she of no scruples (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} writeatmidnight) wrote,@ 2007-08-01 18:43:00 |
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| Entry tags: | rps, sick 'verse |
Fic: Ten to Disaster
Title: Ten to Disaster
Series/Verse: Part 20 of the Sick Verse that started off with Green Around the Edges and spiraled out of control.
Summary: Oh, if only Jared could control that gaping hole that happens to be his mouth.
Type: Real people
Rating: PG-14
Characters: Jared/Jensen
Word Count: 5,362
Warnings: this one, she is ripe with teh angst
Disclaimer: It’s all a pretty little fairytale. Also, The Uncle does not actually exist.
AN: This verse really is my baby, but I’ve been working on it for nine months. You’d think I’d have delivered (some sex) by now. Or at least a conclusion. I think I’m going to start bringing it to a close soon. It’s getting kind of long.
Oh, and I got bored so I did a Jensen POV. He’s been quiet for quite a few chapters now.
* Sick verse: 01 Green Around the Edges | 02 Contagious | 03 Always Off Limits | 04 Walk in the Snow | 05 What Goes Around Comes Around | 06 But What a Way to Go | 07 When Green Meets Red | 08 After an Afternoon | 09 Nobody Ever Said It’d Be Easy | 10 The Art of Chocolate | 11 Stumbling Out of the Closet | 12 Why Aren’t You Stopping Me? | 13 With Eyes Closed | 14 Where Else Would I Be? | 15 Like Putty in His Hands | 16 No | 17 To Trust | 18 Wrong Side of the Sunrise | 19 The Size of Texas | 20 Ten to Disaster | 21 Somewhere in the Heart of the Aftermath | 22 The Epic Love Story of Jared and Jensen | 23 Yours | 24 Just a Murmur | 25 You Know That Saying? | 26 And the World Just Keeps Spinning | 27 Shut Up and Hold Me
Please, God, let it be a mirage. Just a mirage. Jared’s not really standing there wearing a frilly yellow apron. It’s just a—
Jared chose that moment to take a flying leap through the air, skidded a little on the carpet during takeoff, and landed square in the middle of the bed, right on top of Jensen, who already had one leg thrown over the side of the bed in an useless attempt to scramble out from between the sheets and evacuate the area.
It didn’t work, though he may have blacked out for a minute there. Lack of oxygen or something.
Having landed, Jared blanketed Jensen’s body and bounced a little, making the springs squeak in protest and Jensen’s arm—now crushed under Jared’s body weight—do a little protesting, too.
Right. Definitely not a mirage.
Attempting to breathe around Jared’s mess of hair, Jensen said, “You’re trying to kill me,” and let his head flop back onto the pillow. “Get off my arm.”
Jared didn’t budge, didn’t look like he planned on moving for awhile, looked pretty comfortable with his head burrowed in the blankets that were bunched up around Jensen’s collarbone. “Are you gonna sleep all day?”
“Not with you in the house.”
“You slept through breakfast.”
Jensen grunted out some sort of response and tried to wiggle out from under Jared. The only thing he actually managed to wiggle were his toes.
“Is it because you know he’s gonna show up today?”
As always, right-to-the-point-Padalecki, bringing The Awkward to conversations since the early 80s.
“Seriously, I can’t feel my arm anymore.” With his free elbow, Jensen tried to nudge away the 6’4” bundle of limbs and hair that currently happened to be sprawled out over his body.
“Your family loves me,” Jared declared into the folds of the blanket, still not bothering to move. “I cooked breakfast with your dad this morning—you never told me he likes to cook, and how much he kinda really sucks at it—and your mom thinks I’m ‘adorable.’ She’d adopt me if she could. Oh, and I’m wearin’ her apron. She said yellow looks good on me. And, oh hey, where’s your sister? By the way, your brother’s freakin’ me out, keeps lookin’ at me weird. And Pa Ackles tried to teach me to make crepes this morning. He burned, like, ten of ‘em, and the rest fell apart when he tried to get ‘em outta the pan—no one looked surprised at that. I got one of the burned crepes. I tried to trade it off for one of the falling apart ones but your aunt wouldn’t go for it. I like your family.”
Jensen closed his eyes, rubbed his thumb across his forehead, and wondered how Jared squeezed all of that out in one breath. So it was going to be one of those days, the kind which started off with Jared and several cups of coffee obviously filled with several heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
One deep breath, and Jared was already opening his mouth to go again. God. He’s like a twelve-year-old on crack and coffee.
“Hey,” Jensen interrupted, before Jared had a chance to rev the engines back up, “guess they drank all of the coffee by now.” Meaning: I really need some fucking coffee before I can deal with you.
Jared, well aware of Jensen’s code language by now, rolled and swooped off of the bed in a blur of dark hair, and Jensen was able to take his first deep breath of the morning; all of the available air in the room smelled like a mixture of Jared’s aftershave and his scarily girly peach shampoo. Jensen wrinkled his nose.
“They drank it all at breakfast,” Jared said, and Jensen deflated a little until he appeared back at the bedside, a large mug in hand. “But I saved you a cup. I hid it behind the toaster.”
Jensen was sitting up in three seconds flat, making grabby hands at the mug in Jared’s hand.
“I already put cream in it,” Jared continued, handing it over and openly watching Jensen’s mouth as he put his lips to the rim. As Jensen gulped, Jared said, “Ya know, I really spoil you.”
Jensen nodded agreement and licked coffee off of his lips, slowly. As predicted, Jared followed the path of his tongue with obvious interest.
Already halfway through the coffee, Jensen said, “Wait till you see Dad start a fire on the grill today. Burned beef tastes a lot worse than burned crepe.”
Skeptical, maybe even a little worried: “Does he start a fire every year?”
“It’s like a tradition now. We keep a fire extinguisher nearby.”
“Huh.”
“And hey, don’t get too close; you might singe some hair off.” Ahh yes, that would be the coffee kicking in—really no other way to handle Jared in the morning.
Unconsciously, Jared reached up and fingered his bangs. Jensen snickered too loudly, so loudly that Jared apparently found it necessary to tackle him back into the sheets.
On the way to the bathroom, Jared trailed Jensen step-for-step, until Jensen slammed the door in his face. And locked it.
When Jensen came back out, hair still dripping water from the shower, he found Jared sitting on the floor, leaning with his back against the wall right next to the door, grinning sunshine-bright up at him—a definite sign that the day ahead was going to be a long one filled with burned burgers and a clingy man-child.
Jensen needed more coffee.
“Let me,” Jared said, arms winding around Jensen from behind, snatching the can of hair gel right out of his hand, and it was really unfair that someone so tall should be able to sneak up from behind so freakin’ quietly.
Jared moved Jensen to the only mirror in the bedroom, and Jensen said, “You’re not doing my hair,” even though Jared was already spraying out a good amount of product into his hand. “I don’t use that much. You’re gonna do it wrong.”
Standing behind Jensen, watching his own movements in the mirror, Jared brought his hands together and rubbed, then smoothed both hands through Jensen’s hair, bringing the longer pieces together to stand straight up in the middle.
“Oh hell no,” Jensen said, seeing where this was going, and reached for the hair gel.
All it took was for Jared to widen his eyes slightly and say, “I saved you coffee,” and Jensen shut up right then and there, let Jared do his thing.
Six minutes later Jared wrapped his arms around Jensen’s chest, pulled him in close, a half hug, both of them staring into the mirror at Jensen’s mini Mohawk, and said, “Done.” Jared then spun him around, examined his work as if it were a newly-completed masterpiece, and kissed Jensen’s left eyebrow. “Looks good. Right?”
“Yeah,” Jensen said, smiling weakly at the pride in Jared’s voice, “great.”
“I should do your hair everyday.”
This ain’t even right.
Downstairs, Josh took one look at Jensen and the first words out of his mouth were, “What happened to you?”
And as soon as Josh turned away, Jared was behind him again, leaning over his shoulder, whispering in his ear: “Forgot to ask. How’s your butt cheek?”
Was it too early in the day to smack someone?
On the way outside, Jensen grabbed Jared by the shirt sleeve and hauled him into the laundry room.
Jared simply raised an eyebrow, grinned goofily, closed the door to the room, and flicked the light on. “I dunno, Jense. Making out in a room full of dirty clothes with your family on the other side of the door? That’s kinda crazy.” Yet he took two steps forward, bounded the rest of the way up to Jensen like an overexcited puppy, hair bouncing with each exuberant step, and crowded Jensen back against the washing machine and a laundry basket filled with clean underwear. “But, hey, you know I’m up for it. You want the light on or off?”
Jensen said, “Stop shadowing me.”
“What?”
“This is why I didn’t want you here. I knew you were gonna do this: Hover over me all day like my uncle’s gonna pop through the front door any minute and… eat me. I don’t need you breathing down my neck all the time, like some sorta,” Jensen spread his arms as wide as the small room would allow, “overprotective boyfriend.”
Jared looked vaguely surprised, as though he thought Jensen already knew this simple fact by now: “But that’s what I am.”
“That’s the problem,” Jensen ground out, harsh enough for Jared to take a step back, clearly unsure.
Backing into a set of hangers behind him, Jared said, “It’s just that. Just that you’ve been through a lot of shit. And I want you to be safe when I’m around.”
The familiar words bubbled up and rested on the tip of Jensen’s tongue: I’m not your fucking helpless girlfriend. Back off. Stop treating me like—like a girl.
Thickly, he swallowed them down, as he had been doing for several months now. It was always easier not to… just not to.
Jensen said, “You’re a real pain in the ass.”
And Jared smiled, looking a little relieved around the edges. “Worse than the splinter?”
Jensen’s only retaliation was to jostle Jared into a bunch of hangers full of… bras? Huh, and push his way out of the cramped room.
Behind Jensen there was a clatter, and Jared sputtered, panicky, “Oh, God. Oh shit, Jensen. I think I just touched your mother’s bra.” More clattering, as though Jared had gotten himself tangled up in the clothes and hangers, then a whiny and bitten off, “…scarred for life.”
And things were okay again, for the moment. Well, semi-okay. As okay as things got lately.
Jared stuffed the last bite of a ketchup-smothered hotdog into his mouth. Sill chewing and at the same time wiping mustard from the corner of his mouth, he garbled, “Let’s go into the city tonight. I’ve never seen Dallas.” A half-chewed piece of bun flew out and landed on Jensen’s knee.
It was both amusing and disgusting at the same time. At Jensen’s raised eyebrows, Jared grinned sheepishly, reached over and flicked the food onto the ground, mouthing, “Sorry,” and gulped the oversized bite down with a large swallow of beer.
Full of meat and clearly satisfied, Josh yawned widely and stretched his arms over his head, leaning back so far in his chair that it creaked. “I was thinking about going fishing at the lake Uncle Dan always used to take us to. Gimme a chance to get to know Jared a little better. How ‘bout it, Jense?”
The lake. Fuck no.
“S’been awhile since we’ve been there,“ Josh went on. “What, ten years? Eleven, maybe?”
Jensen had to force the word out: “Fifteen.”
“So you two used to go to this lake a lot to fish with your uncle?” Jared’s question came out casual enough, sounded slow and easy to the ear, but one look over at him—his tense lean forward in the chair, the way he suddenly gripped the neck of his beer bottle with white-knuckled intensity—and Jensen figured it was probably time to break this little powwow up.
“Yeah,” Josh started, “we used to go nearly every afternoon until I got into this after school soccer thing and stopped going. But Uncle D. still took Jensen fishing there all the time.” He laughed. “At one point, we were having fish for dinner almost every week. I was so sick of the damn stuff, but Dan said Jensen was a real natural at it.”
His face was burning, hot with shame. He couldn’t even look at Jared, kept his eyes locked down to where his hand gripped the edge of the flimsy paper plate in his lap. To the plate, as if he were too busy studying potato chip crumbs to bother looking up, Jensen said, “We can drive into Dallas instead. Jared doesn’t wanna see some overgrown lake.”
“There’s time enough for both. ‘Sides, it’s easier to bond while fishing. I wanna get to know my little brother’s TV-brother. You two can go into the city tonight; it’ll still be there. It ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
And even though Josh had no idea, no clue, as to why Jensen had never gone back to their old fishing spot, why he’d avoided it all these years, Jensen still kind of wanted to smack him. Just for being so damn pushy. ‘Bond with Jared’? Seriously, what the hell could that even mean, and why did it worry Jensen?
Inside the cool of the house again, Jensen stood from putting the mustard and ketchup back in the fridge only to have Jared right at his back, at his ear, hushed tones: “We don’t have to go to this lake place if you don’t want to. You probably shouldn’t be there anyway, at that… spot.”
Jensen pushed him away. “It’s fine. It doesn’t bother me.” Do I look weak to him? Like I’m gonna break if I see a bunch of weeds and muddy water? I’m an adult. I can handle this. No problem. It’s all good.
One of the kids came barreling through the kitchen before Jared could answer, but the look he shot Jensen clearly said, Bullshit. This is a bad idea.
Josh dropped his fishing gear on a nearby pile of dirt, mouth hanging open. “When did they drain the lake?”
Oh, this was just too damn good to be true. His uncle’s favorite fishing hole sucked dry and turned into a dry crater-like hole? It was perfect. Almost had a poetic quality. Keeping his face carefully indifferent, Jensen said, “Guess this means we won’t be fishing today.”
Translation: No buddy time with my brother and boyfriend. Life is awesome.
“What do they do with all the water?” Jared asked, completely serious as he adjusted the ridiculous cowboy hat on his head.
“Well, damn.” Josh kicked a loose rock into the lake-hole, and turned to Jensen. “Siddown. I don’t feel like heading back to the house. It’s too crowded.” One arm spreading out dramatically to indicate the once-lake, he nodded over to Jared, who had a cooler tucked under one arm. “They can take our lake but not our beer.”
“You’re an idiot,” Jensen said, and Josh shoved him hard, trying to push him over the side.
Settling back in his lawn chair with a squeak, Josh popped open a cold bottle. He looked perfectly relaxed, nonchalant and bored. “So, Jared. You have a thing for my brother.”
Jensen choked on his piece of gum; it lodged somewhere in the back of his throat. No one seemed to notice his hacking.
With a plop, Jared’s fishing gear fell to the ground. “Uh. I. I what?”
They were so screwed.
“Because I’ve been noticing some things.”
“Are you calling me gay?”
So very, very screwed.
“No.” Calmly, Josh took a swig of beer. “I’m calling you Jen-gay. Hey, it’s a pretty simple question. I’m not gonna jump you if you answer wrong.”
Jensen stared at the side of Jared’s face, willing him to just keep his mouth shut, while Jared stared at the back of Josh’s head.
“Well,” Josh prodded, “what’s the deal? You got a thing for Jen?” His eyebrows waggled up and down suggestively. Jensen wanted to smack him. Or throw up. Whichever came first.
At some point during Jared’s gap of silence, Jensen ground out, “Josh.”
“No. No thing,” Jared answered carefully, slowly, and Jensen thought, Good boy, dared to let out a breath full of relief. And then Jared ruined it with, “But I am kind of in love with him.”
Jensen closed his eyes. I’ll kill him.
The casual quality of the conversation was pretty damn disconcerting, even as Josh said, “And how’s that workin’ out for ya?”
The odds of Jared coming out of this conversation unscathed were pretty low.
“What do you mean?” Jared asked, instantly uncertain and fidgeting, as though the conversation were only just now becoming awkward.
Jensen said, “Josh. Cut it out.”
“What? I’m just enjoying getting to know Jared here. He’s a very interesting guy. You hang out with some fascinating people, Jense.”
I’ll kill them both. Hide the bodies in the lake.
“It’s not the way you think.” Jared had set aside his beer, where it was now setting in a patch of weeds and watering the area as it slowly tipped sideways. By now he was glancing nervously at Jensen, as if just now realizing blurting out his love might have been a bad idea. “It’s not… like that.” Jensen wondered where the hell Jared was going with this, and just how large a grave he was going to dig for himself before he finally shut up—or slipped and fell in. And the odds that he was going to take Jensen with him? Very high.
“It’s not like what?” Having sucked down one beer already, Josh began pawing through the cooler for another. Apparently interrogating your brother’s maybe-boyfriend called for lots of alcohol.
While Josh was bent over the cooler, Jensen fixed Jared with a narrow-eyed, tight-lipped expression, easily read as Just shut the fuck up. Unfortunately, Jared didn’t seem to get it, couldn’t seem to shut his yap-hole.
“It’s not like, uh,” Jared stopped to wet his lips, clear his throat, “like a sex-lust kinda thing.”
Jensen might have groaned out loud at that little gem. Oh, God. Could this get any worse?
“I see,” said Josh, voice a blank canvas as he nursed his second beer. “So you two don’t actually sleep together.”
Looking up at the sky, Jared let out a clever little, “Huh.”
“And this is a mutual thing?” Josh continued, tilting his head over to Jensen.
Jared quickly went silent, leaving an obvious space for Jensen to speak up, confirm, maybe bail Jared out of his ever-widening, self-dug hole.
Jensen decided to go with the ever-popular, “Just drop it.”
“I can’t help it if I notice things. I’m an observant guy.”
Somewhere off to the side, Jared muttered, darkly, “Yeah, nothing gets by you,” and Jensen cringed inwardly at what he figured the words were actually in reference to.
Seeming to not have heard Jared, Josh said, “The next time you curl up in bed together, maybe you should lock the bedroom door. I came in to your room this morning because Mom wanted me to get you two up for breakfast. Didn’t know I was gonna have to bleach my brain afterwards. Shit, Jensen, if it had been Mom who’d come up there instead… or Dad—Can you imagine what would’ve happened if it’d been Dad?”
Yes, Jensen could imagine it. Far too easily, in fact. And the images in his head involved tears, maybe a little blood—probably Jared’s.
“Wait. You already know about…?” Jared trailed off, too busy gaping to finish the thought.
“Well, I had a suspicion. But it kind of confirmed it when I walked in on you two all tangled up and—God, it still burns my brain.” Josh’s face was crunched in what looked like excruciating pain, and he was clutching at his head dramatically.
Jensen reached over and, out of habit, flicked him in the middle of the forehead, said, “No one else knows, and it’s gonna stay that way. Got it?”
“Right. I’m not stupid. So you two are an actual… couple?” Added as though the concept was utterly new to him, “Like a gay couple?”
At that, Jensen gave pause, even as he could feel Jared’s hand inching up the arm of his lawn chair.
The hand curled around Jensen’s forearm, slid down to circle impossibly long fingers around his wrist. Jared piped up with, “Yep. In the flesh.”
Eyeing them both like a new species of animal, Josh asked, “For how long?”
Shit. I just came out to my brother.
Shit.
How did this… why did we… Shit.
Now that their secret was out, it seemed that Jared felt comfortable getting all touchy-feely-gooey again, seemed ready to test out his open cuddliness in front of an audience. The pad of his thumb began rubbing back and forth over the sensitive skin right above Jensen’s pulse point. Actually, it was a little distracting. Jensen glanced down at his wrist enclosed in Jared’s man-paw, looked back up at Jared pointedly.
But Jared wasn’t paying attention. His free hand was up in the air, ticking months off, counting. “Been around six or seven months, right? Jen?”
Josh whistled. “Gotta start telling me these things, Jense. You two are practically—” He twisted his index and middle finger together, realized that it looked a little strange, and made a face. “Well, you know.”
No, Jensen didn’t know. Though he probably didn’t want to know exactly what Josh meant.
“Man,” Josh said on a heavy breath, “I knew it. As soon as you called him Jen. The only person who ever got to call him that was this girlfriend he had back in high school.” Beer halfway to his lips, Josh paused and looked over at Jared. “Dude, not that I’m calling you the girlfriend, if there are roles or whatever, because. Uh. I. Yeah. Damn, it’s really humid out today, isn’t it?”
Kill me now, kill me now, kill me—
“Roles?” Jared asked innocently, thumb pausing in its rhythm on Jensen’s wrist.
Jensen took the opportunity to yank his hand free, while Josh choked a little on his gulp. Jensen said, “We need more beer,” jumped up from his chair, and got the hell out of there.
It was a silent ride back to the house.
“You just can’t keep your mouth shut.”
Jared hadn’t even finished shutting the bedroom door yet, and one of the kids ran by screeching for Cameron to get out of the bathroom NOW, I gotta go!
For the first time all day, Jared frowned a little, but it was a frown of utter confusion. “He asked me. What was I supposed to do, lie?”
“Yeah.”
“But he saw us in bed together this morning.”
Jensen went silent, and Jared passed right over the conversation, changing the subject so fast that it kind of made Jensen dizzy, especially since he was gearing up to hash it out.
“Yeah, I been thinking. I think I’ve decided that I’m gonna bottom.”
Blinking, Jensen said, “Bottom what?”
Making a face, Jared put on a quick and extremely obscene little silent play using his hands and a pencil laying on the desk nearby.
“Oh.” Jensen watched him fidget for a minute after tossing the pencil aside. “Since when do you know the gay lingo?”
“Since you made me gay?” Jared shrugged. “And I’ve been researching.”
“Researching?”
“Well, yeah. On the internet.”
Was Jared’s mention that he had looked up gay porn on the internet supposed to comfort Jensen? Reassure him? Because it sure as hell wasn’t working.
“You’ve been watching gay porn on the internet?”
Instead of answering, Jared turned to look out the window.
Jensen said, “Oh, God. I’m scared.”
“Anyway,” Jared continued, huffing out a gust of air that lifted his bangs from his forehead, “I’ve decided I don’t want you in that… position.”
“Since when do you make decisions for me?”
“I never said that I did.”
“You think I’m too fragile to handle it?”
No answer again, though Jared bit his lip red.
“Screw you, Jared.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking you to do.”
“We’re gonna decide this my way, like real men.” Jensen held his hand out, fist in his palm, raised his eyebrows for Jared to follow suit.
“Paper, Scissors, Rock? Seriously?”
“If it’s good enough for Sam and Dean, it’s good enough for us.”
“There’s no way this can end well.”
“Chicken?”
“Whatever. You’re on.”
“Best three out of five.”
“Damn, Jen. You’re just as bad at this as Dean was.”
“Shut up. You’re messin’ with my concentration.”
“Best five out of seven.”
Jared grabbed both of Jensen’s hands, stilled them in his own. “Forget it.”
“Okay, fine.” Breathing out loudly, Jensen reached up to run a hand through his hair and instead encountered the stiff spike of Jared’s mini-Mohawk creation. “Okay. So I’ll… bottom. Or whatever it’s called.”
“The hell you will.”
“What? I can do it. You don’t think I can do it?”
“I’m not gonna be the one who puts you in that… position.”
“Dude, will you stop saying it like that? All ominous and shit.”
Jared’s voice lowered as he leaned closer to Jensen. “You really need to see the videos I found.”
“No, I really don’t.”
“I don’t think you realize…”
“I’m not stupid. You’re making a big deal out of—”
There was a crash right outside the bedroom door, and then Jensen’s mom yelled at someone about leaving a roller blade laying in the middle of the hall for anyone to trip over and die. A bang on their door followed, with her saying, “C’mon downstairs for dessert! And Uncle Dan just got here!”
Jared’s mouth curled into something that resembled a snarl.
Halfway down the stairs, Jensen said, “Just… keep your mouth shut, okay? And get that look off your face.”
The look disappeared, only to be replaced by wide hazel eyes, blinking naively. “What look?”
“The one that says, ‘I’m either gonna eat you or kill you in the next two minutes.’”
“Oh. That one. Okay. Got it.”
This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Jared was surprised. His face was always an open book and at the moment it read Seriously? This is him? No way, dude.
Tall, lean, slim, young, and blond, Dan straightened his business tie and pumped Jared’s hand up and down. “Great to meet you.” He nodded over at Jensen in greeting, and turned to Jensen’s mom, exclaiming, “Sis!”
Giggling, blushing, and pinching his cheek, she informed him that he’d missed the barbecue.
He said, “Aw, damn. So how high did Alan’s fire get this year?”
Jensen’s dad chuckled and pointed at Dan. “You, shut it, buddy boy. I can still kick your ass halfway across this state.”
Jensen snagged Jared’s shirt sleeve and backed away to the outer edges of the kitchen, back to an area where the family wasn’t crowded around Dan.
The breath from Jared’s whispered words touched Jensen’s temple. “He’s so young. So much younger than your dad. How’d that happen?”
“Seventeen years older than me,” Jensen confirmed. “He’s Dad’s half brother. Same father, different mother.”
“He’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Someone like Bill, I guess. Someone a lot older and a lot less…”
“Attractive?”
“Well, yeah. And less charming.”
“He’s got a great job, just got engaged…”
Silently, Jared watched Jensen’s family swarming around Dan, eating up his words. “Jesus. He’s like the star of the family.”
“Bingo. They all love him.”
“Well, I hate him. Even if I didn’t know about… you know. His face would still bother me.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanna put my fist through it.”
Jensen could definitely relate to that urge.
“He barely even looked at you,” Jared said.
“Told you. We hardly ever say a word to each other.”
Suddenly, Josh was at Jensen’s elbow, joining them at the edge of the room and making a little half circle. “You should see the picture of his fiancée. Damn. She is,” Josh mouthed the word hot.
“That’s,” Jensen paused, “great.”
Laughter erupted from the other side of the room, and Jensen’s mom broke away from the pack long enough to grin over at them and say, “Could one of you boys go get the paper plates? I think we left them by the grill.”
Elbowing and nudging, Josh managed to shove Jensen in the direction of the back door. He then grinned. “You’re closer to the door, Jense.”
On his way out, Jensen reached over and once again flicked Josh in the middle of the forehead. “Lazy jackass.”
Just his luck, the plates weren’t by the grill, weren’t actually anywhere in sight. Great.
After ten minutes of searching, he found them, still packaged in plastic, laying on top of the garbage can at the edge of the yard.
He trudged through the backdoor, warm and sweaty from just ten minutes in the Texas sun, swept back into the kitchen on a gust of humid heat, and stopped in the threshold at the dead silence in the kitchen. Confused at the quiet, he looked up from tearing open the plates for his mom. Every eye in the house was fixed on him. Lowering the plates, he laughed, shaky, nervous.
Glancing from one somber, wide-eyed face to another, he said, “What?”
No one answered him, which in itself was pretty damn creepy.
Josh, face lined in a frown, caught his eye, and Jensen, in return, crinkled his brow in a silent question: What the fuck is going on?
It was his mom who let out the first sound: a wet little exhale of air. She took a step forward, one step, and seemed to teeter a little on her feet.
Again, Jensen looked around the room. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
In the time it took for him to say the words, his mom had stepped through the various members of his family to come and stand directly in front of him. Her hand came up towards his cheek, but she paused before it made contact, frozen in midair, shaking. She said, in an almost-whisper that everyone could still hear, “Oh, Jesus. Is it true?”
No one in the room seemed to be breathing, the air was so hushed.
Jensen figured he’d missed something. Something big.
Hesitant, eyes flickering back and forth from his mother’s face to the frozen faces around the room: “Is what true?”
In a soft, crushed voice, she said two words, and it was all Jensen needed to hear: “Uncle Danny.”
Fuck, fuck. No. This can’t be happening.
Jensen’s head snapped up from her face, searched the room until his gaze found Jared’s shock-frozen, open-mouthed expression.
What the fuck did he do in ten minutes?
“Is it true?” she repeated, desperate.
Jensen swallowed and dumped the stack of paper plates onto the kitchen table. Each and every movement he made was being studied, examined. Feeling exposed, he hunched his shoulders in and thought, Will somebody just fucking say something?
When he looked up again, his gaze fixed on his dad’s face.
Mistake.
“What’ve you been telling your Hollywood friends?” Alan demanded.
“Nothing.”
Directed at Jensen: “I want you out of this house.”
Josh said, “Dad.”
Dan was near the stove, leaning against the counter right next to Alan, face carefully molded in to a look of worry and shock, even though nobody was sparing him a glance.
“Now.” It was blindingly obvious that he was going to get no chance to explain his side of it, not here, not now. Maybe not ever.
The crowd of people, his own family, parted down the middle as he walked through them to get to the door. No one said a damn word in his defense, though his mom was crying silently.
One foot outside, one foot still inside, hand on the doorknob, Jensen stiffened his jaw, straightened his shoulders, and to his dad, said, “You know I’ve never lied to you,” before he let the door slam shut behind him.
Footsteps immediately pounded on the driveway after Jensen, followed him out to his car. At the driver’s door, he shrugged off the hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Jared said, “I’m so fucking sorry,” and tried to stop Jensen from closing the car door.
Calm and even, Jensen said, “Don’t.” Surprisingly composed but obviously a warning. For once Jared got the message and backed away from the car, both hands up in the air. Jensen slammed the door, locked it.
Briefly, right before he drove away, Jensen peered out the window at Jared’s imploring face and thought, How could you do that to me?
{End of part 20}
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