Your Strength

Jared pounded out three loud knocks on Chad’s door, loud enough that he knew Chad would have to wake up if still asleep. It took a moment, but sure enough, Chad answered in pajamas, bed head worse than Jared had ever seen.

“I come with gifts,” Jared told him, holding up the brown bag that held two burgers. “Greasy burgers, cure all for a hangover.”

“Danny swears by that,” Chad muttered as he allowed Jared entrance. “Did you bring coffee too?”

“Dude, who brings coffee with burgers?” Jared snorted.

“People who are trying to cure their friend’s hangover,” Chad complained. “I’ve already taken, like, eight aspirins and my head is still pounding.”

“You’re not used to Absinthe,” Jared stated. “Don’t feel bad, though. No one is really used to Absinthe.”

“Never again,” Chad groaned. They both walked over to the breakfast bar in Chad’s kitchen, plopping down on bar stools. Jared took out the two burgers and two cartons of fries, distributing one of each to Chad. They sat in silence for a few moments as they both ate. Once Chad had gotten about half way through his burger and was looking a little more alive, Jared cleared his throat.

“So…uh,” he began and Chad raised his eyebrows at him. “So, I asked Jensen out.”

Chad’s eyebrows shot up higher and he immediately blurted out, “Uh-oh.”

Jared shook his head, smiling. “No, he said yes.”

Chad let out a low whistle and Jared frowned at him. “Wow,” Chad murmured. “Good, he would’ve been an idiot to have said no.”

“Aw, shucks,” Jared rolled his eyes. “How much of last night do you remember?”

“Bits and pieces, why?” Chad narrowed his eyes at Jared.

“Well…you guys were just…I don’t know, hinting at something about Jensen that he got really stiff with,” Jared said and Chad groaned, rubbing his eyes.

“God, Absinthe sucks,” Chad moaned. “He’s going to be so pissed if we told you about that.”

“No, you didn’t tell me,” Jared said. “You just hinted. But…I mean…what is it? I know you can’t tell me…but I like Jensen. Or at least I think, it’s not like we have spent a lot of time together yet, but he seems kind of, I don’t know, like a flight risk. I just don’t want to do something wrong.”

Chad snorted. “Aw, you’re cute Jared. But really, I promise that if Jensen decides to run, it’s not because of you.”

“Why? What do you mean?” Jared frowned deeply.

“Jensen is very cautious,” Chad said slowly. “And he has damn good reason to be. But that means that a lot of the time he’s overly cautious, so if he runs, it’s probably because he’s over thinking.”

“Why does he have reason to be cautious?” Jared pressed and Chad pursed his lips.

“Look…I really shouldn’t tell you, it’s definitely something that he should tell you,” Chad started. “I mean, he won’t tell you, probably. He didn’t even tell me, Chris told me, and now it’s just kind of an understanding between us that I know and he knows I know.”

“Why did Chris tell you?” Jared inquired.

“Because he needed to explain to me why he needed to bail on a gig,” Chad said. “Jensen ended up in the hospital.”

Jared’s eyebrows shot up and concern colored his tone as he asked, “Oh, my God, what happened?”

Chad sighed deeply. “If I tell you the story, will you promise not to tell Jensen you know. And if he ends up telling you, then you have to act like you haven’t heard it before, okay?”

Jared slowly nodded. He was caught in between feeling guilty and dying of curiosity.

“Okay, and to be honest, I don’t know the whole story myself. I’m pretty sure only Danny knows the whole story, and that’s only because she was there,” Chad said further.

“Okay, just tell me what you know, then,” Jared encouraged.

“Yeah, alright. Well, Jensen came out here for college when he was eighteen, right? Well, sophomore year of college, he met Charlie. Now, I wasn’t around for the first bit, I met Chris and started the band towards the end, so this is all I’ve heard from Chris. Apparently, they were very passionate about each other, very much avert-your-eyes disgustingly in love in the beginning.

“They dated for two years. The first nine or ten months were great, but then one day, Jensen showed up at the bar with a bruise on his jaw. Chris asked him how he got it, he told him he fell. It was that kind of thing, he’d come in beat up somehow and say it had been just a clumsy accident. Of course, at the beginning, there were weeks in between each bruise or whatever, so it was believable. But then it increased. He’d have some sort of new thing every other week, then once a week, then he stopped coming around the bar as much to avoid the questions. This is when I came in, about a year into their relationship.

“I knew something was up with him the first time I met him. Chris had told me all these great stories about what an awesome guy he was, how fun loving and crazy he was, and so I was psyched to meet this dude. Then one day, I come into the bar and I see Chris serving this guy, talking very animatedly to him. The guy was kind of hunched down a little and had his face turned away from Chris at a weird angle. I walked up, and Chris stopped talking immediately. He introduced us, and Jensen had to turn to shake my hand. When he did, I saw he had this gnarly bruise across his cheek, with a welt that looked like whoever hit him had been wearing a ring. So you know, I didn’t know this was a touchy subject at the time, so I was like, ‘You get into a bar fight or something, dude?’ He agreed that was what happened, but then Chris said, ‘Jensen, you don’t go to any other bars.’ And Jensen looked like he’d been cornered and bailed. Chris ran after him, and I knew there was going to be some kind of drama with this guy.

“Well, this goes on for nearly a year, and I barely saw the guy. He would come in on days where the bruises were pretty much faded, and seemed to be able to unwind a little, so long as no one brought them up. But those days still probably only added up to about a week cumulative over the year, maybe a little more. The last four months were the worse. He didn’t come in at all, and Chris was on edge all the time. He’d call Danny, who I had only met a couple times at that point too. She would tell him that she only talked to him on the phone every once in a while. They were worried, like a lot. So, I guess one day they got together and decided one of them would have to go to Jensen and Charlie’s house. Chris decided that it might be too much for him to go, so they decided Danny would be less threatening, or whatever. Now, this is where the details get fuzzy. I don’t know what happened when she went over, but I know that it ended up with her having a bruised jaw and Jensen ended up in the hospital with seven broken ribs, a fractured skull, and a scars that I’ve only seen once since across his chest and back. I don’t know what happened to Charlie, Jensen bails any time anyone even hints at mentioning it. But he’s better now. Even since I’ve known him, I can see that he’s better.”

Jared’s head was fighting with emotions that made him want to cry and find this Charlie guy so he could murder him. “Oh my God,” he murmured.

“Yeah, exactly,” Chad agreed. “Jensen spent a week in the hospital, and he wouldn’t talk—not only about Charlie or what happened, but not at all. Chris told me that he wouldn’t talk with anyone, not his doctors, not Danny, no one. But then, a month later he graduated college, because he had kept up his grades and everything through all this somehow—the guy is wicked smart. He started to write, he’d sold a few screenplays in college to indie film directors and contests I’m told, but it was when he started to write about Charlie that he really started shaping up. The moment he finished, he wouldn’t let anyone read it. He just sent it out through his agent, and within a week it was sold. He wrote it in the three months after college. Now, he’s written a few other screenplays that are in production now, he’s really good. Don’t tell him I said that, though.”

Jared was amazed. “Wow, he’s been through a lot,” Jared murmured. “He’s strong to have moved past it.”

“Yeah,” Chad nodded. “I’m glad you see it that way.”

“How else would I see it?” Jared frowned.

“Let me tell you, there’s certainly a stigma against men as abuse victims. You’d be surprised what crap Jensen went through afterwards.” Chad shook his head. “His father didn’t really believe or didn’t want to believe it until he won the Oscar. Then it’s all, ‘My son is a hero, survived this and survived that’.”

“That’s horrible!” Jared exclaimed, angry again. “How could they do that to him?”

“Oh, it wasn’t a them situation,” Chad said. “Just his father. I think the rest of his family was relatively good about it. I know that his sister stayed out here with him for a about a week before she had to go back to work.”

“That’s good,” Jared said lowly.

“Yeah,” Chad agreed. “So now you know. Jensen moves at his own pace, so don’t try to push him too far, okay? And I don’t mean to sound protective, especially to my oldest friend, but seriously don’t hurt him.”

Jared laughed a little. “I don’t think I could.”

“Yeah, that’s what you say now, but be careful.” Chad warned and then finished his burger in two bites.