A Lesson in Romantics
Jan. 2nd, 2012 03:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apodiopsysJared/Jensen (and others) | R
Jared leaves Jensen behind to go to college & accidentally
breaks his heart. On going back, he has his own coming for him.
They meet first when they’re children. Jensen’s grandmother is friends with Jared’s and while the older women knit they play in a sandbox in the backyard, building castles and cities that they have to defend. Jensen plays the knight in shining armour while Jared stomps around and crushes the sandy buildings. “We need a princess,” Jensen says, shading his eyes as he looks towards the front of the house hopefully, like maybe a female shaped person will wander out to cater to their needs. “I’ll do it,” Jared offers, and Jensen doesn’t bother to tell him that he can’t be two characters. So Jared plays the dragon and he plays the damsel in distress; Jensen slays Jared and then rescues him and kisses him on the cheek.
There are afternoons made messy by helping their grandmothers bake in the kitchen. They spill flower and sugar and protest against the clucking of boys should be outside playing, not baking. Their fingers and cheeks and clothes get stained by batter and as soon as it’s cool enough they eat warm chocolate cake with a cold glass of milk, spilling crumbs onto the pages of Jared’s comics.
At night Jared sneaks out of his grandparents house and throws rocks at Jensen’s window until he opens up. He tempts him outside with promises of a tree house and comics and candy. Up in the safety of the tree they’re covered by leaves and branches. Through a gap the moon is visible and Jared lies down on his back and points up at it, telling stories that he makes up on the spot about astronauts and space monsters. His hand finds Jensen’s, first to point out the constellations that his grandpa showed him earlier. Then he clasps them together like his parents do, and he tells Jensen not to forget him when the summer is over.
&
Summers like that don’t collide again until they’re much older and Jared’s tall (Jensen feels like he has to look up and up and up at him until his neck hurts) and he’s filled out all muscular arms and toned chest and Jared’s willing to bet that the ACDC t-shirt he’s wearing is hiding washboard abs. He recognizes him from his childhood, remembers the summer spent with freckles and green eyes and the grip that Jared’s hand gives Jensen’s is firm, mouth quirking up in a half smile. Away from their grandparents and bingo and dried flowers, Jared says, “You remember me,” and it isn’t a question, it’s a statement because he knows.
“I remember you, princess,” Jensen laughs, loose and easy, and they go back up into the tree house where Jared has soda and chips and skin mags. They fall back into familiarity easily, easier than they should since when they last knew each other they were barely able to read. They’re older now, less innocent and more daring. In the treehouse again Jared shows Jensen constellations, but this time they’re right and he isn’t making it up just to impress him. The darkness and branches hide them from the world when they kiss, soft and slow and experimentive.
Days and nights are made longer, forced to work around them. They take Jensen’s bike out for a spin and Jared clings tight to him, arms wrapped around his middle as they zip down dirt roads to watch the sunset and eat sandwiches. Jared teaches him how to jimmy a lock and they stay up half the night skinny dipping in the public pool, drinking beer stolen out of their grandparents fridge. The moon and the sun witness it all, kisses and touches snatched when no-one else is looking.
Jensen loves him over the course of hoursdaysweeksmonths, the same way he did back when they were kids. He’s loyal to a fault, and his grandmother all but smacks his hand with a ruler when she catches him sneaking out of his room in the middle of the night. He does it again anyway, young and reckless and in love and he kisses Jared stupid under a canopy of leaves. Sometimes he doesn’t mark the calendar that hangs on his wall, and after a handful of days he marks them all off with an X and realizes that summer is that much closer to ending. Before long Jensen takes his calendar off the wall and puts it in a drawer so that he doesn’t have to think about the approach of September.
On the last day Jared kisses him sweetly. “I’m going to college,” he says. “In California.” Jensen’s heart skips a beat, jumps rope, does a somersault. Maybe. “I don’t really want to be tied down to anyone when I start,” Jared is saying, but Jensen isn’t hearing it, not really. His vision fades out until it’s fuzzy around the edges. “I was thinking that we could just be friends because we get along so well and you just... you get it.” He’s looking at Jensen expectantly and he realizes that Jared’s waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, I agree,” he says, even though he isn’t going to college, even though he doesn’t agree, not really. They promise to write and email and call, every week, all the time. Jensen feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. It hurts.
&
In his defence, Jared honestly believes that their past has nothing to it and he stands true to his word, writes and calls and emails at least once a week. Jensen goes to New York and lives out his dream of having an apartment that’s too small and drinking coffee that’s too strong with friends who write poetry and stories darker than their coffee. He acts on a stage, works his way up and up and up while Jared goes to classes and parties with his college friends.
They write and write and write; Jensen keeps every single one of Jared’s letters in a shoebox under his bend, bound together with ribbon. He doesn’t share the letters with anyone, keeps them locked away for himself, pretends that the letters mean something that they don’t. His are signed, Always, Jensen. When he’s feeling brave, there’s a heart, but he doesn’t get anything back. Every time there’s a letter waiting for him in his mailbox he leaves it propped up on his coffee table, runs through his routines of showering and making dinner and eating all while watching the white rectangular envelope until he can’t stand waiting anymore.
On reading the words that he’s put on paper, cramped and spidery along the white page, Jensen thinks that Jared is really good at hurting him without meaning to. And I’ve met someone, Jared writes. He’s one of my professors, so it isn’t technically allowed but he’s so interesting. And Jen, he’s married. The feeling he gets is the same as when Jared told him that they were just friends. He can’t breathe and he can’t see; it hurts, this dull thudding in his chest. It occurs to him that maybe this is what having a broken heart feels like.
It takes seven tries for him to even compose something worth sending back to Jared. The floor around his waste paper basket is littered with crumpled pages. Jensen’s handwriting isn’t as neat as Jared’s, it’s bigger and loopier and someone once told him that it was girly. It takes another seven tries before it doesn’t sound like Why him and not me? What is he that I’m not? When’ll you see that I’m waiting where you left me?
At the end of the letter, all he puts is his name.
&
Jeffrey says to him, “If you want to do this we can only be together after dark and until sunrise; you don’t speak to me unless it’s related to your classes and we never say I love you.” He looks at the man in front of him, older and experienced in the ways of the world that everyone else he’s been with wasn’t. Jared looks at his professor and sees sharp angels and dark: dark hair and dark eyes, day old scruff putting shadows on his cheeks. He looks and he wants and he agrees to it, agrees to sneaking around with an older man all while there’s the underlying possibility of Jared getting kicked out of school and Jeffrey getting fired and they find that neither of them care.
Before, their relationship is platonic; one night after Jeffrey offers to drive him back to his apartment - back when Jeffrey was still Professor Morgan-call-me-Jeffrey - they end up sitting in a diner, drinking shitty coffee and just talking until four in the morning. They talk about everything and nothing at all; Jared tells him about Texas and the horse his mom owned when he was a kid and Jensen and Jeffrey tells him about all the places he’s been, the things he’s done, the people he’s met. They skirt carefully around the ring on his finger and when their fingers brush while handing over the bill neither of them pretend to notice.
The diner becomes their place. More often than not, that’s where they meet, in the back corner booth, next to a window. It’s off-campus, far enough away that very few of the students go there or even know about it, a few blocks away from Jared’s apartment and minutes by drive from the university. Jared goes there after class, buys a cup of coffee every hour so that he can stay and do his studying and write his papers before Jeffrey comes, and then they drink more coffee and eat the brownies and cakes and pie that the diner provides. Sometimes it’s Jared that meets Jeffrey there, breezing in after a late lecture or a pep rally or a studygroup that lasted longer than he wanted.
Jared’s place becomes their place to go; Jeffrey’s is never an option because wifechildfamily. He doesn’t talk about it and Jared doesn’t ask, and they drink bad coffee and then go back to Jared’s, using the whole apartment that he has to himself to their advantage. If walls could tell tales they’d have pornographical ones about them, sleeping together on every inch of every horizontal - and sometimes vertical - surface possible. They fall into Jared’s bed in tangles of lips and skin and limbs, sheets sticking to sweaty bodies that entwine together until they’re almost just one.
He finds out what makes him tick, works his body over like clockwork. They stay up late, talking on the sofa while a nineties sit-com plays over in the background. Jared misses morning classes and Jeffrey shows up late and tired, unshaven and in yesterdays clothes. He tells his wife that he slept in his office and she believes him. If anything, it’s the fact that she is faithful beyond a doubt that makes Jared loose sleep at night. He chooses not to think about it and uses the way Jeff holds him as an excuse.
In some ways he wants to be able to show Jeff off to his friends the same way they show their girlfriends and boyfriends off when they go out drinking and parties or just hanging out. Sometimes he just wishes that he could take Jeff’s hand in public and say to someone (everyone) This is my boyfriend and it doesn’t matter who knows it. Instead, he pretends that he isn’t interested in dating under the pretense of taking his studies seriously. Other times, he’s glad that he can keep Jeffrey a secret; selfish and greedy and wanting to keep him away from the world and all to himself.
What doesn’t occur to Jared in the beginning is that this isn’t the kind of thing that can move forwards and ahead; there’s no getting serious, no I love you or moving in, no picking out dishes and curtains and rugs. It’s another one of those things that he steadfastly doesn’t think about, pushing it to the side as one of those things that he’ll think about later. The thing about affairs with men who still love their wives, love their children, love their family is that there isn’t even the lie or promise of a future. As much as they love each other’s company (and maybe even each other) they’re stuck in relationship purgatory.
At the end of the semester when he’s had his last class with Jeff, he thinks that maybe there’ll be a little bit more leeway. He goes to their diner, hopeful. The back corner booth next to the window is empty. There’s a cup of still-warm coffee on top of a napkin and Jared slides onto the seat, pulls them towards himself. Jeffrey’s handwriting is square and purposeful. It’s been nice knowing you, he wrote on the napkin.
Jared sits in the booth for a while, finishes Jeffrey’s coffee and decides he’s going to New York for spring break.
& Before the letters ran to a stop Jensen told him that he was doing a small-scale Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire; he’d said that the run would last a year, and Jared dresses in a suit and buys tickets and a bouquet of flowers, watches Jensen play Stanley so perfectly and it reminds him exactly why he ever loved him in the first place. He watches Jensen play a force of nature, something to be reckoned with: dominating and rough and amazing sensual as he does it, and he realizes again that he wants Jensen to be his.
He gets himself backstage, lies to the security guy at the door that he’s Jensen’s date, that he’s expected. There are people everywhere backstage, managers and actors and crew members. The security guy leads him to a door with Jensen Ackles on the front, leaving him to the side while he knocks to tell him that someones there for him.
“Jared?” Jensen asks, disbelief written all over his face. He stands in his partly cracked door, leaning against the doorframe. He looks the same as Jared remembers him, if only a little bigger, more muscular. Jensen still has the same freckles on his cheeks and along the bridge of his nose he’s willing to bet they still line his shoulders and back. “Jared, what’re you doing here, I didn’t know you were coming!” He steps outside, closes his dressing room door with a click and Jared realizes that he’s shirtless. He probably interrupted him while he was changing.
“I wanted to surprise you,” he says, voice dropped into a drawl, all southern Texan charm cranked right up to full. “You told me you were doing this, remember? You were amazing, it blew me away.” They stand there for a few seconds, weighing out the strangeness of this even happening. A thorn from one of the roses in the bouquet digs into Jared’s palm, draws a drop of blood to the surface. It reminds him that they’re there. “Oh! These are for you.” He hands them to Jensen and the smile that crosses his face is genuine.
“These are great.” His voice is almost hoarse. “I’ll just put them in water and go get finished changing. If you wait outside I’ll be out there in a few.” Jared nods, opening his mouth to say something else, ask Jensen to dinner (because he wants to do this right, he’s not the kid that he was when he left Jensen behind and went to university) but he’s already opening his door and he thinks that he hears Jensen say something to someone inside the room but the door is already closing.
He waits outside like Jensen asked him to, leaning against a wall and looking up at the cracked yellow streetlight. The actor comes out in a group of other people - other actors - and he breaks away from them, moving over to Jared dressed in jeans and a black button down shirt. He looks good. “Jared!” he says. “Do you want to come into town with us? A bunch of us are going for some drinks.”
Jared pauses, says, “I was actually thinking if me and you could go out for dinner? I heard about this great restaurant a couple of blocks from here and I made reservations in case.” He trails off, seeing the expression on Jensen’s face. It’s not one that he’s ever seen before, not one that he’s ever looked at him with.
“We always go for drinks after a show, I can’t just go and change tradition.” There’s something in his voice that stings, and one of the guys from the production - the one with bright blue eyes who played Mitch - calls out to them. He’s standing in front of an open cab door, another cab parked to the side. He can see the silhouettes of people filling them.
“Come on!” the guy yells. “Jen, we’re going!”
He sighs. “Come on, it’ll be fun, I haven’t seen you in forever. We could catch up, you don’t write to me anymore.”
The sound of his voice is apologetic, Jared can hear it from the tone. He wipes his hand over his face and says, “No, yeah, I should have written, or called or something. I’m sorry.” He hesitates for a second, considers asking if they could just get together for lunch tomorrow. It’s not an option though, like backing out. “Yeah, I’ll go with you guys.”
Feeling like a third wheel for most of the cab ride, Jared sits shotgun while Jensen sits in the middle of a girl and the guy who played Mitch, discussing something about lightbulbs and existentialists. The guy actually introduced himself, said his name was Misha, but there’s something about him that Jared doesn’t like, so he keeps calling him the guy who played Mitch in his head. They end up in someone’s kitchen, and he sits on a sofa talking to one of the actors about how he knows Jensen and what he’s studying in college.
“Jay!” Jensen says, cheeks flushed. “Hey, let me get you a drink. We can sit and talk after, I’m probably being such a bad host.” He laughs, too loud and forced, and disappears before Jared can tell him no. He watches as Jensen makes his way over to a bowl of punch that’s on a table, filling two red cups and it reminds him of the parties that they snuck out too during the summers at their grandparent’s.
The way he moves is the same, graceful and effortless. It’s like watching a dancer, and Jared marvels at it. But then the guy who played Mitch - Misha - is curving his hand around Jensen’s wrist and pulling him so his back is against his chest. The guy - Misha is actually shorter than Jensen, but for some reason he’s leaned back against him, smiling in a way that makes Jared nauseous. One of the cups are taken out of Jensen’s hands; he can see how he protests, reads the That’s for Jared! on his lips. Misha laughs tauntingly and drinks from it anyway, and then he takes Jensen’s now-free hand and spins him around so they’re chest to chest, hand with the cup resting on his waist.
Misha kisses Jensen, on the mouth, and Jared knows that it’s meant for him, and he understands completely. He gets up and Jensen only sees him leaving as the front door clicks shut. Jared is halfway down the block before he even catches up with him.
“You can’t just expect me to drop everything and come running just because you decided to drop in, Jay. I did this and I built up a life here, I have plans.” The venom that was in his voice before is back, dripping acid into open wounds. “If you’d called or something, I don’t know, we could have gone to dinner. I’m not one of your dogs, you can’t just whistle and expect me to be there.”
The people from inside are coming outside now, moving over to more parked taxis. The party is moving somewhere else. Misha is by a cab door again, calling out and asking Jensen to come; he isn’t going to say anything but Misha whistles and Jensen goes. “We’re going out, there’s going to be music and dancing and people,” he says, voice lacking the earlier venom. It’s an empty invitation.
Jared ignores it. “Do you love him?” he asks instead, looking him in the eye.
He hesitates, quiet for a moment. Jensen says, “I think I do.”
Jared leaves Jensen behind to go to college & accidentally
breaks his heart. On going back, he has his own coming for him.
They meet first when they’re children. Jensen’s grandmother is friends with Jared’s and while the older women knit they play in a sandbox in the backyard, building castles and cities that they have to defend. Jensen plays the knight in shining armour while Jared stomps around and crushes the sandy buildings. “We need a princess,” Jensen says, shading his eyes as he looks towards the front of the house hopefully, like maybe a female shaped person will wander out to cater to their needs. “I’ll do it,” Jared offers, and Jensen doesn’t bother to tell him that he can’t be two characters. So Jared plays the dragon and he plays the damsel in distress; Jensen slays Jared and then rescues him and kisses him on the cheek.
There are afternoons made messy by helping their grandmothers bake in the kitchen. They spill flower and sugar and protest against the clucking of boys should be outside playing, not baking. Their fingers and cheeks and clothes get stained by batter and as soon as it’s cool enough they eat warm chocolate cake with a cold glass of milk, spilling crumbs onto the pages of Jared’s comics.
At night Jared sneaks out of his grandparents house and throws rocks at Jensen’s window until he opens up. He tempts him outside with promises of a tree house and comics and candy. Up in the safety of the tree they’re covered by leaves and branches. Through a gap the moon is visible and Jared lies down on his back and points up at it, telling stories that he makes up on the spot about astronauts and space monsters. His hand finds Jensen’s, first to point out the constellations that his grandpa showed him earlier. Then he clasps them together like his parents do, and he tells Jensen not to forget him when the summer is over.
Summers like that don’t collide again until they’re much older and Jared’s tall (Jensen feels like he has to look up and up and up at him until his neck hurts) and he’s filled out all muscular arms and toned chest and Jared’s willing to bet that the ACDC t-shirt he’s wearing is hiding washboard abs. He recognizes him from his childhood, remembers the summer spent with freckles and green eyes and the grip that Jared’s hand gives Jensen’s is firm, mouth quirking up in a half smile. Away from their grandparents and bingo and dried flowers, Jared says, “You remember me,” and it isn’t a question, it’s a statement because he knows.
“I remember you, princess,” Jensen laughs, loose and easy, and they go back up into the tree house where Jared has soda and chips and skin mags. They fall back into familiarity easily, easier than they should since when they last knew each other they were barely able to read. They’re older now, less innocent and more daring. In the treehouse again Jared shows Jensen constellations, but this time they’re right and he isn’t making it up just to impress him. The darkness and branches hide them from the world when they kiss, soft and slow and experimentive.
Days and nights are made longer, forced to work around them. They take Jensen’s bike out for a spin and Jared clings tight to him, arms wrapped around his middle as they zip down dirt roads to watch the sunset and eat sandwiches. Jared teaches him how to jimmy a lock and they stay up half the night skinny dipping in the public pool, drinking beer stolen out of their grandparents fridge. The moon and the sun witness it all, kisses and touches snatched when no-one else is looking.
Jensen loves him over the course of hoursdaysweeksmonths, the same way he did back when they were kids. He’s loyal to a fault, and his grandmother all but smacks his hand with a ruler when she catches him sneaking out of his room in the middle of the night. He does it again anyway, young and reckless and in love and he kisses Jared stupid under a canopy of leaves. Sometimes he doesn’t mark the calendar that hangs on his wall, and after a handful of days he marks them all off with an X and realizes that summer is that much closer to ending. Before long Jensen takes his calendar off the wall and puts it in a drawer so that he doesn’t have to think about the approach of September.
On the last day Jared kisses him sweetly. “I’m going to college,” he says. “In California.” Jensen’s heart skips a beat, jumps rope, does a somersault. Maybe. “I don’t really want to be tied down to anyone when I start,” Jared is saying, but Jensen isn’t hearing it, not really. His vision fades out until it’s fuzzy around the edges. “I was thinking that we could just be friends because we get along so well and you just... you get it.” He’s looking at Jensen expectantly and he realizes that Jared’s waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, I agree,” he says, even though he isn’t going to college, even though he doesn’t agree, not really. They promise to write and email and call, every week, all the time. Jensen feels like he’s been punched in the stomach. It hurts.
In his defence, Jared honestly believes that their past has nothing to it and he stands true to his word, writes and calls and emails at least once a week. Jensen goes to New York and lives out his dream of having an apartment that’s too small and drinking coffee that’s too strong with friends who write poetry and stories darker than their coffee. He acts on a stage, works his way up and up and up while Jared goes to classes and parties with his college friends.
They write and write and write; Jensen keeps every single one of Jared’s letters in a shoebox under his bend, bound together with ribbon. He doesn’t share the letters with anyone, keeps them locked away for himself, pretends that the letters mean something that they don’t. His are signed, Always, Jensen. When he’s feeling brave, there’s a heart, but he doesn’t get anything back. Every time there’s a letter waiting for him in his mailbox he leaves it propped up on his coffee table, runs through his routines of showering and making dinner and eating all while watching the white rectangular envelope until he can’t stand waiting anymore.
On reading the words that he’s put on paper, cramped and spidery along the white page, Jensen thinks that Jared is really good at hurting him without meaning to. And I’ve met someone, Jared writes. He’s one of my professors, so it isn’t technically allowed but he’s so interesting. And Jen, he’s married. The feeling he gets is the same as when Jared told him that they were just friends. He can’t breathe and he can’t see; it hurts, this dull thudding in his chest. It occurs to him that maybe this is what having a broken heart feels like.
It takes seven tries for him to even compose something worth sending back to Jared. The floor around his waste paper basket is littered with crumpled pages. Jensen’s handwriting isn’t as neat as Jared’s, it’s bigger and loopier and someone once told him that it was girly. It takes another seven tries before it doesn’t sound like Why him and not me? What is he that I’m not? When’ll you see that I’m waiting where you left me?
At the end of the letter, all he puts is his name.
Jeffrey says to him, “If you want to do this we can only be together after dark and until sunrise; you don’t speak to me unless it’s related to your classes and we never say I love you.” He looks at the man in front of him, older and experienced in the ways of the world that everyone else he’s been with wasn’t. Jared looks at his professor and sees sharp angels and dark: dark hair and dark eyes, day old scruff putting shadows on his cheeks. He looks and he wants and he agrees to it, agrees to sneaking around with an older man all while there’s the underlying possibility of Jared getting kicked out of school and Jeffrey getting fired and they find that neither of them care.
Before, their relationship is platonic; one night after Jeffrey offers to drive him back to his apartment - back when Jeffrey was still Professor Morgan-call-me-Jeffrey - they end up sitting in a diner, drinking shitty coffee and just talking until four in the morning. They talk about everything and nothing at all; Jared tells him about Texas and the horse his mom owned when he was a kid and Jensen and Jeffrey tells him about all the places he’s been, the things he’s done, the people he’s met. They skirt carefully around the ring on his finger and when their fingers brush while handing over the bill neither of them pretend to notice.
The diner becomes their place. More often than not, that’s where they meet, in the back corner booth, next to a window. It’s off-campus, far enough away that very few of the students go there or even know about it, a few blocks away from Jared’s apartment and minutes by drive from the university. Jared goes there after class, buys a cup of coffee every hour so that he can stay and do his studying and write his papers before Jeffrey comes, and then they drink more coffee and eat the brownies and cakes and pie that the diner provides. Sometimes it’s Jared that meets Jeffrey there, breezing in after a late lecture or a pep rally or a studygroup that lasted longer than he wanted.
Jared’s place becomes their place to go; Jeffrey’s is never an option because wifechildfamily. He doesn’t talk about it and Jared doesn’t ask, and they drink bad coffee and then go back to Jared’s, using the whole apartment that he has to himself to their advantage. If walls could tell tales they’d have pornographical ones about them, sleeping together on every inch of every horizontal - and sometimes vertical - surface possible. They fall into Jared’s bed in tangles of lips and skin and limbs, sheets sticking to sweaty bodies that entwine together until they’re almost just one.
He finds out what makes him tick, works his body over like clockwork. They stay up late, talking on the sofa while a nineties sit-com plays over in the background. Jared misses morning classes and Jeffrey shows up late and tired, unshaven and in yesterdays clothes. He tells his wife that he slept in his office and she believes him. If anything, it’s the fact that she is faithful beyond a doubt that makes Jared loose sleep at night. He chooses not to think about it and uses the way Jeff holds him as an excuse.
In some ways he wants to be able to show Jeff off to his friends the same way they show their girlfriends and boyfriends off when they go out drinking and parties or just hanging out. Sometimes he just wishes that he could take Jeff’s hand in public and say to someone (everyone) This is my boyfriend and it doesn’t matter who knows it. Instead, he pretends that he isn’t interested in dating under the pretense of taking his studies seriously. Other times, he’s glad that he can keep Jeffrey a secret; selfish and greedy and wanting to keep him away from the world and all to himself.
What doesn’t occur to Jared in the beginning is that this isn’t the kind of thing that can move forwards and ahead; there’s no getting serious, no I love you or moving in, no picking out dishes and curtains and rugs. It’s another one of those things that he steadfastly doesn’t think about, pushing it to the side as one of those things that he’ll think about later. The thing about affairs with men who still love their wives, love their children, love their family is that there isn’t even the lie or promise of a future. As much as they love each other’s company (and maybe even each other) they’re stuck in relationship purgatory.
At the end of the semester when he’s had his last class with Jeff, he thinks that maybe there’ll be a little bit more leeway. He goes to their diner, hopeful. The back corner booth next to the window is empty. There’s a cup of still-warm coffee on top of a napkin and Jared slides onto the seat, pulls them towards himself. Jeffrey’s handwriting is square and purposeful. It’s been nice knowing you, he wrote on the napkin.
Jared sits in the booth for a while, finishes Jeffrey’s coffee and decides he’s going to New York for spring break.
He gets himself backstage, lies to the security guy at the door that he’s Jensen’s date, that he’s expected. There are people everywhere backstage, managers and actors and crew members. The security guy leads him to a door with Jensen Ackles on the front, leaving him to the side while he knocks to tell him that someones there for him.
“Jared?” Jensen asks, disbelief written all over his face. He stands in his partly cracked door, leaning against the doorframe. He looks the same as Jared remembers him, if only a little bigger, more muscular. Jensen still has the same freckles on his cheeks and along the bridge of his nose he’s willing to bet they still line his shoulders and back. “Jared, what’re you doing here, I didn’t know you were coming!” He steps outside, closes his dressing room door with a click and Jared realizes that he’s shirtless. He probably interrupted him while he was changing.
“I wanted to surprise you,” he says, voice dropped into a drawl, all southern Texan charm cranked right up to full. “You told me you were doing this, remember? You were amazing, it blew me away.” They stand there for a few seconds, weighing out the strangeness of this even happening. A thorn from one of the roses in the bouquet digs into Jared’s palm, draws a drop of blood to the surface. It reminds him that they’re there. “Oh! These are for you.” He hands them to Jensen and the smile that crosses his face is genuine.
“These are great.” His voice is almost hoarse. “I’ll just put them in water and go get finished changing. If you wait outside I’ll be out there in a few.” Jared nods, opening his mouth to say something else, ask Jensen to dinner (because he wants to do this right, he’s not the kid that he was when he left Jensen behind and went to university) but he’s already opening his door and he thinks that he hears Jensen say something to someone inside the room but the door is already closing.
He waits outside like Jensen asked him to, leaning against a wall and looking up at the cracked yellow streetlight. The actor comes out in a group of other people - other actors - and he breaks away from them, moving over to Jared dressed in jeans and a black button down shirt. He looks good. “Jared!” he says. “Do you want to come into town with us? A bunch of us are going for some drinks.”
Jared pauses, says, “I was actually thinking if me and you could go out for dinner? I heard about this great restaurant a couple of blocks from here and I made reservations in case.” He trails off, seeing the expression on Jensen’s face. It’s not one that he’s ever seen before, not one that he’s ever looked at him with.
“We always go for drinks after a show, I can’t just go and change tradition.” There’s something in his voice that stings, and one of the guys from the production - the one with bright blue eyes who played Mitch - calls out to them. He’s standing in front of an open cab door, another cab parked to the side. He can see the silhouettes of people filling them.
“Come on!” the guy yells. “Jen, we’re going!”
He sighs. “Come on, it’ll be fun, I haven’t seen you in forever. We could catch up, you don’t write to me anymore.”
The sound of his voice is apologetic, Jared can hear it from the tone. He wipes his hand over his face and says, “No, yeah, I should have written, or called or something. I’m sorry.” He hesitates for a second, considers asking if they could just get together for lunch tomorrow. It’s not an option though, like backing out. “Yeah, I’ll go with you guys.”
Feeling like a third wheel for most of the cab ride, Jared sits shotgun while Jensen sits in the middle of a girl and the guy who played Mitch, discussing something about lightbulbs and existentialists. The guy actually introduced himself, said his name was Misha, but there’s something about him that Jared doesn’t like, so he keeps calling him the guy who played Mitch in his head. They end up in someone’s kitchen, and he sits on a sofa talking to one of the actors about how he knows Jensen and what he’s studying in college.
“Jay!” Jensen says, cheeks flushed. “Hey, let me get you a drink. We can sit and talk after, I’m probably being such a bad host.” He laughs, too loud and forced, and disappears before Jared can tell him no. He watches as Jensen makes his way over to a bowl of punch that’s on a table, filling two red cups and it reminds him of the parties that they snuck out too during the summers at their grandparent’s.
The way he moves is the same, graceful and effortless. It’s like watching a dancer, and Jared marvels at it. But then the guy who played Mitch - Misha - is curving his hand around Jensen’s wrist and pulling him so his back is against his chest. The guy - Misha is actually shorter than Jensen, but for some reason he’s leaned back against him, smiling in a way that makes Jared nauseous. One of the cups are taken out of Jensen’s hands; he can see how he protests, reads the That’s for Jared! on his lips. Misha laughs tauntingly and drinks from it anyway, and then he takes Jensen’s now-free hand and spins him around so they’re chest to chest, hand with the cup resting on his waist.
Misha kisses Jensen, on the mouth, and Jared knows that it’s meant for him, and he understands completely. He gets up and Jensen only sees him leaving as the front door clicks shut. Jared is halfway down the block before he even catches up with him.
“You can’t just expect me to drop everything and come running just because you decided to drop in, Jay. I did this and I built up a life here, I have plans.” The venom that was in his voice before is back, dripping acid into open wounds. “If you’d called or something, I don’t know, we could have gone to dinner. I’m not one of your dogs, you can’t just whistle and expect me to be there.”
The people from inside are coming outside now, moving over to more parked taxis. The party is moving somewhere else. Misha is by a cab door again, calling out and asking Jensen to come; he isn’t going to say anything but Misha whistles and Jensen goes. “We’re going out, there’s going to be music and dancing and people,” he says, voice lacking the earlier venom. It’s an empty invitation.
Jared ignores it. “Do you love him?” he asks instead, looking him in the eye.
He hesitates, quiet for a moment. Jensen says, “I think I do.”
