#and the writers knew. and eventually even jensen knew. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kazosa · 2 years

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Summary: you and Jensen have been pen-pals and friends since you were kids. You were always attracted to your friend but were never able to act on it... After an incident occurs and Jensen spirals downward and eventually falls off the radar for a while, his mother enlists your help to find him and bring him back. Will your feelings for him come to light, or will you fall back into your old buddy routine?

Pairing: female reader x Jensen Ackles

Word count: 9200

Warnings: alcohol consumption, language, sexual situations, skinny dipping, talk of abuse and exploitation

Author's note: please remember this is just fiction and not intended to be disrespectful to any real life people, this is merely how I want him to be in this situation

Big thanks to @coffee-obsessed-writer for creating the banner and helping me edit this monster

You had suspicions about where Jensen might be hiding out but you didn’t want to give up his location if he wasn’t actually there. Not to mention, you didn’t know if anyone else knew about his cabin. He must have kept it a secret from everyone if no one knew where to look for him to confirm if he was okay.

It surprised you to see he had a mailbox at the end of the road. All it had printed on it was “Wayne”. It gave you hope that you were in the right spot and he would be there. The postal carrier was the only person you could find who both knew of the cabin and would give you a lift up there. He was done with his route and you’d caught him at the local convenience store in your search for Jensen.

“You know the guy?” the carrier asked.

You nodded, putting your phone back in your pack.. You hadn’t seen him since before COVID, but you would still sometimes get texts from him and video calls, but those hadn’t been as regular as you would have liked. The last communication you’d gotten from Jensen had been over a month ago and it had only been an emoji, which was very unlike him. He always wrote out everything and didn’t even use abbreviations.

“Have you seen him?” you asked.

“No, but I deliver a lot of stuff here. Instructions say to just leave there,” he pointed to a cement pad with a small roof over it. “It’s always gone next time I come by.”

You thought about it for a moment. “That’s okay, I think he would prefer you didn’t. Thanks for the ride, Glen.”

“Get a lot of traffic up here?”

“Not really,” he shook his head. “Just residents or people who get lost. You want me to drive you up there?”

Glen raised his hand in goodbye before slowly pulling away from the drive. You couldn’t see anything past 50 yards up the road that would indicate anyone even lived up there. The road disappeared around a curve, getting lost in the trees.

You looked down at your trail shoes and hoped they would stand the test they were about to endure.

“Of course he’s gotta pick a goddamned mountain,” you muttered as you began the hike into the unknown.

He only had a few more logs to chop before he would call it a day. Still not sure if he would spend the winter on the mountain, or not, he didn’t want to get caught without firewood. Either way, it was good exercise and he would rather be safe than sorry.

He moved a log onto the stump and swung a few times before he caught movement out the corner of his eye. He swung again with a grunt and the log gave a satisfying crack, splitting about halfway down. He pulled the axe out, slung it to his bare shoulder and took a few steps toward whomever was dumb enough to hike up this far.

No way was the figure walking toward you was the man you were looking for. He looked like an actual mountain man with long hair and beard. His body was thick with muscle and shiny with sweat. If it weren’t for those tell-tale bow legs, you would never have recognized him from that far away.

“Who the hell are you?” he bellowed, holding the axe in front of him with both hands.

“Jay? Is that you?” you called out. Jesus, he can be scary, you thought. The only time you ever heard that particular tone of voice was when he was mad, and it was rarely ever directed at you, if at all.

“What are you doing here? How did you find this place,” he was a little closer now, his voice still booming.

“Jesus, Jensen, it’s me, (Y|N), and you told me you were here!”

“(Y|N)?”

You nodded.

“I texted you that a month ago.”

“I know, but you left your phone in Texas and no one could get in touch with you, dumbass!”

“I told everyone who needed to know that I was taking some time for myself.”

“A fucking cabin emoji is pretty goddamned cryptic.”

His tough exterior deflated a little.

“Shit,” he rubbed his hand over his face. He’d been gone too long without contact.

You shrugged your pack off your shoulders and pulled out your phone. Somehow, out in the boonies, you had one bar. Finding the name you needed in the list, you hit ‘send’ and listened as it rang.

“Hi Donna,” you walked toward Jensen, “yeah, I have some good news… yep, I’m with him right now and he’s fine…” you were within arms reach now, “hold on, he’s right here.” You held out the phone, “Talk to your mother.”

Jensen took the phone from you and talked to his mom while you went to grab your pack. He walked behind you and took your pack before you could even heft it to your shoulder, easily putting the strap over one of his arms. He motioned for you to walk with him while his mom gave him the business.

“Mhm… yes, ma’am… mom… mom, I’m sorry… yes, ma’am… you’re right, I’m sorry… I don’t know… no, I’m not sure I’m ready yet… I promise…” he sighed, rolled his eyes and hit the speaker button.

“(Y|N)?”

“I’m here,” you answered.

“Thank you for finding him and letting me talk to him.”

“Of course, Donna.”

“Please let me know when you leave, okay?” she asked.

“I will.”

“Jensen, I love you. Don’t scare me like that again.”

“No, ma’am,” he answered.

Donna disconnected and Jensen handed your phone back to you. You walked in silence for a while. Only the sounds of nature and shoes on the ground. It was a really pretty and peaceful piece of land. The road took you toward his cabin and ran parallel to the stream nearby. There was a small dock over the water. The cabin was in line with the dock and partially went over the water, too.

“Took you long enough,” he broke the silence.

“Um, that was over a month ago. Second, we’ve gone longer without talking. Third, you left your phone in Texas. What was I supposed to use, telepathy? And four, once your mom said you were missing, I figured it out and came up here. Which, by the way, was not easy to do and hard as fuck to hike up to. Because, of course, you chose a fucking mountain to hide out on.”

“What?”

“I texted you a month ago.”

“I knew you’d figure it out,” he grinned.

He leaned the axe against the cabin wall, turned the door handle and pushed open the cabin door. He let you go in first, following you in and put your pack against the wall by the door. You did a quick look around and noted there were only two rooms, one being closed off with a door. The rest of the space was all one room including a kitchen, a living space and a small area to eat, all constructed of stone and wood. There was a large fireplace on the wall that was over the water with a chair and side table situated near it. The back corner of the cabin had the kitchen and the main space had a daybed that doubled as bedroom and living space.

“And now you’ve seen the whole place,” he said. “Make yourself at home, I’m gonna go get cleaned up.”

You expected him to go into the room with the door, which you assumed was the bathroom. Instead, he grabbed a towel and went outside with what looked like 2 bars of soap. Before you even registered what was going on, he was already outside and stripping by the stream. Unabashedly, you followed him out just in time to see his bare butt disappear into the water.

“Get a good look?” he asked when he caught you.

Over the years, you’d seen him in various states of attire, or lack thereof, but you’d never seen him fully undressed.

“No! Why don’t you do it again,” you called out.

You’d always been attracted to Jensen, and flirted with him, but it never went any further than that. You’d met him by accident in 1994 when you went on a family vacation to Dallas. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. You liked to think that fate had thrown you two together. After that summer in Texas, you became pen-pals. Every summer, you begged your parents to go back to Texas. Eventually, through letters and those trips, you’d gotten to know each other’s families and would still send letters. When you became adults, it was easier to meet up more often and exchange phone numbers.

You leaned on the porch railing and really looked at this god of a man and wondered how it was you’d gotten so lucky to have met him and to have kept him in your life for so long. His career had skyrocketed and he could have left behind the summer vacation friend, but he hadn’t. Why were you the one he’d chosen to let know where he was? What was he expecting?

“Earth to (Y|N)!”

Your focus snapped back to Jensen in the stream. He motioned for you to turn around.

“Prude!”

“I’m shy,” he was beginning to shiver. “Wanna make it even and show me yours?”

Countless times, you had thought of offering just that, but your own shyness had never let you… not to mention your body image. You sighed and went back inside the cabin. Not much time passed before a soaked Jensen came back into the cabin wearing the towel and a t-shirt you hadn’t seen him take outside. Quickly, he was dressed and back in the main room with you, this time with jeans and bare feet.

“I barely recognized you when you walked up, you’ve changed,” he said.

“Me?” you’d only cut your hair and walked a little more often. “Look at you mountain man. I’ve never seen your hair this long. Not even on Dawson’s Creek…and the beard!”

He nodded in resignation, “Fair point. You look good though.” A few beats ticked by, “It’s good to see you.”

You sat with him on the daybed. “You could have just called before disappearing. What’s with all the secrecy? Doesn’t anyone know you have this place? Also, how come I’ve never been here, it’s amazing!”

“Thank you. Honestly, I just wanted this place to be for me. Kind of reminds me of the summers we had. It’s a good place to get my head right, sort of reset…”

He didn’t answer your question.

“It’s good to see you, too. Even through all of that hair,” you gently pushed his hair away from his forehead.

“It’s been too long. Do you want a drink?” he asked, standing up quickly, like the feelings were hitting him too hard.

You supposed he did need a break from the onslaught. You knew his life could be overwhelming and it made sense that he needed the cabin to relieve the stress. The media could be extremely intrusive and you knew that things had happened to drive him out of the public eye, but this had been extreme.

“Sure,” you said, and pulled out a few things from your pack.

“How long can you stay,” he asked from the small kitchen.

Jensen was waiting to hear your answer. You stood back up and took a few short steps to cross the cabin to where he was waiting for your response. The look in his eyes broke your heart. What had happened was tearing him up. You touched his arm and he turned fully toward you. Not even thinking about it, you reached up and pulled him down into a hug. His beard scratched at your skin as he nuzzled into your neck.

“I can stay as long as you can stand me,” you whispered, your hand stroking the back of his neck. He was giving you a bear hug and you tried to return the comfort.

You knew what had happened, but only after the fact. When Donna called you to find him, you knew it was serious and had done deeper research, including where to find him.

He never wanted her to leave. She always did that self-deprecating thing where she minimized herself and her importance, but he was always sad when their visits came to an end. He sent her that text hoping she would come. He needed his friend. She seemed like the only person he could trust and she always told him exactly what she thought about anything. It was all so overwhelming, the scandal, the shame, his feelings for his friend…

Eventually, he pulled away, but you wouldn’t let him go. You held his face in your hands forcing him to face you, but he was having a hard time making eye contact. His eyes were red and his face was a little damp. You used the palms of your hands to dry his eyes.

“Whatever it is you’re going through, you can tell me. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care. Anytime you’re ready. I’ll follow your lead. What do you want to do? Work? Bullshit? Chill on the porch with our drinks?” you offered.

. “Yeah,” his voice was still a little emotional. “Let’s take these outside, it’s a great view.”

Because Jensen is who he is, he had his porch swing set up to overlook the most perfect view of the stream and woods surrounding his land. He held the swing for you so you could get in and get comfy. It wasn’t a typical swing. It was more like a bed inside a pod that could completely enclose two adults inside. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a blanket which he tossed to you. Somehow, he rolled into the swing like a cat and didn’t spill a drop of his drink.

“That’s some Jedi-ninja shit right there. Expert category drinker stuff,” you admired.

“I’ve practiced,” he said. The swing swayed a bit as he pulled in his long legs. “C’mere,” he patted his shoulder, “bring the blanket, it gets chilly at night.”

He was half sitting up against the wall of the pod. You thought for a moment about how you should rest against him. You wanted to cuddle into him, but he was your friend and didn’t want to do something unwanted. Instead, you scooted to sit next to him and he draped his arm around you.

“This is really nice,” you said. The two of you had known each other a long time and had even spent a lot of time together alone, but this time was different. He wanted you, maybe even needed you, to be near him. Nothing was pressing either of you to be somewhere else, or to do anything else. It was just the two of you and you had time to enjoy the company. Being in the pod with him was way more intimate, like maybe you weren’t just friends anymore.

You looked out at the landscape and were feeling very relaxed and happy with the help of the drink Jensen had made for you. The hike up the mountain had definitely helped your eyelids start to feel heavy.

“You sleep out here, don’t you?” you asked, already knowing the answer.

“Damn right I do,” he took a drink. “Gets hot in the house in summer.”

“Jay?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not complaining, but why me? I’m sure there has to be someone else you’d rather have up here…”

“Why not you? Sometimes… Sometimes… I wish I weren’t this version of me.”

“If you weren’t an extremely handsome guy, the world at his feet, with the best pen-pal ever, who would you be?” you asked.

You could feel him shrug next to you, “I don’t know. I like who I am when you’re around… maybe a carpenter, or bartender who does karaoke on weekends and the best pen-pal ever visits whenever she can. I just want to be the guy I am when you’re around. I like him.”

You sat up and turned to look at him. Leaning over his legs you put your glass on the porch and took his drink to do the same before sitting back up.

“I think you’d be a great bartender,” you said. When you leaned back this time, you tucked into his side and wrapped your arm over his body, “Or a lumberjack,” you giggled, gripping his bicep. His strong body squeezed you tightly to him and you thought you might be in heaven.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” he said.

“I missed you, too,” you said. “I wish I had the freedom to visit whenever, but… I could… it would take time, though.”

“What’d you say to get out of work this time?” he asked.

“Told ‘em the truth. I said, and this is a quote, ‘My idiot friend has fallen off the radar and he’s scaring the shit out of his mother, so I need to go find him, ‘cause if I don’t and his mom finds him, she will do to him what she fears has already happened to him’.”

He chuckled knowing the absolute truth of what she said, “And what did they say?”

“They were concerned that, not only do I have a friend, but that he’s also missing and asked for a picture to help spread the word. Naturally, I declined and said my friend is hideous and any hungry wildlife would be doing us a favor if they took him out, but they insisted on seeing your mug.”

Jensen was silently laughing, his chest shuddering with laughter.

“Did you show them?”

“Yeah, I did. No one ever believes I know you. They just rolled their eyes and asked me to be serious. I said no-can-do buckaroo and lit out of there.”

“You got the time off?” he wheezed.

“No idea. I needed to get my stuff together and figure out your one emoji text meaning with zero context. Your confidence in my sleuthing ability is flattering… one fucking clue…”

“There were two,” he was catching his breath now.

“Are you serious?! You are so lucky I have a good memory.”

“Bullshit. Your memory is garbage. I know you keep the letters.” he said.

“Listen here, fucker… my memory may be garbage, and, alright, I do keep them, but at least I knew where to look! Don’t act like you don’t keep mine, too,” you countered.

“I’m not a sentimental simp like you.”

“Yes, you are! Maybe you don’t keep the letters, but you do have them all locked away in that brain of yours. You love my letters… butthole.”

“They’re so eloquent,” he laughed.

The back and forth between you had gotten animated and the swing still swayed for a few more moments.

“God, I’m glad you’re here,” he said, wiping his eyes.

“Well, it might be permanent after the shit I pulled, so, lucky you. You might owe me a job,” you warned.

“That can be arranged,” he spoke too soon. He didn’t know if he would even be going back to work acting. He didn’t know if he had destroyed his career, or if he would be accepted back into the fold. He would probably have to testify at some point.

“Hey, where’d you go?” you asked.

“Uh, just drifted off for a sec,” he said.

You wondered where he had drifted.

“Wanna go back inside? My drink is empty,” you asked.

He gave her a nod and watched her struggle to get out of the pod making it swing wildly back and forth.

“Got an ETA on that exit, hot shot?” he asked.

No sooner had he gotten the words out of his mouth than (Y|N) lost her balance and tumbled backward into him.

Jensen let out a little “oof” when you fell backward. The swing was going all over the place, making you feel more dizzy. You struggled to get your bearings and finally were able to get your hand placed to push yourself up only to see Jensen looking back at you. Only vaguely were you aware of his hand on your back.

“That drink was stronger than I thought,” you sputtered, staring at his mouth so close to your own.

“Lightweight,” a soft smile touched his lips.

“I think I need help getting out of this thing,” you conceded, still lying on his chest.

In one smooth movement, he had you lying on your back, looking up at him. His bodyweight pressed into you, heightening the intensity of the moment. Cautiously, your hands went to his back and shoulder. The gamut of emotion ran over his eyes. His mouth moved toward yours, but stopped. You moved your hand from his shoulder to cup his neck, your thumb on his jaw. Gently, you pulled him closer, letting him know you wanted him, too.

His mouth met yours, soft at first, quickly becoming more urgent. Your hands pulled up his shirt and Jensen pulled it off in one quick motion. Just as quickly, you pulled off yours. He kissed you again as he undid your pants. He laid you back and kissed you all over your body and down your belly. Your head was spinning from euphoria and barely noticed he had laid you completely bare for him. He removed his clothes before he moved between your legs, kissing up your thighs. His hands went under you, gripping your hips before he buried his face in your folds, devouring you. Your body responded to him in ways no one had ever brought forth in you. Sounds you didn’t even know you were capable of making… you clutched one of his hands and his hair as he brought you to one of the hardest orgasms you’d ever had. He kept working your body until your orgasm finally subsided allowing you to relax.

“Oh my god,” you gasped, trying to catch your breath.

Jensen wasn’t done with you yet. He crept up your body, worshiping every inch. His large hands cupped your breasts, softly massaging them, his fingertips brushing over your nipples making them rise to a peak.

“Just call me Jensen,” he said, pulling your leg up to his hip. His hand caressing your leg, knee to thigh.

“Smartass,” you said, kissing him.

“We should have done this a long time ago,” he said, touching your hair. He paused, “Has no one ever made you…”

You laughed, “No, not like that. Gawd, not like that.”

He laid between both of your legs and looked at you before tracing lines on your chest. “What a shame.”

“Hey, come up here, let me look at you,” you told him.

He pushed himself up and over your leg so you could lie next to him and up on your elbow. You couldn’t help but keep kissing him, his chest, his neck, nibbling on his ears. He pulled and pushed you on top of him and you reveled in the feel of his body under yours. So warm and strong. Still wet from before, he easily slid into you as he sat up with you on him. You both groaned with pleasure as his cock filled you. He buried his face in your chest and leaned you back to suck and bite on your nipples. He was getting your blood to flow in all the right places and you were getting desperate for relief. You tried to move your hips a little, but Jensen wouldn’t let you, grasping you tightly around your waist, forcing you to hang onto his neck and shoulders, for dear life.

The things he could do with his tongue were driving you crazy. If you didn’t get some relief soon, you were going to scream. You were already making noises. He was doing things you didn’t know were possible. He was doing things that were both extremely pleasurable and agony at the same time. He finally let you wrap your legs around his waist. What had earlier felt like pure animal lust, turned into tender love-making. He let you touch and caress his body how you wanted, moving your body with him inside you. You couldn’t keep your lips away from his. You wrapped your arms and legs tightly around him and he rolled you onto your back, pushing all the way into you, making you groan loudly, arching your head back. He looked into your eyes as he began to move again, slowly. He took his time as he brought you both to ecstasy.

“Oh my god, Jensen,” you muttered as he made you cum again.

Jensen shuddered with a moan and collapsed onto you with his face in your neck, breathing heavily. After a moment, he gave you another sensual kiss and carefully rolled off of you.

“Holy shit,” you breathed. “My legs are gonna be so sore tomorrow,” you laughed.

“I’ll give you a massage,” he offered.

You looked for your clothes in the darkness but didn’t find them and not knowing where Jensen threw them, you pulled on the t-shirt he had been wearing before this out-of-the-blue release happened.

“Whaaaat just happened?” you wondered aloud.

“Greaaat sex,” he sighed.

“Oh my god, yeah, but…”

“I really needed that,” he put a hand on your thigh.

You really needed it, too, but you wondered if it were for the same reason of pent up lust for your friend of almost thirty years.

“The sex? You could have had that with anyone. I have literally seen women faint in your presence.”

He tensed up a little. You could hear him roll his eyes rather than see them. “Come here,” you heard him pat his chest. He pulled you into his side and you laid on his shoulder. He grabbed the edge of the blanket and flung it over both of you. He held you snugly to him as he talked drowsily.

“I didn’t want ‘anyone’,” he said. “I wanted you,” he kissed your forehead.

“Me? Really?” you’d thought for sure your desire had been one-sided all this time.

“Yeah, but you or I were always with someone. It just never worked out to give us a try.”

“This day keeps getting stranger and stranger,” you muttered.

“You mean in a good way, right?” he teased.

You nodded knowing he would feel your answer.

“How long have you felt like this?” you asked.

“Remember when we met up the 2nd or 3rd time? It was either right before or right after I got Days and we were in Texas, and you met my buddy, Kenny?”

“Yeah?” you barely remembered Kenny, but what you did remember was, “Oh yeah, that was the summer you were a dick.” It finally hit you, “You were a jealous dick! Oh my god!”

It felt like a revelation.

“You were loving all of that attention from him,” he grumbled.

The memories were coming back in force.

“I really don’t remember Kenny, I just remember you being a grouch,” you said.

“I know, I was a shit,” he admitted.

You clung to him, “I forgave you.” You were feeling sleepy and had no idea what time of night it was. A wave of sadness hit you. “I should have told you how I felt… when we said goodbye, I knew… when you…”

“When I kissed you before you got on the plane,” he finished.

“I knew way back then, you would always be the one that got away.”

Somehow he held you even tighter, “Can’t be the one that got away if I never let you go.”

You couldn’t remember a time you’d slept so soundly. Sleeping out on the porch almost felt like being on a boat and it lulled you into a deeper sleep.

When morning came and Jensen was gone, you briefly wondered if it had all been a dream. You were still in the swing with the blanket covering you and wearing Jensen’s shirt. Your movement to look for him caused the swing to turn and you saw him sitting on the porch in his jeans with his arms wrapped around his drawn up knees. The sun was just starting to come up and he was watching the horizon.

More graceful this time, you got out of the swing, taking the blanket with you. The man had the audacity to look good with a savage case of bedhead. You draped the heavy blanket over both of you as you sat down next to him. He took the blanket and held it in place while you put your arm around his waist and leaned into his side. The blanket was big enough to enclose you both and let you sit on a bit of it so your butt wouldn’t freeze.

“I see why you like it here. It’s beautiful,” you whispered.

“It’s where I come to reset. Just taking longer this time,” he said quietly as he put his arm around you. “It helps having you here.”

“Did you sleep?” you asked.

He waggled his hand, so-so. “You’re like a furnace.”

“You’re welcome?”

He leaned in for a soft, good morning kiss.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Sore as hell, but happy. Not gonna lie, it’s been a while. Definitely not how I thought the night would end after hiking up a damned mountain,” you smiled and nudged him. “How are you? How’s your brain?”

He took a moment to think about it and what happened the night before. “Better than I was 24 hours ago.” He debated how much to tell her about why he needed to disappear and why this cabin and what it all meant to him.

“Jay?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m starving.”

Inside the cabin, Jensen said he would get some breakfast going and you told him you were going to use his shower. He let you know the tank isn’t very big and takes a while to refill.

“Got it, turn it off when not needed,” you said. He tapped the side of his head with one finger then pointed at you and turned back to getting the food ready. You didn’t bother washing your hair, it didn’t need it yet, and you doubted you would be able to get it clean with the lack of water pressure. That was probably the reason why Jensen went to the stream to get cleaned up, you supposed. You went as quickly as you could since the delicious smell of breakfast was wafting into you.

When you emerged, Jensen had made pancakes, bacon and eggs for you both. He was drinking what you assumed was coffee while he waited for you.

“You coulda told me to hurry up,” you said.

“Um,” he realized he was staring, “I just put it on the table.”

“Something wrong?” you asked

“No,” he said quietly and motioned for you to have a seat at the table.

“About last night,” you began. “What happens now? Do we pretend like it didn’t happen and carry on like usual? Or can this go somewhere?”

He wanted nothing more than to see where things could go together. Their timing had never been right. Even when they first met, he shouldn’t have even been there. He was supposed to have gone to a camp and had missed the bus. It had pissed off his parents enough to not let him stay home alone while the rest of the family went on vacation. While at the resort, (Y|N) had literally bumped into him and he was hooked.

They had become fast friends and when she’d suggested being pen-pals, he loved the idea. He’d told her things in those letters that he never told anyone. They’d bared their souls to each other in those letters. When he needed her, she was always there, no judgment. She never pulled punches with him and always gave her brutally honest opinion when he asked for it and sometimes when he didn’t, but those were the times when he needed to hear it most. He knew he could trust her with anything. He’d kept her away from the spotlight, fiercely protecting her privacy. The media could be so invasive and if they’d ever found out who she was to him, or asked her for a comment, she’d never told him about it.

Any time he had seen her, he’d think about asking her out, but she was always in a relationship, or he was. They would meet up and it was just easy to fall into the familiar “buddy” routine that they had going so well.

Last night had been completely different. A little liquid courage had gone a long way for them both. Maybe it had been the fatalist attitude he’d adopted of late, but he’d wanted to see if it would happen naturally and it had, much to his delight.

“Hold on,” he said, “I need you to read something.”

He got up from the table and went to the daybed. He pulled out a box from underneath and brought it to the table. (Y|N) was watching him closely and she didn’t miss much.

“‘Nova Stuff’, huh?” she noticed her codename on the box. “I thought I was the sentimental simp?”

She saw him digging through the box.

“Alright,” he admonished, “don’t get all cocky.”

“That’s all you,” she snickered, taking another bite of her food.

“Enough from the peanut gallery,” he said. She was trying to make him laugh and he loved her for it.

“Elephants like peanuts…” she was almost crying trying to hold in how amused she was with herself.

“Is that all you think about?” he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“It is now!” she had to wipe her eyes. “Oh man, I really needed that laugh!”

“Happy to help,” he tried to sound miffed.

“Don’t be mad,” she chuckled, “I tease you out of love and I only tease the people I love most.”

“You love me?” He held the letter he was looking for in his hand. It had all of the sordid details in it and some things TMZ hadn’t dredged up. If he didn’t give it to her, maybe she wouldn’t find out about what he’d done and why he’d been stowed away in the cabin for over a month. He put the box on the floor and held the letter in between his hands. Finally, he laid it down and pushed it across the table to her. “You might change your mind after reading that. Everything is in there, all of it.” He said it like he had to force the words out. He pushed his chair back from the table, clasped his hands on top of his head, and looked up at the ceiling.

You took the envelope and flipped it over to see his familiar scrawl addressing the letter to you.

“Let me tell you a little something, Jensen Ross Ackles. When my friend’s mom calls me up and says her oldest child has gone on a trip, no one’s heard from him in a month, and asks me to help her find him… If you think I’m not going to Dean Winchester the shit out of the situation, do you even know me?”

You got up from your chair and left behind the letter to sit on his lap. You put one arm around his shoulders and raised your hand to touch his face, “You saw some scary shit. It fucked you up, as it would for any normal person. You’ve been working so hard and traveling all over the world. You dealt with it in a way that maybe you didn’t realize was destructive in the moment. It happens. That skank was arrested for filing a false report. Everyone stuck up for you, everyone. No one believed her. It was clear she was just trying to drag you down. Your parents released a statement saying you were taking some time off and now, it’s just been a waiting game until I found you.”

You looked at his sad eyes and read the question he couldn’t ask.

“No, my sweet boy, I didn’t believe a word of it,” you brushed the hair away from his face. “How could I ever believe it?” You kissed his exposed skin. “Aside from my mom, you are the only other person who has been consistently in my life for so long. I know you, Jensen.” You kissed his lips. “And if I had known you would become such a good kisser, I would have upped my flirting game.”

“Your game was pretty good,” he said.

“It didn’t work, though.”

“One or both of us was always with someone else. What was I supposed to do with that?” he asked.

“You were supposed to realize your unending love for me and ditch whomever you were with and run away with me. Or fight the person I was with for my hand. But you were a ‘gentleman’.” you changed your voice and used air-quotes for emphasis.

He seemed to consider your words for a moment before sweeping you up into his arms and carrying you to the bed.

His skin felt warm and smooth under your touch. You couldn’t help but want to get to know every part of his body. He was in fantastic shape and you felt dumpy as hell next to him. Unconsciously, you pulled a blanket over you.

“Are you cold?” he sounded sleepy.

“No, just self-conscious,” you admitted.

“Stop it, you’re perfect.”

“I jiggle.”

“Don’t do that. There isn’t a single bit of you that isn’t perfect. You are exactly who I want,” he tried to assure you.

“Do you know I love you?” you asked, your hand resting over his heart.

“I know,” he paused. “I love you back.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t pick up that something was wrong earlier. I should have known as soon as you sent that stupid emoji.” you said. “You know what’s weird about you? Your complete lack of chest hair. I always thought you shaved.”

“You know what’s weird about you? Your inability to not say exactly what you’re thinking.”

“I mean, you’re so preppy… I thought it was a thing you did… but you really are dolphin-smooth.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” he tackled you.

After a little power nap, you decided to let Jensen sleep while you made yourself useful outside. Seriously under-equiped for cabin life, you made do with leggings, t-shirt, and trail shoes. You slipped your phone into your pocket and quietly went outside. There was a wood carrier near the door, which you grabbed and started for where you had seen Jensen the day before to gather the wood.

When he woke up (Y|N) was gone and her spot on the bed next to him was cold. A wave of panic hit him and he pulled on his pants to look for her. He dashed onto the porch and checked the swing.

(Y|N)!” he yelled.

A noise behind the house alerted him and (Y|N) popped out from around the corner.

“I’m right here!” she said, hand on her chest. “Are you okay?”

“Where were you?”

She held out the wood sling. “I was just bringing over the wood from yesterday. You seemed like you needed the sleep, so I didn’t wake you.”

That look was on his face again. The sadness that he’d been carrying around like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

“You’re not going to get rid of me, Jensen.” you said.

“Let me get dressed, I’ll help you.”

It only took a little while for the two of you to haul over the loose pieces and for Jensen to finish the other logs he had. Even though it was somewhat quick work, it was strenuous and you were both sweating.

“If all of your fangirls could see you now… they would lose their ever lovin’ shit,” you said marveling at him, too.

Jensen looked at himself, covered in dirt, wood chips and sweat, “Seriously?”

You nodded. “You’re checking a lot of boxes.”

“Well I feel disgusting,” he said, flipping the axe into the stump with force. He looked over at you after you made a strange sound and saw you make a checkmark with your finger and a mischievous grin. “Y’all are dirty.”

The two of you collected the last bits and carried them to the cabin. If you weren’t filthy before, you definitely were now.

“Speaking of dirty,” you began, “what do we do about this?”

He waved you over to follow him down to the stream and dock where you both kicked off your shoes. You should have seen it coming, but you didn’t. Jensen grabbed you by the shoulders and pulled you with him into the water. You barely got your feet under you and stood up in the water, Jensen emerging right next to you.

“It’s a lot quicker than the shower,” he grinned. “Sometimes the fish get curious, though.”

You jumped on him, clinging to his neck and wrapping your legs around his waist.

He laughed, throwing his head back and for a moment, he looked like the boy you had known so long ago.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt, it’s just weird when they brush against you,” he explained.

“That’s not comforting,” you argued.

He just laughed and slowly spun you in the water, eventually dipping down til your shoulders were almost submerged.

Eventually she began to relax a little and could enjoy the water with him. It was cool and felt good after a day of hard work. She even got brave enough to put her feet down, but not enough to let go of his hand. Every moment he spent with her, he felt a little bit better. He should never have let her get on that airplane all those years ago. He just felt like a better person when he was with her.

“Human again?” he asked.

“Mm, yes, much better,” she agreed. “Also, can we talk about all of the hair?”

“What’s wrong with it?” he stroked his bushy beard.

“It’s definitely a look,” she said. She seemed to be doing something under the water. “And I’m not mad at it at all, it’s really working for you.” She held up her leggings and threw them at the dock landing with a wet plop and a soft ‘thump’. He became very intrigued by what she was doing. “My cha-cha, however, IS mad.”

“Excuse me? Your ‘cha-cha’?” he asked.

“Mhm. My downstairs kitty, vulva, specifically.”

“Any other notes?” he asked, amused.

“Oh no, we were quite pleased with the performance. We’re not asking for it to go away, just maybe a trim?”

She stood up straight in the water and pulled off her shirt, throwing it aside as she moved closer to him. He inhaled sharply at the sight of her. Her hands went to his jeans while he worked on his shirt. He quickly removed them when she threw his shirt on the dock next to hers. When he turned back to her, her bra was gone and she took his breath away…

You liked the way Jensen looked at you. It made you feel like you were queen of the world. He looked like he was ready to either devour you whole, or love on your body for hours. Either way, you would be happy. Never would you have guessed that your search would have led you here. Not just to the mountain and Jensen, but to this new chapter of your lives together.

You stood on your toes and pressed against his chest to kiss him. He wrapped his arms around you and kissed you back, seeming to relish in you.

“I think you better take me inside, sir.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We should have done this a long time ago,” you said.

“I’m about to get dehydrated,” he said.

You gave him a playful swat on his butt. “No, I mean, you and me.”

“The things that happened before needed to happen so we could be here now. We did what was right for us at the time,” he said.

“I just feel like we missed out on a life together,” you said.

“I don’t feel like I missed out on anything with you. There are people I have known just as long, but none are as important to me as you. You are the person I always wanted to talk to first. I loved it whenever we could get together. This last couple years sucked, but we had video calls, at least.”

“Speaking of that, you owe me a new phone, too. Your mom is gonna be so pissed,” you teased.

A few weeks passed and Jensen ordered a phone for you, adding you to his plan. The two of you were enjoying every moment together. Eventually, you needed to go to the local store for supplies and managed to run into Glen while you were there.

“Oh, hello there, young lady. Did you find your guy?” he asked.

“I did,” you answered, “that’s him back there.” You turned to see Jensen looming behind you, almost glowering at Glen from under a trucker hat. “Be nice,” you mouthed to him.

“Got you a good, strong one there,” he said, still wary.

“Not much of a people person right now,” you explained.

“‘Least he’s got you to soften him up a bit.”

“Don’t let him fool you, he’s really very sweet and he treats me right,” you said.

“You folks plannin’ on staying the winter?” he asked.

“We actually need to talk about that yet,” you realized aloud.

“Best get on it. Winter comes early up here. You need to be prepared in case you get stuck,” Glen warned.

“Thanks, Glen,” you said with a smile.

“Thanks, Glen,” you heard Jensen mutter in a mocking tone from behind you.

Glen returned your smile and left you with a tip of his hat, so you and Jensen could finish your shopping.

You ignored Jensen for the moment, but things needed to be talked about whether he liked it or not.

The store you were in was, technically, a convenience store, but it had a very large grocery section since most of the locals didn’t want to go to the nearest large town with a proper grocery. Jensen gave you his keys so you could go out to the truck while he took the cart to the checkout and paid for everything.

When he came out, you tried to help, but he shoo’d you away. He loaded everything in the back and brought the cart back inside the store, before finally getting back in the truck with you. After starting the truck and putting it in gear, he slowly pulled away from the little store and headed toward the road that led to the cabin. Jensen was a little quiet, but that wasn’t too unusual for him. You were just happy to look out at the scenery.

“Oh, um,” he fidgeted in his pocket, “I got you this in the store.”

He held out a cellophane package to you. You took the package and read the label, RingPop. Quickly, you hid your smirk before you spoke. It was a cute gesture, but you couldn’t resist.

“Is this a proposal?” you asked.

“What?! No! It’s just a RingPop,” he said.

“But it’s my favorite flavor,” you went on. “Ooo, who would I be? Mrs. Wayne or Mrs. Ackles?”

“Whatever, it’s just a RingPop,” he said again, trying to look annoyed, but you knew better.

“Don’t try to deny it. One day, you’re going to ask me to marry you, Jensen Ackles.”

“Uh-huh,” he gave you side-eye, and half-mockingly said, “that would make you Mrs. Ackles then.”

“I thought it was just a RingPop,” you teased.

“Alright, enough,” he grinned.

Late one afternoon, you and Jensen were sitting on the daybed playing cards and having snacks. Since he didn’t have any, not one, single electronic device, it forced you to talk or get creative with how to entertain yourselves. At first, it had all been great fun and felt like old times, except the old times didn’t have great sex. But as each day ticked by, it felt more and more like you were hiding with him.

You drew a card, “Jay?”

“Hmm?” he was studying his hand.

You chose your discard and laid it in the pile, “As much as I love spending time with you, and I do, it’s been a great summer vacation…” Jensen drew a card and immediately discarded it. “Vacations end and people go back to their lives.” You picked up the card he discarded, rearranged your hand, then laid it down. “Gin.”

“Again? I swear, you cheat,” he said, reaching for the cards to shuffle for a new game, but you stopped him by grasping his hands.

“I’m fine here,” he said, blandly.

“Jensen… at some point, you have to face what happened.”

“I don’t know if…”

“You won’t be able to move past it if you don’t face it, and you know it.”

He stopped and started a few times before speaking, “I like it here. It’s peaceful.”

“Why?! Because it’s easy?! That is some serious, cop-out bullshit if I’ve ever heard it. You need to make a fucking choice. Are you going to lay down and let this one bad thing dictate your life and throw away 25 years of hard work? Or are you gonna stand up, set the record straight, and take back your fucking career and name?!” you couldn’t be silent any longer.

Jensen ditched the cards and went to the kitchen to fix himself some coffee. You would not be dismissed so easily and were hot on his heels.

“Goddamnit, Jensen, you may be able to shut out the world, but I will not let you shut me out. You need to quit hiding out up here and get your head out of your ass. The Jensen I know is a fighter, so fucking fight!”

You stormed out of the cabin, shoving the door open and walked down to the dock area where you collected some rocks to throw as hard as you could. You kept it up until you ran out of frustration and rocks to throw, finally sitting on the end of the dock with your feet in the water.

You sat there for a while, rehashing every word said and adding things here and there to strengthen your argument. Just when you thought maybe he wasn’t going to come out to talk, you felt footsteps on the dock. He nudged your shoulder with a mug. At first you didn’t want to take it, but its glorious smelling contents forced you to grudgingly accept the mug.

Jensen stood on one foot and lowered himself to sit next to you on the dock. For a few moments, he sat in silence, sipping from his own mug, not looking at you, just looking out at the water.

“You’re right,” he said, softly.

I know, you thought.

“I have been hiding. I don’t want to give up my career. I’ve worked too hard. I just…lost my head for a while. I know better…” he said.

“She took advantage of you when you were in a bad way and exploited the shit out of you for 15 minutes of fame. That is not your fault, it’s hers and that makes her a shitty human being, not you,” you took his hand and held it tightly on your lap.

“I don’t want to do anything else. I want to be in this industry. I haven’t just been sitting here. I have ideas for new shows, and I was writing songs. I’d at least like to give them a shot… I do need to stand up and fight. I’m not the guy that lets the bad guy win.”

“There he is… there’s my guy,” you smiled. “I’m proud of you.”

You leaned over for a kiss and he met you half-way. You felt a whole lot better about him and where he was mentally. He’d been sitting at the cabin in a sort of limbo and you’d helped kick his ass out of it. The weather was going to turn soon, you could tell, even the water in the stream felt colder. Your summer vacation was about to end and the familiar pangs of sadness hit you.

When you were a little kid, you used to cry when you had to go home. Not because you didn’t want to go home, but because you didn’t want to leave all of your new friends. By the time you met Jensen, you had your more childish emotions under control and were old enough to be serious about being pen-pals. What didn’t change was the crushing sadness you felt whenever you had to leave Jensen.

“You ever see that movie, ‘Same Time Next Year’?'' you asked.

Jensen finished off his coffee, “Mhm.”

“I don’t want that anymore,” you said.

“Nova… that’s not us,” he said. “We see each other whenever we can. We make time… That’s not us.”

“Well, what are ‘we’ then?” you wanted to know where he saw your relationship going.

“You are the only woman I want by my side. I’ll take you home, but only to pack it up, ‘cause I’m not letting you spend one more night without me next to you. It should always have been you, but things happened the way they did so we can be together now. And now that I have you… I’m not letting you go.”

You couldn’t help but get a little misty. It was nice to be wanted, especially by Jensen. We are so gonna get married, you thought.

“You could have said “girlfriend,” you joked, wiping your eyes.

“That’s such an empty word. You are so much more to me,” he said. “What did you want? How do you want things for us?”

“I just know that I want to be with you. I don’t really have anything holding me to my apartment. My friends are all over the country, so I’m not leaving any friends behind… I can go anywhere…”

“So how does Texas grab you?”

“Hot as actual hell, but acceptable,” you answered.

Jensen grinned, “Yeah, true. You better come with me on jobs. You’ll love it. Freeze your ass off. So, do we have it settled?”

You nodded. You both sat in silence for a while processing everything that just happened. Nearly a month on the mountain with Jensen had been amazing in so many ways. You swung your feet in the water and even though you wished you could stay, it was very important to get back to reality.

“So…” you began, “what do we do now?”

“We get off the mountain as soon as we can.”

“Okay,” you said, “but not tonight.”

You pulled your feet out of the water, got up and started back to the cabin. You looked back over your shoulder to see Jensen quickly catching up.

#jensen ackles rpf #wildwood #kazosa #one and done #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles x female reader

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crashdevlin · 9 months

Text

Losses and Gains 6- Reunited

Author’s Note: This is the sixth chapter of Losses and Gains, the second part of To Have it All. This is Something More...from Jensen's side!

Summary: Jensen gets Y/n back in his trailer, and back in his arms, but does that mean everything's going to be okay?

Pairing: Jensen x Reader, background Reader x Tom Hiddleston

Word count: 4378

Story Warnings: open marriage, mentions of depression and heartbreak, bad things, alcohol as a crutch, anger, fighting, divorce, anxiety, panic attack

~~~

“She’s okay.” That’s all Jared had to say after he got back from lunch with Y/n on Sunday. I raised my eyebrows at him and silently demanded more information. “What?”

“That’s all? She’s okay? That’s all you have to say?”

“That’s all I feel comfortable sharing.”

I scoffed and shook my head at him. “What the fuck, dude? She’s not okay! We talked about this yesterday!”

“She’s okay enough…and even if I was willing to share, you don’t want to know what she told me.”

“Of course, I-”

Jared shook his head and patted my shoulder. “No. Listen, I talked things out with her. If things are the way she says they are, then it’s a simple fix. If it’s worse than that, then she knows what she needs to do. It’s going to be okay, either way.”

“You’re really not gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

“It’s not mine to tell. If you want to know, then make friends with her again, and maybe she’ll be okay to tell you eventually.”

I rolled my eyes and let it go. He wouldn’t tell me, so I moved on. “I don’t think I could be friends with her again. I love her, man. I don’t think I’d be able to ignore that.”

“Yeah. I understand that. You gonna be able to work with her?”

It was a valid question and I wasn’t sure of the answer, even as I responded, “Yeah, of course.”

When I got back to Vancouver, I knew I had to put on a brave face. I had to act like I had everything together…which was really fucking hard when the writers sent me the script for the episode Y/n did Second Unit shooting for a couple weeks before.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me." I was in awe. I couldn’t even be mad about it because I was shocked…and a little bit excited that I was gonna get to kiss Y/n again, even if it was gonna be in front of a dozen people on set.

"Not just kissing, Ackles. This is a real sex scene. You haven’t done one of these since the Born Again episode." Jared flipped through the pages and sighed. "This is bad. This is gonna set you back weeks and-"

"Are you kidding me? I'm a professional, Jared. I think I can draw the line between-"

"Who do you think you're talking to right now?" He tossed the pages on the coffee table and pointed at the fresh beer in my hand. "That's your second beer and it's not even 10am and you're at work. You're a consummate professional." I set the beer next to the script and started to tell him to shut up but he kept going. "I know that you're excited about this and you're happy to pantomime getting her back in your arms but you have to end that shit right now. You have to approach this like a sex scene with any other actor, completely detached and looking out for their emotional welfare. She's gonna be in agony over this."

That took me aback for a minute. "Agony?"

"First off, this is gonna be her first sex scene…and it's with an ex. Not just any ex, but the one she can't tell people is an ex. So she has no one but me and Tom to complain to. Beyond that, she's still in love with you and she remembers exactly how you really are in the sack and she's probably missing that about now and she can't have it because she's with the gentleman bastard. And you think you should come in and act like everything is good?"

"Since when have I been acting like everything is good?" I snapped. "Like you said, it's not even 10 and I'm on my second beer. I'm not expecting everything to be magically better since Tara and Dean are gonna fuck, but maybe, just maybe Y/n will talk to me since we have to work together. Maybe we can start making things better. And in the very least, I get to kiss her again. I get to hold her again. I get to feel just a bit like things are going to be okay…and that’s all I want."

“Dude, detach. Things are not going to be better. Not now, not in a few months. You need to act like everything is over because it is. Move on. Don’t make this harder for her than it already is.”

Why was it about her and not me? Why did I have to tippy-toe around her emotions when I was feeling shit, too? Why did I have to fucking detach?!

I seethed a bit as Jared left, knowing that he was ultimately right, but still hating to hear it. I needed to be calm and cold and not show how I was feeling. It was better that way. It was better for both of us.

So when she knocked on my trailer door and came in, looking shaky and nervous, I locked my emotions away as best I could and welcomed her back.

“Did you get Wednesday’s pages?” she asked, looking around the trailer.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

She leaned against my counter, careful to keep her eyes anywhere but my face. “So, how, uh…how do we-”

“We follow the script,” I interrupted. “Just like every other scene we’ve ever done. You’ll be Tara and I’m gonna be Dean and they’re gonna share a messy first kiss and then Dean is gonna fuck Tara on one of the tables in the Men of Letter Library and then I’ll come back here and you’ll probably go back to your hotel and call up your boyfriend.”

Well, cold and detached didn’t last long.

Her eyes glistened as she looked up at me and she started to say my name but I cut her off again. “Y/n, look, I know this probably isn’t any easier for you than it is for me, but I…I really fuckin’ miss you and the fact that you are standing right there in front of me and I can’t-” I convinced myself to shut up, reminding myself that my emotions were not important in this moment. “At least he treats you well. That grand declaration of love on Facebook…something I could never do.”

“I didn’t want him to,” she asserted weakly. “I told him not to do that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, that’s fuckin’ nice. The man ignores simple requests.”

“Come on, Jay, don’t be-”

I put my hand up, a finger raised to get her quiet. “Don’t call me that. We’re just coworkers now. I’m fighting calling you ‘Baby Girl’ so you’re gonna respect my efforts and call me ‘Jensen’.”

Fuck, I didn’t mean to make her cry. I didn’t mean to snap like that. “Jensen, please. You can’t tell me that you don’t understand,” she begged.

“I understand. I understand just fine.” And I did. I completely understood exactly how I managed to get to that moment in time. “But it doesn’t make any of it hurt less. It doesn’t matter that you saw the end of my marriage rapidly approaching because I couldn’t get you out of my head and you distanced yourself for my family’s good. It doesn’t matter that Tom capitalized on that distance the moment you created it.”

I don’t know what came over me, just trying to get the honesty out, maybe. Maybe I was just trying to rail against Jared’s decree about detachment. “What matters is that I haven’t talked to you in months, but I still pick up my phone to call you after we wrap every night. What matters is that you left that bottle of your perfume in the bathroom and I can’t bring myself to throw it away because the pillows on your side of the bed don’t smell right if they don’t smell like CK Eternity. What matters is that I’m so in love with you that it hurts and you saw that, saw how I feel, and you left so that I wouldn’t fuck up my life over you…”

I could see the pain in her eyes as I reached out to cup her cheek. “All of that just makes me love you more.”

She closed her eyes but she didn’t move away. She leaned just a little closer. “You can’t,” she whispered.

I pulled her closer to me, hand on the back of her neck. “Shit, that doesn’t change a thing. Baby Girl, your protests don’t change a goddamn thing.”

She gave a full-body shiver but then she pulled away. It was like she didn’t really want to pull away but she felt like she had to, so I put my hand on her hip and pulled her back again. Gently, not aggressively, not in a bad way, just in a ‘please don’t leave me’ kinda way. Her eyes snapped open and she looked me dead in mine as she pushed me away just enough to get her point across. “Jensen…I can’t. I’m not that woman.”

I knew exactly what she meant. She couldn’t cheat on Tom…and she didn’t want to hurt me, either. So I let her go and stepped away from her. “I know. It’s part of why I love you. You’re too damn good for me. But you’re also too good for fuckin’ Loki.”

She wiped her tears away and shrugged, sniffling. “I don’t know about that. There’s a lot of people on Twitter who seem to think I’m not good enough for him…if the death threats are any indication. I mean, Tom’s got some rabid fans…but I’m sure they’re not as bad as our fans would be if they found out-”

“That Danneel is divorcing me?” I finished…even though I know that’s not what she was planning to say. I couldn’t help but laugh at the shock and confusion on her face. I picked up my warm beer from earlier in the day and took a drink. “Yeah. It’s not official, but Gino said she’s talking to lawyers.”

“No!” she shouted and slammed her fist down on the counter. My eyebrows went up as she grabbed her wrist. “No, you have to fix it! I did not walk away so that you could still fuck it up!” Seriously?! She’s blaming it all on me? “You love her! You love her and you love your kids and you just have to get over this stupid other feeling-”

“My feelings are stupid, now?” I demanded, offended to my bones but somehow…excited to be having an honest conversation with her about everything.

“That feeling is! You feeling like you think you’re in love with me is stupid! You…” She looked lost and frustrated as she threw her hands in the air. “Go to counseling! Go see a fucking shrink! Go fucking fix it! Fix! It!” she demanded.

“We fucking were! We’ve spent months talking to a shrink. Ever since you left, we’ve been trying. It hasn’t worked!”

“Try harder!” She scoffed at me and I could see it. She wasn’t mad at me. She was regretting it. She was regretting leaving because it didn’t stop the end that she was trying to stop. “Three months isn’t enough! Between the show and the cons and everything, it’s not enough time. Try to-”

“I don’t want to!” I admitted, tossing my beer at the floor. I didn’t want to drink anymore. The desire was fucking gone in that moment. I just wanted Y/n. “I’m tired of trying to not love you. I tried! I really did. Everyone told me to stop and I tried but I’m fucking exhausted and I can’t fuckin’ do it. It fucked my family, but I can’t stop how I feel.”

Everything stopped. We were both breathing heavy. My heart was pounding, I’m sure hers was too. But neither of us moved for a few moments. We just stared at each other, shoes and legs covered in beer…and something in the air said this was one of those pivotal moments. This was a moment where literally everything could change if we let it.

Finally, she broke the moment. “Fuck, Jay,” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand and looking away from me.

“I know…” I started, but I bit my bottom lip to give myself a minute to think. I had one chance. I had one opportunity to make this work. “I know that you’re with Tom. I know he loves you. I’ve spent…months wanting you to not love him, but I saw you on Colbert and you looked so happy, but when you talk to Jared…”

She stepped closer to me, regret etched across her face, and she wrapped me in a hug. “I’m so sorry, Jay.”

I wrapped my arms around her, excited that she initiated the embrace. “You got nothing to be sorry for, Baby Girl.”

“No. I do. If I’d never come here, you wouldn’t be in this situation. Everything would-”

“No, no, hey. Never say that. If you hadn’t come here, you’d be in a worse-”

“I’d be depressed, but you wouldn’t be. It’d just be me sad and you’d still be happily-”

I kissed her before she could finish that thought. She was regretting everything, which meant she was regretting Tom. She was back in my arms. It seemed like the right way to move forward. It seemed like the best way to get both of us happy. Her hands went to my hair. Mine went to the back of her thighs. I hauled her up so her legs wrapped around my waist and I held her close as we kissed. My hands roamed her body as I walked her to the bedroom. It was almost like I was on autopilot. She was making these breathy little noises and she was grabbing at me and it was like things were the way they used to be.

We found the bed and dropped to it, still kissing. I wasn’t going to waste any opportunity, and I was gonna go as far as she’d let me…and as fast as possible before she realized we might be making a mistake. I didn’t want either of us to focus on the mistake. I wanted to focus on the way her skin tasted, the way she whimpered when I started inching my hand up under her shirt, and the feel of her lace bra under my fingertips. God, and I wanted to feel the matching lace underwear I knew she was hiding in her jeans, but she stopped me as soon as I went to unzip them. I can’t even lie and say I wasn’t disappointed at her cockblocking, but I understood.

“I’m sorry. I swear I’m not trying to be a tease, Jay, but I can’t.”

“I get it. You don’t wanna do to Tom what Nate did to you.” I rolled off of her, staring at the ceiling and willing the discomfort in my pants to go away. More than that, I was willing for this to be the start of a new chapter of us. I had her back. She was literally lying in my arms. She was nestling in close to me. As long as she didn’t go back to Tom, everything was going to be okay.

“I’m sorry that everything is so messy,” she whispered, half into my chest.

I kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay. I can handle it. I can handle any mess, as long as I’ve got you.”

She hugged me a little bit tighter and sighed, the adrenaline falling and exhaustion taking over.

As long as I had her…

~~~

My trailer door opened about fifteen minutes later and I slowly extracted myself from Y/n’s embrace. She looked so peaceful and I was happy that I could get up without waking her. The bedroom door opened up and Jared’s eyes zipped from me to Y/n. I didn’t want him waking her up, either, so I put a finger to my lips and pointed toward the living room. He took the hint and I followed him, closing the door as softly as possible and turning to him.

“What did you do?” he whispered, pointing at the door.

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything!”

“Bullshit! What the fuck, Ackles?”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t give me that. She came here of her own accord, she talked to me of her own accord. I tried the detached and cold thing but it didn’t fucking work.”

“And how’d she end up in your fucking bed?”

“We didn’t do anything. She’s not a cheater.”

“That doesn’t answer the damn question. How did she-”

“It just happened. We were talking and we both admitted to some regrets. I told her that Dee was divorcing me. She said she never wanted to cause anybody any harm and…we kissed and we ended up in the bedroom but nothing happened and she fell asleep, okay?”

“It’s asking for fucking trouble.”

“Jesus, Padalecki, Danneel’s already leaving me. What more trouble could she give me?”

“She could take everything. She could take the house, the kids, the brewery; she could take your good fuckin’ clubs, Jensen, just for spite.”

“She can have ‘em!” I snapped in a whisper before processing all of what he said. “Well, not the kids, but anything else she wants to use against me? She can have it. I lost Y/n once already. I’m not letting it happen again.”

He sighed. “What about Tom?” I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to respond with a well-thought-out “Fuck Tom” but Jared continued. “Hey, we may not like the guy, but she has a boyfriend.”

“And that’s the only reason why she’s still got clothes on right now; because she wanted it just as much as me, dude, and as soon as she breaks up with him and it’s not cheating anymore, I’m gonna make her scream and I do not give a damn who hears it.”

“You idiot. Danneel hasn’t even filed yet. You can’t start fucking another woman when she hasn’t filed, because then she can list infidelity as the reason for filing.”

“You say that like I give a fuck about the money. I don’t.”

“You should,” Y/n said as she stepped out of the bedroom.

I smiled at her, hoping she’d smile back, but she didn’t. “Hey, Baby Girl. How was your nap?”

“You should care about the money, Jay. Because even if she doesn’t hit you for everything, the judge is probably going to-”

I shook my head. Already back to worrying about me. “You don’t need to worry about any-”

“Jensen, of the three of us in this room, only one of us has been through a divorce. I have specific, sad expertise about this, so let me help you see things correctly.” Jared smirked as she walked over to the fridge a grabbed a bottle of water. “She’s gonna get a shitload of child support out of you, whether she asks for it or not. The judge is just going to give it to her, for the kids’ benefit. I mean, you’ve got three young children, two of whom are still in diapers. You’ve gotta pay for daycare, private school, the nanny, it’s going to be a lot. If she wants, Danneel can definitely come at you for alimony, since she hasn’t done much acting since One Tree Hill, except the Harold and Kumar movies, but I can’t really imagine that those made bank for anyone except John Cho, Kal Penn, and NPH-” She stopped her lesson to take a drink of water from the bottle she pulled out of the fridge and cleared her throat. “If she files with infidelity as the reason, the judge is going to hand her your life on a silver platter.”

“I feel like she’s gonna do that anyway. I mean, she’s leaving because I couldn’t stop loving you.”

“That was different. The old agreement wasn’t infidelity. You had her express permission to have a relationship with me. Hell, she apparently suggested me, and if you’ve still got the phone you had in January of last year, then you’ve got proof of that. I did a screen recording of the Skype call between me and Danneel.”

I pulled my phone out and looked at it, a bit shocked. “No shit?”

She nodded and opened up my videos folder. “Yeah. I figured that if the media found out, it’d be a good idea to have proof that I wasn’t a homewrecker.”

I bit my bottom lip as I watched the beginning of the conversation that led into it all. “You thought of doing this in the few seconds after I handed my phone over to you?” I asked, looking over at her.

“My dad taught me to cover my ass. As soon as I knew we weren’t doing anything wrong, I wanted to have some sort of proof that it wasn’t a bad thing. Back then, it wasn’t infidelity, but anything we do now…it would be, because that relationship is over. I left, she withdrew her permissions…and then there’s Tom.”

“Tom’s a dick,” Jared said, obviously pulling on the knowledge he didn’t feel he needed to share with me.

“No, he’s not,” she disputed, running her hand from her forehead backward. “He’s a good man and he was so fucking worried that he was going to lose me and that’s why he was so controlling and-”

“Controlling?” My eyes went wide. I knew it. I knew that there was something wrong there. I schooled my expression into something serious. “Tom’s controlling?”

She looked down at her feet and bit her lip. “It doesn’t matter.”

Yes, it fuckin’ did. It definitely mattered. “It does fucking matter, Y/n. What did he do?”

“Tom thinks she belongs to him,” Jared said, and Y/n flinched. He didn’t think to tell me that before all this?! He didn’t think I should know? She wasn’t fucking happy and he made it seem like I was making it up because I didn’t want her happy and that was fucking horrible.

“No, I talked to him about it. It wasn’t that big of deal anymore. He stopped.” She looked down at her phone and sighed. “I will tell you about it later, okay? Right now, we need to get to work.” She started to walk out.

The way she turned suddenly so cold and was still defending him, it worried me. “You are gonna dump him, right?”

She threw her hands up in the air and shook her head. Her voice took on a high-pitched sound as she shouted, “I don’t fucking know! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what the right thing is here!”

I smiled and reached for her, attempting to calm her down and soothe her. “Y/n/n, you just need to-”

“No, shut up!” she cut me off and I could see the panic welling up in her eyes. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Don’t tell me that everything is going to be fine, because nothing feels fine right now!” She started tugging lightly at her hair and looked at the ceiling. “You’re getting divorced, Jensen. Your beautiful and amazing family is going to be broken in half a-and that’s not fine, and Tom told the world about me and him and if I break up with him for my not-even-divorced-yet coworker, what kind of whore am I? What kind of bitch am I?”

I hadn’t even processed my shock over the way she was talking about herself before Jared had rushed over to her. “You’re having a panic attack, aren’t you?” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you have any PRN anxiety meds?”

“No. I haven’t needed them. I…I can’t breathe,” she rushed to say as she sat on the steps of the trailer and Jared followed. “I can’t breathe.”

“Hey, Jensen, go tell Rich that Y/n and I are gonna be late,” Jared demanded.

My jaw dropped a little as I debated staying and trying to help. But as Jared rubbed his hand up and down her spine, I knew that I was part of the problem. She needed someone who could help her calm down, and it wasn’t me in that moment, so I left.

I took a moment to calm down myself before heading to the set and cleared my throat as I approached Rich at the director’s chair. “Hey, uh, we’re gonna be runnin’ a little behind. Maybe we should switch some scenes around or something, ‘cause Y/n is having a bit of a panic attack and she’s not going to be able to-”

Rich’s eyes went wide. “Shit, is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, Jared's in my trailer with her and he’s talking her down, but it’s gonna put us off schedule. I know that we’ll make it work and we won’t make a big deal about it.”

"Of course not, but she's going to be okay, though, right?"

"Yeah. Definitely. She just needs a little time to breathe."

Rich nodded and sighed. "We'll wait for her. It's a Tara-heavy episode so we can't do much without her. But, hey, at least you two aren't fighting anymore."

My eyebrows came together and I cocked my head to the side a bit. "What do you mean? We weren't fighting."

He scoffed and grinned up at me. "Come on, man. I may not be a genius but I have eyes. Your little breakup was killing the con scene." I opened my mouth to argue, my brain telling me to keep to the rules despite the fact that the rules weren't going to matter much longer, but he reached out and patted my shoulder as he walked toward the set. "When you lost your con cooch to Hiddleston, everything went sour. I'm glad you guys are getting over that. Tomorrow would be very awkward otherwise."

I chuckled and watched him sit in his director's chair. Con cooch. At least he hadn't put it all together. He didn't know we were in love…and I’m sure he didn’t know we were going to end up together for real.

#cassie writes stuff #spn rpf #jensen x reader #tom hiddleston x reader #alchol abuse #divorce

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chasingmidnights · 6 months

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13 Nights of Halloween: Campfire Stories; Story Four

Title: The House at the End of the Dead End Road

Storyteller: Jake Jensen

Summary: A story about a mysterious house and its bloody history.

Warnings: Minors DNI, 18+ only; implied abuse; implied incest; implied witchcraft; implied that Constance & Mary Kat were conceived by Satan; Charles Blackwood & Jake Jensen (yes, they are both warnings!); implied murder; implied death by poison; implied s*xual ass**lt; and I believe that’s everything. This one is a little darker than the other ones, I think I would classify it as possibly, soft!dark? I apologize if I missed anything but you are responsible for what you read and your own social media content. I do not claim to be a professional writer, any and all mistakes are my own; nothing is beta read.

Wordcount: 998

The following night, you and your friends had gathered around the campfire once again and you couldn’t wait for tonight’s story. You couldn’t help but smile as you roasted a marshmallow and watched all of your friends smiling and laughing. Once the chatter started to die down, you decided to speak up.

“So, who’s telling tonight’s story?”

Everyone glanced around at one another, waiting for someone to take the lead on tonight’s story. When Jake realized that no one was volunteering, after a quick drink of his beer, he spoke up.

“I’ve got one for y’all.”

“Alright, go on with it then.” Nick smirked as he sat across from Jake.

Jake cleared his throat before he started his story. “I think it’s safe to say that we all grew up in a town where there’s that one house that has a past and from that past, rumors of its past had spread. In my hometown, that house rested at the end of a dead end road. This house was called Blackwood Manor. Growing up, I heard various stories about the old, abandoned manor and I never knew which one to believe. But I did know one thing, I knew not to go inside of it.”

As Jake was about to continue, Andy interrupted. “What exactly were these rumors?”

“Well, one example was that the Blackwood sisters were a murderous pair and that they lived there a long time ago, before any of us were even born. The two sisters, Constance and Mary Kat, were accused of murdering their evil parents. However, there was never any proof, so the sisters got off Scott-free. Why did they kill their parents, you might be wondering? This is where things get a little fuzzy and where the rumors run rampant. Some of the rumors say that they killed their parents simply for their inheritance, because you see, the Blackwoods were rich. Their father, Mr. Blackwood, owned the mines and about half of the town and he did what he could to make sure the town thrived so that he would remain rich. But, Mr. Blackwood was a stingy and selfish man who wouldn’t give the girls a scent. It’s said that the reason why Mr. Blackwood was so rich because of his wife, who apparently was a witch. She would cast spells that would benefit her family. In fact, it’s said that both of the girls were a gift from the Devil himself as a reward for their mother’s constant devotion. Perhaps, that is why the two Blackwood sisters were so evil and led them to kill their parents.

“Another rumor that surrounds the manor and its previous tenants, is that Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood were extremely abusive and in the most unforgiving way. Mr. Blackwood didn’t allow the girls to date, claiming that they were his and that no one else was good enough for them. He would apparently beat them for the smallest of disobedience or if they showed any sign of rebellion. That was just the father though, they endured a lot worse from their mother. It’s said that Mrs. Blackwood would practice her magic on them and when the witching hour struck, you could hear the screams of the two sisters. Eventually though, the Blackwood sisters had had enough of the constant abuse that they received from their parents. So, one night at dinner, they decided to poison the tea that they would be serving with dinner. Constance and Mark Kat stole glances at one another as they sat at the table and watched as the poison slowly did its job. When their parents were finally dead, wicked grins formed on the sister’s faces, as a weight lifted from their shoulders.

“One final rumor, well, at least where I’m capping off, because there are hundreds more that surround this old manor. This one, now this one is a little more messed up. I’ve heard this one about a half a dozen times and that is that Connie Blackwood had poisoned her parents because she had fallen in love with her cousin, Charles Blackwood. With this rumor, Charles manipulated Connie into poisoning them so that she and her sister would get their inheritance. The oldest Blackwood sister obliged because she truly thought Charles was in love with her as well. He had told her that her parents were the only thing standing in the way of them being able to be together. Charles had also convinced her that nobody could love her like he could and he would be the only one to properly take care of her. Her little sister tried to talk some sense into Constance but got nowhere. In fact, it’s believed that Connie also killed Mary Kat. When it was all over though, Charles ended up leaving Constance and taking the money with him. This left Constance distraught and heartbroken which led her to eventually killing herself. It’s said that you can still hear Constance Blackwood still wailing from the house because of her broken heart.”

The wind started to pick up a little bit causing it to whistle. Everyone jumped a little bit as the whistling wind sounded a little too much like a wailing woman.

“Damn Jensen, that’s messed up.” Bucky said, finally breaking the silence as the wind died down.

A cold shiver ran through your entire body and you couldn’t help but feel for Constance a little bit, even if there’s the possibility that she wasn’t real. You looked around at your friends and wondered who would be telling the next creepy story.

“So, are we ready for another story tonight?” You asked before you polished off your hot chocolate.

“I could go for another story.” Steve said as he sat next to you.

Bucky glanced around at his friends, normally he wasn’t one for storytelling but he felt like he had a good one. “I’ve got one.”

Everyone turned to Bucky, a bit surprised but ready to hear his story.

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antigonewinchester · 10 months

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15x05 I can’t decide if the “Dean looks way older now” jokes are a double joke, because it’s clearly Jared who looks different/older playing Sam in 2019 than he did in 2005, or if because Dean is the more comedic character they used him for this joke despite Jensen looking more similar to his 2005 self. Again, they’re going for the old school references in bringing back Ford and Hamill as alias, pulling from 1x02 (which isn’t technically a werewolf ep but features a creature similar to it, and one they were right not to reuse and use werewolves instead).

We’ve got three dark mirrors for Sam & Dean in this ep – two dreams from Sam, first of Dean drying to kill Lucifer!Sam with the colt, failing, and Lucifer!Sam killing him; then demon/MoC!Dean killing Sam, and then the werewolf brothers, who have taken to killing humans, and eventually ending in a murder suicide, as the younger bro, tormented by his and his brother’s killing of people, kill his older bro and then himself. Given the discussion of the werewolf bros as “foreshadowing,” there’s also perhaaaps a link to 15x17, in the older bro werewolf being the one who wanted to kill people/wouldn’t stop, and being taken out by his younger bro, and then Dean being willing to sacrifice everything & everyone to kill Chuck… except, ultimately, Sam, who convinces him to stand down and ‘stops him’ without having to kill him. Or perhaps linking to Kripke’s “Sam goes dark, Dean has to hunt him down” ending which one could imagine ending in a murder-suicide, if they’d wanted to go the really tragic route.

Lilith’s return – and the first person to be killed through the randomly stabbed through the back this season, pretty sure. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say she acts as a dark foil to Dean in the ep? Dean’s worst impulses are often brought out by his following the script, being the unquestioning loyal soldier, similar to how Lilith is still following Chuck’s script even though she hates him. (They even get somewhat similar cuts on their cheeks.)

LILITH Wouldn’t it be great if everything was just planned out for you? [She laughs.] DEAN Let me guess, one of Chuck’s lines? LILITH Word for word. God… he is not exactly Shakespeare. He’s more of a low-rent Dean Koontz. I had to listen to his whole, quote “writing philosophy”. And his very weird, very pervy obsession with you. Then it always ends the same. One brother killing the other. I mean, this world… he could’ve ended it in so many ways, and… he likes that one. You know, I guess that’s why you had to see the werewolf brothers die the way they did, ‘cause… foreshadowing.

I thought the “pervy obsession with you” line was going to refer to both Sam and Dean, but the way it’s played it definitely sounds like Lilith is referring specifically to Dean. The ‘Dean gets creeped on by quasi-mentor/father figures’ thread drops off almost entirely in Dabb’s seasons so it’s curious to see it pop up now, although given this ep was written by Yockey, who joined in S12, I’m hesitant to declare it’s intentional. If I had to guess, it would be more that it’s balancing out the ‘Dean looks old’ jokes at the beginning, as well as just making Chuck seem weird & obsessive. (Like the awkward, invasive fans who are obsessively attracted to Jensen/Jared/J2? Idk how many were around by this point in this show but the writers had to be somewhat aware of them historically.) We’ll see if there’s more of this thread thru the rest of the season tho.

SAM Where’s Chuck? LILITH Why would I ever tell you anything? SAM Because I’ve killed you before… [he takes out the demon blade.] and I can do it again. LILITH See, you keep saying that, but you killed me because I let you. Now I’m feeling… less generous. [LILITH’s eyes flash white. The room starts to shake as lights start breaking and falling.]

This dialogue isn’t a retcon per se, as S4 implies that Lilith knew all along she was the last seal, but it certainly does give a certain... framing to Sam and his actions in S4. Definitely an implicit passivity in Lilith “letting” Sam kill her.

#spn rewatch #season 15 #season 4 #lilith #sam & dean

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aoitrinity · 3 years

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Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it.

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in.

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length.

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages.

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money.

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments.

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve.

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

#supernatural season 15 #spn finale #speculation #destiel #destielgate #the ending was not the ending #fuck the cw #trust the story #we were robbed

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thetiredstuff · 3 years

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I need to make a post outlining everything that proves they're gonna make Dean say I love you back

- Meghan said that Bobo wrote the love confession scene as one of the first scenes when the writers came back for season 15

-And you can very clearly tell that there are a bunch if callbacks and moments leading up to the love confession scene

- Dean and Cas relationship has literally been plot line A this entire season.

- They have multiple times shown what happens to Dean when Cas dies: he loses his will to live and eventually will end up killing himself

- The freaking parallels in episode 18 alone: Charlie's gf Stevie getting snapped (dying), Sam's girlfriend Eileen getting snapped, and then Dean's best friend dying???? Like no it only makes sense if it's Dean's boyfriend dying

- Jensen has said that after he learned about the ending that he made certain acting choices reflecting that. What else could have influenced (lol) Jensen's acting if not Dean and Cas ending up together

- Jensen and Jared joking during a con when a fan asked about ‘Samstiel” and Jared answered “Sam has better taste” and Jensen just nodding in the background to then say “Dean has no taste, clearly” At that point, Jensen was aware of Cas’ love confession.

- Misha has not only said Cas is gay he has also said "Destiel is canon" if Dean does tell his truth and it's unrequited, Misha would never ever go out of his way to say Destiel is canon only for us to then be extremely distraught two weeks later.

- They would never ever ever go for the “bury your gays” trope knowing how much backlash that would create and knowing what an injustice it is. Bobo is a gay man himself (which of course can still mean that he does that trope) but what’s more significant during the virtual panel and meet & greet Misha had today, he mentioned the “bury your gays” trope multiple times and even asked a fan what the reaction was within the fandom. I doubt they would go for that trope if not to spin it upside down and have him come back.

- Cas' end: Rich has talked a bit about how monumental they knew this scene was. Together with Jensen and Misha, they came up with the bloody handprint on Dean's jacket. You don't put such callbacks in there if it's an unrequited love

- Cas was able to speak his truth when confessing his love, now it’s Dean’s turn.

- Cas is gonna come back in episode 20. I am 100% sure of that. And Eileen is gonna come back and end up with Sam. The brothers are gonna part ways. It would make no sense to have Sam go with his love and then Dean and Cas split ways or then go together without that love being requited. In real life, you obviously don't owe someone your love, but this is a show where nothing is just written because. It all has a purpose. There is no way they wrote that love scene to then have an unrequited love.

- And most importantly: “the one thing I want is something I know I can’t have” Why would they put that there if they aren’t gonna answer it? It is meant to make the viewer question “well what does he want?” and you don’t kill off a character with such a beautiful and significant death by leaving one question unanswered. Unless it’ll be answered later on.

-Also just gonna say, it makes no sense for them to have Cas going to the Empty as his ending. Because we’ve seen Cas escaping from it thanks to Jack. We’ve literally just seen jack blow up the Empty. Like no. He’s gonna come back.

#this is incoherent jumble but i needed to write it down #destiel #I love my husbands #spn #supernatural #dean #dean winchester #spn spoilers #15x19 #15x20

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destielshippingnews · 2 years

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Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x12 Faith

In this review and analysis, I will discuss Dean’s obvious trauma, survivor’s guilt, and suicidal ideations stemming from John's mistreatment of him; Sam’s possible autism; and atheism in America in Supernatural's twelfth episode. Spoilers up to the final episode of The Show.

1x12 Faith is one of the fans’ all-time favourite episodes, enjoying a rating on 8,8 on IMDb based on over 6,000 votes. Written by Sera Gamble and Raelle Tucker, this episode suggests that Gamble IS a good writer of individual episodes, though she dropped the ball as show-runner on series 6 and 7. However, Raelle Tucker’s solo episodes such as 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be are standout performances, so I am not sure where the real credit belongs.

1x12 Faith presents a morally-ambiguous situation wherein an innocent person dies regardless of what happens. It is reminiscent of the Buffy episode 2x07 Lie to Me, wherein a character dying of brain cancer is willing to sacrifice dozens of innocents to avoid his fate. Faith is, however, unusual in Supernatural in that it shows an uncharacteristic depth of thought regarding its plot.

In addition to a stellar script and Jensen’s usual world-class performance (once more, I swear I am not paid to say things like that), Julie Benz also graced the screen with her presence in the role of Layla. Unless I am forgetting somebody, she is the third Buffyverse cast member to appear on the show, following Amy Acker in 1x03 Dead in the Water and, of course, Jeffrey Dean Morgan who appeared in an episode of Angel. While lovely to see familiar faces from similar genre shows appearing in Supernatural, it is a reminder of how precarious the show’s position was at first. They tried to draw in the audience they expected would enjoy the show by casting people from other shows the intended audience knew and enjoyed. It does not count as stunt acting coughSnookie cough Paris Hilton cough and their performances definitely stand up without distracting from the plot.

The plot is certainly one of the most interesting and challenging so far; no matter what happens, innocents are going to suffer and die. Do we want innocent Dean to live, or do we want innocent Layla to live? The plot will not allow both.

But the first year of this show is mainly focused on developing the brothers and their relationship to each other, so episodes such as 1x12 Faith stand out for having both brilliant plot and character development.

On to the episode, and the cold open begins right in the middle of the action. In medias res (a term meaning ‛starting in the middle of the action’) is a risky business. Writers want to get the viewer or reader interested in the story right away, and a fight scene or chase is theoretically a good way of going about this. It is risky because if the reader or viewer does not know the characters, the stakes, or even what is going on, it can be confusing and off-putting. Star Wars IV: A New Hope did this well in the opening shot AND the opening scene: the visuals of the tiny rebel starship and the overwhelming juggernaut of the Imperial battleship chasing it tells us everything we need to know to get started. The introduction of Darth Vader presents him immediately as a tyrannical threat. All of this is done with no backstory (except the opening crawl) and it is easy to follow the events.

The cold open of 1x12 Faith is in medias res done right: I know the characters and the world well enough that no explanation is necessary here. A shame, then, that The Show did not do this more often. I expect that by the time it had become two or three series long, they could not rely on all the viewership having watched all the episodes, knowing all the lore, or simply having the attention span to be able to follow without having their hand held. Perhaps this explains why the ‛Previously on’ eventually gets obnoxiously spoilery with all its unnecessary exposition for the idiots in the cheap seats.

What exactly a rawhead is never gets revealed, only that it eats children. A rawhead is referred to again in series 14, but only in passing. As such, I will skip over it to the important part of the cold open: Dean killing it with electric. The rawhead knocked Dean over into a puddle of water, and Dean wasted no time in electrocuting the rawhead with the stun gun. Unfortunately the rawhead was just barely standing in the water, so Dean got shocked as well. Upon my rewatch of the episode for this review, I realised Dean probably knew this was a risk. It could not have escaped his notice that he was wet and lying in a puddle, nor that playing with electricity had a high chance of damaging him. Did he accept the probability of his own death as an acceptable price in killing the rawhead and saving the children? Knowing Dean as well as I do, I have to conclude that he did, even without taking the rest of this episode into account.

Sticking with the cold open a while longer, let’s discuss Sam a bit here. It should not be news to anybody who has read this far that I am not here for Sam: I do not love Sam, I do not live for Sam, I generally do not care for Sam. I do understand, though, that some people get a lot out of Dean and Sam’s brotherhood, and enjoy a show about love that is not romantic. While I have my beef with some people in this contingent, the premise of a show focusing on men’s non-romantic bonds with other men definitely appeals to me for a variety of reasons. I first read Robert and Arvid in Vilhelm Moberg’s The Emigrants novels as a deeply intimate and important male friendship which they valued above other relationships, and I did not realise how much I needed that in my life until I read it. (That said, it is also equally valid to interpret Arvid and Robert as a same-sex couple, but that is another story).

Supernatural, however, made Dean and Sam’s relationship poisonous, manipulative, and abusive. Dean was the codependent abused and Sam the narcissistic abuser. While it gave us this dysfunctional horror show, the series seemed blissfully unaware of precisely what it was portraying. It expected the viewer to get behind the brothers’ relationship and root for them to value their brotherhood over everything and everybody else. This is not what I watch the show for, but Sam’s reaction to Dean’s apparent death in the cold open did give me a glimpse of what The Show and the brothers’ relationship could have been. Sam genuinely seemed terrified that Dean was dead, and the rest of the episode carries this on. I give Sam a lot of grief, but even I have to admit that in spite of all his crap, he does love Dean. This does not negate the bad behaviour, but at least when Dean needs him, Sam does his best to help. It is just a shame that Sam only shows his love when he is about to lose Dean.

It is also nice to be reminded of a time when Jared cared about acting on this show.

Moving swiftly on, after a nasty reminder of precisely how messed up the American medical insurance situation is, the viewer is presented with a scene which – without my trademark oversharing – is simply an entire mood. Panda-eyed, pale, and weak, Dean’s suicidal, fatalistic attitude is both tragic and 100% relatable.

I have stated elsewhere that when I watch Dean, I see exactly the kind of young man who is at an acute risk of dying by suicide. The responsibility he takes onto himself, his self-sacrifice, his lack of self-worth and self-esteem, his abusive, violent childhood (leaving your child alone in a motel for weeks IS abuse, whatever John’s apologists might say), his lack of support before he is in a crisis, his use of humour to cover up his real emotions, his desperation to be worthy of his dad’s love... I am no expert on suicide or suicide studies, but I cannot help recognising it in Dean (and The Show explicitly portrays him as suicidal on various occasions). Whether or not this was the intent is besides the point, and whether or not I am projecting is also beside the point; this is what I see.

One thing many people do not know or consider when thinking of suicide is that it is not always actively trying to die, but it can also mean not trying to stay alive. Dean makes it abundantly clear that he does not intend to keep living in this scene as soon as he brushes aside Sam’s comment of “I talked to your doctor”. He purposefully deflected with his remark about daytime telly being terrible (hilarious given Jensen’s career), signalling his desire to avoid that conversation.

Dean gets a lot of hate from some people who perceive his actions as entirely selfish: he brought Sam back into the hunting life in episode 1 because Dean did not want to be alone, some claim. Some also claim he did what he did at the end of series 2 because he could not live without Sam, even if it meant Sam had to watch him die. He restored Sam’s soul against Sam’s will in series 6. He helped ‛Ezekiel’ keep Sam alive in series 9, etc etc etc.

At risk of offending one or two of my seven readers, that reads to me like the limited perspective of the younger, immature sibling who does not see his/her older brother as an actual human, but rather a trope and a punchbag. That reads like Emo King Sam’s perspective, and it is so short-sighted and self-absorbed that it does not belong anywhere but in a teenager’s diary.

Dean believes he is worthless, but at the same time is entirely responsible and accountable for other people’s suffering. He does not try to help or save others because he wants to be the hero or wants to have control over their lives, but because he believes the only thing he is good for is getting hurt so other people do not have to. If that means sacrificing his life, then so be it: his life is worthless anyway, and even his dad never shows him anything resembling love.

Up until this point in the show, Dean’s mask has mostly stayed firmly on around Sam. He presents himself as a larger-than-life, unnaturally strong and charismatic hunter with a Devil may care attitude, but he does this because it is what others need of him. He has to make Sam believe Dean is stronger than he is and that Dean can protect him, because that was always his role. He must be seen to be capable (which of course he is), but to do this he must downplay and conceal any weakness to maintain the illusion. The reason for this is that any hint of weakness runs the risk of the people he loves seeing him as flawed, casting him aside, and replacing him.

I said in 1x09 Home that I will save most of my ire for John until a later date, and the later date is fast approaching. We see little direct evidence of John’s mistreatment of his sons, the elder in particular. However, the other side of Dean presented in 1x12 Faith is all the negative image we should need. His façade falls away to reveal a weak, small, broken, and very human man. His eyes are sunken, his skin is grey, his jokes fall flat, he sits like a sick man with breathing problems, and the viewer is forced to look at the man behind the mask. The choice of attire for Dean in this episode is also striking is its divergence from his usual garb: a hoodie and outer coat reminiscent of Tom Hanniger in My Bloody Valentine. This makes him look smaller, younger, and much more vulnerable.

This is the part of Dean he hates other to see. If they see him as weak, they see him as less capable, and less valuable. They see him as disposable. As his entire motivation is centred around being valuable to others, this is incredibly difficult and scary for him. Worse, perhaps, is the fact it was not a monster who did this to him, not really: it was an accident involving electricity. It was a reminder that simply being alive is a risk, and being alive is a threat to Dean’s usefulness.

His resistance to Sam’s offers of help also suggest a certain view of himself: that he truly is worthless and does not deserve to live if he is weak. Thanks, John.

All of these last few paragraphs seem to pass a huge number of viewers by, and I cannot for the life of me understand how. The show presents Dean as suffering suicidal ideations in a way which is blindingly obvious, but still people miss it. Some even say he wants to die fighting. It is true Dean says more than once in the fifteen years of the show something to the effect of ‛I want to die fighting’ and ‛The only way it ends for me is young and bloody’. Some people cite this as reasons why what happened in 15x20 is what Dean would have wanted, but I cannot even begin to agree.

He does not want to die like that, he simply does not see a happy ending for himself. He does not believe he could ever have anything resembling a happy ending, and all his actions are informed by this belief. He never hesitated for a second before electrocuting the rawhead in the cold open, for example, because he thought he would likely die soon anyway. This is why he willingly sacrifices himself over and over again, and this is precisely why the way he died in the ‛official’, ‛canonical’ ending to the show was a complete betrayal of the character, the actor, and the fans who saw a part of themselves in Dean. Misha and Jensen’s You Are Not Alone campaign raised money to start a suicide and crisis hotline, and spoiler alert spoiler alert having Dean die of a treatable wound because he accepted he was supposed to die young was a slap in the face and a wad of spit in the eye spoiler alert spoiler alert.

The show was so close to doing so many things right, but the last two episodes undid every chance they possibly had. Cas’s erasure shocked me, and the refusal to address Dean’s feelings about Cas’s confession was a kick in the nuts, but what happened to Dean took the biscuit.

This was not just another of my side-tracks, but necessary to ensure you are on the same page as me when I discuss this episode and its importance in Dean’s character development.

Dean has hitherto been a larger-than-life character, so it is shocking for him to be hospitalised and on the verge of a very human death. It is intensely unheroic and he fully believed Sam would leave him there to die.

If I had a heart left...

Moving on to the main plot of the episode, Sam’s refusal to let Dean die lead them to a faith healer in Nebraska, and the episode’s other main theme comes into play: belief in ‘good’ and faith in general.

It was not until my most recent viewing that I actually saw anything unusual about Dean’s lack of religious belief. Whether you want to call it agnosticism, atheism, deism, or whatever, he does not believe in ‘good’ forces, nor miracles, not apparently a life after death. As a British person living in northern Europe, this is par for the course. Most people in Britain are de facto atheists, and most people in the Nordic countries where I now live are atheist. Dean’s views would not in any way stand out

here or be considered noteworthy, and Sam’s would be regarded as naïve, sweet, and childish.

America (and Canada), however, is a different beast altogether. Belief in the Christian god is taken as a matter of course there, and atheists or even agnostics are seen as radical, dangerous, and even threatening. Dean’s lack of faith is therefore remarkable. Of course, given his history it would be hard for him to believe in the existence of good of any kind, and it took until 15x18 for anybody to tell him that he was good.

Which reminds me, as sweet as Layla was, her line If you’re going to have faith, you have to have faith when the miracles don’t happen’ was just a nice way of saying ‘If you don’t believe when things are going badly, you never really believed in the first place’. I understand religionists hold onto things like that as if it is is a noble position to hold, but to be quite honest it just sounds like denial to me. However, my own opinions on religious belief are not the issue here: the point is that Dean is in a nadir where his lack of belief is challenged by the apparent existence of miracles.

Before going into the tent, I would like to linger a moment on Dean and Sam’s conversation outside. Dean’s hesitance to enter the tent is clearly a product of his refusal to believe anything good can exist, and Sam’s question ‘If you know evil’s out there, why don’t you believe good’s out there too?’ is one a lot of viewers might be asking themselves.

My thoughts went instantly to Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire. In contrast to the film, the first 100 pages of the novel deal with Louis’s brother Paul’s illness and death. His illness was likely some variety of psychosis as he claimed to be hearing god. A local priest was convinced it was not the voice of god the boy was hearing, but rather Satan. A similar question is raised in this plot arc: why is it so much easier for us to believe in evil than to believe in good? Why did the priest not believe it was God talking to the brother?

The answer Louis gives to the interviewer is essentially the same as Dean’s justification: we see evil much more often than we see good, so it is no stretch of the imagination to come to conclusion that evil exists. It requires much more ‘imagination’ to conclude that good exists, too. In fact, the predominance of evil in everyday life makes it hard to see how good could exist.

The fact that Doubting Dean is chosen as the first person to be healed at his first time attending the faith healer’s service is indeed open to interpretation as divine intervention. As episode 4x18 The Monster at the End of This Book makes clear, God is indeed very much involved in the brothers’ lives (especially Dean’s, with whom he has a weird, perverted obsession), this is an interesting thought to entertain.

Putting that aside, it does not take long before Dean and Sam realise the miraculous healings are not blessings or any variety, but the result of serious dark magic which has bound a reaper to the healer’s wife. The wife in question – named Sue-Ann – sends the reaper to kill a person whom she deems morally reprehensible, and that person’s life force (or so I deduce, it is never made explicit) is transferred to the person the healer is ‘healing’.

The first person to die in this manner in this episode is a gay teacher, and it is this man who died so that Dean could live. I would like to draw the reader’s attention to three things here: it is specifically Dean’s heart which is failing, rather than any other organ, and that the person who died to ‘save’ him is both gay and a teacher. The teacher role is a good mirror of Dean. Teaching is a nurturing profession which requires a lot of dedication, care, and patience, as the teacher is imparting knowledge to others to help them succeed in various areas of life.

The teacher killed in this episode was a school teacher, raising children. This should be more than enough for the viewer to draw parallels between Dean and the teacher, since Dean was responsible for raising his own brother at the expense of his own childhood. The teacher died of heart failure, and Dean’s heart was healed with a gay man’s life force (read: Dean’s heart is a gay man’s heart). This is what the episode shows us, and is not an issue up for debate: while dying of heart failure, Dean was linked to a gay man who died of heart failure. From 1x12 Faith until the end of the show, Dean has a gay man’s heart. Make of that what you will.

The blind priest’s line about seeing Dean’s heart, and that he was a young man with an important purpose, should also cause people ears to prick up.

Ethically and morally, what Sue-Ann is doing is unquestionably bad. A young woman dying of inoperable brain cancer is tragic, but should somebody die to save her? Layla never knew the cost of the healer’s miracles, so was not wracked with survivor’s guilt, but Dean’s confusion as to why he was chosen and saved indeed does transform into full-blown survivor’s guilt. Having experienced survivor’s guilt, Dean’s journey in this episode is spot on – it is more than simply wondering ‘Why am I alive?’, and involves a feeling that I do not deserve to be alive, and that I should die. He wants to stop the ‘healing’ to prevent more people dying, but perhaps also hopes that in doing so he can end his own life and be free of both his burden and his guilt.

What makes things worse is that Layla is exactly the kind of person whom Dean would want to protect and save, and Dean clearly sees a lot of himself reflected in her mother’s dedication to helping her. That she was passed over in favour of him is a knife in the guts, but the true kicker comes in at the end of the episode when Dean finds out that Layla is to be healed, and Dean will be killed to save her.

This was peak dramaturgy and I must tip my hat to the writers for this. Dean certainly turned his charm up to 11 the moment he set eyes on her, but after that I sensed nothing sexual between them; rather he simply wanted to help and protect her from her death, but was unable to. He and Sam had to sacrifice her to save others, and that is true tragedy.

Her bravery at the end of the episode when she has her final scene with Dean shows a lot of personal strength. I am not religious so I cannot take any kind of comfort in believing a deity or divine something has a plan or will take care of me after I die, but I understand it is a source of comfort and strength for a lot of people. Layla has accepted her death, but she does not do so in a despairing manner, but rather with her back straight and head high. The point of this final scene was not simply to drive home to the viewer the fact that Layla WILL die within the next few months, but to compare and contrast her with Dean. Both were at death’s door in this episode, but ‘faithless’ Doubting Dean fell in to despair, whereas Layla refused to bend beneath her burden.

A nasty thought I had whilst writing this section was that the writers might have written Dean the way they did in this episode as a snide, underhanded comment on the cowardice and faithlessness of suicidal people. It was just a thought, and I cannot give it much credence given Raelle Tucker’s exploration of Dean in 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be, yet Layla’s comment about having faith when miracles do not happen can easily be interpreted that way.

If the readers want my own thoughts on this – and if you have read all of my reviews up to this point, you probably do – I sympathise but cannot empathise with Layla’s position. Sure if you believe, you cannot just believe when things are going well, but my question is ‘Why would I believe in the first place?’ I lost a friend to suicide, and never once turned to any kind of deity for help or comfort. It would be nice to believe in some kind of afterlife and to hope for a reunion of some variety, but I had to look death right in the eye and accept it as the final end. Doing otherwise would feel like lying to myself to avoid an uncomfortable truth and ignoring the reality of his death.

As for the reaper in this episode, it would be fine if reapers never appeared again, but they do as early as 2x01 In My Time of Dying. The next reaper we see looks nothing like this reaper, nor reapers much later in the show. The reason for this is likely that the writers etc had not decided on exactly what reapers were in the Superverse, how they worked, or what they looked like. This is not a big problem, but slightly jarring: the reaper in 1x12 Faith looks like what we might think of as an agent of death: ill, old, ugly, creepy, but this is almost completely forgotten after this. The fact that clocks stop when a reaper is around is a nice touch, but never comes up ever again.

What is not forgotten is Dean’s relationship with death, and it makes a reprise at the very beginning of series 2. Dean is a Jesus figure, as Paula R. Stiles detailed in her own reviews of Supernatural. He takes responsibility for other people’s suffering, and takes their guilt unto himself to try to absolve them. He is also the character who challenges death the most, and who eventually becomes the arch-enemy of Death itself.

This episode begins this parallel, but also begins what some fans call a storyline which details Dean’s slow journey to faith. The theme istaken up again in 2x13 Houses of the Holyand coming to a conclusion in 4x01 Lazarus Rising when Cas appears and reveals the existence of angels, i.e. the ‘good’ which Dean did not believe exist. This is a plot I am not keen on: 2x13 ended with Dean believing in something because of a freak accident, and 4x01 is not about belief, but knowledge. Belief and knowledge are different, and if ones knows angels exist, one does not believe in them. One knows. This is a strange, incoherent end to this subplot, but I can see what they were perhaps trying to do with it. Maybe religious people will get something out of this, but not me.

At just over 4,500 words, I will move on from the big topics of the episode and cover some smaller points. I make no secret of my distaste for Sam, but it recently occurred to me that some of his bad behaviour could possible be explained by his being somewhere on the autistic spectrum. He has a few traits of Asperger’s, such as fixations (serial killers, magic lore) and saying awful, insensitive things which he might not actually realise are awful and insensitive, which suggest perhaps something is not quite usual about his brain.

However, some of the things he says to Dean seem too malicious to be explainable as ‘not realising what he was saying’. When Dean checks himself out of hospital and turns up at the motel looking like Death warmed up, Sam wastes no time in talking to him in an incredibly patronising manner. ‘This whole laughing-in-the-face-of-death thing, it’s crap. I can see right through it.’ While it is nice for Sam that he thinks he is an expert of psychoanalysis, it should be obvious to anybody that Dean’s attempts at humour is a coping mechanism, as gallows humour always is. It is not particularly clever to see through it, but it would have been wise to allow him that little fig leaf so he can deal with his death in the way he wants to, not in a way that comforts Sam.

Come to think of it, this is exactly the problem I have with series 3: rather than focusing on Dean’s own journey in coming to terms with his own impending death, the focus is on Sam and how he deal with it.

But back to 1x12 Faith: Sam is almost certainly not neurotypical, but he does a better job of hiding it than Dean. Dean functions well in certain situations, but 1x11 Scarecrow gave us a hint that he is not as socially fluent as he might appear to be. Sam, however, is better as interaction with people he does not know, indicating perhaps a greater capability of adapting himself to different situations. This would not have come about naturally in his childhood, as he was isolated, had few if any lasting friendships, and mostly interacted with Dean who is in no way a paragon of social interaction. He had nobody to learn this stuff from, so would have had to learn by observation and mimicry.

This does not in any excuse his bad behaviour, but could explain it. I do not think he would be anythingmore than a mild or borderline case of Asperger’s if he is autistic, and the traits I have seen do not add up much, but it is a possibility. These traits can also be explained by his having grown up in an abnormal environment, but the two are not mutually exclusive.

The policemen seemed unnecessarily rough in their treatment of Dean when Sue-Ann started shouting. They could see he was not doing anything, so I do not understand why they grabbed him bodily. I did get a laugh however, later in the episode when Dean taunted them by saying ‘You gonna put that fear of God in me?’ It does not take much to see the euphemism there. Typical Dean, sexualising himself in front of authority figures.

The DVD featured an alternate version of Dean’s healing scene which is intercut with the gay teacher being killed. I can understand why the clip might have beencut: it made it too obvious too early that the healing had serious consequences, and it also felt a little awkward. A nagging in the back of my mind wonders whether the unmissable link between Dean and the gay teacher might also have played a role in the scene being axed from the theatrical release.

Regarding the choice of song for the episode, whilst it is the song one would expect in an episode dealing with this topic, it is obvious. I am not a huge fan of it, and sometimes the soundtrack in series one and two can feel like 10 year old Eric Kripke’s mix-tapeof his favourite songs. That said, it worked well and added to the vibe. I always associate the song with Stephen King’s The Stand because the chorus appears as a quote at the beginning.

And one last thing: John did not respond to Sam’s telephone calls. His elder son was dying, and John could not drop whatever it was doing for long enough to even call back. I spent a while at the beginning of this review detailing the negative image of John’s treatment of his sons, particularly the elder one. The fact John could not even pick up the telephone, let alone ‘shag ass’ to see Dean one last time before he died, really should cement the idea that John does not love or value Dean. His apologists might claim that John was busy, in too much danger, or trying to keep danger away from his sons, but Dean was dying. What more danger could he have been in? Neither does he apologise at any point for this rejection or abandonment. This is unforgivable, and I do not care what John does ‘for Dean’ in 2x01: he left his son to die and could not even pick up the telephone to call him. No apologia can excuse that.

With that, it is time to draw this analysis to a close. This is definitely one of the finest episodes of series one, and indeed the entire show. The acting was stellar, the dramaturgy was excellent, and <3 I live for Dean in a hoodie <3. After having watched the whole show, I appreciated the fact that an episode about Dean’s mortality actually focused on Dean and his struggles. This is a stark contrast to series 3 of the show, wherein Dean is dying but the focus is on Sam and his coming to terms with the imminent death of his brother. That is an important aspect of the story, but since Dean’s own journey was side-lined, it felt inappropriate and self-absorbed.

Next time is one of the worst episodes of the whole show, so prepare for whiplash as I write about 500 words about 1x13 Route 666 and its racist monster truck, then go straight to 1x14 Nightmare.

And in case you missed it, <3 I live for Dean in a hoodie <3 Thank you to @emotionalsupportbees for discussing this episode with me. Your insights on this episode revealing Dean's human weakness were definitely valued.

#dean winchester #spn #supernatural #jensen ackles #1x12 faith #spn 1x12 #spn rewatch #spn meta #edvard's supernatural rewatch

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deanwasalwaysbi · 3 years

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I've gotta say, I find the concept of Bedlund trying to Ben-Hur Jensen absolutely hysterical. I'm just imagining Jensen getting a script and being like "Ben?? What's this? Is this gay? This seems gay????" and Ben just soothing him like a frightened horse.

Hahaha - Look it wouldn't be the first time. What is this verb we're working with? Okay. Strap in everyone. The Multi-Oscar-winning 1959 movie 'Ben Hur' had a bunch of gay subtext. The writer, the director, and the second lead actor all knew that Charlton Heston's character, Ben Hur, was gay. However, one person didn't find out until the 1990s: Charlton Heston. The consensus on set was "Don’t tell Charlton, because he’ll freak out." and when Heston found out in the ninties, freak out was exactly what he did. (x) [the movie may have gotten a reference from Misha back in season 6 (x)]

Whether this happened with Jensen on SPN depends on two things.

Was the character of Dean intentionally written as Bi and, if so, at what point did that become true?

Did anyone tell Jensen? Did he figure it out? if so, when?

I personally DO believe at this point, I really do, that Bedlund - Ben Hur'd Jensen. I think it was part of the writers room but not all of it, until it was. (Which RN I believe finally happened under Dabb.) I think Jensen wasn't in on it, until he was. So for me? I think he really was in the dark at one point. But at what point that changed? Probably only he can answer that question. and RN? He ain't talking.

In the meantime we can only look at things Jensen has said on the subject - Like this unbearably ambiguous GIF set from @nikadd. Was this tongue in cheek? Legitimate ignorance? You're killing me, Jensen. That cheeky lil smile, Jensen. Nvm - I'm going to kill you instead. It's for my own survival. No hard feelings right? You understand.

UH OH HERE COMES A CUT TO HIDE A LONG DERANGED POST...

We can look at the text for number 1 - and I do that uh - a lot - see the blog name #Dean Was Always Bi

For number 2 we can look over some points when we got clues from what Jensen thought was going on [regardless of whether they make sense based on his jacting or directorial choices I guess] and get left wondering whether at any point he felt pressured to lie for his career, for self protection, or to protect the narrative from the network:

2010 - 'We're missing the gay angel' (x) (Season 5 gag reel) (x) “Sorry man, not what the show’s about.” Jared: One of the good and bads about playing the straight [non-comedic] character on the show… Jensen: What wait? I’ve been playing him so wrong

2012 / S8 - Trenchcoat - Jensen talking about how sometimes they change the lines because they're way too gay. Calls Cas a third brother

2012 - "What's Destiel?" Ben Edlund: That’s some weird shit. Jensen: Is this something that you created, Ben? Ben: You don’t want any part of that.

“Don’t ruin it for everyone now” “I still don’t know what the question was. I’m going to pretend I don’t know what the question was.”

2013 @ JIB, re Dean’s reaction to Aaron’s flirting in the season 8 episode Everybody Hates Hitler, (x)

“And the scene wasn’t written to be that kind of - I mean - It was written to be awkward. Ben Edlund wrote the - my favorite line in that scene was ‘carry on . citizen’ that was - I almost couldn’t say that with a straight face I was laughing so hard. But it was - you know - it was comedy. It was a comedic moment in the show and fortunately Dean gets a lot of the comedic moments in the show and it was just, you know, Ben was poking fun at the fact that - you know, how can we make this very kind of manly, heterosexual guy uncomfortable - uh -you know, or or have him back on his heels and throw him off his game a little bit.”

The thing is - Bedlund and Phil Sgriccia made very clear on the commentary track that THEY saw this scene as a 'romantic comedy kind of fluster' "This potential for love in all places."

Ben Edlund calling the writer’s room a boy’s club in 2013 (x)

Misha Collins telling Destiel fans they aren’t Crazy in 2013 after some executives said they were (x).

2014 Jensen says he was glad there wasn’t much Dean and Cas in season 9 - HA Hah HAH (x)

“I think the whole Cas and Dean thing has gotten out of hand” “I don’t think there’s anything secret to their relationship even though a lot of people wish there was” REMINDER - that season we got the nightstands acknowledgement and “play him like a jilted lover” and the “he dumped me James” cut and -

I certainly know that Misha and I don’t play that. SIGH. they Ben Hur'd Jensen.

2014 - the fan fiction joke - 10.05

“I didn’t have a positive reaction, The first time in I think 200 scripts I went and sat down in the showrunners office and said, ‘What in god’s name are you doing?! Why? I need to understand why this is happening.’” “[Carver] gave very eloquent answers and did a great job of explaining why we were doing what we were doing, I guess I had been aware of this ‘fan fiction’ for a while and I felt like maybe if I ignored it, it would eventually go away. When I read it in the script that is what I do for a living and is my work—I’m very protective of these characters and the story and I think we have a right to be—I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to understand why and what was the message we were ultimately sending with this script and story. By the end of it, I felt good and it gave me all the confidence I needed. It was better than I could have ever hoped.”

But then there's Jensen in 2015 talking about all of Dean’s bromances. (x) [gifs at the top] Could go either way - starting to figure it out? or No?

What had changed if anything? the entire Crowely season 10 story line? This was July 2015 - the same day as the SDCC 2015 panel where Misha talked about Destiel (x @ 13) Carver and Dabb were there -

By this time Jensen and Misha were nominated for a teen choice award for best chemistry against various tv couples (and one ensemble cast, but the award nomination did NOT include Jared) .... Misha and Jensen would go on to WIN this award one month after the panel.

At the Panel Rob and Rich ask the question: “You two have branded yourselves as TV’s greatest team since, ... idk who.... Ernie and Bert so.” [Misha says to Jensen & Jared, half not on the microphone: “I really didn’t expect them to throw us under the bus.”] “are we going to see that continue? Is the Castiel Dean relationship still aflutter and still growing as we move into season 11?” Jeremy Carver: “Ish.” [mocking from panel ensues] “Yes. Of course. I mean Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. There’s no doubt.”

Jensen Directs 11x03 and the choreo mimics Goodbye stranger (x)

2016 - Jensen: Dean could have a huntress, but you’d kill her.

Jan 2017 Con the infamous - no hedge - harsh - “Destiel doesn’t exist.” (x)

I would hope that if he knew he wouldn’t have been so harsh with it. So by that point either he still didn’t know - OR - to him ‘Destiel’ was specifically about internet porn/sex and not like - the potential for feelings / a relationship. It makes me think about something Misha had actually said, around 2013, “It’s called ‘Destiel’ and it’s about the romantic interludes between Dean and Castiel.” (x)

2017 - jib8 Jensen called Dean a lover of the ladies

May 2017 - After filming the end of season 12:

2018 - Misha confirms he and Jensen have talked about Destiel (x) - also 2018: The Bisexual Dean essay "? No." (Oh god was this really this recent?! I can't deal with this.)

Well. SOMETHING happened in 2019. cuz here it comes

2019 - "Dean has no taste, clearly." 2019 - 'So, tell us just a little bit about what you're most excited to tackle with your character this final season.' "Cas. Just like a full football form tackle."

Look at this face he gave Dean when Cas told him he loved him and tell me he wasn't playing into it here. You can't. (x)

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luci-in-trenchcoats · 3 years

Text

Honey & Sweetheart

Spoilers for Season 15x20 finale

Summary: The reader talks to Jensen and a special friend about struggling with parts of the finale...

Pairing: Jensen x reader

Word Count: 1,700ish

Warnings: language, spoilers

A/N: I wrote this one more for me than anyone else but if you feel similarly to how I do, I hope it helps you a bit like it did for me...

______

“Honey,” said Jensen as you stared out the window over the kitchen sink. “Oven’s going off.”

You spun and heard the beeping from the timer but he was already pulling on oven gloves. He took out the dish and set it on the counter, taking off the mitts with a strange look.

“Y/N. Are you okay?” he asked. You shrugged and he stepped behind you, resting his chin on your shoulder, arms wrapped around your waist. “Still thinking about the finale?”

“It was a few days ago,” you said.

“Honey. I thought you said you liked it Thursday night.”

“Oh course I said I liked it. This thing has been a part of you for so long. You’ve been with the show longer than we’ve even known each other. I am so proud of you and the guys and everything you did.”

“But.”

“But I’m so angry and sad at what they did to Dean. I wish I’d asked you to tell me the end over a year ago when you found out instead me wanting to be surprised. I’m so mad because there was a sign all over your face about how it would go and I ignored it because I thought you were upset they would both live quiet normal lives and not go out blaze of glory. I should have said something. I would have called somebody.”

“Honey no one would have listened,” he sighed. “That was the ending always.”

“They should have listened to what you thought about it.”

“It was decided before I walked in the room.”

“I get it. It’s just not fair you had to do what they said with no say of your own. No one on earth knows Dean better than you and they ignored you and that’s wrong.”

“I’m not a writer, Y/N. I didn’t have a good idea.”

“Why the fuck did we just make a production company if you don’t have the ability to come up with ideas then?” you shot back. He stepped away and started to walk out of the kitchen when he paused. “I’m sorry. I know you had no choice. I’m sorry you’re telling me it’s okay as much as I’m telling you lately. I should be taking care of you. He deserved so fucking better though.”

“I know he did,” said Jensen quietly. “I know some people liked it. Some hated it. The general consensus I’ve gotten one or the other is that yeah, most agree he deserved better. I knew he did. But it’s done and I can’t change it.”

“I know, honey,” you said. You nodded and he stepped closer again, resting his hands on your arms and cocking his head.

“Sweetheart,” he said, voice lower and you looked up at him. You stared and he smiled.

“Jensen don’t-”

“That’s not my name,” he said, still smirking at you. “You do realize I’m like right here, sweetheart. Anytime you want me I’m right here.”

“No you’re not. You died a stupid death. I would have taken a stabbing, a bite, a shot, a sacrifice, so many other ways. A fucking accidental death for you was stupid. Some think it’s poetic and realistic but I don’t,” you said. He shrugged and you bit your bottom lip.

“You were always gonna be upset if I died though.”

“Because your character grew the fuck up and knew he could have more in life. You should have gotten to have more than a dog for a week. You deserved everything Sam got too. I deserved to see that was Eileen he ended up with. I deserved to see that Cas and everyone Dean cared about was in his eventual heaven when he was an old, old man. I deserved so much better than a premature death.”

“I was forty one.”

“Jensen’s forty two. So if he keels over I’m supposed to say aw shucks he lived long enough, it’s cool? I wanted you to have everything you fucking deserve. What was the fucking point of you growing all that time for you to die from fucking rebar on a run of the mill hunt? You died just like you thought you would as a kid and I fucking hate that. Just because it is how you thought you would go out does not mean it-”

He leaned down and kissed you hard, resting his forehead against yours as he broke off.

“I never said it was a perfect ending, sweetheart. Write your own story. Write how I come back. Take it from me, I know a guy, hot guy, you may be acquainted with him and he really wants to come back in a few years once he’s gotten some space. He wants to take more control if that happens. He will he promises. He wants someone that cares as much as he does to help him figure that out. So you gonna help him out and figure out that perfect ending for me? That way to bring me back? You know this world. We break the rules all the time. You could have me back in a heartbeat. What do you say? Gonna help him and his friends out?”

“Yes,” you said quietly.

“I know you see yourself in me, sweetheart. I know you look up to me. I’ve heard from our mutual friend,” he said. You turned your head away and felt tears build up again for the millionth time in the past week. His fingers grazed your cheek and turned you back to face him. “So I deserved better. I deserved a long and happy life. Just because I deserved it and didn’t get it doesn’t mean that your story ends up like mine.”

You blinked and he smiled, stroking your cheek.

“You can have your happy ending. Keep going towards it. Don’t ever stop. You deserve your happy ending too. But you’re writing your story. You can take control in a way I couldn’t. You deserve happiness and you’ll get it. Don’t be scared it’ll go away, sweetheart.”

“I hadn’t thought of that until just now,” you breathed out.

“I know. Don’t be scared for you is all I ask. Go figure out my comeback story and figure out how to give me some kickass hunter wife and I get the kids and house and whole nine yards. You figure that out for me cause you need it and I’m not opposed to it. In the meantime, I’m gonna hang around with our mutual friend. Well I’m always gonna be around him but I’ll be around if you want to talk. Just say so. I’m gonna tag along the ride of his happiness for now okay?”

“You’re such a dork,” you said as you nodded and rested your head against his chest. “But I fucking love you. Both of you.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m okay. I promise. I want you to be too. If our friend tries to take care of you, do me a favor and let him? He’s not the only one allowed to feel so strongly about this.”

“Okay, Dean,” you said with a smile. “I think I feel better now.”

“It’s okay, honey,” said Jensen, his voice lighter as you hugged him.

“Thanks for doing that. I needed it,” you said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he chuckled. “But maybe listen to our friend. He made some good points.”

“I’ll still be upset about it all, maybe forever, but I’ll be okay,” you said. He kissed your temple and you shut your eyes, holding onto him. “Would it bother you if I honestly said there was parts of it I didn’t like at this moment?”

“It’d only bother me if you pretended to like it because you think that’d make me happy. You can support me and be proud of me without loving 100% of it. I have my own thoughts and opinions on it all, you can have yours too...plus I wouldn’t mind seeing your way of mixing it all up...you gonna pull the boys out of heaven?”

“Maybe. A few years from now, if you’re ever really serious about what you said, own it. Make those choices yourself.”

“Yes mam,” he said, kissing you again. “Want to go see if the new coat rack I put up in the mudroom earlier looks alright? I think I really nailed it.”

You stared at him and he giggled as he broke away.

“Too soon. So too soon,” you said as he pulled you with him towards the far side of the house.

“You cry and stress bake. I use bad humor and talking to Dean to cope. We all got out methods,” he said. “But seriously, I think I nailed it.”

“Jensen. You need to stop.”

“I’m gonna take a selfie with it and make that joke on instagram. Everyone’s gonna love that,” he chuckled.

“You need to calm down with the shitty jokes on instagram young man,” you laughed as he spun you around.

“You laughed. I won,” he said, booping your nose. “Thanks for telling me how you really feel about the end though. The end for now at least.”

“Just gotta keep teasing me with that don’t you,” you smiled.

“Not a tease, sweetheart,” he said, flashing you a wink. “Maybe we can get Dean with a beard and some swearing, what do you say?”

“Maybe I could get a preview of that?” you asked.

“You certainly fucking can,” he smirked, voice low again.

“Oh yeah, that’s definitely on the list,” you laughed. He cocked his head and kissed you gently, picking you up off the ground. “Love you.”

“Love you too, Y/N.”

______

#spn spoilers #dontspoilthefinalhunt #spn season 15 spoilers #jensen x reader #spn season 15x20 spoilers #spn #supernatural #Jensen Ackles #jensen ackles x reader #jensen imagine #spn fanfiction #supernatural fanfiction

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all-my-love-for-harry · 4 years

Text

Delicate. — Part 1.

word count: 2.6k

a/n: Here we are fam, i gotta be honest with y’all, this is heavily inspired in the fact that i watched Miss Americana twice this month, what resulted in me going through my taylor swfit phase again. Pls bare with me, i haven’t written anything like this before.

catch up here!

They said artists become what they are because deep down they are as insecure if not more than normal people. Because they craved constant validation in what they do.

At least it was the case for Y/n.

A girl who has built an entire system around being accepted by the public, someone who their major source of happiness is provided by strangers all around the world. When you are living from the approval of strangers and that is where you drive all your joy and fulfillment, one bad thing can cause everything to go down. Y/n has spent her whole life trying to please the world so they would like her, so what she has achieved over the years would last.

When the world turned their back on her, Y/n had no choice but to disappear, because she thought that was what everyone wanted. Even then, she made her choices around what she thought would make them happy.

Y/n knew she could not hide forever, but for now, it was a necessary evil she had to take. Deciding to take a break from everything was the healthiest decision she has ever made, shutting down her social media, getting out of the city and going back home with her family was exactly what she needed.

"Mom was sad she couldn't pick you up from the airport."

Seventeen-year-old Jensen, whose driving license was still new and fresh, was the one who picked Y/n up when her flight landed. In complete honesty, she did not like using a private plane, but she could not risk someone seeing where she was going. Jensen was good at driving, well, he has not crashed into a tree yet, so they were safe.

"She would've brought Chase and scare Pandora and Lizzie."

Jensen chuckled. "She's obsessed with him. I haven't started college yet and she's already thinking about turning my room into Chase's."

Her parents’ house was a gated property away from others since it was safer that way. Y/n would not stay there the whole time since she had her own apartment a little closer to town. Her luggage, as well as her cats, were picked up separately and taken to her home, she would go there after lunch with her family. Jensen parked next to a black range rover that belonged to their dad, meaning both of their parents were home.

Y/n threw her backpack over her shoulder as she stepped out of the car, eager to finally reunite with her family, especially her mother. She is in desperate need of a tight hug, a mug of hot chocolate and a shoulder to cry on. Y/n did not realize how mentally drained she was until she saw her mother open the front door.

"My baby!" Louise exclaimed, embracing her daughter in a tight hug. "How was the flight?"

"It was fine. I'm starving though."

They walked into the living room and Louise closed the door behind them. Y/n dropped her backpack on one of the couches and sighed in relief. “Where’s dad?” Jensen went straight to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

“Get the white wine.” Y/n told him.

“It’s too early to drink that.” Louise took the bottle from Jensen’s hands and put it back in the fridge. “Dad’s outside. We bought some roses that will look beautiful by the pool.”

“You’re buying a lot of plants lately.” Y/n pointed a big vase full of daisies, her mom’s favorites, on the kitchen’s island.

“I like supporting local business.” She shrugged.

“That and she’s obsessed with the owner of the flower shop.” Jensen chuckled, cracking open a water bottle.

“Hey! That’s not true.”

“Mom, you there like… every day. Who needs new flowers every day?”

“Shush.” The elder woman faked offense then gigged. “Handsome young man, he is. I’ll take you tomorrow.” She turned to Y/n.

“Oh, no, mom. I’m going to lock myself in my apartment and try to write.” She said, making Louise scoff. “I’m serious!”

“I know you are. But living like a hermit is not going to do you any good.”

“I agree, sis.”

Y/n rolled her eyes, knowing they were right as always but did not want to admit it. The truth was, she wanted to write some songs, so badly, but could not find the right words. She was hoping to get some peace and quiet to get her ideas and emotions in order again. Before any of them could say anything else, David entered the kitchen while taking off his gardening gloves and smiled widely when he spotted Y/n.

“And who do we have here?”

“Hi, dad.” Y/n smiled at him brightly before wrapping her arms around her dad, who hugged her back just as tight.

“Good to have you home, darling.”

The family of four sat on the kitchen island and started to catch up. Jensen talked about his different college options and how he was considering getting a summer job this year. Louise kept talking about how nice the owner of this flower shop was, making emphasis on how he was also single. Y/n didn’t know what she was trying to do, but she didn’t pay much attention either.

Overall it was nice for Y/n to get out of her head for a little bit, and her family was always a great help for that. She knew she still had a lot to deal with, and she would probably get a call from her publicist and a lot of other people soon, but for now, she just wanted to think about anything else that wasn't the whole world hating on her.

"How are you doing, Y/n? Be honest." Her mom asked after they stayed alone in the kitchen.

"Been better." She sighed. "I don't want to think about it, mom."

"You have to talk to someone, sweetie. I know your team cares for you and is trying to handle the situation, but you can still talk to me."

"I know, thank you. I'm just trying to figure it what I'm going to do."

Louise sighed. "You sure you don't want to stay here? You have your room and everything."

"Thanks for the offer, mom. But I sort of want to be on my own." She said. "But I'll come for lunch every day, I promise."

Although Louise wasn't convinced by her daughter's words, she chose to not push it. She knew Y/n had her own ways to express her feelings, and she'd talk whenever she felt like it. So she let her go, making her promise she'd come to visit soon.

"Do you need a ride? I'm going to town anyway." Jensen offered, taking the keys of his car from the little plate they kept on the table beside the front door.

"Yes, please."

The drive to her apartment wasn't a long one, and in less than ten minutes she was opening her front door and being greeted by her two beautiful cats rubbing themselves on her legs. Y/n sighed, thinking about how much she needed to unpack now that she was here. The truth was, she didn't know for how long she'd be staying here, but she figured it'd be a long time so she packed a lot. Now she kind of regretted it because she would probably be in her pajamas all day anyway.

After cleaning Pandora and Lizzie's sandbox, Y/n decided to grab an acoustic guitar and try to come up with some melodies. She wasn't quite sure about any lyrics yet, but it was always good to have a little something to start a song.

She went from playing the guitar to play the piano, hoping she'd get more inspirations somewhere. But she had nothing. Not even one decent note. She was empty.

"Don't pretend is... mhmm. Think about the... No." She groaned and slammed the palm of her hands on the keyboard, growing frustrated. Why all of a sudden she couldn't even rhyme? Maybe she needed a break, or perhaps she was tired from her flight and tomorrow she'd be able to write something.

Turns out her writer's block was here to stay. A week has passed since her arrival and Y/n hasn't been able to finish one single song. Everything she started ended up being erased or in the middle of her living room after the ripped the page off her journal.

"I told you, you shouldn't hurry. Inspiration will come eventually, it always does."

"I guess. I just have nothing else to do other than play scrabble with you and write songs, or at least try to."

"Let me take out then." Louise started and Y/n shakes her head. "C'mon, let's eat somewhere or buy groceries and I'll cock at your place." Y/n looked at her mom and realized she wouldn't stop until she accepted, so Y/n offered Louise a nod. "Marvelous. There's this little café that I absolutely love. You'll love the owner."

"What is it with you and the owners of local shops?"

"They're my friends. Oh! We could drop by Blossom House. You could use some flowers around your house so it would look like somebody actually lives there."

"Stop dragging me, woman."

Louise drove them to this café called Furry Cakes, which turned out to be a cat café. Y/n obviously lost it as soon as they walked in, and nearly cried when she saw all the kittens, and absolutely shed a tear when the girl behind the register said every kitty except for one named Chaster was up for adoption. She felt like a little girl all over again when her mom told her she couldn't take every single kitty home.

Y/n was wearing a hoodie that was twice her size, plus some big sunglasses she refused to take off, even inside of the café. She was praying she wouldn't get recognized as she knew people were dying for a picture of her, see how she was after the entire world canceled her.

"We'll leave the car parked here, the flower shop is just around the corner." Louise pulled from Y/n's hand to make her walk faster. There weren't a lot of people on the streets and she was grateful for that, she hasn't gotten a proper walk in what felt like ages.

They stopped outside a modern-looking building with a big, bright sign that read 'The Blossom House'. It was simple yet cute. The pair stepped in and a little bell ringed. Y/n looked around, admiring how everything looked like it was straight out of a fairytale. There were little pots hanging from the ceiling and she looked up, she saw the ceiling was pure glass, which made the whole place brighter. Flowers weren't really her thing as she could barely keep them alive, but seeing this amount of flowers all in the same place... made her somewhat happy and warm inside.

She was so deep in thought she didn't even realize her mom left her and was nowhere to be found. It doesn't look like it from outside, but the shop was actually big and very spacious. It was also empty right now, not even an employee was around, so she decided to have a look on her own. It looked like they had all kinds of flowers in here, which made her even more excited because that meant they had-

"Azaleas? They're also my favorites." A deep voice interrupted her thoughts. She jumped on her place as she wasn't expecting it, which made the person behind her chuckle. "I didn't mean to scare you, sorry."

"It's okay..." She turned around and it was fair to say that was she saw stunned her right away.

In front of her, a gorgeous looking man was standing there with a bright smile on his face. She noticed the two dimples poking at each side of his face, making his smile even more beautiful. His emerald green eyes were the greenest eyes she has ever seen in her life, she believed. He had crinkles by his eyes due to his smile being wide. But to her, the icing of the cake was the beautiful mop of chocolate curls he had on the top of his head. She suddenly felt the insane urge to run her hands through it just to see if they were as soft as they looked.

"Harry, darling!" Louise appeared out of nowhere and wrapped her arms around the man, who only chuckled while reciprocating the greeting.

"Hello, Louise. What's it gonna be today? Tulips? More daisies?" Oh God, he's British. Y/n thought to herself.

"Gosh, you know me so well. I'm actually here just to look around, I see you found my daughter though." She smirked.

"I surely did. I'm Harry, nice to meet you, love." He offered her a hand for her to shake.

Y/n was a little surprised by the pet name but took his hand nonetheless. "I'm Y/n, nice to meet you too."

"I want her to get some plants for her house." Louise spoke again.

"Well, you're in the right place then." He said. "Do you want them for your garden?"

"No, uhm... I don't have one. I live in an apartment."

"Personally, my favorite to keep indoors are Begonias." Harry guided the two women to a different section of the flower shop and pointed to some pretty ones in pink color. "But I also enjoy Daylilies, although they're a little harder to maintain."

"Yeah, maybe not those then. I'm not very good at keeping plants alive."

"She killed a cactus once." Louise mentioned.

"No way."

"I didn't know they'd drown if I watered them more than once a week!" Y/n defended herself.

"Amateur mistake." He joked.

The truth was Y/n was too busy to have a garden, she was always traveling and didn't stay too long in one place so even if she tries to have one, it'd be dead by the end of the month.

"What plants are cat friendly? I have two at home."

"Bromeliads are cat friendly, they're easy to maintain too."

They looked around for a little bit. Harry said a fun fact about every type of flower Y/n pointed out, never failing to make her laugh. The funny thing was, it didn't look like Harry knew who she was. Either he hasn't recognized her, or he didn't know about her. Which by the way, not to be a narcissist, would be highly unlikely.

She ended up taking a couple of new plants home, starting to grow excited about them. It was true, her apartment could use a little more life to it, and now she was sure her new plants would do that for her. Harry was wrapping everything for them while he stood behind the counter.

"Oh, here. This one's on the house." Harry handed her a pot with some beautiful blue Azaleas. She took them with a growing blush on her face, a blush that went deeper when their hands brushed with each other. "Try to not kill them though." He teased.

Y/n rolled her eyes as her mom chuckled behind her. "I'll report their aliveness back to you, you'll see."

"You better. Have a nice day, ladies. I'm guessing I'll see you around, Y/n?"

"Sure, I'm uh... I'm living here right now."

Harry smiled at them one last time before they exited the shop. After the door closed behind them, Louise turned to Y/n. "He likes you."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"What do you say if we invite him for dinner sometime?"

"Like, at your house?" She asked surprised.

"Yeah, why not?"

"I have to keep a low profile, mother. For all I know he could be tweeting about I just exited his shop."

"Don't let the paranoia ruin the possibility of forming new friendships... or more." Louise sent her a wink.

"Okay, that's enough."

Y/n brushed her off, trying not to think much about it. A new friendship sounded impossible at this point of her life, let alone pursuing a new relationship with someone. She had made up her mind, she was better off being alone.

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kazosa · 1 year

Text

Wildwood Prequel: Broken

Summary: Not everything is sunshine and roses where the reader and Jensen are concerned.

Pairing: female reader x Jensen Ackles

Word count: 15k

Warnings: swearing, pregnancy loss, cheating, jealousy, death of a family member

a/n: please remember, this is fiction and not intended to be disrespectful to any real-life people

@leigh70 @djs8891 @sandlee44 @coffee-obsessed-writer

Broken

It felt like defeat going back to your hometown and your apartment over the old theater. The plan had never been to stay away forever, you just hadn’t thought you would be back so soon. Of course, your parents knew that you were coming back and they’d been the ones who had taken care of your building and apartment while you were away. They had been the ones who had arranged for your moving boxes to be brought inside your apartment. You flipped the light switch and the lights in the kitchen came on. At least your parents were reliable…

The boxes were stacked and filling up your living room. You didn’t even know where to begin. Why did you need to ship so much back from Korea? You didn’t have the energy to deal with unpacking anything. Instead, you slowly walked through your apartment to make sure there were no issues. Nothing jumped out at you. Plumbing, electrical and physical all seemed to be in proper order. Even the skylights were in good shape.

The only trouble you found was around every single corner; a memory of Jensen’s last visit was waiting for you. It was almost too much to bear. You walked down the hallway to your bedroom and looked around. Everything was as you’d left it except for your bed which had fresh sheets and blankets.

“Bless you, Mom,” you muttered, shuffling to your side of the bed. Your brain was too fried to figure out what time it was for your body that was still on Seoul time. And whatever time it was in your hometown, you decided you didn’t give a shit and pulled back the covers.

Sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off your socks, you saw the picture of you and Jensen looking back at you. You laid the frame face down and finished undressing before you gave yourself over to oblivion.

A few days later you were still lying in bed, having only gotten up for restroom breaks and water. You supposed you’d slept enough to be on hometown time, but you still didn’t move. You just stared at the brick wall for a few minutes, then you grabbed the photo frame from your night stand.

You missed the boy in the photo. You missed who you were in the photo, too. Full of life and happiness and having no clue you would be the cause of your current state of misery. You’d fallen for Jensen and you hadn’t even noticed how far you’d fallen until it was too late and you’d found yourself sitting at his wedding trying not to sob. The wedding wasn’t all bad though. Dan had been a guest and despite what happened later, you had loved him and would never be sorry for your time together.

When you met Dan, you were at your absolute lowest. You’d basically run away from Jensen, all the way to Australia, only to come back 6 months later for his wedding. You had barely had any time to sort through your feelings for Jensen and had tortured yourself more by throwing yourself headlong back into them at the wedding. Dan had been going through something similar and had recognized the same sadness in you, choosing to sit with you at the reception. The two of you hit it off and forgot about your woes for a while. After the wedding, you kept in touch with him and eventually you went to live with him after a year of racking up some serious air miles.

It was great at first. Dan would take you to all of his favorite places and do tourist things with you. He could speak and understand Korean, mostly, and could communicate with people fairly well, but you had no understanding at all. He tried to teach you, but you had no capacity for other languages. You kept trying though. Dan was quite famous in Korea. He did a lot of modeling for fashion shows and print ads, which had gotten him a lot of attention on their own. What really put him over the top were the Korean television shows and movie productions.

When you would be out with him, he would get mobbed by tiny, beautiful Korean women. They would push you aside and Dan would be very accommodating by signing autographs and taking pictures. You didn’t mind the fans and Dan interacting with them, it was the fact that you were looked down upon by the fans. You couldn’t understand what they were saying, but their body language and facial expressions said everything. It made you feel isolated and when you told Dan how you felt, he thought he was helping by taking you out less.

When Dan was home with you, you got all of his attention and you loved every second of it. When you got brave enough, you would go to the public library and do research for your books. It was better than sitting in the apartment all day waiting for him to come home and it helped you to feel less isolated. The people at the library were nicer and would speak to you in English and teach you phrases in Korean.

It made Dan happy that you were learning the language and were less reliant on him for all communication. It made him even happier when you said yes to going more places with him again, too.

You thought things were good between you, until you started seeing tabloids when you went to the market. The newsstands were positioned outside the markets and you never really paid much attention to them until you noticed Dan on the cover. He’d been on tabloids before, of course, but this time was different, it wasn’t you who was with him. Not knowing what else to do , you bought all three and immediately went to your favorite library to find your librarian friend, Hyun, to help you translate.

When you got to the library, Hyun was behind the counter and smiled brightly when she saw you approaching.

“Hello my American friend. Nice to see you again so soon!” she said, cheerfully. “What are you researching today?”

“Hi Hyun. Actually, I was hoping you could tell me what these say?” you laid out the tabloids for her to look at.

“Oh! Daniel Henney! He’s so handsome. Do you know him in America?” she asked.

“No, I know him here,” you answered.

“This one says… Daniel Henney and new flame Bingbing Fan leaving set.” She looked at the other covers, “These say almost the same.”

Your gut twisted and jumped inside your body. “Does it say anything about anyone else? Like a previous girlfriend?”

After reading some of the article, she said, “No, it says nothing like that. Just rumored about Bingbing and how Daniel has been single since Mr. Perfect.”

You knew that wasn’t true. He’d been in love with Dee before you met him and you’d been living with him for three years, but the way he held her hand…

You ignored the pain you felt and went home to confront Dan about it. You had hoped he would deny it, put your mind at ease, profess his love for you… That wasn’t what happened though. Tears were streaming down your face and felt sick from the pain.

“Y|N, what…” he began, but that was all you heard.

You looked down and wondered where the blood was coming from before your vision swirled and went black.

You drug yourself out of bed and went to the kitchen to find your carry-on bag and pulled out the pen and paper you always had with you and took it back to your room. You chugged the rest of your water before you began.

The last letter you sent him had been the hard part. Everything that happened was in there. You hadn’t expected a return letter, but you’d thought Jensen would call, at least. You’d sent it to the house in Austin when you were certain he would still be there… You put your pen to the paper:

Jay –

I’m back in the states now. I didn’t hear back from you about my last letter. I thought you might call… I know you’re busy, but I could really use a hug from my friend. Please respond.

–Nova

You made sure your return address was written clearly on the envelope and addressed it to him at his Vancouver apartment. You debated calling him, but decided against it. There had to be a reason he didn’t contact you and if he didn’t want to talk to you, you didn’t want to talk to him. Resigning yourself to the fact that you needed to go to the post office for stamps, you thought it best to take a shower and get yourself mildly presentable for a public appearance.

Once the stamps were bought and the little note sent, you went back to your apartment and unpacked one box. It felt good to empty the box, but you refilled it with things you no longer wanted that either came from the box, or your apartment, and put it in the hall to take down to the dumpster.

“That’s quite enough,” you said, closing and locking the door behind you. After checking the cupboards, you grabbed a box of crackers and went back to bed.

Jensen knew by the knock that it was Jared at his trailer door. He went and opened the door for him.

“Hey, get in here,” he said.

“What’s going on? You’ve been weird since Clif picked us up this morning.” Jared stepped into the trailer and closed the door behind him, “Something happen?”

“I got a letter from Y|N,” he held the paper with his fingertips. “Something isn’t right,” he extended his hand to Jared to take the paper.

Jared took the note and quickly read the missive.

“Is this it? What was in the last letter?” Jared asked. “And Y|N doesn’t seem like someone who asks for hugs… except from me.”

“That’s a financial transaction, that’s different,” he said, “and I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

“Did it get lost? She knows the schedule, right?” Jared was concerned, too. Over the years of Jensen talking about her and spending time with her at conventions, he genuinely liked Y|N.

“I don’t know. She usually knows where I am. She said she’s back in the states now, so that takes time and if I missed a letter saying she was coming back, Y|N would know to send it to Austin ‘cause I would have been home then,” he was thinking out loud.

“Did Dee say if it came there, or shown up yet?”

Jensen pulled out his phone. “She didn’t mention it the last time I talked to her.” He hit ‘send’ on her number. “Hey hon,” he said when she answered, “did any letters from Y|N come to the house?” he waited for an answer. “No? Not since I’ve been up here, huh? What about before and you just forgot to give it to me?”

Jared could only hear Jensen’s side of the conversation, but it wasn’t sounding good.

“I’m asking because I think something is wrong.”

“No, I’m not saying that.”

“I just don’t want to…”

Jared knocked hard on the chair and talked into his arm, “Jensen, ready on set.”

“I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” he ended the call. “Thanks,” he mumbled and began pacing.

“That was intense,” Jared observed.

Jensen nodded, chewing on his thumbnail. “She said ‘no’ then said I’m obsessed with Y|N.”

“Sounds like Dee might be a little jealous of how close you and Y|N are,” he paused to carefully choose his words. “Dee doesn’t have a reason to be upset, does she?”

Jensen whipped his head around, “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. You better see what’s up with Y|N,” Jared said, getting up from his spot. “That was way too cryptic for her.”

Jensen hit ‘send’ on Y|N’s number, not worried about what time it was for her. It rang through to voicemail once before he tried again. She picked up on the second ring.

“Jay?”

He hated how small her voice sounded. “What happened?” he demanded, “Tell me right now.”

Jared stopped rummaging in Jensen’s fridge at the tone of Jensen’s voice.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked, not able to understand what she was trying to say.

“No,” her voice was so quiet. She could only whisper the words or they would come out as sobs. All he caught was, “Baby died,” and his blood ran cold. Immediately he went to the bedroom, got his coat, bag, and passport. He made sure he touched what he needed before shoving them in the bag.

Jared followed him wide-eyed, not needing an explanation. Seeing Jensen packing a small bag, he knew it was serious and helped him gather what he would need.

“Babe, I’m coming,” he said.

“Okay.”

Jensen went to Bob Singer and told him what was going on . Bob looked over the shot schedule and told Jensen, “I can only get you a day.”

“That’s all I need, thanks, Bob,” he said.

Jared had told Clif that Jensen needed to go and got the car ready. Jensen was on the phone to the airline before he even got in the car.

“Text me when you land and give Y|N my love,” he said quietly because Jensen was talking to the ticket agent.

Jensen gave him the thumbs up and Jared closed the car door. As soon as it closed, Clif took off like a shot. He booked a flight that had a layover in Denver before he felt like he could breathe again.

Seven and a half hours later, it was after 10 at night and he was quietly using his key to open her apartment door. Thankfully, the key turned and she hadn’t flipped the security latch over. He noticed her living room windows were dark when he had gone around the block to park in the alley, so he made sure he was quiet as he entered, in case she was sleeping.

No need to turn on any lights. She had a nightlight on her kitchen counter which lit the way for him to the hallway where he stopped in the bathroom to get cleaned up. He couldn’t stand to not shower after such a long day of work and travel.

He felt a little bad sneaking in the way he had, but he needed to sleep. Despite working overnight, he’d only slept a couple hours on the Vancouver to Denver leg and not at all from Denver to Sioux Falls. His usual tricks to shut down his brain hadn’t worked. After his shower, he tiptoed into her room, pulled the covers back and climbed into bed and Y|N stirred.

“Jay, that’d better be you,” she muttered, not really caring that someone got in her bed in the middle of the night.

“It’s me, sweetheart,” he said.

“Mm, Dean, even better,” she rolled toward him.

He patted his chest and stretched his arm out so she could get close.

“Do you want to talk now, or sleep,” he asked.

“Sleep. All the sleep,” she laid on his chest.

He thought maybe she had drifted off, but then she spoke softly. “I fell for him and he broke my heart. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until it was too late.” She didn’t have any tears left to cry. “I found out from a tabloid. He didn’t even try to deny it. I woke up in the hospital. I lost a lot of blood and that’s when they told me. When I was released, I was told I had a week to move out while he was away working. I did. But it took a while to make all of the arrangements.”

Jensen kissed her forehead and stroked her arm while she talked, but there was one thing he had to know, “Where’d you send the letter and when?”

“About six or seven weeks ago to Austin.”

Twenty years and he’d never not gotten a letter she sent.

“I’m sorry. You know I would have answered or done something if I got it. Hell, I just traveled almost eight hours as soon as I got the last one.”

“I don’t deserve you,” she said.

Jensen could feel her start to pull away, but he held on tighter.

“You don’t get to decide that. Did you ever think about what had to happen for us to meet in Dallas?” He could feel her shake her head ‘no.’ “You could have stayed with your grandma. If I hadn’t hit snooze on my alarm, I wouldn’t have missed the bus. Your parents could have picked a different hotel. My parents could have made me stay home. Your parents could have said no to you going to the pool by yourself. If you didn’t have that stupid fanny pack, you might never have run into me, literally.”

“My fanny pack wasn’t stupid.”

“Yeah it was, but I love that thing,” he caressed her face and made her look at him. “The powers that be decided and I am grateful.”

Everything in him wanted to kiss her so badly. To take her pain away, to pull her out of her darkness, to make her feel better for a moment, to remember what it was like to feel her lips on his.

There was no way he could do that to her though. He’d never seen her so raw and broken before. She’d always been so solid, so strong. He couldn’t be doing things like that to her when she was in such a fragile state. Somehow, she knew he was struggling and tipped her head back down, her hand reaching up to couch his face. He took her hand, kissed her fingertips then held her hand to his chest as they finally drifted off to sleep.

He woke her up just as the sun was barely beginning to light the sky.

“C’mon,” he shook her shoulder, “you need to get up.”

“I don’t need to do jack shit,” she growled.

He yanked the covers back. “Great. Let’s use that salty energy to get you into the tub.”

“What?” she said with emphasis on the H. “Are you drunk? Am I drunk?”

He pulled her up to sitting, “Not possible. You already drank everything.”

“Let me sleep, damnit,” she tried to pull away.

“Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” without malice, he grabbed her up into his arms and carried her into her bathroom and placed her, clothes and all, into the bubble bath he’d drawn for her.

She had things to say when she popped up out of the bubbles.

“What the hell was that for?!” her voice was raised.

“To wash off the guilt you’ve been wallowing in for the last two months,” he told her.

She kept trying to rebut his statement, but she couldn’t.

“It wasn’t your fault that any of it happened. No one made Dan screw around on you. That was a choice,” his voice boomed off the stone and wood in the bathroom. He took a moment and calmed himself and softened his tone. “As for the baby, you didn’t even know you were pregnant. And when it happens that early, there is NOTHING anyone can do to save it.”

“What if Dan was my one shot at happiness?” she pulled off her soaked shirt and staying below the bubbles.

“He’s not, I promise.”

“How would you know? You married a snobby, jealous bitch who hates me,” Y|N was letting it all out. “I don’t get second chances, Jay. It just doesn’t work like that for me.”

She slipped down into the bubbles briefly. He waited for her to resurface.

“Dee is still my wife, Y|N. You may have differences, but I don’t think she hates you. You’re going to be brave and do things one step at a time, just like you always do. And when you’re ready, you will shine so bright that it would be a crime to not notice you,” he looked at her covered with bubbles. “Scrub the wallow off of you. Then we’ll go to the bakery and take a walk. Then I gotta go back to work. Bob could only get me a day.”

She went under and shimmied out of what she was still wearing. He would never tell her he saw everything in the process. He just took the clothes and threw them into the open shower.

“Where did you find the bubble bath?” she asked, pulling the bubbles toward her for her modesty.

“I didn’t. It’s my shower gel I left here last time I came by,” Jensen said, grabbing a washcloth to throw in with her. “Got any of that sandy, scrubby shit for your skin?”

She gave him a look, “No?”

“Huh,” he mumbled, “it works pretty well.”

She scrubbed while he looked through things. “Any of those boxes out there labeled?”

“I dunno,” she scrubbed the leg that was propped on the edge of the deep tub. “I wasn’t too concerned.”

“I’m gonna go look… out there,” he excused himself. If he kept catching glimpses of her like that…

Opening the first box he came to, he dug right in. Something heavy was wrapped in bubble wrap that caught his attention and chose that first. At first, he didn’t realize what he was holding, then remembered it was the glass art his mom bought her for Christmas forever ago, the Christmas he kissed her. She had taken it with her when she left. It made him wonder where the star that he bought her was as he placed the glass on a bookshelf.

He unpacked the rest of the box and put things away without any more blasts from the past. He was just about to start another when she came down the hall.

“Just can’t leave shit alone, can you?” she asked.

“How long have you been back, a week? It looks like you haven’t touched anything.”

“So? It’ll still be there when I’m ready.”

Y|N was getting on her shoes.

“Next step is unpacking,” he said.

“What?”

“You have one week to unpack these boxes, then you’re gonna facetime me and show me every inch so I know you’re not hiding them.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?” she asked.

“Yeah. I am. Baby steps.”

“Bossy bitch,” she snarked.

“You’d do it to me, and you know it,” he responded.

“I’ve never had to do anything like that for you,” she grabbed her keys. “Frickin’ Mary Poppins.” she rolled her eyes when he didn’t get it. “Practically perfect in every way.” She opened the door and swung her arm in a motion for him to walk out. Somehow she managed to look annoyed and still exhausted.

“When was your last meal?”

“Fuck if I know,” she went down the stairs and turned to the alley door. “What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

She shrugged. “Sunday? Why does it matter? When I’m awake, all I do is think about it all and it makes my stomach hurt. It never ends.”

He opened the car door for her, “It might not hurt if you eat something good for you.” He’d noticed she’d lost weight. “Not like you need to go crazy, but you shouldn’t be surviving on pizza rolls and chicken tenders. You should hire a chef, you got the dough for that now, don’t you? I saw you put out more books and a movie is being made. Are you getting a percentage?”

He thought if he could get her thinking about anything else, it might help get her out of the darkness.

“Yeah, the books are doing well. I can cook for myself, Jay, I just don’t like to,” she answered. “I’m going to get a percentage. Threw out a number and they accepted it. Hopefully it does well. I heard Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansen are in the running.”

“Are you shitting me? You have a script already?”

She nodded. “It’s about ready to go into production I guess. I hope it does well so I can retire.”

“I don’t remember getting a script for that,” he pulled open the bakery door to let her pass through first.

She snickered, “It wasn’t my call, Jay. Also, I have you in mind for something else.”

Y|N went to the counter to wait for someone to help them.

“Woman, you cannot leave me hanging like that,” he said.

She ignored him as the owner came to the counter. “Hi Dave. I’ll have my usual. He’ll have something healthy and a black coffee.”

She definitely hadn’t lost her sass. “Dave, is it? I’ll have an apple fritter and a coffee. Black.”

Y|N rolled her eyes and waited patiently for Dave to get their donuts and Jensen’s coffee. Y|N pulled an apple juice from the cooler then chose a table for them to sit. When they were seated, he only sipped his coffee and stared.

Y|N sighed, “I’ve been doing a lot of research. I haven’t written anything yet. However, if, and that’s a big IF, I write it and there’s production talk, I think you would be a perfect fit. Maybe you can for your own production company, or something, and can cast yourself finally.”

“So salty,” he muttered. “Because that’s the only way I would get cast?” Salty and a little bit mean, he thought.

“I didn’t say that,” she took a bite of donut.

“What are you saying?”

“I said I want to write the character with you in mind and getting you cast as the character is not up to me.”

“What’s the character?”

“Uh-uh, I’m not telling you that, but it would give you a wider variety of wardrobe choices than jeans and flannels.”

He tipped his head to the side agreeing that the wardrobe change might be nice.

“Can you tell me anything else?” he asked.

“No, I don’t want to jinx it. Good guy though, but a smidge of anti-hero.”

For the moment, she didn’t look quite so destroyed. It had scared him when she answered the phone the way she did. Sitting with her in the bakery, she seemed more like her old self. They sat shooting the breeze while they had their donuts and drinks. When they were finished they used the restrooms before they left for their walk.

They drove to the park they went to the last time he was in town for their walk.

“Ever been to Italy?” he asked out of the blue.

“Nope, not even on a layover,” she answered.

They were up by the river and he paused to let her catch her breath. He wondered if Dan had kept her locked up in that apartment.

“We booked JIB this year. You should come,” he said.

“Why?” she didn’t look at him. Instead, she looked out at the river, squinting, even with her sunglasses on. “Will you tell Dee if I do?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Pretty simple, Jay. Does she even know you’re here now?”

“Do you have something you need to say to me? Just say it.”

“Dee doesn’t like me being your friend. When I needed you most, the first time in almost 20 years, you didn’t get the letter I sent.”

“You weren’t exactly thinking clearly…”

“No, Jay! I might have been as clear as I’ve ever been. I knew exactly where you were. Didn’t it seem strange to you that Dan was at the wedding?”

“Why would I? You were at the wedding and you’re my friend.”

She gave a rueful laugh. “Yeah. You should probably ask her about that. He was under a different impression. He said he didn’t even want to go but she insisted. She practically shoved him at me after I danced with you. By some miracle, we actually got along well and hit it off. We were just lying to ourselves though. Neither of us were with who we wanted.”

“Or maybe Dee thought you two might be good together.”

“And why would she do that, Jay? She’s maybe said five sentences to me the entire time you’ve been together.”

He stood in silence for a few moments. “I think she doesn’t like how close we are. She is my wife, Y|N. Knowing we have so much history is hard for her. It would be hard for anyone. I don’t think she hates you and inviting Dan came from a good place.”

“I love that you always look for the good in people, Jay, but it makes you blind to the bad,” her voice was softer now. “Maybe I’m just bitter. I’m sorry.”

They started walking again. “Did you get the last birthday card I sent you? I sent it to Austin so it would be there when you went home.”

“Dude, I don’t know. I’m sure I did. Didn’t I text you?”

“No. I wouldn’t be asking if you had. Did you use the gift card I sent? It was for that steak place you like there.”

He, in fact, did remember going there for his birthday, but not how the meal was paid. This whole conversation had made him wonder what else he had been missing.

“I gotta go soon,” he changed the subject. “Are you going to be okay, or do I need to worry about you?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll just kill Dan in a book.”

He snorted, “Okay. No real-life felonies, please.”

She didn’t say anything for a few steps, then with a smirk she said, “Petty arson?”

He grinned, “I can’t associate with a criminal, regardless of the charges.”

“As if I would get caught,” she said.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Good,” she said. “Stay on your toes, Ackles.”

He looked after her, questioning what she said, before catching up to her again. He looked at his watch, not really wanting to know the time, but he didn’t want to push things too hard. He needed to be at his gate by 11:30 and that meant he needed to leave Y|N by 10:30.

They kept walking through the whole park and Jensen finally got to see the whole scale of the place. He felt like he’d gotten in a good hike and it was all still in town. It wasn’t til they were on the way back to the car that she noticed and started laughing at him.

“Oh my god, this whole time, I’ve been hanging out with Dean Winchester!”

He was less amused. “I left from set. I didn’t have much choice.” He smoothed the flannel shirt. “By the way, I left you makeup-covered washcloths as a ‘you’re welcome’.”

Jensen opened the car door for her. “Good on you for even finding them,” she got in the car slowly like she was exhausted from the hike and he closed the door for her.

He started the SUV and got the vents going. The outdoor temperature was climbing quickly. “Everything was still right where I left it 5 years ago. Now promise me 2 things. One, you will unpack. And two, think about JIB.”

“The best I can do is promise I will think about it.”

“JIB or unpacking?”

“Both.”

He sighed heavily. It was pointless to argue with her. She could be so stubborn. Or she would turn everything around and he would lose sight of his original point.

“Jay?”

He put the SUV in gear and pulled out of the lot.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you, for coming,” she said sincerely. “You didn’t have to and I just…I’m really grateful for you.”

He drove toward her building. “You would do it for me.” He reached out and took her hand, knowing how hard it was for her to say anything about her feelings for anyone.

He pulled into her regular parking space at the back of the building. The go-bag he’d brought was already in the car. After putting the car in park, he hopped out to open her door. When she was out, and the door closed, he pulled her into a bear-hug which she returned with surprising strength.

“Love you like crazy,” he said.

“Love you, sweet boy.”

She watched as his car backed away, turning into the alley. Putting the car in drive, he stuck his arm out the window to wave at her one last time as he drove away.

On domestic flights, you didn’t care if you flew economy. Leaving the country was a whole other animal. The best you could manage was business class. You’d waited too long to book your flight, but you’d been in training and hadn’t known when, or if, they would release you to go on the vacation you’d planned. Last minute booking came with last minute pricing and you about fainted at the cost. If you hadn’t already bought the ticket for JIB 15, you might have backed out. You were physically exhausted from the training you’d been in for your new, armed security, job that you were sure was equally intensive as military training. The difference was, your training lasted four months and you’d gotten into the best shape of your life, which you both loved and hated. You’d become a person who ran for fun.

While you were waiting for the staff to start boarding the plane, you already had on your headphones, but no music playing yet, just in case your seatmate was chatty. Your seating section boarded first and you were a little surprised to see some very specific people you knew appear from nowhere at the gate with you. Being dressed for comfort over fashion, you hadn’t expected them to recognize you, but Rob looked right at you and it didn’t register with him. You recognized Gil, but had never met him. Then there was Rich. He was your favorite. He was at the head of the pack and you followed him onto the plane.

As it turned out, your seat, was next to Richard, but by the window. Rob and Gil were next to him, but across the isle. Rich twisted in his seat to let you in, still not quite looking at you. Your hair was in a bun on top of your head, glasses on, band t-shirt, sweatpants, flannel around your waist, and sneakers. The small bag you carried had your essentials.

“Sorry, excuse me,” you said, stepping sideways to get to your spot.

“Nice band shirt. Don’t usually see them,” he said.

“I know, usually it’s Nirvana or Led Zeppelin,” you agreed.

You pulled off your headphones and put them in your bag. He wasn’t staring at you, but you knew you were being watched. You didn’t think you looked that much different from the last time you saw them, but you thought they might remember you, at least.

The flight attendants were going through the precheck and safety checklist when Rich couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Have we met?” he whispered.

You nodded.

“Forgive me, I can’t remember your name,” he pressed.

“Shh, important stuff,” you grinned and gave the crew your attention.

When they completed their somewhat funny spiel, you turned and leaned with your elbow on the armrest to look directly at Rich.

“We’ve slept together and you can’t remember my name?” you asked. “I thought we had a moment.”

The look of utter shock and horror that crossed his features absolutely delighted you and his expression eventually changed to recognition.

“Ohhh my god, you scared the shit outta me,” he gasped in relief. “You looked familiar, but I didn’t know why. Jesus. What’ve you been doing, you look like you’re in fighting shape.”

“Funny you should put it that way…” you told him how you’d gotten a new job and what it entailed. “It just made sense.”

“Jensen didn’t tell us you were coming,” he said.

“He doesn’t know,” you said. “I had a feeling this one was important.” What you hadn’t mentioned was that you’d had a nagging feeling that something was wrong, or was bothering Jensen, but you didn’t know what.

“Have you done JIB before?” you asked.

“Oh yeah, sister. Not the first rodeo for ol’ Dick. I take it you haven’t been?”

You shook your head. “Been lots of places, but never Italy.”

“Well, we’re going to have to show you a good time. What hotel are you in?” he asked.

You got out your phone and pulled up your reservation to show Rich.

“Ha! Well, gonna be tough to stay incognito, that’s where Jensen’s staying.”

Of course it is, you thought. “Gonna be hard to surprise him if we’re in the same hotel.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve done a lot of ops together, we’ve hung out backstage and slept together and I didn’t recognize you. And, let’s face it, guys don’t exactly notice things even when we’re looking for them.”

“True,” you agreed. “Do I really look that different?”

He hemmed and hawed a little, “No, but enough. You just seem like you’re in a really good headspace, too.”

“What hotel are yall in?”

You and Rich talked for a while, then you had a meal, watched a movie, and hit the restroom before you decided to sleep. You took off the Dean flannel Jensen left at your house and put it on, grabbed a blanket from one of the flight attendants, got cozy, and shut off your brain. You’d gotten a lot better about getting your sleep when you could get it and managed to get some good hours in before Rich woke you up for landing.

About two hours after landing, you were standing in the most beautiful hotel room you had ever been in. Jensen had steered you in the right direction, but you should have suspected that he would be there, too. Your room had high ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that overlooked a view you couldn’t possibly have planned when you selected the hotel, the Coliseum. It was nice to have such a beautiful room, in a beautiful city. It would have been nice to share it with someone, like Jensen, but you didn’t want to dwell on it. Instead, you threw open the drapes and soaked in the view. It was absolutely stunning.

Eventually, you grabbed your phone and turned it off airplane mode. Ten minutes later, your phone caught up and 13 hours of missed texts, phone calls and emails all flooded your phone at once. You called your mom first and let her know everything was fine, after which she went on to tell you all of the places you should visit while you were there. You reminded her that you were there for the convention and would be lucky if you got to see more of the city. She made you promise to not go alone and you assured her that Rich would look after you.

Amelia, your publisher, had emailed you three times though she knew you were on your way to Rome. Rather than continue to let her stress levels rise, you got your laptop out of your luggage to respond to her properly. She talked to you on chat and an hour later, she had the files and updates she needed from you to be satisfied. The last to be addressed were the text messages.

Your friend, and freelance employee, Jen, texted asking if you were dead in a ditch. You assured her you were not and sent her a selfie of yourself in front of your hotel window and the coliseum in the background. She then called you on video messenger and you ended up showing her your whole room and the view.

You saved Jensen for last. Once you’d responded to everyone, you checked to see if he sent you a text yet. You scrolled down to check for any unread messages from J. Wayne. Only one unread message was left, and it was, indeed, from a Mister Jay Wayne. It merely read, “Here. 419.”

You: Did you have a good flight?

Jay: Must have. Slept the whole way. Wide awake.

You: Is anyone else at the hotel with you?

Jay: No. Just me.

You pushed ‘send’ next to his name. It rang twice before he answered.

“Really, Jay? Two rings before you pick up? I was just texting you.

“Had another call,” he said cryptically.

That feeling of unease came back. “Jay, what happened?”

The deafening silence was bothering you.

“You better tell me,” you ordered. “I’ll figure it out one way or another.”

“Leave it at, I had a bad day.”

“Is there anything I can do to make it a better day? Do you want to watch a movie with me? Wait, what time is it there?”

“Two PM. I feel like it’s the middle of the night, but I slept on the plane.”

“Do you want distractions or solutions?” you asked.

“Isn’t it like 3 AM there?”

“I don’t know man, I’m talking to you and don’t give a shit what time it is. Besides, I’m at work and it’s boring as fuck.”

“That why you waited to call me back?”

“Jay, it’s a federal facility, there are places where phones aren’t allowed. I couldn’t call back until now.”

“Why do you still insist on having a job? Aren’t you writing and publishing like crazy? Aren’t you getting a big fan base? You’re getting a movie made. You don’t have to have an hourly pay job anymore.”

Why, so I can follow you around like I clearly am already doing? You thought. That realization was not new to you. More than once, he had asked you to be closer to him but you had told him no. The circumstances had always been wrong. If you were going to be, even in the same city, you felt like it would be dangerous and that was partly why you didn’t tell him you were in Rome. Sometimes you felt like he treated you like a security blanket who would always be there to make him feel better.

“I sell books, but I don’t make as much as you might think. So I need a job to have financial security. I don’t have the luxury to drop everything and run to you whenever you get your feelings hurt. I’m not someone you can use up and throw away when you get your fill. Now I get that you’re already upset about something, but you’re taking it out on me for some reason, but I don’t know what that is because you won’t tell me. So unless you want to talk about it, I need to get back to work. You better get your shit together before your panel tomorrow.” Not hearing a response of any kind, you checked to see if the call were still connected. Seeing the timer ticking by on the call, you ended it by saying, “Call me after your first event,” and hit the ‘end’ button.

All day Friday, you were either checking out the con vendors or going on self-guided tours in the city. Staying busy like that not only helped improve your mood, but also your adjustment to Rome time. All of the walking actually made your legs hurt. What didn’t hurt was your proximity to the Colosseum. A mere two minute walk away, you took advantage of your location and saw as much as you could.

On Saturday, you decided to get fancy for the con and the panels. Jensen had a panel around eleven and that was when you were going to make your presence in Rome known. Since you’d gotten fit, you’d bought new clothes for the con and it made you feel good to look good and healthy. You put on designer jeans, white t-shirt and a light jacket that had a Burberry plaid on it, and chose a heeled black boot to finish off the outfit. Your hair had blonde highlights and you used products to enhance your naturally wavy hair. When you were happy with your look, you grabbed your handbag filled with what you needed and left your room.

You managed to keep a low profile at JIB as far as guest speakers went. You were pretty sure Rich was the only one who knew you were there, maybe Rob, but you weren’t such good friends that you would be discussed among them and you were glad of it. Your anonymity had become precious to you with the hoopla around your books.

As soon as the doors opened for Jensen’s panel, you went inside and found your seat, waiting for the announcement that his panel would begin. You snapped a few pictures to send to Jen later. Ten minutes into your wait, the seats all around you had filled in and the room was abyss with excitement.

When they finally called him out, you were practically on pins and needles, too. He looked good and happy as usual and was extremely entertaining. You snapped a few more pictures of him for Jen and sent them immediately. You listened to a few people ask their questions and through the process, his gaze never really landed on you, until you shot your hand up for a question. The motion caught his attention and you locked eyes with him.

“This lady here,” he pointed at you.

You looked for the attendant to hand you a microphone.

“Oof. Hi. I’m a little nervous,” you said into the microphone.

Jensen smiled, “You’re doing fine.”

“I was wondering if you have a favorite vacation memory from when you were a kid.”

His grin got bigger. “Oh wow. American. Did you come here just for this? Or do you have other plans?”

“No, I came to meet up with a friend. He recommended a hotel and it’s really close to the city center and has some great walking tours I was hoping to do with him.”

“Is he at the same hotel as you? Hmm, seems like there is a story there,” he was playful.

“You have no idea,” you said.

“So back to your question,” he got back on track, “It’s funny you should ask. I was supposed to go to a camp and I missed the bus. It made my parents mad ‘cause they had a hotel getaway planned and I ruined it, so, they made me go with ‘em.” The audience responded. “Yeah, none of us were happy about it. So we’re in the lobby and this person walks right into me and their stuff goes flying and I see that they are about the same age as me. We hang out, have a good time. They kicked my ass at skeeball. I’m still pissed about it. At the time we said we would be pen-pals.” The audience aww’s. “I know. It’s some cute shit. We still write.” He nodded to the reaction again. “This person is one of my dearest friends to this day. Thanks for the question.”

“Thank you.”

“Good memory,” he grinned at you.

The rest of the panel went great and Jensen was in a great mood the whole time. The panel flew by and before you knew it, his time was up and you were gathering your things to go grab lunch.

“Miss? Excuse me?”

You hadn’t even noticed the woman approaching you. You assumed she worked for the convention.

“Yes?”

“Are you Nova?” You nodded. “Please come with me. Daniella would like to see you.”

“Daniella Daniella? As in promoter of this show, wants to see me?” you were shocked, but gathered your things quickly when she nodded yes. You could only assume that Jensen had told her his nickname for you.

The woman led you up onto the stage and down through to the back to the private area set up for the talent. You found out, through small-talk, that her name was Samantha and she was working her 3rd JIB for Daniella. Finally, she stopped at a set of double doors and led you inside to what turned out to be a talent greenroom. You didn’t see Daniella.

The sight of him never failed to make your heart do an extra hard jump in your chest. It didn’t matter how much time had passed, he never lost that Texas cowboy stance, bow legs and all. He may have been wearing work boots, jeans and t-shirt, but he could have been wearing a suit and you still would have thought, “there’s my cowboy.”

Jensen turned at the sound of the door closing. He stood there a moment to fully register that you really were there with him in Italy. His right shoulder dropped and a grin settled on his handsome features.

“There she is,” he came toward you with arms stretched wide.

You went to him, arms up high. He squeezed the hell out of you lifting your feet off the floor. For giggles, he gave you a little bounce and your back popped from top to bottom eliciting a moan of surprise from you.

“I love it when you do that,” he whispered in your ear.

You smacked his shoulder, “Dude, stop!” You couldn’t help but smile. “Does this mean you got your shit together?” you asked.

He shook his head, “Not even a little, but I’m going to make the best of this trip.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Not now, but eventually,” he said.

You didn’t respond right away and looked up at him, searching his face for clues. “Okay. Can I ask, why did you want me to come?”

“You’re my friend and I want my other friends to know you. You’re my friend. They’re my friends. We should all be friends.”

“Such a dork. You’re lucky any of us are willing to be seen with you.”

“I know.” He put his arm around you and introduced you to everyone.

After being in the green room, you ended up spending the rest of the weekend with Jensen and his friends. You could not have asked for a better time. You got to sit backstage and see all of the panels and talk with his friends while they were waiting. It was all just really nice.

One night, the whole group met at your hotel and walked around the city center and landed at an outdoor cafe that was near a huge fountain. Everyone was eating food, drinking drinks and having a good time. You all assumed the camera flash was from the friends group.

You were getting tired and very relaxed, so you were leaning over onto the table, using your arm and table to prop you up while you talked to Jensen, who was practically doing the same thing. *flash* Then Rich came over to you to pull you out of your seat to do some shenanigans with him and the other boys by the fountain. It wasn’t until everyone was practically on the way home to the States that the shit hit the fan.

You happened to be on the same flight to the US as Jensen and you both were sitting in the airport when he got the call from Dee. You were busy looking out the windows trying to soak in all of the sights, but you could still hear almost everything, and it wasn’t good.

The one phrase you could hear quite clearly was, “The pictures are everywhere, Jensen. What am I supposed to think?!”

You tried not to react to her obvious and somewhat justified anger at Jensen. Instead, you immediately searched for new pictures of Jensen on Google and saw exactly why she was mad. You and Jensen had only been talking and telling each other funny stories. You’d even nearly fallen asleep at that table and that was when Rich came to get you. Whomever the photographer was had caught you as you’d nearly bounced your head off the table and Jensen reached out to break your fall. In reality, he was only checking to see if you’d hit your head on the table, but it looked like he was tenderly touching your face. No matter how many times he told Dee he was just checking for an injury, she wouldn’t believe him. As innocent as the pictures were, it was the headlines and speculation that dealt the most damage.

You could barely hear him now and you could tell, in the window reflection, that he was trying not to lose his temper. Thankfully, it was still very early and there weren’t a lot of people to witness the exchange.

As discreetly as you could, you went over to the ticket counter and asked if you could change flights. When they told you what it would cost to change flights and availability, or to change seats on your current flight, you were trying to make a decision on what to do. In the middle of discussing options, Jensen snuck up on you and asked what you were doing.

“Checking for alternate seating and other flights back to the states,” you answered.

“No, you’re not,” he said, matter-of-fact.

“Is this man bothering you?” the gate attendant asked.

“No, it’s okay. He’s not bothering me. Can I come back in a few minutes?” She nodded and said, “of course,” then Jensen pulled you away to talk.

“Why are you changing flights?” he asked.

“Jensen…” you began, “I could hear Dee.”

He sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to upset her more by showing up in Chicago with you. Plus, people not knowing my face is one thing I am extremely happy about. I don’t want any publicity at all and this is the bad kind for you. I may still be able to get away with denying everything, but what about you? What are you going to do?”

“Tell the truth, if anyone asks. You and I need to talk,” he said, looking very serious.

The two of you found the quietest corner in the airport that you could find and Jensen finally told you the reason he was in a sour mood when he arrived in Rome.

“Jensen, I’m so sorry,” you said.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. This is all on me. “All you ever wanted was a friend and to follow your dream, just like me.”

“Has she said anything else?”

“No, not yet.”

“Think she will?”

He shrugged.

“Jay, I really am sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

The last text he had sent Y|N was before the fight was asking if she was going to JIB. Dee made her feelings known that she did not like the nature of his relationship with Y|N, saying they were way too close to only be friends. Maybe it had been a mistake to tell Dee he had only kissed her one time and it had been over ten years before he even met Dee. They just had a closeness that only friends of over twenty years could have.

February 2016

Soft, non-descript music played over the sound system. It was oddly quiet for the enormous amount of people he knew were inside. He signed the book with his usual “Jay Wayne” and walked toward the double doors. People were still mingling, but he spotted Y|N at the front, sitting by herself, staring straight ahead.

He moved his way through the crowds of people as he tried to get to Y|N. He didn’t see her mom or brother as he weaved his way to the front. He sidestepped into the row and sat on the pew next to her. She barely acknowledged his presence. He put his hand over her and she turned her wrist to clasp his hand in return.

“How are you holding up?” he asked quietly.

“Surprisingly well. Got a lot of my crying out of the way already. But I went a little crazy at the store. Saw a friend and I honestly don’t remember what I said to him…and I never see anyone I know there. It was weird.”

“I thought Sir would always be around to scare the shit out of me.”

“His brothers are here.”

“Thee brothers?”

She nodded. “Don’t worry, they’re old men in bad hats.”

Jensen looked around and picked out the three men in hats he suspected to be Y|N’s uncles.

“They look like guys who have seen and done things.”

“That’s fair,” she responded. A few beats passed, “I can’t believe he’s gone, Jay.”

He put his arm behind her on the pew and she moved closer to him.

“I knew something was off at Thanksgiving, even then it was still too late…” she said.

“Then you know there wasn’t anything you could have done differently.”

“Oh I know, but I’m still mad. He should have been at a desk job instead of still out on job sites. My uncle took him from me. Took away any special moments we should have had. Took him from his grandchildren… by the way, I’m an aunt again, but my nephew will never know him. He will never get to walk me down the aisle.” The rage willed up inside her. “I will never forgive him. I hope he feels guilty for the rest of his miserable life and rots in the misery of it.”

“Do we need to go outside?” he asked, leaning to talk into her ear.

“No, I’m fine. I’ll just do what I always do, shove it deep down inside where it can fester instead of telling every last motherfucker in here exactly what I think of them.”

“Okay, we’re going outside.”

He stood up with her and took her hand to lead her through the crowds of people and met her mom on the way.

“Oh Jensen, you came. That’s so good of you.” she said and she noticed Y|N behind him.

“Of course. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m sorry, but I need to get her outside…”

“Oh boy, I know that look. Through those doors and to the left, then right,” she pointed the way.

He didn’t waste time and got her outside. It was like watching a piece of hot metal skittering around in a cold pan. She was literally so hot, she was practically steaming in the cold air.

“He’s got some fucking balls showing his face here. He didn’t even recognize me at the hospital, or so he said. I haven’t changed that much! That sonofabitch worked his own brother to death! Always sending him and his crew out to fix what my cousin’s incompetent crew fucked up. Do you know he never even gave my dad a raise in all the years he worked for him? Not once, Jay. But my dad was too good of a person to ask, but he shouldn’t have had to do that of his own brother. Of course, there probably wasn’t anything left to give after all the scams he ran to embezzle money out of his own company.”

Jensen looked around and noticed a crowd had formed. He tried to calm her, but she needed to say what she needed to say.

“How does a piece of shit human like him continue to suck air and MY DAD IS DEAD?! I hope the guilt of what he’s done eats him up inside until there’s nothing left. All my dad ever did was try to get along with everyone and you just used him and used him til you got what you needed and he never even so much asked for a thank you from you. You should all be ashamed of yourselves!”

An old woman started walking toward Y|N. “That’s enough now. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Don’t you take another step toward me you two-faced blowhard, bitch. You’re just as bad as him,” she pointed at her uncle. “Maybe even worse because you suck up to him. Why’d you even come back here? You were already retired in Florida. Did you think Bob was going to share his stolen wealth with you? Did you think he would help you in any way whatsoever? Who was it that showed up when you needed help? It sure as fuck wsn’t Bob! My dad didn’t even want this service, but you browbeat and conned my brother into convincing my mother to have it! Do you have enough attention now, Faye, or should I continue?”

It was then that her brother came through the crowd, pushed Jensen’s arm away, picked Y|N up and carried her about thirty feet further back in the funeral parking lot.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jarrod was angry.

“Telling the truth,” she answered.

Jarrod was fuming. “I’m not going to say anything of what you said was wrong, but this wasn’t the time to do it. What about Mom?”

“She agrees with me! Do you even listen to her? You’re so blinded by all of the shit they do, Jarrod,” she stood toe to toe with her much larger brother.

Jarrod’s face was red with anger, or maybe it was embarrassment, at what Y|N had said. Jarrod turned to Jensen, “Handle her.”

Jarrod walked back toward the now somewhat dissipated crowd and talked to them. His already loud voice carried on the breeze, “If anyone here doesn’t like what my sister had to say, you may leave at any time. It will not be discussed any further at this service. Please go back inside if you want to stay.”

Jensen took off his suit jacket and put it around Y|N’s shoulders. Her anger unload had left her shivering and in a sobbing mess. He put his arms around her and let her cry it out. It took five agonizing minutes of grief sobs for her to eventually slow down and breathe normally again.

“You must think I’m crazy,” she said softly, clutching his now well-used pocket square.

“Where I’m from, we call women like you ‘spicy”.” he said gently walking her back toward the funeral home.

“Do you believe me?”

“Never known you to lie, Y|N.’

They stepped inside and she gave him back his jacket.

“Do you want to stay or go to your mom’s?” he asked.

She shook her head, “No. We’re staying and whomever doesn’t look me in the eye is someone who is guilty. You watch.”

He did, indeed, watch and she wasn’t wrong. People avoided her gaze, either out of the guilt she suspected, or to avoid her wrath from whatever reason. Some smiled at her in sympathy and a few came to check on her. The cousins he remembered from the races were among those who checked on her. The older one commented how Y|N got both her mom & dad’s temper before giving her a hug and moving on.

Eventually they were back outside again for the military honors which ended the memorial service. He stood away from the immediate family seating, but close enough to step in if needed. His heart hurt for her, seeing her jump out of her skin during the rifle salute.

She was getting up from her seat and Jensen’s attention was drawn to a bottle blonde who may have, at one time, been attractive and was now very wrinkled and unnaturally tan. She was watching Y|N too intently for his liking.

Sure enough, as soon as Y|N was somewhat on her own, the blonde made her move. She marched right over to Y|N and nearly shoved her in her rapid approach.

“What is wrong with you?!” she hissed.

“Does the truth hurt? Can’t help but notice none of you are trying to deny anything. Tell me, how much company money was spent bailing out Junior when he got picked up, repeatedly, for DUI? Y|N wasn’t keeping her voice down. “Did you call it ‘office expenses’?”

Jensen didn’t interfere, but he was right beside her, ready.

“What gives you the right to talk about us like that? As if you don’t have skeletons in your closet?”

“My skeletons don’t include embezzlement, baby daddies, alcoholic siblings, abortions, or fraud spanning years. In fact, my skeleton is pretty fucking epic, but your skanky ass will never hear it from me. One day, you’ll just know, and in that moment, it will be my big Fuck You to all of you criminals.”

Jensen swooped in and pulled her out of the situation and got her to the Range Rover he got at the airport. It still surprised him that such a small city always had a new Range Rover for him to rent.

“Feel better?” he asked, with them both safely inside the locked car.

“Yeah,” she answered quickly. “That felt really, really good.”

He started the car. “Spicy, spicy. I swear, it’s never dull around you.”

At your parents’ house, you made sure to pull your mom aside.

“I’m sorry if what I did causes any problems for you,” you apologized.

“Honey, don’t worry about it. They had it coming as far as I’m concerned,” she assured you. “Just be careful around them. They play dirty.”

“Mm,” you’d thought of that after the fact. “I text my lawyer already. If they want to do something, I’m ready.”

Your mom gave you a devious look, “Did Shelley give you good stuff?”

“Lawyer was happy,” you confirmed.

She looked up at you like you were some kind of mastermind. She wasn’t wrong considering the fact that you’d been gathering information for years, evidence, before you even knew your father was dying. Your lawyer felt criminal, maybe even federal, charges could be filed if you simply gave the word.

“If I haven’t said so recently, or told you enough, I’m so proud of you,” your mom pulled you down for a hug. “I saw Jensen was looking after you.”

“Yeah, he’s a good guy to have in my corner.”

“Did he seem okay to you?” she asked.

You gave her a pointed look. “Are Donna and Alan here?” Your mom only asked questions like that for a reason.

“No,” she said, “they’ll be here tomorrow, though.”

“Very cryptic, mother,” you said. You looked around to see if you could spot where Jensen was hiding.

“Better find him before the girls do,” your mom said, meaning your cousins. Two of them were married, but not the oldest of the three sisters, however, they were all wildcards

Thankfully, or maybe not, you found him sitting on the bed in your childhood bedroom.

“How do you always find the most embarrassing things about me?” you said from the door.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been here before,” he put down the unicorn snow globe your dad got for you.

“Dad got me that at an airport because he was away on a work trip on my birthday,” you told him. “I don’t remember anything else I got that year, but I remember that.”

You sat on the bed next to him.

“Thank you for being here, Jay. I really don’t know what I would do without you,” you put your head on his shoulder. “How’s everything with you?”

“Could be better, could be worse,” he admitted. “Nothing I really want to talk about right now.”

“Understood. You know you can tell me, though, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” he nodded.

“Okay,” you knew better than to push. If he wanted to talk, he would. He probably just needed to work out the details in his head first.

“Remember Rome?” he asked a few moments later.

“How could I forget? Everything was so incredible,” you said.

He nodded, “Remember Danneel and I arguing?”

“Oh no, has something else happened?”

“We’ve been going to counseling and it’s not going well. She’s mad I’m here. Thinks I give you too much attention still.”

You let go of his hand and turned your body away from his so you could see his face. Jensen adjusted to do the same.

“So what do you need to tell me?” you asked. Your stomach hurt all over again. You didn’t want to hear the words you knew were coming.

“The thing is, she’s not wrong. I don’t want to get divorced if there’s a chance. If you don’t hear from me, you know why.”

Of course you understood, you just never thought it would be nearly total silence. Then, out of the blue, you would receive a thick letter or a box from anywhere but Texas. In the boxes would be snow globes, or a piece of glass he thought you would like and lots of letters. Other times you would receive a postcard of a pretty landscape and only signed “J”.

While you missed your friend with a terrible ferocity, it made you happy to know he still thought about you and missed you, too. The letters that came in the box were often 3x their usual length because he still told you everything, they would just show up months and months after they happened.

When your doorbell rang, you thought it was the mailman bringing you another box from Jensen. You went down the steps to answer the door with a little light in your step. You could see a man through the frosted window and you knew something was different.

If you’d bet $5 on who could have been on the other side of the door, you would have lost $5. When you opened the door, you were utterly stunned to see a very tall, dark, and handsome Dan looking back at you.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“I don’t know if I can do that without yelling,” you were honest. “I have very strong feelings, Dan.”

“I know and I deserve that. I still want to talk,” he said.

You looked around behind him. “Where’s Martin? He must be lurking somewhere.”

“It’s just me.”

“No Roscoe, either?”

“Fully solo, I swear.”

Somehow, you found yourself opening the door to him, allowing him into your home.

Dan had been surprisingly apologetic and admitted how wrong he had been getting involved with another woman.

“Got anything to say about leaving me high and dry in a hospital after losing your baby?” you asked, hearing the acid in your voice.

“I don’t have any excuses, or any explanation where what I did would make sense. I went to therapy, too…and…”

“Do you have a coherent thought in there or are you wasting my time again?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t think I ever gave you the right attention. I never let you get too close. I didn’t want to fall in love with you.”

“Yeah, that was painfully clear, Dan.”

“I did, though…fall in love with you.”

“Oh really?”

“I was hoping,” he began, “we could try again. Us. As a couple. What do you think?”

“Man, you’ve got some balls on you. Why on earth would I do that, so you can shit-stomp my heart again?”

“All I’m asking for is a second chance. We had something before. We can start fresh.”

“Huh. I thought you were going to be corny and say ‘Hi, I’m Dan’ or something like that.”

“I’m dead serious.”

He sat with his hands clasped in front of him on the island. He seemed sincere and remorseful, but you didn’t trust a word out of his mouth.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Dan, but I’m going with ‘no’ on this.” you took the few steps to the door. “You abandoned me at my lowest point after cheating on me. I want to believe you, but I know I will never trust you again.”

You opened the door wide and swung your free arm with your finger pointed to the exit.

“Wish I could say it was good to see you. Tell your parents I said “hi” and tell Dee she can go fuck herself.”

He sighed heavily as he passed the threshold. “For what it’s worth, I really am sorry.”

“Good! You should be! And I do NOT forgive you. Now get the fuck gone. You’re good at that.”

And you had gotten good at acting like things didn’t bother you. Hell, you almost believed you didn’t give a shit, yourself. But as soon as the outside door clicked shut, the tears began to well up. Your stomach had been doing flip-flops and shudders the whole time Dan had been in your apartment. It still felt like he was in the apartment with you, sucking all of the air out of your lungs. You ran for the fire escape door, flung it open and ran up the stairs.

You went over to the deck and laid down on your back. Finally, you could breathe again. Your whole apartment seemed to have a new, oppressive vibe. Everywhere there were memories that you didn’t want to remember. Your dad and Jensen, mostly… all of the useless boyfriends… You needed a change.

December 2019

You sat on the deck of your new house, bundled in a giant, cozy blanket, drinking hot chocolate in front of the fire pit. Fixings for s’mores were near you on a little table next to your chair, which happened to be one your dad made for you. You’d just opened the marshmallows when your phone rang with a video call from Jensen. You left the phone on the arm of your chair when you accepted the video call.

“Dahling, it’s been ages, how are you!?” you were giving Jay your best Edna Mode. You leaned over a little so you could see his face in the screen better. Still in Edna-mode, “My god you look like shit. Talk to me, dahling, tell me everything.”

“You done? Can I talk to my friend now?” he snipped.

“Only if you get the bug out of your ass, fun-hating party-pooper,” you replied.

“Have you heard about this corona virus thing?”

“Of course,” you answered. Suddenly the worry struck you. “Are you sick?”

“No, I’m fine, but they’re canning production. Soonest I could get out of here is tomorrow morning,” he paused. “Where are you and where’s your face? This is face-time. I wanna see your face.”

“I’m outside,” you said and smooshed your marshmallow between graham crackers and chocolate, “Making s’mores.” you showed him your completed sandwich.

“Isn’t that dangerous on the roof?” he asked.

You just stared at him in disbelief. “Jay, do you even read the letters I send you? I must have wrote about it a dozen times or more. I even sent you paint chips early on.”

The crease between Jensen’s eyebrows deepened. “I must have missed it,” he concluded.

You suspected that him missing something was not the case at all. If anything, Jensen could be meticulous to a fault.

“I built a house, Jay,” you explained. “I’m sitting outside, on my deck, wrapped in a blanket and having s’mores… probably for dinner.” You shrugged after taking a bite. “It’s an acreage and I can see the stars out here.”

A few awkward moments passed before either of you spoke. Jensen went out onto the balcony at his apartment in Vancouver.

“Congrats on the house, Y|N,” he said, finally. “I’m glad you have somewhere you can be in case this shit goes sideways. …do you have protection?”

You snickered, your mind had all of the dirty comments, but you answered seriously “Um, yeah, I’m all set. The house is actually ready for almost anything. And yes, I have a security system and various… implements if needed. Pantry is stocked. Lots of land for a garden. All of the streaming services,” you could see him nod with each item you listed. “What about you? You gonna make it in Austin okay?” he rolled his eyes. “You know Texas takes their yee-haw too far. I hope the gate is sturdy at your house.”

“If they make us lockdown, I’ll be in Austin with Danneel.” he said. “We got all the things, too,” he said with finality.

You’d finished your s’more and wished you’d spiked your hot chocolate.

“Do you think it will happen?” you asked.

“I don’t know, but if we do, I just wanted to make sure you were good to go. You wanna show me around the new digs?”

“Nah, I’m feeling pretty lazy right now,” you held up the phone over your head to show him what little could be seen with the dim lighting you had on. “That’s as good as you’re getting tonight.”

“Not decorating for Christmas? And what is that?,” he leaned forward as if he would somehow get a better look, “is that cement?”

“Nosy.”

“I bet the neighbors love that,” he teased.

You adjusted in your chair. “The neighbors can’t see shit. Closest one is at least a mile away, plus there’s trees, hills and the river. You can’t even see the house from the road.”

“There it is. I was wondering what got you out of the apartment; the river.”

You shrugged, “It’s partly why I bought the land. It was hard to be in the apartment.”

“How come?”

Sometimes he could be so oblivious. “All I could see up there were memories I didn’t want to think about anymore. Reminders that I’m never anyone’s first choice. Maybe I’ll get a dog.” You felt the sting in your eyes and the burning feeling in your nose hit you hard. You took a deep breath and cleared your throat to cut off the feelings of loneliness that were threatening to spill out in a torrent.

Sadly, you knew he thought you were talking about all of the ex boyfriends you had and not considering he may be one of the reasons you couldn’t stay at the apartment any longer.

“Dude, no. Just… don’t get a dog. And I’m sorry. Are you renting it out, or what?”

“Yeah, my mom, actually. She needed to get away from memories, too,” you said.

“She doin’ good? Give her my best,” he said. When you nodded, he continued, “So, when is the next smut book coming out?”

“Jay, it’s not smut. … It’s not all smut. People compare me both to Nicholas Sparks and Hallmark and Danielle Steel, so I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but it’s not all smut. People really like romance and I’m told I put good little bits of humor in, too.”

“Are you ever going to use me as a muse?”

You never knew what to think of him asking that. Did he want you to think of him as a romantic partner?

“No. Stop asking. I told you I have you in mind for something else.”

“What ever happened with that?” he asked.

“I’ve published a few books,” you said.

“What? You have?” the crease between his brows was back. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Your career had only amounted to something when you finally got over your fear of letting anyone read your stories. You didn’t even know if you would have been able to write at all if you were with Jensen. Even so, you couldn’t help but feel like you’d missed out on a life with him.

“Because I didn't want you to know. You know how it is. It’s doing good though. Just leave it alone, okay?”

He couldn’t. “So I’m guessing it’s not under Nova Scott?”

“Jensen. Stop.”

It was really good to see him and it had been too long since the last time. You always felt better after talking to him, even when he was in a pissy mood. When you got the Face-Time calls, you finally felt like you were whole again. And after you hung up, you were back to missing him.

Pandemic 2020-2022

As far as your career went, you couldn’t have asked for better conditions. People were reading books like crazy and you had never written as consistently, or as much, as you had prior to that time. You quit your full-time job and got a job at the local grocery store with part-time hours. With all of your “free time”, you learned how to make soap and got prolific at crochet and cranked out a ton of scarves, blankets, potholders and coasters.

It was working at the grocery store, where you would get a little downtime, and could have a chance to look at the magazines and tabloids. Rumors on the tabloids speculated that Jensen and Danneel were talking to divorce lawyers. Since it was a tabloid, you didn’t give it much credence. But, several months later, when People Magazine picked up the story, your heart sank. As much as you didn’t like Dee, you knew the rumors had to be true and Jensen was surely hurting.

The pandemic had thrown a lot of lives into a turmoil that many had never faced before. Not every couple survived. Jensen being forced to slow down and not work so hard probably didn’t help matters. There were times when you tried to call him during his life’s upheaval, but for whatever reason, he didn’t take your call. You almost called his mom to see how he was doing, but you didn’t. When a year and a half passed with minimal contact from him, the tabloids showed Jensen out on the town with a new woman every few months. It stung that he didn’t want you. After all you had been through together, you thought maybe your time had finally come where you could finally be Jensen & Y|N.

You were trying to not see too much about what was going on, but it was hard not to notice the chatter on social media. Usually, if Jensen or Jared were out on the town, it was Jared who made headlines. After Dee, it was Jensen, and whatever flavor of the month, was on his arm.

If he had been with you, maybe you would have been able to keep him from spiraling into whatever dark hole he was falling into. He was still together enough to get a job with Kripke again and started weight training for the role. When he posted progress pictures, you couldn't believe your eyes. Not only was he looking more like himself again, but he was also very hairy and muscular… You learned from a fan site that the pictures were old and he was already planning his next job, a movie with Alec Baldwin… he hadn’t even told you that… It felt like you were drifting away from him with any form of communication almost non-existent, not even a letter.

When the incident on the set of “Rust” happened and got to the press, you texted him to see if he was okay, but all you got in response was a house emoji a few hours later. And that was it. Radio silence.

A couple of months after “Rust”, Donna called you out of the blue.

“Hello?” you answered.

“Y|N? Hon, have you heard from my boy?” Donna asked, a worried note crept into her voice.

Your blood ran cold. Donna couldn’t contact him.

“Not since Arizona,” you said. “How long since you heard from him?”

“Same time. We’ve checked with everyone else already. We were hoping he was with you.”

“No, ma’am,” the gravity of the situation pulled you down into your kitchen table chair. “I haven’t seen him in person since before covid. No letters in over a year.”

“I need you to find him. A whole new mess has cropped up. Some hussy saying terrible things,” she paused, noticing you didn’t say anything. “You haven’t heard… it’s all over TMZ. Y|N, I need you to find him and help him.”

“I…,” you didn’t know where to begin. “I don’t know how I’m going to find him if you can’t track him down.”

She sighed. “I don’t know that anyone but you can find him. You are his best friend, hon. He loves you so much . Nothing would stop him if it were you. And sweetie,” she paused, “he won’t come back for anyone but you. I’m sure of it.”

“I’ll find him.”

You didn’t have to dig too deep to find what Donna was talking about. A woman claiming to be a girlfriend of his sold pictures of him, passed out, to TMZ saying he was on a bender. That wasn’t the worst part. She also sold pictures of herself with injuries, claiming that Jensen had caused them. Just by looking at the pictures, you could tell something wasn’t quite right with her story. You believed the injuries were real, but not that Jensen was responsible. He would never raise a hand to a woman.

The only thing you could think to do was go to your box of Jensen letters and search for anything you thought might help. It took a couple days to read through them all. You narrowed it down to the more obscure postal codes and worked out from there. After researching everything from land purchases to DMV records and tons of phone calls, you’d created a list of three potential places to check out.

You closed your laptop and looked around at your house before picking up your phone.

“Mom, I need you to look after my house for a while.”

#jensen ackles rpf #wildwood #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles x you #spn fanfiction

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