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Jensen almost doesn’t make it to his cell phone before it switches to voicemail. It’s in the kitchen and he’s in the upstairs bathroom – he barely hears it ringing and then he trips over a pile of Jared’s dirty clothes that he told the idiot to pick up like three times before he left for L.A. Jared got a week off because there’s a bunch of Dean-scenes that need to be shot and when Jared doesn’t have anything to do on set, he amuses himself by distracting everyone else. After this many years, the directors have learned to shoot everything that doesn’t require Sam in blocks so they can kick Jared out and actually manage to get work done. Jensen finds the whole thing funny, until Jared starts tossing suggestive glances at him from across the room while he’s trying to get into Dean’s increasingly melancholy headspace. Then it isn’t so funny anymore. Jensen’s a professional, and Jared kind of … isn’t. Not always, anyway. So as much as Jensen misses his boyfriend, he’s okay with him being gone because it’s a lot easier to shoot a scene with Misha when Jared isn’t just off camera trying his damndest to make them both crack up – and usually succeeding.
And, it looks better for everyone right now if Jared spends as much time as he can with Genevieve getting ready for the baby that supposed to be both of theirs. It is – technically – and Jensen’s still not a hundred percent cool about that but mostly he’s learning how to be alright with it. He understands how much Gen has had to sacrifice to keep their whole charade from falling apart, and he does get that she wanted to be a mom and that it was the least Jared could do after everything she’s done for them. So he’ll be Uncle Jensen and he’ll love the kid when it comes, even if there will always be a part of him that’s a little sad Genevieve has been able to give Jared something that Jensen never could. He knows Jared loves him, though, so that’s enough.
By the time he skids across the kitchen floor and grabs his phone, the voicemail message is already playing and he has to listen to his own voice asking the caller to leave a message and he’ll get back to them, while he loudly says, “Hello” and “don’t hang up!” to whoever’s on the line. He repeats it after the beep, and then for a second he thinks the person did hang up because all he hears is slightly fuzzy silence. But then there’s a shaky sigh, like the person is trying to compose themselves, and then a small voice that Jensen recognizes after a moment as Genevieve’s says, “Jensen?”
“Gen? Is that you?” Jensen asks, wondering if there’s something wrong with their connection.
“Yeah, it’s …” she trails off and sighs again, sniffing a little and suddenly Jensen’s heart jumps into his throat.
“What’s wrong?” he asks sharply. His mind races to every scenario from a miscarriage to Jared’s dad having a heart-attack to Jared himself being in some kind of accident.
“Something’s happened,” she says, and Jensen can hear the tears on her face even though he can’t see them. “It’s, um, it’s Harley. He’s … gone.”
Jensen frowns. For a moment he doesn’t understand. “Gone where?”
“Gone, gone. He’s dead, Jensen.”
It still takes Jensen’s brain way too long to figure out what her words mean, and then when it does, it hits him in the gut like a ton of bricks. He’d known Harley had been sick for a while, so really he should have been expecting this, but it still takes him by surprise. Harley isn’t Jensen’s pet, but he’s lived with Jared and both his dogs for almost four years so in a way they were both Jensen’s too, and after having a pet in his life for so long, he’d been lulled into this false sense of security that they’d both always be around. They became such a big part of his life and he’d never really thought too much about what it would be like if they weren’t anymore. Nothing is particularly simple or normal in his life, with what he does for a living and with being fake-married and everything, but on the weekends when they got a break from filming, when it was just him and Jared and Harley and Sadie in their little house in Vancouver, the four of them felt like a family. It breaks his heart to think that might be different now.
“Oh god,” he mutters. “I’m so sorry, that’s … that’s awful. How’s Jared?”
“That’s why I’m calling,” she answers, her voice wavering again like she’s trying really hard to keep it together and isn’t doing such a great job of it. “He’s … he’s really bad. He won’t talk to me, he won’t really talk to anyone. He just sits there all the time looking … I don’t know, blank. Vacant. He won’t eat or sleep or anything, and the vet needs him to decide what to do with Harley’s body, if he wants it cremated and put in a public pet cemetery or if he wants to bury it himself or what, and Jared won’t do that either. When the vet asked him he just walked out. I don’t know what to do, Jensen. He’s really scaring me.”
Jensen swallows, emotion swelling up like heartburn in his chest at the thought of the person he loves in so much pain.
“I know you’re busy filming and everything and I know it’s a lot to ask, but … please, Jensen. He needs you.”
And honestly, in Jensen’s mind, not flying to L.A. right now isn’t even a possibility. He doesn’t care if people are pissed at him – although he doesn’t think they will be – because Jared needs him, and that’s the only thing that matters. Jensen promises he’ll be there as soon as he can, and then he hangs up and he’s packed and out the door in minutes.
____
The flight from Vancouver to L.A. feels excruciatingly long. It’s a journey Jensen’s made so many times over the last couple of years that he’s completely used to it, and usually it seems to go by in minutes and Jensen doesn’t think anything of it. It just feels like getting up asshole early for call times or walking red-carpets or doing panels at a convention – it’s not exactly something he enjoys doing, but he’s does it so often that it’s second nature. But this time, he might as well be flying to China for how much it seems like it drags on. Maybe Jensen is just painfully aware that every second he spends thirty thousand feet in the air is another second he’s away from Jared when Jared needs him. No one’s ever needed him before, not really anyway.
Genevieve picks him up at the airport. He told her he could take a cab, it’s not like he hasn’t done that hundreds of times before, but she insisted and Jensen knows better than to argue with a pregnant woman. She has to stand on her tiptoes and jump a few times before he spots her in the sea of people, and then when he gets to her he drops his bag at his feet and immediately leans down to wrap her small body up in his arms. She hugs him tightly, and the hard bump pressing into his stomach is such a stark reminder of how much everything is changing that Jensen’s overwhelmed by it. He puts on a brave face, though, like he always does.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she whispers, smiling up at him tearfully, and he brushes the tears off her face and kisses her forehead.
“A stampede of rhinos couldn’t have kept me away,” he tells her, and she manages a small, watery laugh.
“Were people mad that you left?”
He shakes his head. “’Course not. Those dogs are always on set, everyone knows how much they mean to Jared. I think they would’a been pissed if I didn’t come.”
She nods and wipes her eyes again.
“How’re you doing?” Jensen asks, picking his suitcase up again and then putting an arm around her shoulders as they start to walk out to the short-term parking lot.
“I’ll be okay,” she answers softly. “He was a great dog, but he wasn’t really mine, you know? I’m just worried about Jared. I’ve never seen him like this. If you can’t snap him out of it, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Jensen doesn’t know either.
____
It takes absolutely everything Jensen has in him to keep from bursting into tears when he walks into the house Jared shares part-time with Genevieve and sees him sitting on the couch staring into space, exactly where Genevieve says he’d been when she left for the airport more than an hour ago. For a moment, he just stands in the doorway and watches him, completely frozen. He has no idea what to do. He should know what to do; he’s Jared’s boyfriend, partner, whatever you wanna call it; but he doesn’t. He’s never seen Jared like this. Jensen is usually the type to retreat into himself when something bad happens, but Jared is the opposite – grief tends to pour out of Jared just like every other emotion does, in big, dramatic, exaggerated waves until he gets it all out and then can start to heal from it. When he called off his engagement to Sandy, he cried daily and slept in Jensen’s bed for a month, curled around him like the world’s biggest teddy bear because he couldn’t – literally couldn’t – sleep alone. So to see him, like Genevieve said, blank and vacant is more than Jensen knows how to deal with.
Genevieve goes the other direction into the kitchen, and Jensen can hear her rummaging around in a drawer for a few minutes, probably her way of trying to inconspicuously give them some time alone, but when she comes back and Jensen still hasn’t moved from where he’s hovering by the door, she nudges him gently into the room. It’s stupid that it takes Jared’s pretend wife to make Jensen man-up enough to walk into Jared’s eye-line, but he’s grateful that she’s there anyway because he might not have been able to do it himself. Jared looks up at him slowly, his reaction delayed and his expression confused like it takes him a minute to figure out who he’s looking at. There is probably something Jensen should be saying right now, but words are failing him. Jared just looks so lost, so broken, and Jensen feels like he can’t breathe.
“J-Jensen?” Jared stutters, frowning and tilting his head to the side just like Harley used to do.
“Hi Jare,” Jensen barely whispers.
“Wha … what’re you doing here?”
Jared’s surprise that Jensen would come here in his time of need hurts a little, but it still makes sense. It’s strange, but Jensen still feels like an intruder in this house. Jared spends a good amount of time here, but for the most part it’s Gen’s house and Jensen feels like he doesn’t belong here even when he was invited. Especially since when Jared is here, it’s to pretend that he and Gen are the perfect little all-American married couple, the classic story about the girl-next-door ending up with the high school quarterback, and it’s a work of fiction but it’s one that doesn’t include Jensen. It can’t, because if he’s here too much, everything they’ve all worked towards would be cancelled out.
“She called me,” Jensen answers, nodding to where Genevieve is still standing next to him.
“You’re supposed to be filming,” Jared says, and at that moment apparently Genevieve has had enough.
She clicks her tongue impatiently, putting her hands on her hips and jutting one out to the side. “Alright, stop this, both of you. You’re a couple, you idiots, and you’re acting like strangers. Jared, I called Jensen because you’re drowning and you need him, and he jumped on the first flight and high-tailed it down here because he loves you, so let’s go! Hug, kiss, fuck, whatever! Just do something!”
Jensen almost laughs at her directness, but then he realizes that she’s completely right, and he moves over to the couch and drops down to his knees in front of Jared. He pushes himself between Jared’s legs and wraps his arms around Jared’s neck, pulling the bigger body down into his chest. Jared only hesitates for half a second and then he slides his arms around Jensen’s back, clinging to him and burying his face into Jensen’s shoulder. It makes everything hurt even more, but at the same time it’s just a little bit better, feeling Jared’s warmth against him. Jared smells like he could use a shower but underneath that he smells like the man Jensen’s been in love with for almost seven years. It hurts more than Jensen could have imagined to see him like this.
“I’m so sorry, Jay,” Jensen murmurs, pushing his fingers into Jared’s greasy hair and petting through it gently.
“He’s gone,” Jared whispers, his voice small and shaky and so pathetic it’s heartbreaking.
“I know.” Jensen hugs him just a little tighter. He hears Genevieve quietly moving out of the room, but honestly he wouldn’t care if she stayed. The only thing that matters to him right now is Jared. He rubs his other hand slowly up and down Jared’s back, twisting a little so he can kiss Jared’s temple. “I’m so sad about it. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”
Jared doesn’t answer; he just lets Jensen hold him.
____
Eventually, Jensen manages to convince Jared that he’ll feel a little better if he eats something, and after Jared half-heartedly picks at the sandwich Genevieve makes him, Jensen sends him upstairs to shower.
“It’s more than I’ve gotten him to eat,” Gen says, shrugging as she wraps up the leftover half sandwich in cellophane and puts it into the refrigerator.
“He just looks so …”
“Empty?” she suggests, and Jensen nods dejectedly.
“I know that’s what you said on the phone, but I guess I couldn’t really imagine it. Jared’s usually so …” he trails off again, but he doesn’t need to finish the sentence for her to know what he means.
“He’s like a Tasmanian Devil.” She smiles sadly and pats his arm. “He’ll be okay, now that you’re here. I know he will.”
“What if he isn’t? What if I can’t help him?” Jensen asks, voicing for the first time the fear that’s been nagging him since Genevieve first called him in Vancouver.
She huffs a little, although affectionately, and stands in front of him, placing her small hands on his arms. “Jensen, he doesn’t need you to fix him. He just needs you to be there for him.”
“You were the one worried I might not be able to snap him out of him,” Jensen points out.
“That was until I saw the way he hugged you, he way he looked at you. That’s as close to human as I’ve seen him look since this happened. You make him happy when nothing else can. So go do that.”
She nods in the direction of the staircase, and Jensen follows her gaze and then turns back to her for just a moment. “You’re sure it’s okay that I stay here?”
He’s always liked her but they’ve never been particularly close, and things have maybe been a little strained between them since Jared agreed to be the father of her child. But she rolls her eyes and smacks him lightly on the shoulder.
“Go,” she says again. “Don’t make me use my pregnant-lady super-rage against you.”
____
Jared is just getting out of the shower when Jensen gets to the top of the stairs, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and no socks and usually Jensen would find that sexy but right now it makes Jared look like a vulnerable little boy. Jensen follows him into his bedroom, biting his lip when again he isn’t sure what to say.
“When was the last time you slept?” Jensen asks quietly, and Jared shrugs and doesn’t answer. “You’ll feel better if you do that, too.”
Jared still doesn’t say anything, he just pulls back the quilt and climbs into the bed obediently, like he doesn’t have the strength to argue. Jensen does think he needs to get some sleep, but it’s painful to see the usually bubbly, effervescent Jared so despondent. Jensen doesn’t know what else to do, what else to say, so he flicks the light off and starts to leave the room when Jared’s voice stops him.
“Jen?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay with me?”
He sounds exactly as lost and vulnerable as he looks right now, and Jensen’s heart breaks for him all over again. He’d rather chew off his own arm than refuse Jared anything right now. And he’d be lying if he said it wouldn’t make him feel better too, to lay next to Jared, so he pulls off his overshirt and steps out of his jeans and climbs into the bed. He realizes once he gets there that this is Genevieve’s bed too – that she and Jared have a shared bedroom just like Jensen and Danneel do, on the off chance someone who doesn’t know the truth about their situation comes over. It feels like yet another place that he doesn’t belong, but then he moves in close and wraps Jared up in his arms, and then it’s easier to pretend that they’re back in their own bed. Jared cuddles in against Jensen’s chest, and Jensen holds him close and strokes his wet hair.
“I miss him,” Jared whispers, and Jensen takes a deep breath and kisses Jared’s forehead.
“I know, baby,” he whispers back.
“I know he was sick, and I’m happy he’s not suffering anymore, but it’s …”
“Me too.” Jensen knows what Jared’s going to say before he says it. “I’m here, okay? Everybody on set told me to take as much time as I need to get you through this, so I’m not going anywhere. Whatever you need, I’m right here.”
Jared nods, his face rubbing against Jensen’s collarbone. “Don’t leave if I fall asleep, alright?”
“I won’t,” Jensen swears.
Jared’s breathing deepens and evens out less than a minute later, and Jensen keeps his promise. He sleeps a little himself, shallowly and on-and-off, but even when he’s awake he stays right where he is the whole time Jared’s asleep, holding him close and running his fingers slowly through Jared’s damp hair.
____
The next day, Jensen goes with Jared and Genevieve back to the vet’s office, and Jared cries as he tells the doctor he’d like to have Harley cremated but keep the ashes to bury himself, but Genevieve squeezes his hand and Jared manages to get through it. Jensen has never been so proud of him, and he tells him so later while they’re waiting. All he can think of is Jared in that episode in season two where Sam had to kill Madison, and that Jared told him after they filmed it that he’d used the idea of losing Jensen and losing his dogs to make himself cry like that. Jensen isn’t really religious, but at the time he’d been so bothered by the thought of Jared upset like that, that he’d sent out a little prayer to whoever might be listening that Jared would never have to actually endure the sadness he’d conjured in his own mind to play the scene so brilliantly. And apparently no one at all was listening, because now one of Jared’s worst nightmares has come true, and Jensen’s obviously useless appeals to a non-existent deity did nothing at all to stop it from happening. And he still feels utterly helpless, like there isn’t anything he can do to make any of this better.
The ashes come in a small cardboard box, and the tears stream relentlessly down Jared’s face as he accepts it from the doctor but he does it without saying a word, and then he walks slowly but purposefully back to the car while Genevieve takes care of the bill. Jensen offers a few times to pay, but she just glares at him and Jensen gets that don’t mess with me, I’m pregnant vibe from her again so he doesn’t push the issue.
Jared decides he wants to bury Harley in their backyard in Vancouver because that was more his home than this place is. He would be flying there anyway at the end of the week, but he wants to do it as soon as he can so he changes his flight and Jensen manages to get a seat on it too. They spend one more night in L.A. with Genevieve, who takes them out for dinner to one to one of Jared’s favorite restaurants and toasts Harley and makes Jared teary again. Gen makes a joke about Jared having more mood swings than she does, and Jensen squeezes his thigh under the table.
Jared goes to bed early at Gen’s insistence, to the guest room so he can sleep with Jensen. Genevieve offered them the master bedroom because the bed is bigger in there and Jared is a giant, but Jensen already feels bad for taking over her home. He’s not going to kick her out of her bed too.
“I’ll be there in a bit,” Jensen tells him, and Jared nods and kisses him on the cheek while Genevieve turns away and doesn’t manage to hide the smile on her face. “What?” Jensen asks, after Jared leaves.
“You guys are really sweet, that’s all,” she says, shrugging. “Sometimes it’s hard to do this, you know? But when I see how you are together, it feels like it’s worth it.”
Jensen isn’t sure what to say to that. They chat for another couple of minutes, and then he thanks her for calling him and for letting him stay in her house, and then he follows Jared into the guest room. Jared is sitting cross-legged on the bed, in his boxers and a t-shirt, petting Sadie where she’s lying beside him looking just as sad as Jared’s been. It makes Jensen’s chest hurt to think that she understands her playmate is gone.
Jensen sits down next to them, rubbing Sadie behind her ears and smiling sadly at Jared. “She’s gonna miss him.”
Jared nods and looks down at his hands, and Jensen reaches out and brushes his fingers over Jared’s cheek.
“I know this is hard,” Jensen says softly. “But he had a really good life. He was a rescue, remember? He could’ve ended up dead or stuck in a shelter or with someone who wouldn’t have been half as good to him as you were. You gave him a home, you gave him a family. You loved him, and that was everything he could’ve asked for.”
Jared nods again and inhales shakily. “I know all that. I just wish he was still here.”
Jensen leans in and kisses Jared gently, and Jared holds the sides of his face and kisses him back. He gets lost in the warm cavern of Jared’s mouth, licking over his teeth and letting his tongue slide languidly against Jared’s. After a few minutes, Jensen moves forward so Jared has to lean back, and he gets them horizontal and lies on top of Jared’s bigger body. Jared’s hands are warm and insistent where they move over Jensen’s back, leaving his skin tingling and his mind fuzzy. Jared’s lips are so soft and his scent is intoxicating from this close, and he’s big and hot like an inferno and he surrounds Jensen and fills him up from the inside out until Jensen doesn’t know who he is anymore when he isn’t wrapped up in Jared. His cock stirs in his pants and he rolls his hips down into Jared’s, ready to let himself melt into Jared until they aren’t two separate people anymore, when something cold and wet touches the side of his face and Jensen shudders involuntarily.
“Dude, gross, Sadie just wiped her snot on my cheek,” Jensen complains, unable to keep the smile off his face when Jared bursts out laughing. It’s the first time he’s seen Jared look anything close to happy in two days.
“She thinks it’s time to cuddle,” Jared says, reaching over and scratching the side of her neck.
“Daddy’s try’na get lucky,” Jensen tells her, chuckling himself when she just turns those big, brown eyes to him and tilts her head to one side in confusion. She looks exactly like Jared when she does that. “Okay, fine,” he concedes. “I guess it’s time to cuddle.”
He moves off of Jared and lies beside him instead, and Sadie crawls over him, her back foot digging painfully into his spleen as she goes, and settles in between them. She rests her chin on her paws, and Jensen looks at Jared over the top of her head. Jared still looks a little sad, even with the small smile on his face, and Jensen feels it too. They’re incomplete, without Harley here too, but when Jared takes Jensen’s hand in his own and rests them on Sadie’s back, Jensen thinks maybe they’re going to be okay.
____
Jared buries the box of ashes just in front of the big tree in the corner of their yard. He marks the spot with a purplish rock about the size of an apple that Jensen doesn’t know where he got – it doesn’t seem to be special or valuable in any way but maybe Jared just thought it was stupid to have an actual headstone for a dog. Neither of them speak while Jared digs the hole, kisses the top of the box and puts it into the ground, and then fills the soil back in. And then they both just stand there and stare at the little mound of earth. Jensen wipes at his wet eyes with his sleeve, but Jared doesn’t bother to hide his. He always was better at just letting his emotions be what they are. After a while, Jensen curls his hand around the back of Jared’s neck and pulls him down for a kiss, tells him to take as long as he needs, and makes his way back to the house with Sadie. For almost half an hour, Jared doesn’t come in, and when Jensen glances out the window, Jared’s sitting on the ground with his elbows wrapped around his knees. His mouth is moving, although Jensen can’t hear what he’s saying, and it makes him sort of sad and happy at the same time.
Eventually Jared does come back inside, and there are still tears on his face but there’s a smile there too, and Jensen smiles back at him. Jensen is lying on his back on the couch with his hands tucked under his head and his feet crossed at the ankle, and Jared toes out of his shoes and then lies down on top of Jensen, tucking his head into the crook of Jensen’s neck. Jensen wraps his arms around Jared’s back, and even though Jared is a little heavy on top of him, Jensen hopes they never have to move. He rubs his hand slowly up and down Jared’s back, and the steady sound of Jared breathing combined with his warmth and the smell of his hair right in Jensen’s nose has Jensen almost asleep before Jared finally says something.
“I wouldn’t have gotten through this without you,” he whispers.
Jensen hums in agreement and makes a joke out of it because he’s tired of being sad. He thinks Harley would have wanted them to laugh. “You’ll live to regret those words, Padalecki. You’re never, ever getting rid of me now. I cling hard.”
Jared snorts. “I think you’re thinking of me.”
“Oh, yeah. I knew it was one of us.”
“I never, ever want to get rid of you, anyway.”
“Well it all works out, then.”
“Yes it does.”
Jensen can feel Jared’s lips smiling where they’re pressed into his neck, and he hugs him a little tighter. “I love you so much,” he tells him, dropping the teasing tone of his voice so Jared knows how much he means it.
“Love you more,” Jared answers.