Pull Away

Jared heard the car pull up outside, the soft hum of the engine being cut off, the slam of the door. Normal enough sounds, nothing out of the ordinary; he lived on a social street, after all. What he wasn't expecting, though, was for his dogs to raise their heads, nearly in unison. He wasn't expecting it to be his doorbell that rang.

Harley was off his chair first, Sadie moving more slowly as she got down from her spot on the couch next to Jared, and they both went out to the entryway with him, nails clicking over wood. Harley was already there by the time Jared reached the door, nose pressed to the crack, and he was whimpering just a little, which was odd, Jared thought, because he was usually barking by this point.

When Jared looked through the peephole, though, he understood, because there was Jensen. Standing on Jared's front stoop. Hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, looking off to the side, biting at his lip, and—

God. It had been six months and—

Jared fumbled with the deadbolt, turned the door handle, and then the dogs were pushing their way past him, noses going immediately to Jensen's hands, bumping at his palms, and Jensen was curling his fingers to scratch at their ears. Habit, Jared was pretty sure, because Jensen wasn't looking down at them; no, he hadn't looked away from Jared.

He was still biting at his lip, but he'd started to smile, too. Lips quirking upwards, then down again quickly, and his cheeks were pinking and in a moment, Jared was pretty sure he was going to start rubbing a thumb across his eyebrow. So familiar, and before he knew it, Jared was stepping forward and wrapping his arms around Jensen, clapping him on the back, hard, twice, before stepping back again. He left his hand on Jensen's shoulder, though, as he said, "Man it's good to see you."

Jensen finally succumbed to the urge to rub his thumb over his eyebrow then, but he was truly grinning, too, no 'sort of' about it. It was still another moment before he coughed slightly, though, and cleared his throat. Then he said, "So, uh. I guess it's okay then that I didn't call?"

*

Anyone else, and Jared would probably be embarrassed by the state of his living room: the three pairs of shoes and five half-chewed bones that were scattered across his floor. The open bag of chips and the four empty cans on his coffee table, artfully arranged between the Lifestyle section of the San Antonio Express-News, the latest John Grisham, and two copies of Sports Illustrated from about four months ago, that Jared was just getting to read now. There was a sweatshirt draped over one of his chairs, a bookstore bag leaning against the couch. And, yeah. Not awful, but not exactly the state he would have been keeping it in if he'd been expecting company.

Three years since the end of Supernatural, though, and Jared was still pretty sure that Jensen would never be considered company.

"So, uh," Jared said, gesturing at the couch, the chairs. "Make yourself at home, man. And then you can tell me what the hell you're doing here."

Jensen was already stripping off his jacket, draping it over the back of Harley's chair, but he seemed to realize whose chair, exactly, it was, so he made his way to the other one. Sat down. He didn't sprawl the way Jared was expecting him to, the way he'd sprawled in Jared's various living rooms a hundred times before. He pretty much sat up straight, elbows planted firmly on the chair arms, leg crossed so that his ankle was balanced stiffly on his knee. And yeah, if Jared hadn't already figured out that something was going on—because, well, it wasn't like San Antonio was just a few minutes away from L.A., and if Jensen had truly been planning a trip to Texas, he would have mentioned it to Jared when they'd last talked, the week before. Of that Jared was sure.

"So?" Jared asked after a few long moments, when it became clear Jensen wasn't planning on volunteering information any time soon. "What are you doing here, man? How long can you stay?"

Jared watched as Jensen glanced over at Harley, then, as the dog hopped back up into his chair, circling twice before flopping down, as Jensen moved his gaze down towards the floor.

"Just, you know, needed some time," Jensen said finally, looking back up at Jared, his smile mostly real again, even if the answer wasn't, and Jensen had to realize that Jared knew he was lying. But he also apparently trusted Jared not to push him. At least not right at the moment, not right now.

Jensen swallowed then, and said, "As for how long I'm staying… how long before you kick me out?"

"Hey," Jared said. "There's a spare room with your name on it, for as long as you want it. If you don't mind sharing space with my sister's skis and the dog beds, and the three of my grandma's quilts I don't have beds for, but she insisted I take anyway."

Jensen laughed at that. "Seriously, though. I don't know. A couple days. I thought I could, you know, get a hotel room—I sure passed enough places on my way over here—and if you weren't busy, I thought we could grab some meals, that I'd kick your ass a few times on whatever you're playing on the Playstation right now…"

At which point Jared succeeded in interrupting him, and said, "Dude. Seriously. You're staying here. Go grab your shit from the car, okay, and I'll go clear off the bed."

*

He didn't ask.

Oh, he wanted to ask: as he grabbed the sheets from the linen cupboard; as Jensen got him talking about his next movie project, which was going to start filming in three weeks up in Pennsylvania; as they drove to the little hole in the wall of a Mexican restaurant that night; as they drank their beers and ate their tacos and doused their chips with about a third of the salt shaker.

But Jared knew Jensen well enough, still, to know that a) if something was really wrong, Jensen would have told him, and that b) Jensen liked to think things out, yes, quiet and broody, yes, but he'd tell Jared eventually. He always did.

So, Jared didn't ask.

Well, not directly.

The closest he got was that night, when they were sprawled out on Jared's living room floor, elbows cushioned on the throw pillows from the couch. Their two characters were attacking each other, Jared's thumbs working frantically on the controls in an effort to deflect Jensen's shots and to try to make some of his own, and in the midst of the stream of, 'Bastard's and 'Dude!'s and 'Oh, you are so going down's, he said, "Everything's okay, right?" and Jensen said, "Yeah, yeah. Of course." His voice sounded a little bit too light, too carefree, but he also sounded like he meant it, so Jared said, "Okay. Good. Because I don't want you crying when I take you down!" To which Jensen replied, "Yeah, you and what army," and then the game was back on.

*

He didn't ask, but that didn't stop him from doing a little bit of research on his own.

Two a.m., one too many beers in his stomach, and the house was quiet, Jensen sacked out in the guest room, so Jared went into his office, shut the door, and turned his computer on. He stared at the screen as it booted up, blinked at the hot pink Barbie background—his niece's contribution, apparently, from when she'd last been over—and then waited for his browser to load.

Google news search: Jensen Ackles. Three hundred hits. The first headline, dated today, 23 minutes ago: Ackles' War? His eyes skinned the first sentence: Word is, Jensen Ackles, formerly of the CW show Supernatural, more recently seen in movies such as The Good One… has been approached to play the lead in James Cameron's new epic…

And suddenly Jared felt like he was intruding, that he'd read too much, so he closed the browser, turned off the computer. Leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen as it went black.

He stayed there for long enough that he started to drift off to sleep. He only decided it was time to move when his chin hit his chest and he jerked back to full wakefulness.

*

Jensen was already up and about when Jared woke up the next morning, and Jared found him sitting in the kitchen, the paper spread out on the table in front of him, halfway through the Sudoku puzzle. Jared raised an eyebrow at that, and Jensen rolled his own. "Addictive little suckers," he said. "My agent, he started me on them. Said they helped to pass the time, and oh, lord, I needed time to pass when Lisa and Bill—"

He kept speaking, but Jared pretty much stopped listening. He'd heard all about Jensen's adventures (or lack there of) on the set of the romantic comedy his agent had talked him into doing. Good script, good cast, and a director and a leading lady who had argued over what'd felt like every single shot, or so Jensen had said. Thus: lots of time to kill.

This, he thought, was more the Jensen he'd come to know.

Maybe, he thought, Jensen had gotten the offer.

Maybe he really did just need a few days away, to process. Because James Cameron epics, they'd been known to put actors on the map, make them household names. And Jared could see how Jensen would be a little unsure of how to handle that. He could see how he'd need a few days to himself—or out of LA, anyway—to deal.

Looking at Jensen now, rolling eyes, edged smile, Jared thought that maybe that was all there was to it. That Jensen just wanted a few days of normalcy before he told Jared, before all hell broke loose in his professional life.

Jared couldn't blame him for that.

*

Later, though, he wasn't so sure, because while Jensen's, well, odd behavior—nervousness? reservedness?—from the day before could be explained by the four hour flight, the trips to and from airports, the exhaustion of too much excitement, well. It didn't explain his behavior today.

If Jared had been in Jensen's position, he would have, well. Okay, so he would have been on the phone first, calling everyone he knew, but he also would have been having a hard time keeping his excitement repressed. He would have been even bouncier than he normally was, and Jared knew from experience that Jensen could be pretty bouncy, too. Too wide grins and too loud laughter, twitching knees.

He would have taken Jared up on his offer to join the weekly Thursday lunchtime pickup soccer game down at the local park, or he would have said yes to the swim in Jared's pool. Instead he just looked out at Jared's car—a Ford truck, 'cause yeah, he'd always be a Texas boy—and said, "How 'bout we go for a drive?"

"Sure," Jared said. "Just give me a few to—" He gestured towards his bedroom, didn't wait for Jensen to nod before he headed that way. When he came back out again, Jensen was standing in the hallway, staring at his phone. Pushing buttons.

"Miss a call?" Jared asked, but Jensen just smiled, his muscles tight again around his lips. "Nothing important," he said, but Jared could tell that was a flat-out lie.

Jared drove, but he let Jensen choose what they listened to on the radio. Some classic rock station, and for a moment, Jared had a moment of déjà vu. It wasn't the same, of course, because his truck was no Impala, and there were no cassette tapes of mullet rock. Still, though.

"Where do you want to go?" Jared asked once they were heading out of the city on the highway, but Jensen just shrugged. He'd slid down in his seat a bit, and his head was tipping over towards the window, and Jared thought that the next time he glanced over, he'd find that Jensen's eyelids would have slipped closed.

And in the ensuing silence, he started thinking again.

He thought: he could ask. Even though Jensen apparently trusted him not to, he could. He could be subtle about it, though, and ask if Jensen had any new projects on the horizon. Say he'd maybe heard a rumor, blame it on his agent or Welling—who he still got a quick email from, every few months.

The words—questions—were right there on the tip of his tongue, but then Jensen spoke. "You know, this reminds me of the hours and hours and hours we spent trapped in the Impala. Granted, this is much more comfortable, but—"

"Yeah," Jared said. Then, "Listen, Jensen—"

But Jensen interrupted him. "Hey, you remember that time when we actually fell asleep in the car, waiting for those damn planes to stop passing overhead? So we could get our lines out about it being too still and quiet to be normal?"

And that was all it took. They were off and running, and two hours later, when Jared pulled his truck back into his driveway, they were still going and Jared had renewed his vow not to ask.

Because this was Jensen, and Jensen was obviously there for a reason, and Jared owed it to him to give him the time he needed.

*

"So," Jared said the next morning, "I hate to say this, but I have to take a call with my agent. If you want to start thinking about what you want to do today, though? We could head somewhere for lunch, if you wanted. Take in a movie?"

Jensen just nodded and said, "Hey, no worries. I'm the one who dropped in unexpectedly. Besides, I'm pretty sure I can entertain myself. For a little while at least."

"Uh huh," Jared said. "I'll believe that when I see it." But they were both laughing when he made his way back to his study to call LA.

*

When he came out again, Jared found Jensen out in the backyard, sitting in one of the old lawn chairs, the dogs spread out, one on either side of him. His head was back, his sunglasses on, and even as he walked over, Jared was pretty sure he'd find Jensen asleep in the early morning warmth. He was wrong, though, because when he was within about ten feet of the chair, Jensen turned his head, looking over his shoulder at him.

Harley got up to greet Jared, but Sadie just thumped her tail as he took the other chair, kicking his legs out in front of him. There were a few moments of silence, then Jensen turned back towards Jared's pool. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and when he did finally speak, his voice was carefully neutral.

"So you've probably heard by now, right? About the Cameron picture?"

Indeed, Jared's agent had mentioned it when Jared had mentioned he had a houseguest—Your boy Jensen, Dan had said. Heard he beat out Jonny and Colin and a whole load of others. Fuck. He bouncin' off the walls?—and Jared thought it'd be okay to let Jensen assume that this was the first Jared had heard of it.

"Yeah," he said, because what else was there to say? "He told me. That's—that's great, Jensen. I mean, man, that picture could to be huge."

Jensen laughed at that, almost bitterly. "Yeah, I know."

There was silence again, but now that Jensen had started to open up about the reason he was here, Jared wasn't going to let him retreat.

"So?" he asked. "You feel like telling me what's going on now?"

More silence, going on for long enough that Jared thought Jensen just might not answer, that he might have to push at Jensen like he'd resisted doing for the last two days, but then Jensen said, "My agent says this could make me into the next Leo. Push my career to the whole next level. Epic love story, World War II. We're talking big budget, months worth of shoots. The script is pretty awesome and the studio is already talking awards campaigns and—"

What Jared wanted to ask was: '…and this is a problem, because?' Because that was what every actor was supposed to want, right? A-list status, choice of projects, awards buzz.

What he said was, "And?"

"And," Jensen said. "I—" He stopped, took a deep breath. "I have a friend back in LA, Marissa, and she's got this script. Little indy film. Single mother moves back in with her mom—sounds like something you've heard a million times before, right? But Jared, this script is brilliant, and I—"

"What?" Jared asked. "She wants you to be in it? If she holds off a few months, she could probably drop your name to get it a wider release—"

"It starts shooting this summer, overlapping with the Cameron pic," Jensen said. "She's got everything lined up: money, actors, we're working on getting location permits. And she wants me to direct it."

To which Jared said, "Oh," because suddenly he understood the problem.

Jensen's fascination with camera work had been growing ever since Jared had first met him. Up in Vancouver, he'd spent more and more time paying attention to how their directors set up their shots. Composition and lighting and how to make things interesting. When to do quick cuts, when to let the characters just walk and talk. Since then, Jensen had made a few little short films, too: Rosenbaum had been in one, one of Jensen's recent co-stars, Mindy, in another.

"I would be an idiot to turn the Cameron picture down," Jensen continued. "Believe me, I know. But I feel like, if I do this film, and it succeeds, I'll never be able to get back to this place. I won't have friends trusting me with their scripts. People will talk about how I'm not just satisfied with being an actor, I want to be a director, too. How I'm not Robert Redford, or Ron Howard, or even George Clooney. Which yeah, I'm not.

"But I was looking around as we drove yesterday, and I kept thinking, 'that would be a perfect exterior for the mother's house, and those fields, the flat barrenness of them, they would be perfect for the opening shot: sun rising over the brown grass.'"

"You're thinking like a director," Jared said, and Jensen nodded, looking almost defeated.

"I feel like if I don't do this now, I won't ever be able to," Jensen said. "Not in the same way I can do it now; not without people watching my every move, or calling it a celebrity vanity project. I want to—"

"Do this," Jared said. "So you should."

Now Jensen was looking at Jared like he was the insane one. "Are you serious? Do you know what people will say?"

Jared nodded, because he did. He opened his mouth, but Jensen kept on talking. "I will be the laughing stock of Hollywood. My agent will probably have a heart attack. I will—"

"Be doing what you want to do," Jared said. "You think I can't tell? You think I don't know you've already made up your mind? That the reason you showed up on my doorstep was because you're trying to run away from that fact? You want this, Jensen. Now you just have to let yourself take it."

Jensen was looking back out at the pool again, his jaw set, and maybe he'd been hoping Jared would try to talk some sense into him. Acknowledge that yes, Jensen would be an idiot to turn such an opportunity down. Maybe that was why he'd taken so long to actually open up to Jared, because he hadn't wanted to hear Jared say that.

Or maybe he'd been afraid Jared would say just what he had said, and then Jensen would have to admit to himself that yes, as idiotic as it might seem, this really was what he wanted. That it was okay for him not to want the Hollywood dream of being the big star.

"There will be other acting jobs," Jared said softly. "They wanted you for this, they'll want you for others. Maybe the next Spielberg epic. Or maybe you can land yourself a Scorsese—I mean, if they're saying you could be the next Leo and all, then why not aim for that. Or maybe you'll make this film as brilliant as the script is and you'll become the next James Cameron, the next Scorsese, the next Spielberg. Have you thought of that?"

He could see Jensen's jaw loosening, his shoulders slumping slightly. He watched as Jensen took a deep breath, then another, and then he was turning to Jared, pulling off his sunglasses, his lips already shaping into a smile, and yeah, he'd made his decision. Jared could see it in his eyes.

"So," he said after a moment. "You going to call your agent? You have your phone?"

Jensen took one more deep breath, then nodded, reached into his pocket and said, "Yeah."

End.

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