A Ghost in Your Garden Part 4
Jul. 25th, 2014 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_lioraLeft my spine in the wedding chapel
Full of people
Feet turning into lead
Lost a leg at the iron foundry
Where they found me dead
Chris is on his front porch with a sledgehammer.
Jensen blinks sleepily and then takes a long sip of his coffee.
“Good morning.”
“To you too. Gonna knock down a wall on your second floor.”
Jensen lifts an eyebrow, and then moves out of the way. He’s not sure if Chris showed up this early to make sure Jensen wouldn’t argue, or because his friend is part of that evil group that consider themselves morning people.
He pours Chris a cup of coffee and then rambles through the hallways until he finds his friend strapping on safety glasses in one of the extra rooms on the second floor. The blueprints for the house are spread out on the floor in front of him, and Chris has stripped down to just his undershirt.
“You know, if you wanted to get naked around me I’m pretty sure you shoulda brought Aldis too.”
Chris grunts, hefts the sledgehammer up, and then slams it into the wall. Jensen’s not sure what he expected. It’s not what happens.
The door slams open, and he can hear the same thing happening up and down the hall and in other parts of the house. The windows fly open, and a low scream begins to build from the floor. Jensen clutches the coffee mugs in his hands and looks around as Chris pauses before slamming the hammer into the wall again.
Noise ratchets up, one of the windows slams shut so hard that glass flies around them, and Chris squares his jaw and fixes his grip.
“I seen Aldis when his computer crashes. You ain’t scaring me.” And then he begins to swing the hammer again, slamming into the wall methodically as the door crashes in and out of its frame and Jensen keeps his feet only through sheer willpower.
Chris doesn’t have to live with these people.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it stops.
Because Chris has broken through the plaster wall. Chris has exposed a door.
---
Aldis arrives a little while later. They’ve cleaned up the glass, and Chris is taping plastic over the window when his boyfriend comes crashing into the room wide eyed and armed with a bat.
“Little late to be the hero, darling.”
Jensen lets out one shaky laugh and goes back to staring at the door. A few more precise strikes have widened the hole around it, and they can open it any time. Jensen agreed that they shouldn’t without Aldis.
“Were they gruesome? All rotted and corpsified? Did they make Chris at least a little scared Jensen? Say yes.”
He wants to, because it scared him, but he has to shake his head. Part of Jensen wants to go get Jared. He wants his new friend there for this, because if anyone understands this place and its residents it’s Jared. But he doesn’t know which house Jared is, and he’s not ready to go outside at the moment. He’s not willing to part company with living people and be alone for even one second, or to leave living people he cares about alone in his home.
“I think he missed his target once.” Jensen gestures to a dent to the left of the hole, and Aldis crows until Chris eyes it critically and shrugs.
“Nobody’s a hundred percent accurate.”
And whether or not it scared Chris they’re all doing everything they can without saying it to not open that door. To not find out what’s on the other side.
One of the differences between modern homes and older ones is the quality of the walls. Jensen has explained it to so many homeowners and potential ones that he could recite the speech in his sleep. Older homes made their walls out of solid plaster. They’re stronger, thicker, and much more expensive. Which means they take more work and time, but they’re worth it.
To put one up here, just to cover a door, has a pretty dark undertone and Jensen isn’t sure he wants to know what would make a person do that. Not in a house with the history of this one.
Still, it’s his house, and he’s agreed to keep it. As long as he has to. Jensen thinks of Jared’s hands on his shoulders, of his firm promise to never let the ghosts hurt Jensen, and steps forward before grasping the doorknob.
Aldis and Chris are right behind him, two warm and vital reminders that he is not alone, and Jensen turns the knob and pushes. Nothing happens.
“Locked.”
They stand for a long moment perplexed, and then Chris reaches for the sledgehammer and Jensen steps out of the way. A minute later the door is open, and Jensen can see the strain his friend is suffering from not making a joke about magic keys or being an excellent knocker.
Stairs lead up in a passage beyond the opening, and natural daylight shines down them. Whatever is up there has windows facing the outside, and is a part of the attic. Chris’s suspicion about its size finally makes sense.
Jensen leads the way. The stairs creak under their combined weight, but just like everything else in the house they are solidly built and made to withstand.
At the top Jensen pauses before moving out of the way of his friends. Chris still has the sledgehammer. It’s odd, incongruous with the room, and Jensen tries to take in the mise en scene at the same time he wants to pick up every detail.
It’s the same wood as the rest of the attic, but it’s lighter somehow. Without the clutter of all the people that came to the house before it has an openness that calls to Jensen. The windows are the same size as the rest of the attic’s, indistinguishable from the outside, but there’s a skylight set in that brings extra light and makes Jensen wonder why they weren’t put in the rest of the attic as well.
The room has a cabinet that is shut, dust lies heavy in every part of the room, and coats the multitude of canvases that sit on tripods all around. One large canvas is an oil painting of a beautiful woman, naked and reclining backwards on stairs Jensen recognizes. Holding the pose on those sharp steps must have been a bitch.
He hears Aldis’s reaction before he sees it, a sharp screech that is entirely warranted and yet definite mockery fodder, and then he sees Chris’s eyes widen as his friend’s mouth falls open. All of it is in perfect detail, burned into his brain, as his eyes sweep over the sight and then slow to take it back in. There’s a mummified corpse in the chair in front of one canvas. An unfinished portrait of a nude man. In the same position as the woman that came before it but with an entirely different facial expression. The woman’s is open and innocent, the man’s is sultry and knowing.
Distantly Jensen wonders how long the body has been locked up here for the summers to turn it into this. How no one ever smelled the stench of it through the walls. Now it has no smell but dust and acrid fear.
“That’s gotta be the painter that went missing. Polish guy.”
And Jensen knows. Knows the second Chris says it, maybe knew it before then, but he doesn’t want to say it out loud and make it true. Doesn’t want to lose what little footing he had left in reality.
“Jared. Jared Padalecki.” Aldis’s face is an ashy gray. “The one whose wife went nuts and was committed.”
Jared’s married? It’s a betrayal and Jensen doesn’t know why. Somehow greater than the one where Jared befriended him without mentioning that he’d been dead the whole time.
A hand lands on his shoulder, and Jensen knows it already. Would know it anywhere. Aldis shrieks again and Chris raises the sledgehammer threateningly.
But Jensen is too worn out and disconnected to do more than smile weakly and nod at the corpse in front of him. Force the words out of the empty space that used to be his reasoning brain.
“Hi Jared.”
----
Jensen wants to say it’s the most bizarre moment of his life, but a few days ago a ghost gave him toilet paper and asked for Pabst in return. His bar has gotten ridiculously high since they moved to Cedar Hill.
Chris and Aldis have positioned themselves on the couch beside Jensen, Aldis adopting the look of a disapproving father studying his daughter’s prom date and Chris still handling the sledgehammer like Jared is a physical person that can be hurt.
Is Jared physical? Jensen’s touched him. Jensen hit him.
“I knew I didn’t punch like a sissy.”
Chris is amused, Aldis looks concerned like Jensen is just a hair’s breadth from snapping, but Jared blushes a little and casts his eyes down. It’s the blush that puts Jensen back into an existential crisis.
“Well, the good thing about being dead is you never stub your toe anymore. Or get bruised from punches. Not that I get punched a lot, but you know if I did.”
Jared’s rambling, big hands moving to express points he’s not making, and Jensen wonders again at how lifelike he is. For a ghost.
“And you were playing at being a living neighbor why?” Chris doesn’t seem to be taken in by Jared’s puppy dog charm.
“I. Ok, you gotta understand, it’s not like I can go around town visiting people. I’m stuck here. I’ve been stuck here since 1923 and it gets…lonely? The other ghosts are great but they forget sometimes that they’re dead and then they get weird. And they can’t really have engaging conversations like that. They can only talk about what we’re doing here, or how they died, or what they’re missing. Which is kinda depressing. I mean really depressing. And it’s been ninety-one years of that. So when new living people show up I kind of like to make friends because they can, you know, be around. As themselves. All the time.”
Aldis’s face fell, and Jensen felt the same as his friend. How terrible would it be to be the only logical and sentient person in a house for almost a hundred years? To have to wander around with people who were your friends one moment and rambling specters the next? Jensen thought of the difference between the ghost that might have been Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s demeanor when he saved Jensen from falling and when he’d come at Jensen in the living room.
“But you told Jen you were alive.” Chris doesn’t seem to be buying into it, but then again Chris is wearing his inscrutable face, and when he’s got that on it’s next to impossible to know what he’s thinking or what he’s backing before he just outright says it.
Aldis elbows Chris sharply and then turns back to Jared.
“So you didn’t want to hurt Jensen you wanted a friend.”
Jared nods eagerly, puppy dog expression in full force, and Aldis lets out a little noise that he recognizes a second too late to save him from Chris’s mocking smile.
“Shut up.”
“Didn’t say nothing.”
“Anything. Use proper English, you know how. My Nana would smack you.”
“Your Nana always smacks me Aldis.”
“Well she’d smack you double.”
Chris rolls his eyes and all attention focuses back on Jared.
“How much trouble is Jensen in? With these other ghosts?”
Jared looks perplexed for a second before his eyes widen and his whole body is involved in his shaking head.
“None. None at all. None of us want to hurt anybody. Jensen is totally safe here.”
“The body count of this place says something a little bit different Casper. The body count suggests-“
“Hey.” All of them stop at the same time, Jared falling still, Aldis ending his glare at Chris, and Chris’s words dying in the air as the group turns to look at him. “I’m right here. You guys know that right? Jensen is an adult that can ask questions about his own safety and determine how he feels about things on his own. So thanks guys, but I got this.”
Chris raises an eyebrow, but it’s Aldis that speaks. “Want us to leave the room Jensen? We can wait in the kitchen.”
Jensen nods, sees how little Chris likes it, and sticks to his guns. He is an adult, a fully functioning one no matter what anyone says, and he can handle this. He can handle his new friend/supposed neighbor actually being one of the dead residents of his house.
His friends file out of the room, and it’s just the two of them.
“Jensen I am really, really sorry I-“
“How’d you die?”
Jared swallows once, what is he swallowing, and begins to wring his hands a little. His long and graceful fingers rasp over each other, skin touching skin, and Jensen marvels at the science of it. It’s so far beyond his understanding it may as well be Quantum Physics.
“My wife. My wife went mad. It was… I don’t know for certain what it was. We had an understanding you see. In my time two men couldn’t be with each other, but no one looked sideways at a married man who threw parties. Sandy liked her life, and I liked mine, and we were the best of friends. And then one day she began to ask questions, to suggest she wanted something else, and it made no sense. She was the one who proposed the deal after all. Next thing I know I’m in my studio and she’s screaming at me. Then she struck me, and the next thing I knew I was in my studio again, but the light was different, and Jeff was waiting for me.”
“Jeff? Jeffrey Dean Morgan? The ghost you only thought you could identify when he rushed me?”
Jared takes on that hangdog look again and starts to glance around the room like inspiration will arrive from some corner. And Jensen focuses on that anger and not the odd thrill he gets from the knowledge that Jared’s marriage was a sham. That Jared likes men.
“He’s the oldest of us. He’s a really great guy Jensen. When he’s in his right mind he’s super nice and really funny. You’ll like him. I promise.”
“I’ll like him. You’re making a lot of assumptions here Jared. You’re assuming I’m going to stay. You’re assuming that I want to make friends with ghosts instead of doing the sensible thing and calling a priest to evict all your asses out of this house.”
“Won’t work.”
“What?”
“A priest. It won’t work. I’ve seen four of them, seven preachers, ten psychics, and a ghost-hunting team. None of them were able to send us away.”
“What even-that’s the thing you think you need to focus on?”
Jared bites his lip for a second before holding out his hands in a pleading gesture.
“Jensen, I’m not here on vacation. I didn’t choose to stay in this house. None of us did. We’re stuck here, and believe me we’ve tried to leave. There was no tunnel of light, no choir of angels, and no dark corridor with sulfur smells and flames licking the walls. At this point I don’t think we’d care which we saw as long as it was a door out. But nothing has ever come, and everybody that dies on this property ends up right here, stuck with the rest of us. We’ve tried to make the best of it. We’re friends, almost family, and we stick together. We don’t want to hurt people. We don’t anyone to end up stuck like the rest of us. You understand? There’s no bitterness here. When they’re not confused the rest of the ghosts have reached a dejected acceptance. And we work really hard to keep the new residents alive. To run off anybody with kids or just anybody who will listen.”
It may sound petulant, but Jensen finds it both true and relevant.
“You didn’t try very hard to get rid of me.”
Something flashes in Jared’s face, something Jensen is neither capable of identifying nor terribly interested in exploring at this moment. Right now he wants to focus on any possible explanation that will make him not hate Jared as much as he’s pretty sure he should.
“I’m sorry. I can only say it so much. I’m sorry, and I mean it, but I can’t take back the decisions I made now.”
Jensen rubs the back of his neck, not entirely sure what he should do with this, and then he hears a small voice perk up from the hallway.
“It’s not his fault. Shithead.”
“Sierra. Language.” Jared looks horrified, and Jensen turns to see the little blonde girl that scared him into almost falling down the stairs. Her face is no longer open and sweet. She looks suspicious, angry, and all of that emotion is focused on Jensen.
The absurdity of it hits him in just as muted a manner as the rest of the situation has.
“No. No Jay, no. This is ridiculous. You don’t have to stand here listening to him lecture you. Screw him. Let the badness get him. Then he’ll see how much he owes you already.”
“Sierra we’ve talked about this before. We’re helpful ghosts.”
The little girl scoffs even as Jensen wonders if he should give up on fully following the conversation. Maybe he should go into the kitchen, ask Chris and Aldis to give him a ride to their house, and just stay there until Matt joins him or lets the house go into foreclosure out of spite.
“Being helpful never got us to Heaven, Jared. Being helpful’s only gotten us more ghosts to be helpful with.”
Jared winces, eyes suddenly sad, and Jensen wants to reach out and touch him. He doesn’t though, because he’s still not sure even after all the times they’ve touched before that Jared will be solid.
“Sierra we’ll talk about this later, ok? For right now it’s just me and Jensen talking about-“
“Jensen and I.” And with that the little girl ghost disappears haughtily and leaves just them in the room.
He misses her instantly when Jared turns back to him.
“That was Sierra. She’s a good kid just…spirited.”
It’s wildly inappropriate, downright fucking rude, but Jensen laughs hysterically. He sees the moment Jared realizes the accidental pun and joins him, and that’s how Chris and Aldis find them when they come back.
----
So now Jensen lives in a house full of ghosts, and is friends with one, and has to figure out what that means.
He decides it’s best to make these sorts of life-altering choices with alcohol, so he’s almost done with his sixth beer when Jared suggests the plan.
“Let me introduce you. Not everybody is with it, but there’s a bunch of really awesome people here. You’ll like them. What do you say?”
Jensen stares at his mostly empty bottle and then makes his decision. “Yeah. Yeah that sounds good.”
Chris is staring bleary eyed from a few feet away, back propped up against the wall like Jensen’s and legs stretched out over the smooth restored floor of the ballroom. Aldis, always a lightweight, is passed out on Chris’s legs and snoring softly.
“Ok. Ok, hold on.” Jared stares very intensely into the depths of the ballroom, and Jensen waits for a drop in temperature or a wave of fog to roll into the room.
Nothing happens.
“You got bars on your ghost phone?” Chris cracks himself up, slapping his thigh and earning an angry grumble from Aldis.
Jared tilts his head with both eyebrows raised, and Jensen realizes how badly Chris’s joke has missed its mark. The recognition crosses Chris’s face, and then his old friend shrugs and leans back fully into the wall.
“’S nothing man. Never mind.”
A brief pause, and then Jared shrugs his shoulders and calls out like he’s trying to get the attention of friends across the bar.
“Hey guys! Come on out! It’s time!”
And sure enough, rather suddenly, there’s a group of people standing in front of them in the room. Jensen takes them in one by one. Sierra stands between the woman in the suit and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Chad is on the end of the line, a big grin on his face and his hands smoothing his mullet back. There’s a dashing looking African-American man with his arm around a slender, gorgeous blonde.
Samantha stands towards the back of the group, hands clasped together and a light blush on her face, and there’s another ghost Jensen doesn’t know standing next to her in much more modern clothes with her arm around Samantha and a fierce look on her face.
Jared stands easily and crosses the room so he’s standing by the group, a smile on his face and his whole body gesturing along with his hands. Jensen doesn’t miss the way that Jared touches each ghost, the ease with which he interacts with them, or that all of them are happy to see him and be introduced.
It’s odd, but there’s a sharp flare of something in his gut at the sight of Jared acting the same way he does with Jensen with everyone else. That smile, the intense focus, that makes Jensen feel special and noticed when Jared and he are alone is apparently Jared’s default position.
He’s kind of like a cult leader.
Jared starts at the end with Chad, touches his shoulder and then moves through the line rattling off names.
“This is Adrianne and her husband Charles Whitfield, Samantha you’ve met but this is best friend Lauren Cohan. Sierra and Jeff you know, but I think you just met Samantha Ferris. We call her Sam to avoid confusion. She said she prefers it anyway. Jim and D.J. aren’t feeling too good today, so they’re not here, and there’s a couple others that are in and out more than some of us. But this is the core group. Everybody, this is Jensen, and his best friends Chris and Aldis.”
Chris doffs an imaginary hat and Aldis lets out a loud snore. Jensen tries to modulate the smile on his face as he manages a tiny wave.
The group responds in kind, some more friendly than others, and he wonders at the disparity in ages of clothing. History is standing in his ballroom right now. Being introduced to him by his hundred year old ghost friend.
Jensen takes a deep breath, because he imagines he’s supposed to say something here, and whatever it is will set the tone. He’s never really been much for public speaking. A little too detail-oriented and introverted to enjoy anything that didn’t allow him to plan and control the reactions to that plan.
And now he’s going to do this kind of buzzed. Mostly sober.
Drunk. He’s greeting his dead housemates drunk.
“Howdy.”
Worst. Speech. Ever.
But it seems to go over well. That or Jensen has gotten entirely too used to being laughed at by ghosts.
----
Matt doesn’t mention the fact that Jensen is drunk. The ghosts have gone back into hiding, and his boyfriend is comfortable with just chattering about his day a bit before giving Jensen one slightly disappointed look and then going to sleep.
Jensen lies awake, lost in a haze of beer and what might be mild shock, but he’s ok with it. Or he thinks he is. As far as he can tell Jared is some sort of ringleader, or house mother, and that means he’s gotten on the good side of the head ghost.
That has to be good right?
He sleeps fitfully, and in the morning he has a lingering headache and a bleariness he can’t shake. Matt heads out before he even bothers to roll out of bed and drag himself to a long, hot shower.
Jensen should be sanding one of the many rooms that need repainting, but Jensen can’t imagine how the rough rasp of the paper against the wall will make this sick feeling lingering in him worse. Instead he ends up in the graveyard, standing on the border again and staring at the stone memorials of the ghosts he met the night before.
There’s no sound to warn him, but Jensen doesn’t jump or panic when the hand lands on his shoulder, and he turns to see Jared standing beside him in the trees looking into the little cemetery.
“Why’d they all get buried here? Didn’t they have family that wanted to claim them?”
Jared’s head tilts as he considers the stones, and then he smiles sadly. Jensen finds that he doesn’t much care for that smile.
“Some of them didn’t. Some of them did, but…their loved ones knew that they were here. Forever. People react differently to death.”
Jensen nods at that. Knows the feeling all too well.
“Do you have a stone anywhere?”
“I might? My momma might have put one up when I never showed up. I dunno Jensen. I like to think they just had a little get together, talked about how much they loved me, and then went on with having good lives. It hurts too much to imagine anything else.”
He sits down heavily in the needles and dirt, and Jared takes a seat next to him.
“Do you resent her? For killing you?”
“Sandy?” Jared squints at the cemetery like he’s trying to see something far off, and then his head shakes but his body doesn’t get involved in the gesture this time. “Nah. Why would I? It wasn’t her. For what little time she was still in the house she felt just awful ‘bout it. She was a victim as much as I was. One of the other residents looked up her history for me and told me about the sanitarium. She died there. Holding a grudge would be a waste after knowing how much she paid for something she didn’t want.”
Jensen bites his lip, leans back on his hands and feels the little beams of sunlight that break through the trees and sit on his face.
“Are all dead people like that? Too laid back to blame their killers?”
Out of the corner of his eyes Jensen can see that Jared is giving him an odd look.
“No. Not all of us. But a fair amount. Death is a real eye-opener about how much energy gets wasted on hate. Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity.”
Jared makes a little noise and then gets up and walks into the graveyard. He hunkers down near the marker that Chris said belonged to Jeff and stares at it for a bit before brushing his fingers over the stone.
“If I had it to do all over again? I’d focus a little more on living. I spent so much time locked up in my studio trying to make something of a life I didn’t totally live. I mean I had fun, don’t get me wrong, but after close to a hundred years in that house I wish I’d spent more time outside it. You know?”
Jensen licks his lips, because he can tell what Jared is getting at, but he doesn’t want to get into it. Not here. The graveyard, the house, all of it are too much like his life. A quicksand pit of memory and grief that it is all too easy to sink into and never get out of. He tries to find a topic change and one hits him fast and hard.
“You’re good at painting, but are you any good at gardening?”
For a moment he thinks that Jared won’t let him have the out, but Jared has been nothing but gracious since they met.
“Nope. But Samantha sure is, and she’s taught me far more complex stuff than that.”
Jensen wonders if that means that Jared will disappear and reappear, but apparently he has something else in mind entirely. He pulls Jensen up without preamble or warning, and suddenly Jensen is being led back out of the copse of trees and into the yard proper. They end up in the little shed full of yard tools, and when Jared calls out Samantha, Lauren, Jeff, and Chad appear.
And that’s how Jensen Ackles, formerly a fully-fledged member of the skeptic team, finds himself gardening with a family of ghosts.
Samantha immediately rejects his plans and leads him through a series of discussions on local plants and proper planting times. She tells him if he leaves her paper and pen she can sketch out a proper plan, but in the meantime he needs a garden. When Jensen gives her an unsure look Samantha waves off his doubts and insists that he’ll love the fresh vegetables and herbs, and that it will change the outlook of the yard entirely.
They spend the next few hours plotting out size and location, breaking ground, and then fertilizing. The ghosts talk a lot, stories that they’re excited to have a fresh audience for, and Jensen listens enraptured as he digs into the dry clay soil.
When they’re done the sun is starting to wane and Jensen is dirty, covered in sweat and fertilizer, and happier than he’s been in a long time. He’s the good kind of exhausted, the kind he used to get after a particularly fulfilling workday, and he’s happy to head into the kitchen and pour a big glass of tea as he flexes his hands and contemplates a shower. The other ghosts disappear, but Jared sticks around to drink tea with him.
Jensen is just about to ask where the tea goes when the swinging door pushes open and Matt is standing in the kitchen with his tie loosened and surprise on his face.
“Hey Matt. Our neighbor came by to help with the lawn maintenance.”
Matt frowns and then crosses the room, holding out one hand to Jared and then hesitating when he sees how dirty the return hand is.
“Matt Cohen. And you are?”
Jensen barely manages to hide his surprise behind his glass, and Jared shoots him another apologetic look for yet another lie before shaking Matt’s hand and putting on his most gracious and pleasant smile.
“Jared Padalecki. Pleasure to meet you. Jensen’s said a lot of good things.”
Matt frowns at that too, takes his hand back and wipes it dramatically on a kitchen towel before looking sideways at Jensen.
“Has he? Well then I’m at another disadvantage. Which house do you live in Mr. Padalecki?”
Jared shifts and forces a smile.
“Two down on the left. And I should probably get back to it. Already been away for too long.”
Matt nods thoughtfully, but his eyes are already fixed on Jensen.
“Guess you should.”
Jared waves once at both of them, the air too awkward for anything else, and then heads through the swinging door and back to wherever he goes when he’s not visible to Jensen.
He should probably ask about that. It occurs to him that he needs to be more careful when he gets naked in this house. That line of thought is brutally interrupted by Matt’s next question.
“Are you fucking him?”
Jensen finds himself frozen in place, eyes focused somewhere in between Matt’s face twisted with a rage Jensen doesn’t recognize and the door that Jared just exited through. Because he doesn’t know who’s listening to this.
“What?”
Matt, never physically confrontational before this moment and typically one of the most laid-back guys Jensen has ever known despite his profession, steps directly into Jensen’s space. Close enough to hit, and with clenched fists.
Jensen feels a sudden and complete disconnect with reality, more intense than the one he received when he realized his house was full of ghosts. Friendly ghosts who exist as some sort of dead family with his new friend as their housemother.
“Are. You. Fucking. Him?”
“Matt, I need you to take two steps back and a deep breath. Before this becomes a situation we can’t take back.”
“Answer the question you miserable, crippled asshole!”
Jensen sucks in a breath, adrenaline rushing as Matt’s hand rises towards him, and then Matt is flying backwards as doors crash open and closed and the glass-fronted cabinets crack and shatter around them.
It’s chaos in the kitchen, everything flying and breaking, and Matt is pressed against the wall on the opposite side of the room with his mouth hanging open and his eyes fixed on Jensen in fear and shock. Jensen, for his part, is just as surprised.
When it ends, one broken cabinet door slamming a last time before ripping off of its hinges, Jensen stands in the destruction unsure of what he should do next. Matt’s face is bleeding, shards of glass having scraped him, but Jensen is untouched.
They stare at each other, silent, and then Jensen crunches his way across the glass to grab Matt before his suddenly ghostly pale boyfriend hits the floor. Silent still they stand in the room with their arms around each other, both shaking, and while Jensen knows that Matt is scared he’s not sure what he is anymore.
---
Jensen isn’t sure what he should do. Matt’s sitting across from him, face shiny with antibiotic ointment and eyes wide and edged in white. They haven’t spoken since Jensen helped Matt out of the kitchen, but now they’re in some weird in between place where it’s not time to talk about it, but they need to talk about it.
He should tell Matt. He should explain the ghosts, how he’s sort of made friends with them and their leader, and how they really don’t mean any harm. Whichever one did whatever it was that just happened was probably just trying to protect Jensen, but even explaining that is beyond his abilities because the idea of needing to be protected from Matt is so foreign and insane that it has no words attached to it.
“Jensen.”
It takes everything in him to not jerk to attention. To stay soothing and calm. His hands are clenched together in his lap as he speaks to avoid visible shaking.
“Yes, Matt?”
“Was that. Did the. What just.” Matt’s mouth keeps giving up, dissolving into something mushy and unsure, and his hands rub at his hair before he takes a deep breath. “Ghosts?”
“Yeah. I think so. I think ghosts.”
Matt licks his lips and there’s no moisture left behind. Jensen reaches out and links fingers with him, makes a connection in the hopes that there will be some comfort offered. Matt takes it.
“You were right.”
“Yeah. I was right.”
----
It’s been two days since the explosion in the kitchen. Matt has apparently decided to handle it by not handling it. Anytime Jensen tries to bring up the subject his boyfriend shuts down. They don’t discuss leaving, they don’t talk about any of the things that couples in the movies talk about.
Matt works long days, comes home to hover and stare around the house on high alert, and the stress of not sleeping is obvious on his face. Jensen wants to help him, but they’ve lost the common language they once shared. They eat late dinners silently, eyes fixed on their plates, and Matt refuses to go closer to the kitchen then the end of the grand dining table.
Worse, Jensen can’t get a hold of Jared. He can’t seem to reach any of the ghosts, and he’s not sure what to do about that. He doesn’t know which one caused the ruckus, and he doesn’t know how to assure them that whatever it looked like that night Matt is not that guy. He’s still not even sure what happened between them. Matt has never been like that.
A part of him keeps repeating that they’re not dangerous, that he knows they’re not dangerous, but another part is afraid for Matt.
So when the box arrives next day from Amazon Jensen makes sure that Matt is nowhere around before taking the previously sealed off door up into Jared’s old studio. He realizes upon entering that with the whirlwind of events he never asked Jared what should be done with his corpse. It sends shivers of cold through him despite the warmth of the room, and Jensen considers moving to the ballroom before settling down awkwardly on the floor.
The cardboard parts easily, and Jensen wonders how many of the stereotypical responses he once mocked that he’ll take part in after this. He’s become a silver screen idiot, but there’s desperation thrumming under his skin to reach Jared and apologize, to clarify, and to know. Somehow he’s become dependent on his relationship, and that’s probably as scary as using a Ouija board in a heavily haunted house a few feet away from a corpse.
With the planchette firmly in place Jensen settles his fingers on the edge of the thin plastic and then tries to clear his mind of outside thoughts and focus only on Jared. He doesn’t want just anybody.
“Jared Padalecki, I summon you.”
Dust motes dance around him, the air is thick and heavy, and Jensen thinks he’s got to be the biggest idiot in the planet.
“Jared Padalecki, if you’re here with me will you speak?”
Silence continues to reign in the room, and Jensen finds himself looking at the portrait Jared was working on again. He said that he had an open marriage. Jensen wonders if the model got naked simply for the sake of art, or for something else. If Jared’s wife snapped specifically because of that painting, of the jealousy inherent in seeing the person you were with lovingly recreate the image of another. Jared said that she never minded before they moved here, and again clear as day the image of Matt with his usually friendly face twisted in rage takes over.
A hand lands on Jensen’s shoulder and he jumps about a foot.
“You know that you aren’t exactly a medium right?”
Charles’ grin is open, caring, and Jensen wants to trust it but he still doesn’t know who destroyed his kitchen or where Jared is. Why his friend is refusing to see him.
“I. Charles I’m trying to reach Jared.”
The ghost settles down across from Jensen, closer to the corpse than Jensen was willing to get, and rests his hands on his thighs.
“Are you now? I couldn’t tell from the antiquated language and the overly dramatic tone.”
Jensen feels his face puckering and tries to smooth it out, but Charles is already laughing.
“I’m glad you think this is funny, but it’s really important that I-“
“Why?”
For half a beat Jensen is locked in place simply staring at Charles. Why what? Why does he want to contact Jared? Why is it important? Why is he still here when he could probably push Matt with this newfound discovery regarding the state of their house to move somewhere where the worst neighbors they have are the ones next door with the yapping dog instead of the dead people wandering the halls of their very home?
“Because I need to apologize to him.” Jensen settles for the path of least resistance. The thing that requires the least explanation.
Or he thinks he does, but by the cocking of Charles’ head it appears he didn’t succeed.
“Apologize? Why are you apologizing?”
Jensen gestures in a futile hope that it will continue all of his thoughts, and when it’s obvious he hasn’t become a master of Mime he clears his throat.
“Because he had to see something ugly between Matt and I that wasn’t his problem, because he got treated badly, and because I think he feels guilty about what happened in the kitchen.”
“How do you know that was his fault?”
“I don’t, but the lack of contact implies pretty heavily that he has some guilt there.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t want to see you.”
It stings, more than Jensen thought it would, more than he was prepared for, and he takes a shaky breath before pushing himself more upright.
“Well I think I deserve to hear that from him.”
Charles grins at that, teeth sparkling white, and then he stands and shrugs.
“You’ve got spunk kid, I’ll give you that. But what Jared does or doesn’t do is completely up to him. He’s a free spirit. So to speak.”
And with that Charles is gone.
---
Jensen is frustrated, and he finds himself scraping another bedroom to work off the frenetic energy he can’t seem to shake. Chris thinks he should get a real medium if talking to Jared is that important, but Aldis is oddly silent on the subject. Matt’s less and less available as he seems to sink completely into his work and stays away from the house as much as possible.
He’s only felt this alone once before, and that’s not a time he cares to think about too much. So Jensen keeps his hands busy and his brain locked in the job of renovating the house he’s no longer sure he can stay in.
The first cut feels like a small blow, and for a second Jensen honestly thinks he knocked into something. Except he’s standing in an empty room against a wall with his sander and there’s nothing to bump into even if he was moving in such a way that would…
It’s the second cut that gets him moving, his leg already bleeding through the beat-up jeans he’s been working in and the pain suddenly burning through him with no warning. Jensen feels the temperature of the room drop rapidly, and he wonders if maybe all those times he mocked himself about being the idiot in the horror movie are now coming back to haunt him.
A hysterical laugh bursts through his mouth at the internal wording even as the door slams shut in front of him and Jensen is cut off from escape. He’s on the second floor, and the drop from the window is straight down.
When Jensen turns he sees his box cutter floating in the air, glinting with his own blood, and he takes a deep breath before trying to figure out how to combat an invisible enemy with a very sharp knife.
This is where his time would have been better served taking self-defense classes instead of getting wasted at bar trivia nights.
He jerks left when the box cutter comes at him, and then it feints and he buys it and gets a slash to his arm for his trouble. Jensen is fairly certain he’s going to die in here, just like this, at the hands of someone he was probably introduced to. Someone close to Jared.
Jared. He lied. He told Jensen death brought on a certain level of Zen and Jensen had believed him. Jensen had bought into the mystic ghost bullshit. Now he’s going to pay for it. To pay for staying. To pay for living when it should have been that kid. That fucking kid. He remembers wet roads, the squeal of tires, and a hand clutching at his shirt as a weak voice cried for its mother.
“STOP!”
The room is suddenly warm, the box cutter clatters to the wood floor, and Jensen is standing with his bleeding arm covering his face and hiding him from whatever has saved his life. Cool hands take his arm, lower it, and then Jensen is looking into the bright blue of Christian’s eyes. He can see Aldis standing behind Chris, and beyond that Jared whose mouth is tight and face dark.
He loses consciousness.
Masterpost
Next Part
Previous Part
Full of people
Feet turning into lead
Lost a leg at the iron foundry
Where they found me dead
Chris is on his front porch with a sledgehammer.
Jensen blinks sleepily and then takes a long sip of his coffee.
“Good morning.”
“To you too. Gonna knock down a wall on your second floor.”
Jensen lifts an eyebrow, and then moves out of the way. He’s not sure if Chris showed up this early to make sure Jensen wouldn’t argue, or because his friend is part of that evil group that consider themselves morning people.
He pours Chris a cup of coffee and then rambles through the hallways until he finds his friend strapping on safety glasses in one of the extra rooms on the second floor. The blueprints for the house are spread out on the floor in front of him, and Chris has stripped down to just his undershirt.
“You know, if you wanted to get naked around me I’m pretty sure you shoulda brought Aldis too.”
Chris grunts, hefts the sledgehammer up, and then slams it into the wall. Jensen’s not sure what he expected. It’s not what happens.
The door slams open, and he can hear the same thing happening up and down the hall and in other parts of the house. The windows fly open, and a low scream begins to build from the floor. Jensen clutches the coffee mugs in his hands and looks around as Chris pauses before slamming the hammer into the wall again.
Noise ratchets up, one of the windows slams shut so hard that glass flies around them, and Chris squares his jaw and fixes his grip.
“I seen Aldis when his computer crashes. You ain’t scaring me.” And then he begins to swing the hammer again, slamming into the wall methodically as the door crashes in and out of its frame and Jensen keeps his feet only through sheer willpower.
Chris doesn’t have to live with these people.
And then, just as suddenly as it began, it stops.
Because Chris has broken through the plaster wall. Chris has exposed a door.
---
Aldis arrives a little while later. They’ve cleaned up the glass, and Chris is taping plastic over the window when his boyfriend comes crashing into the room wide eyed and armed with a bat.
“Little late to be the hero, darling.”
Jensen lets out one shaky laugh and goes back to staring at the door. A few more precise strikes have widened the hole around it, and they can open it any time. Jensen agreed that they shouldn’t without Aldis.
“Were they gruesome? All rotted and corpsified? Did they make Chris at least a little scared Jensen? Say yes.”
He wants to, because it scared him, but he has to shake his head. Part of Jensen wants to go get Jared. He wants his new friend there for this, because if anyone understands this place and its residents it’s Jared. But he doesn’t know which house Jared is, and he’s not ready to go outside at the moment. He’s not willing to part company with living people and be alone for even one second, or to leave living people he cares about alone in his home.
“I think he missed his target once.” Jensen gestures to a dent to the left of the hole, and Aldis crows until Chris eyes it critically and shrugs.
“Nobody’s a hundred percent accurate.”
And whether or not it scared Chris they’re all doing everything they can without saying it to not open that door. To not find out what’s on the other side.
One of the differences between modern homes and older ones is the quality of the walls. Jensen has explained it to so many homeowners and potential ones that he could recite the speech in his sleep. Older homes made their walls out of solid plaster. They’re stronger, thicker, and much more expensive. Which means they take more work and time, but they’re worth it.
To put one up here, just to cover a door, has a pretty dark undertone and Jensen isn’t sure he wants to know what would make a person do that. Not in a house with the history of this one.
Still, it’s his house, and he’s agreed to keep it. As long as he has to. Jensen thinks of Jared’s hands on his shoulders, of his firm promise to never let the ghosts hurt Jensen, and steps forward before grasping the doorknob.
Aldis and Chris are right behind him, two warm and vital reminders that he is not alone, and Jensen turns the knob and pushes. Nothing happens.
“Locked.”
They stand for a long moment perplexed, and then Chris reaches for the sledgehammer and Jensen steps out of the way. A minute later the door is open, and Jensen can see the strain his friend is suffering from not making a joke about magic keys or being an excellent knocker.
Stairs lead up in a passage beyond the opening, and natural daylight shines down them. Whatever is up there has windows facing the outside, and is a part of the attic. Chris’s suspicion about its size finally makes sense.
Jensen leads the way. The stairs creak under their combined weight, but just like everything else in the house they are solidly built and made to withstand.
At the top Jensen pauses before moving out of the way of his friends. Chris still has the sledgehammer. It’s odd, incongruous with the room, and Jensen tries to take in the mise en scene at the same time he wants to pick up every detail.
It’s the same wood as the rest of the attic, but it’s lighter somehow. Without the clutter of all the people that came to the house before it has an openness that calls to Jensen. The windows are the same size as the rest of the attic’s, indistinguishable from the outside, but there’s a skylight set in that brings extra light and makes Jensen wonder why they weren’t put in the rest of the attic as well.
The room has a cabinet that is shut, dust lies heavy in every part of the room, and coats the multitude of canvases that sit on tripods all around. One large canvas is an oil painting of a beautiful woman, naked and reclining backwards on stairs Jensen recognizes. Holding the pose on those sharp steps must have been a bitch.
He hears Aldis’s reaction before he sees it, a sharp screech that is entirely warranted and yet definite mockery fodder, and then he sees Chris’s eyes widen as his friend’s mouth falls open. All of it is in perfect detail, burned into his brain, as his eyes sweep over the sight and then slow to take it back in. There’s a mummified corpse in the chair in front of one canvas. An unfinished portrait of a nude man. In the same position as the woman that came before it but with an entirely different facial expression. The woman’s is open and innocent, the man’s is sultry and knowing.
Distantly Jensen wonders how long the body has been locked up here for the summers to turn it into this. How no one ever smelled the stench of it through the walls. Now it has no smell but dust and acrid fear.
“That’s gotta be the painter that went missing. Polish guy.”
And Jensen knows. Knows the second Chris says it, maybe knew it before then, but he doesn’t want to say it out loud and make it true. Doesn’t want to lose what little footing he had left in reality.
“Jared. Jared Padalecki.” Aldis’s face is an ashy gray. “The one whose wife went nuts and was committed.”
Jared’s married? It’s a betrayal and Jensen doesn’t know why. Somehow greater than the one where Jared befriended him without mentioning that he’d been dead the whole time.
A hand lands on his shoulder, and Jensen knows it already. Would know it anywhere. Aldis shrieks again and Chris raises the sledgehammer threateningly.
But Jensen is too worn out and disconnected to do more than smile weakly and nod at the corpse in front of him. Force the words out of the empty space that used to be his reasoning brain.
“Hi Jared.”
----
Jensen wants to say it’s the most bizarre moment of his life, but a few days ago a ghost gave him toilet paper and asked for Pabst in return. His bar has gotten ridiculously high since they moved to Cedar Hill.
Chris and Aldis have positioned themselves on the couch beside Jensen, Aldis adopting the look of a disapproving father studying his daughter’s prom date and Chris still handling the sledgehammer like Jared is a physical person that can be hurt.
Is Jared physical? Jensen’s touched him. Jensen hit him.
“I knew I didn’t punch like a sissy.”
Chris is amused, Aldis looks concerned like Jensen is just a hair’s breadth from snapping, but Jared blushes a little and casts his eyes down. It’s the blush that puts Jensen back into an existential crisis.
“Well, the good thing about being dead is you never stub your toe anymore. Or get bruised from punches. Not that I get punched a lot, but you know if I did.”
Jared’s rambling, big hands moving to express points he’s not making, and Jensen wonders again at how lifelike he is. For a ghost.
“And you were playing at being a living neighbor why?” Chris doesn’t seem to be taken in by Jared’s puppy dog charm.
“I. Ok, you gotta understand, it’s not like I can go around town visiting people. I’m stuck here. I’ve been stuck here since 1923 and it gets…lonely? The other ghosts are great but they forget sometimes that they’re dead and then they get weird. And they can’t really have engaging conversations like that. They can only talk about what we’re doing here, or how they died, or what they’re missing. Which is kinda depressing. I mean really depressing. And it’s been ninety-one years of that. So when new living people show up I kind of like to make friends because they can, you know, be around. As themselves. All the time.”
Aldis’s face fell, and Jensen felt the same as his friend. How terrible would it be to be the only logical and sentient person in a house for almost a hundred years? To have to wander around with people who were your friends one moment and rambling specters the next? Jensen thought of the difference between the ghost that might have been Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s demeanor when he saved Jensen from falling and when he’d come at Jensen in the living room.
“But you told Jen you were alive.” Chris doesn’t seem to be buying into it, but then again Chris is wearing his inscrutable face, and when he’s got that on it’s next to impossible to know what he’s thinking or what he’s backing before he just outright says it.
Aldis elbows Chris sharply and then turns back to Jared.
“So you didn’t want to hurt Jensen you wanted a friend.”
Jared nods eagerly, puppy dog expression in full force, and Aldis lets out a little noise that he recognizes a second too late to save him from Chris’s mocking smile.
“Shut up.”
“Didn’t say nothing.”
“Anything. Use proper English, you know how. My Nana would smack you.”
“Your Nana always smacks me Aldis.”
“Well she’d smack you double.”
Chris rolls his eyes and all attention focuses back on Jared.
“How much trouble is Jensen in? With these other ghosts?”
Jared looks perplexed for a second before his eyes widen and his whole body is involved in his shaking head.
“None. None at all. None of us want to hurt anybody. Jensen is totally safe here.”
“The body count of this place says something a little bit different Casper. The body count suggests-“
“Hey.” All of them stop at the same time, Jared falling still, Aldis ending his glare at Chris, and Chris’s words dying in the air as the group turns to look at him. “I’m right here. You guys know that right? Jensen is an adult that can ask questions about his own safety and determine how he feels about things on his own. So thanks guys, but I got this.”
Chris raises an eyebrow, but it’s Aldis that speaks. “Want us to leave the room Jensen? We can wait in the kitchen.”
Jensen nods, sees how little Chris likes it, and sticks to his guns. He is an adult, a fully functioning one no matter what anyone says, and he can handle this. He can handle his new friend/supposed neighbor actually being one of the dead residents of his house.
His friends file out of the room, and it’s just the two of them.
“Jensen I am really, really sorry I-“
“How’d you die?”
Jared swallows once, what is he swallowing, and begins to wring his hands a little. His long and graceful fingers rasp over each other, skin touching skin, and Jensen marvels at the science of it. It’s so far beyond his understanding it may as well be Quantum Physics.
“My wife. My wife went mad. It was… I don’t know for certain what it was. We had an understanding you see. In my time two men couldn’t be with each other, but no one looked sideways at a married man who threw parties. Sandy liked her life, and I liked mine, and we were the best of friends. And then one day she began to ask questions, to suggest she wanted something else, and it made no sense. She was the one who proposed the deal after all. Next thing I know I’m in my studio and she’s screaming at me. Then she struck me, and the next thing I knew I was in my studio again, but the light was different, and Jeff was waiting for me.”
“Jeff? Jeffrey Dean Morgan? The ghost you only thought you could identify when he rushed me?”
Jared takes on that hangdog look again and starts to glance around the room like inspiration will arrive from some corner. And Jensen focuses on that anger and not the odd thrill he gets from the knowledge that Jared’s marriage was a sham. That Jared likes men.
“He’s the oldest of us. He’s a really great guy Jensen. When he’s in his right mind he’s super nice and really funny. You’ll like him. I promise.”
“I’ll like him. You’re making a lot of assumptions here Jared. You’re assuming I’m going to stay. You’re assuming that I want to make friends with ghosts instead of doing the sensible thing and calling a priest to evict all your asses out of this house.”
“Won’t work.”
“What?”
“A priest. It won’t work. I’ve seen four of them, seven preachers, ten psychics, and a ghost-hunting team. None of them were able to send us away.”
“What even-that’s the thing you think you need to focus on?”
Jared bites his lip for a second before holding out his hands in a pleading gesture.
“Jensen, I’m not here on vacation. I didn’t choose to stay in this house. None of us did. We’re stuck here, and believe me we’ve tried to leave. There was no tunnel of light, no choir of angels, and no dark corridor with sulfur smells and flames licking the walls. At this point I don’t think we’d care which we saw as long as it was a door out. But nothing has ever come, and everybody that dies on this property ends up right here, stuck with the rest of us. We’ve tried to make the best of it. We’re friends, almost family, and we stick together. We don’t want to hurt people. We don’t anyone to end up stuck like the rest of us. You understand? There’s no bitterness here. When they’re not confused the rest of the ghosts have reached a dejected acceptance. And we work really hard to keep the new residents alive. To run off anybody with kids or just anybody who will listen.”
It may sound petulant, but Jensen finds it both true and relevant.
“You didn’t try very hard to get rid of me.”
Something flashes in Jared’s face, something Jensen is neither capable of identifying nor terribly interested in exploring at this moment. Right now he wants to focus on any possible explanation that will make him not hate Jared as much as he’s pretty sure he should.
“I’m sorry. I can only say it so much. I’m sorry, and I mean it, but I can’t take back the decisions I made now.”
Jensen rubs the back of his neck, not entirely sure what he should do with this, and then he hears a small voice perk up from the hallway.
“It’s not his fault. Shithead.”
“Sierra. Language.” Jared looks horrified, and Jensen turns to see the little blonde girl that scared him into almost falling down the stairs. Her face is no longer open and sweet. She looks suspicious, angry, and all of that emotion is focused on Jensen.
The absurdity of it hits him in just as muted a manner as the rest of the situation has.
“No. No Jay, no. This is ridiculous. You don’t have to stand here listening to him lecture you. Screw him. Let the badness get him. Then he’ll see how much he owes you already.”
“Sierra we’ve talked about this before. We’re helpful ghosts.”
The little girl scoffs even as Jensen wonders if he should give up on fully following the conversation. Maybe he should go into the kitchen, ask Chris and Aldis to give him a ride to their house, and just stay there until Matt joins him or lets the house go into foreclosure out of spite.
“Being helpful never got us to Heaven, Jared. Being helpful’s only gotten us more ghosts to be helpful with.”
Jared winces, eyes suddenly sad, and Jensen wants to reach out and touch him. He doesn’t though, because he’s still not sure even after all the times they’ve touched before that Jared will be solid.
“Sierra we’ll talk about this later, ok? For right now it’s just me and Jensen talking about-“
“Jensen and I.” And with that the little girl ghost disappears haughtily and leaves just them in the room.
He misses her instantly when Jared turns back to him.
“That was Sierra. She’s a good kid just…spirited.”
It’s wildly inappropriate, downright fucking rude, but Jensen laughs hysterically. He sees the moment Jared realizes the accidental pun and joins him, and that’s how Chris and Aldis find them when they come back.
----
So now Jensen lives in a house full of ghosts, and is friends with one, and has to figure out what that means.
He decides it’s best to make these sorts of life-altering choices with alcohol, so he’s almost done with his sixth beer when Jared suggests the plan.
“Let me introduce you. Not everybody is with it, but there’s a bunch of really awesome people here. You’ll like them. What do you say?”
Jensen stares at his mostly empty bottle and then makes his decision. “Yeah. Yeah that sounds good.”
Chris is staring bleary eyed from a few feet away, back propped up against the wall like Jensen’s and legs stretched out over the smooth restored floor of the ballroom. Aldis, always a lightweight, is passed out on Chris’s legs and snoring softly.
“Ok. Ok, hold on.” Jared stares very intensely into the depths of the ballroom, and Jensen waits for a drop in temperature or a wave of fog to roll into the room.
Nothing happens.
“You got bars on your ghost phone?” Chris cracks himself up, slapping his thigh and earning an angry grumble from Aldis.
Jared tilts his head with both eyebrows raised, and Jensen realizes how badly Chris’s joke has missed its mark. The recognition crosses Chris’s face, and then his old friend shrugs and leans back fully into the wall.
“’S nothing man. Never mind.”
A brief pause, and then Jared shrugs his shoulders and calls out like he’s trying to get the attention of friends across the bar.
“Hey guys! Come on out! It’s time!”
And sure enough, rather suddenly, there’s a group of people standing in front of them in the room. Jensen takes them in one by one. Sierra stands between the woman in the suit and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Chad is on the end of the line, a big grin on his face and his hands smoothing his mullet back. There’s a dashing looking African-American man with his arm around a slender, gorgeous blonde.
Samantha stands towards the back of the group, hands clasped together and a light blush on her face, and there’s another ghost Jensen doesn’t know standing next to her in much more modern clothes with her arm around Samantha and a fierce look on her face.
Jared stands easily and crosses the room so he’s standing by the group, a smile on his face and his whole body gesturing along with his hands. Jensen doesn’t miss the way that Jared touches each ghost, the ease with which he interacts with them, or that all of them are happy to see him and be introduced.
It’s odd, but there’s a sharp flare of something in his gut at the sight of Jared acting the same way he does with Jensen with everyone else. That smile, the intense focus, that makes Jensen feel special and noticed when Jared and he are alone is apparently Jared’s default position.
He’s kind of like a cult leader.
Jared starts at the end with Chad, touches his shoulder and then moves through the line rattling off names.
“This is Adrianne and her husband Charles Whitfield, Samantha you’ve met but this is best friend Lauren Cohan. Sierra and Jeff you know, but I think you just met Samantha Ferris. We call her Sam to avoid confusion. She said she prefers it anyway. Jim and D.J. aren’t feeling too good today, so they’re not here, and there’s a couple others that are in and out more than some of us. But this is the core group. Everybody, this is Jensen, and his best friends Chris and Aldis.”
Chris doffs an imaginary hat and Aldis lets out a loud snore. Jensen tries to modulate the smile on his face as he manages a tiny wave.
The group responds in kind, some more friendly than others, and he wonders at the disparity in ages of clothing. History is standing in his ballroom right now. Being introduced to him by his hundred year old ghost friend.
Jensen takes a deep breath, because he imagines he’s supposed to say something here, and whatever it is will set the tone. He’s never really been much for public speaking. A little too detail-oriented and introverted to enjoy anything that didn’t allow him to plan and control the reactions to that plan.
And now he’s going to do this kind of buzzed. Mostly sober.
Drunk. He’s greeting his dead housemates drunk.
“Howdy.”
Worst. Speech. Ever.
But it seems to go over well. That or Jensen has gotten entirely too used to being laughed at by ghosts.
----
Matt doesn’t mention the fact that Jensen is drunk. The ghosts have gone back into hiding, and his boyfriend is comfortable with just chattering about his day a bit before giving Jensen one slightly disappointed look and then going to sleep.
Jensen lies awake, lost in a haze of beer and what might be mild shock, but he’s ok with it. Or he thinks he is. As far as he can tell Jared is some sort of ringleader, or house mother, and that means he’s gotten on the good side of the head ghost.
That has to be good right?
He sleeps fitfully, and in the morning he has a lingering headache and a bleariness he can’t shake. Matt heads out before he even bothers to roll out of bed and drag himself to a long, hot shower.
Jensen should be sanding one of the many rooms that need repainting, but Jensen can’t imagine how the rough rasp of the paper against the wall will make this sick feeling lingering in him worse. Instead he ends up in the graveyard, standing on the border again and staring at the stone memorials of the ghosts he met the night before.
There’s no sound to warn him, but Jensen doesn’t jump or panic when the hand lands on his shoulder, and he turns to see Jared standing beside him in the trees looking into the little cemetery.
“Why’d they all get buried here? Didn’t they have family that wanted to claim them?”
Jared’s head tilts as he considers the stones, and then he smiles sadly. Jensen finds that he doesn’t much care for that smile.
“Some of them didn’t. Some of them did, but…their loved ones knew that they were here. Forever. People react differently to death.”
Jensen nods at that. Knows the feeling all too well.
“Do you have a stone anywhere?”
“I might? My momma might have put one up when I never showed up. I dunno Jensen. I like to think they just had a little get together, talked about how much they loved me, and then went on with having good lives. It hurts too much to imagine anything else.”
He sits down heavily in the needles and dirt, and Jared takes a seat next to him.
“Do you resent her? For killing you?”
“Sandy?” Jared squints at the cemetery like he’s trying to see something far off, and then his head shakes but his body doesn’t get involved in the gesture this time. “Nah. Why would I? It wasn’t her. For what little time she was still in the house she felt just awful ‘bout it. She was a victim as much as I was. One of the other residents looked up her history for me and told me about the sanitarium. She died there. Holding a grudge would be a waste after knowing how much she paid for something she didn’t want.”
Jensen bites his lip, leans back on his hands and feels the little beams of sunlight that break through the trees and sit on his face.
“Are all dead people like that? Too laid back to blame their killers?”
Out of the corner of his eyes Jensen can see that Jared is giving him an odd look.
“No. Not all of us. But a fair amount. Death is a real eye-opener about how much energy gets wasted on hate. Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity.”
Jared makes a little noise and then gets up and walks into the graveyard. He hunkers down near the marker that Chris said belonged to Jeff and stares at it for a bit before brushing his fingers over the stone.
“If I had it to do all over again? I’d focus a little more on living. I spent so much time locked up in my studio trying to make something of a life I didn’t totally live. I mean I had fun, don’t get me wrong, but after close to a hundred years in that house I wish I’d spent more time outside it. You know?”
Jensen licks his lips, because he can tell what Jared is getting at, but he doesn’t want to get into it. Not here. The graveyard, the house, all of it are too much like his life. A quicksand pit of memory and grief that it is all too easy to sink into and never get out of. He tries to find a topic change and one hits him fast and hard.
“You’re good at painting, but are you any good at gardening?”
For a moment he thinks that Jared won’t let him have the out, but Jared has been nothing but gracious since they met.
“Nope. But Samantha sure is, and she’s taught me far more complex stuff than that.”
Jensen wonders if that means that Jared will disappear and reappear, but apparently he has something else in mind entirely. He pulls Jensen up without preamble or warning, and suddenly Jensen is being led back out of the copse of trees and into the yard proper. They end up in the little shed full of yard tools, and when Jared calls out Samantha, Lauren, Jeff, and Chad appear.
And that’s how Jensen Ackles, formerly a fully-fledged member of the skeptic team, finds himself gardening with a family of ghosts.
Samantha immediately rejects his plans and leads him through a series of discussions on local plants and proper planting times. She tells him if he leaves her paper and pen she can sketch out a proper plan, but in the meantime he needs a garden. When Jensen gives her an unsure look Samantha waves off his doubts and insists that he’ll love the fresh vegetables and herbs, and that it will change the outlook of the yard entirely.
They spend the next few hours plotting out size and location, breaking ground, and then fertilizing. The ghosts talk a lot, stories that they’re excited to have a fresh audience for, and Jensen listens enraptured as he digs into the dry clay soil.
When they’re done the sun is starting to wane and Jensen is dirty, covered in sweat and fertilizer, and happier than he’s been in a long time. He’s the good kind of exhausted, the kind he used to get after a particularly fulfilling workday, and he’s happy to head into the kitchen and pour a big glass of tea as he flexes his hands and contemplates a shower. The other ghosts disappear, but Jared sticks around to drink tea with him.
Jensen is just about to ask where the tea goes when the swinging door pushes open and Matt is standing in the kitchen with his tie loosened and surprise on his face.
“Hey Matt. Our neighbor came by to help with the lawn maintenance.”
Matt frowns and then crosses the room, holding out one hand to Jared and then hesitating when he sees how dirty the return hand is.
“Matt Cohen. And you are?”
Jensen barely manages to hide his surprise behind his glass, and Jared shoots him another apologetic look for yet another lie before shaking Matt’s hand and putting on his most gracious and pleasant smile.
“Jared Padalecki. Pleasure to meet you. Jensen’s said a lot of good things.”
Matt frowns at that too, takes his hand back and wipes it dramatically on a kitchen towel before looking sideways at Jensen.
“Has he? Well then I’m at another disadvantage. Which house do you live in Mr. Padalecki?”
Jared shifts and forces a smile.
“Two down on the left. And I should probably get back to it. Already been away for too long.”
Matt nods thoughtfully, but his eyes are already fixed on Jensen.
“Guess you should.”
Jared waves once at both of them, the air too awkward for anything else, and then heads through the swinging door and back to wherever he goes when he’s not visible to Jensen.
He should probably ask about that. It occurs to him that he needs to be more careful when he gets naked in this house. That line of thought is brutally interrupted by Matt’s next question.
“Are you fucking him?”
Jensen finds himself frozen in place, eyes focused somewhere in between Matt’s face twisted with a rage Jensen doesn’t recognize and the door that Jared just exited through. Because he doesn’t know who’s listening to this.
“What?”
Matt, never physically confrontational before this moment and typically one of the most laid-back guys Jensen has ever known despite his profession, steps directly into Jensen’s space. Close enough to hit, and with clenched fists.
Jensen feels a sudden and complete disconnect with reality, more intense than the one he received when he realized his house was full of ghosts. Friendly ghosts who exist as some sort of dead family with his new friend as their housemother.
“Are. You. Fucking. Him?”
“Matt, I need you to take two steps back and a deep breath. Before this becomes a situation we can’t take back.”
“Answer the question you miserable, crippled asshole!”
Jensen sucks in a breath, adrenaline rushing as Matt’s hand rises towards him, and then Matt is flying backwards as doors crash open and closed and the glass-fronted cabinets crack and shatter around them.
It’s chaos in the kitchen, everything flying and breaking, and Matt is pressed against the wall on the opposite side of the room with his mouth hanging open and his eyes fixed on Jensen in fear and shock. Jensen, for his part, is just as surprised.
When it ends, one broken cabinet door slamming a last time before ripping off of its hinges, Jensen stands in the destruction unsure of what he should do next. Matt’s face is bleeding, shards of glass having scraped him, but Jensen is untouched.
They stare at each other, silent, and then Jensen crunches his way across the glass to grab Matt before his suddenly ghostly pale boyfriend hits the floor. Silent still they stand in the room with their arms around each other, both shaking, and while Jensen knows that Matt is scared he’s not sure what he is anymore.
---
Jensen isn’t sure what he should do. Matt’s sitting across from him, face shiny with antibiotic ointment and eyes wide and edged in white. They haven’t spoken since Jensen helped Matt out of the kitchen, but now they’re in some weird in between place where it’s not time to talk about it, but they need to talk about it.
He should tell Matt. He should explain the ghosts, how he’s sort of made friends with them and their leader, and how they really don’t mean any harm. Whichever one did whatever it was that just happened was probably just trying to protect Jensen, but even explaining that is beyond his abilities because the idea of needing to be protected from Matt is so foreign and insane that it has no words attached to it.
“Jensen.”
It takes everything in him to not jerk to attention. To stay soothing and calm. His hands are clenched together in his lap as he speaks to avoid visible shaking.
“Yes, Matt?”
“Was that. Did the. What just.” Matt’s mouth keeps giving up, dissolving into something mushy and unsure, and his hands rub at his hair before he takes a deep breath. “Ghosts?”
“Yeah. I think so. I think ghosts.”
Matt licks his lips and there’s no moisture left behind. Jensen reaches out and links fingers with him, makes a connection in the hopes that there will be some comfort offered. Matt takes it.
“You were right.”
“Yeah. I was right.”
----
It’s been two days since the explosion in the kitchen. Matt has apparently decided to handle it by not handling it. Anytime Jensen tries to bring up the subject his boyfriend shuts down. They don’t discuss leaving, they don’t talk about any of the things that couples in the movies talk about.
Matt works long days, comes home to hover and stare around the house on high alert, and the stress of not sleeping is obvious on his face. Jensen wants to help him, but they’ve lost the common language they once shared. They eat late dinners silently, eyes fixed on their plates, and Matt refuses to go closer to the kitchen then the end of the grand dining table.
Worse, Jensen can’t get a hold of Jared. He can’t seem to reach any of the ghosts, and he’s not sure what to do about that. He doesn’t know which one caused the ruckus, and he doesn’t know how to assure them that whatever it looked like that night Matt is not that guy. He’s still not even sure what happened between them. Matt has never been like that.
A part of him keeps repeating that they’re not dangerous, that he knows they’re not dangerous, but another part is afraid for Matt.
So when the box arrives next day from Amazon Jensen makes sure that Matt is nowhere around before taking the previously sealed off door up into Jared’s old studio. He realizes upon entering that with the whirlwind of events he never asked Jared what should be done with his corpse. It sends shivers of cold through him despite the warmth of the room, and Jensen considers moving to the ballroom before settling down awkwardly on the floor.
The cardboard parts easily, and Jensen wonders how many of the stereotypical responses he once mocked that he’ll take part in after this. He’s become a silver screen idiot, but there’s desperation thrumming under his skin to reach Jared and apologize, to clarify, and to know. Somehow he’s become dependent on his relationship, and that’s probably as scary as using a Ouija board in a heavily haunted house a few feet away from a corpse.
With the planchette firmly in place Jensen settles his fingers on the edge of the thin plastic and then tries to clear his mind of outside thoughts and focus only on Jared. He doesn’t want just anybody.
“Jared Padalecki, I summon you.”
Dust motes dance around him, the air is thick and heavy, and Jensen thinks he’s got to be the biggest idiot in the planet.
“Jared Padalecki, if you’re here with me will you speak?”
Silence continues to reign in the room, and Jensen finds himself looking at the portrait Jared was working on again. He said that he had an open marriage. Jensen wonders if the model got naked simply for the sake of art, or for something else. If Jared’s wife snapped specifically because of that painting, of the jealousy inherent in seeing the person you were with lovingly recreate the image of another. Jared said that she never minded before they moved here, and again clear as day the image of Matt with his usually friendly face twisted in rage takes over.
A hand lands on Jensen’s shoulder and he jumps about a foot.
“You know that you aren’t exactly a medium right?”
Charles’ grin is open, caring, and Jensen wants to trust it but he still doesn’t know who destroyed his kitchen or where Jared is. Why his friend is refusing to see him.
“I. Charles I’m trying to reach Jared.”
The ghost settles down across from Jensen, closer to the corpse than Jensen was willing to get, and rests his hands on his thighs.
“Are you now? I couldn’t tell from the antiquated language and the overly dramatic tone.”
Jensen feels his face puckering and tries to smooth it out, but Charles is already laughing.
“I’m glad you think this is funny, but it’s really important that I-“
“Why?”
For half a beat Jensen is locked in place simply staring at Charles. Why what? Why does he want to contact Jared? Why is it important? Why is he still here when he could probably push Matt with this newfound discovery regarding the state of their house to move somewhere where the worst neighbors they have are the ones next door with the yapping dog instead of the dead people wandering the halls of their very home?
“Because I need to apologize to him.” Jensen settles for the path of least resistance. The thing that requires the least explanation.
Or he thinks he does, but by the cocking of Charles’ head it appears he didn’t succeed.
“Apologize? Why are you apologizing?”
Jensen gestures in a futile hope that it will continue all of his thoughts, and when it’s obvious he hasn’t become a master of Mime he clears his throat.
“Because he had to see something ugly between Matt and I that wasn’t his problem, because he got treated badly, and because I think he feels guilty about what happened in the kitchen.”
“How do you know that was his fault?”
“I don’t, but the lack of contact implies pretty heavily that he has some guilt there.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t want to see you.”
It stings, more than Jensen thought it would, more than he was prepared for, and he takes a shaky breath before pushing himself more upright.
“Well I think I deserve to hear that from him.”
Charles grins at that, teeth sparkling white, and then he stands and shrugs.
“You’ve got spunk kid, I’ll give you that. But what Jared does or doesn’t do is completely up to him. He’s a free spirit. So to speak.”
And with that Charles is gone.
---
Jensen is frustrated, and he finds himself scraping another bedroom to work off the frenetic energy he can’t seem to shake. Chris thinks he should get a real medium if talking to Jared is that important, but Aldis is oddly silent on the subject. Matt’s less and less available as he seems to sink completely into his work and stays away from the house as much as possible.
He’s only felt this alone once before, and that’s not a time he cares to think about too much. So Jensen keeps his hands busy and his brain locked in the job of renovating the house he’s no longer sure he can stay in.
The first cut feels like a small blow, and for a second Jensen honestly thinks he knocked into something. Except he’s standing in an empty room against a wall with his sander and there’s nothing to bump into even if he was moving in such a way that would…
It’s the second cut that gets him moving, his leg already bleeding through the beat-up jeans he’s been working in and the pain suddenly burning through him with no warning. Jensen feels the temperature of the room drop rapidly, and he wonders if maybe all those times he mocked himself about being the idiot in the horror movie are now coming back to haunt him.
A hysterical laugh bursts through his mouth at the internal wording even as the door slams shut in front of him and Jensen is cut off from escape. He’s on the second floor, and the drop from the window is straight down.
When Jensen turns he sees his box cutter floating in the air, glinting with his own blood, and he takes a deep breath before trying to figure out how to combat an invisible enemy with a very sharp knife.
This is where his time would have been better served taking self-defense classes instead of getting wasted at bar trivia nights.
He jerks left when the box cutter comes at him, and then it feints and he buys it and gets a slash to his arm for his trouble. Jensen is fairly certain he’s going to die in here, just like this, at the hands of someone he was probably introduced to. Someone close to Jared.
Jared. He lied. He told Jensen death brought on a certain level of Zen and Jensen had believed him. Jensen had bought into the mystic ghost bullshit. Now he’s going to pay for it. To pay for staying. To pay for living when it should have been that kid. That fucking kid. He remembers wet roads, the squeal of tires, and a hand clutching at his shirt as a weak voice cried for its mother.
“STOP!”
The room is suddenly warm, the box cutter clatters to the wood floor, and Jensen is standing with his bleeding arm covering his face and hiding him from whatever has saved his life. Cool hands take his arm, lower it, and then Jensen is looking into the bright blue of Christian’s eyes. He can see Aldis standing behind Chris, and beyond that Jared whose mouth is tight and face dark.
He loses consciousness.
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Date: 2016-07-16 05:12 pm (UTC)