Your Strength

The rest of the date went really well, and Jensen was pleased with how smoothly the conversation flowed. There were hardly any awkward pauses like on normal first dates—and any that did occur usually were because they had to pause in the middle of a potentially embarrassing conversation while the waiter came and checked on them. Jensen found himself laughing easier than he had in a long while. He thought that it was nice having someone around who didn’t know all the ugliness of his past. He loved Chris, Chad, and Danny, but they all looked at him like he was…broken. Cracked. But he wasn’t made of porcelain, and he hated the pitying looks they shot between each other when he was having a bad day and they didn’t think he could see.

Jared, on the other hand, was simply a bright light. He knew exactly what to do to make Jensen laugh when he was feeling a little tense. He knew when to smile, and when to frown. And above all else, he never looked at Jensen like he was anything but whole.

After desert and coffee came, they fought over who was supposed to pay the check.

“I chose the restaurant,” Jensen pointed out.

“I asked you out, everyone knows the initiator pays the check,” Jared said defiantly.

“Yeah, but that’s only when the initiator chooses the restaurant, which you did not,” Jensen argued and Jared laughed, rolling his eyes.

“That’s so dumb! My not picking the restaurant was simply a technical aspect. You knew a good place—I didn’t want to take you to some crap hole after all,” Jared narrowed his eyes at Jensen. “Just let me pay, Ackles.”

Jensen laughed at Jared’s faux angry look. “Fine, you get this one, but next date, it’s on me.”

“Obviously,” Jared agreed. “I thought that was implied.”

After Jared paid, he drove Jensen to home. It was late, they had managed to stay nearly until the restaurant closed. Jared walked Jensen up to his front door, and they both grinned at each other as, without any prelude or awkwardness, they leaned in simultaneously, their mouths meeting. Jensen liked that Jared let him lead the kiss, and he made it slow and deep. He could feel Jared’s erection as Jensen pushed him up against the doorframe, and he knew that Jared could most likely feel Jensen’s mirrored against his thigh.

“Do you want to come in?” Jensen finally murmured against Jared’s lips. Jared moaned but then pulled back just a little, so his lips just barely brushed against Jensen’s, like a promise.

“No,” Jared replied and Jensen nearly recoiled from shock, but Jared must have seen that reaction coming because he pressed his mouth urgently for a moment against Jensen’s before pulling back again and adding, “Because I’m no fool, Mr. Ackles. I know that if I come inside, where it will lead, and you respect me far more than that, don’t you?”

“That was very 1920’s southern belle,” Jensen commented, laughing, and kissing Jared again. “As for respect…of course I respect you…but that doesn’t change based on location. I would respect you just as much in between my sheets as I would here on the porch.”

Jared laughed against Jensen’s lips and Jensen found that he liked the vibration of it, the reverberation into his own throat from Jared’s. “That’s good to know,” Jared laughed again, pecking Jensen’s lips a couple times before really leaning back. “Very good to know. But nonetheless, I better go. Or else my southern belle moralities may waver.”

“Oh, in that case,” Jensen growled playfully, pulling him into another long kiss, ending in Jared’s eventual moan.

“God…” Jared let out before stepping back and grinning. “You’re perfect and there’s no way we’re having sex tonight.”

Jensen groaned. “Why so strict?”

“I don’t believe in sex before marriage,” Jared finally replied, his smile gone. Jensen laughed and then quieted.

“Wait…really?” he asked, frowning and Jared burst into laughter.

“Oh…oh God…that was the most difficult ten seconds of my life,” Jared took in a long deep breath. “No, not really. Of course not really! Although, I really should be going…”

Jensen laughed and then sighed. “Alright, thank you for tonight.”

Jared smiled at him hugely. “I should be thanking you. I haven’t had steak that good in a while.”

“It’s one of my favorite places,” Jensen admitted, grinning. “Reminds me of home.”

Jared took a step down from the porch and paused. “When…when do you want to do something next?”

Jensen grinned at him. “I was going to wait until tomorrow to call you, so I seemed suave or whatever, but since you asked: you free next Tuesday?”

Jared smiled, and laughed. “You don’t have to try to be suave. I feel like you just achieve it, all by yourself.”

Jensen rolled his eyes. “Focus, Jared. Tuesday.”

Jared laughed. “Tuesday. Uh, yeah, I think I should be. Is Tuesday a date night? I thought there was a rule about dating on the weekdays?”

“Enough with you and all your rules,” Jensen said. “Tuesday, 5:00. I’ll pick you up.”

“In the morning?” Jared inquired.

“No,” Jensen said, throwing up his hands. “Who even gets up at five in the morning?”

“I do, sometimes,” Jared admitted. “To run the dogs before I leave to go on set. But only when I’m working.”

Jensen grimaced. “Yeah, no, that’s disgusting. I am not a morning person.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Jared commented, laughing. Jensen deadpanned.

“Why? I have such a sunny disposition,” he said, somehow keeping a completely straight face before breaking into a smile.

Jared laughed. “Yeah, alright, Tuesday at 5:00.”

Jared took another step down and paused again on the walkway. “Will…I mean, will I see you before that?”

Jensen tried not to grin, and failed. “Well, my best friend owns a bar, so I hang out on Saturday nights, sometimes.”

“I sincerely hope that you mean someone other than Chris,” Jared laughed. “Because that place is a dump.”

Jensen laughed too. “Hey,” he replied, mock warningly. “It’s not as bad as it seems. I rather like it.”

“Alright, noted,” Jared grinned. “See you tomorrow, then. I mean…maybe. I don’t know. I’ll check my schedule.”

“Right,” Jensen snorted. “You’re a busy man.”

“Exactly…” Jared agreed, with a smile. “I mean…my schedule is pretty packed, so I’ll see you when I see you. I don’t know if I have time for pre-second dates…”

Jensen laughed and rolled his eyes. “Understandable,” he agreed. “I’ll cross my fingers.”

“Aw, cute,” Jared winked, finally turning. Jensen took a long moment to appreciate Jared’s retreating form before turning around to open his door. When he entered his large, quiet house, he let out a sigh of relief. That had gone better than he could’ve ever hoped. He allowed himself, for just a moment, to think of the possibilities. Waking up next to the large man on the mornings he didn’t rise freakishly early…what his two (presumably) sweet dogs would look like running around in his backyard…a pair a slightly larger shoes thrown next to his own neatly ordered pair by the door. He hadn’t wanted that since…well, for a while. He hadn’t even wanted to date for a while. All he really had wanted to do was simply be. Be without any pressure, be without anyone leering over his shoulder.

Jensen hated thinking about Charlie, even after more than two years, but his mind wandered there, standing alone in the darkness of his house. He had dated before Charlie, sure, but when he had met him, it had felt almost like they were cut from the same material. The first time Charlie had hit him, Jensen had been angry. But Charlie apologized profusely, and somehow wove into Jensen’s mind, just a little, that perhaps Charlie hadn’t been completely unreasonable to become just a little violent.

“Sorry, baby…but you were being so unreasonable,” he would say. Or, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I hate when I’m right,” or, “I felt like you were purposefully pushing my buttons, but I didn’t mean to hit you.”

The first time, he had let it slide, even the second time, he hadn’t put up much of a fight. It was the third time, however, that he finally fought back. Charlie had backhanded him, right across the cheekbone, after Jensen had mentioned that he was starting to tutor a lower classman in English. Charlie had sworn Jensen had meant more when he said ‘tutor’.

“It’s a euphemism!” Charlie had snarled, verging on tears. “You’re fucking this little freshman and telling me, straight to my face, thinking I won’t know what you mean!”

Jensen was appalled, called him crazy, and tried to storm off. That’s when Charlie had pulled him back, hard enough that he stumbled and fell into the glass coffee table, splitting open the skin across his forehead. Charlie knelt down, rubbing the blood away from Jensen’s eyes.

“Baby, don’t you love me?” he asked and Jensen tried not to recoil. “I’m sorry…but you can’t cheat on me. You can’t. I couldn’t bear it. You can’t leave me, don’t you see? We’re the best there will ever be for each other. We’re perfect together. You can’t leave me, this will always be how it ends, we’ll both get hurt.”

It had been the first threat of many. For a year, Jensen slowly began to spiral into a pit of terror, never knowing when Charlie would fall back into the deep end, and take out his anger on him. Any time Jensen tried to fight back, Charlie somehow spun it to look like Jensen was the abuser, not Charlie, or that by fighting back, Jensen was just as bad, if not worse than Charlie.

Jensen began to slowly think that he had done something inherently wrong, and this was his punishment: forced to love someone who only wished to cause him pain. He tried to take it, and was even successful for a time, managing to appear somewhat normal to the outside world. He would hang out with Chris, and Jensen knew that Chris knew, but so long as it didn’t come up, Jensen could allow himself to finally let his guard down, finally allow his muscles to relax, stop awaiting the blow that they knew was coming.

It wasn’t until that fateful day that Danny had shown up at the apartment. Jensen had hoped against all hopes that neither Chris or Danny would try to check up on him. He tried to keep this side of his life away from them, didn’t want to poison them too. So he only faced them when he thought the bruises and cuts and scrapes seemed a little less conspicuous, something everyone could easily brush away without dwelling. But for the past weeks, maybe months even, Jensen wasn’t really sure, it was as if Charlie liked the look of him with a split lip more than he liked Jensen’s face whole and unscathed. Or if it wasn’t the split lip, it was a gash across his eyebrow, a too-purple bruise on jaw, a swollen nose that needed to be reset. He had always thought himself just a little too broken to be excused, a little too banged up to be seen by the ones he felt as though were his only glimpse into reality. He somehow convinced himself that perhaps Charlie was simply a dream-turned-nightmare, and one day he would wake up, with all the pain gone.

It was Danny that was the true wake up call. She had shown up out of the blue, and Jensen thanked God, even years later, that Charlie had been in the shower when she knocked on the door. It was poor timing, all around, Jensen had thought shortly after. The day before, Charlie had come home with a particularly nasty rage running through his veins, and had popped Jensen right in the eye. His face was still swollen, and purple, though not as much as it could have been, had Jensen not become a professional at making bruises disappear quickly.

He had answered the door reluctantly, after seeing who it was through the peephole and knowing she wouldn’t go away until someone answered—and much better Jensen than Charlie.

He had opened the door a crack, enough to peek out with his good eye. “Danny, can we please meet up, later? This is not a good time.”

“We haven’t seen you in forever,” Danny said, her voice breaking. She seemed close to tears and this made Jensen feel even worse. If she saw him how he was, he knew that it would make her cry, that he would make her cry.

“This isn’t a good time, Danny,” Jensen pleaded. “Please. I promise, later. Later this week.”

“That’s not good enough,” Danny said, and with surprising force, pushed the door open. Jensen flinched away from it, having experienced too many times the force at which it could hit him when he had tried to keep Charlie at bay in the past. Danny froze when she saw Jensen’s face, and he was proven right when a small tear slipped out from her glassy eyes. “Oh, Jensen…” she said, her voice breaking. She reached out to touch his face, making him flinch away again. Her arm dropped like a rock, her expression a swirl of pain and surprise.

“Everything’s fine, I’m taking care of it,” Jensen told her, keeping her at a distance.

“Taking care of what?” came Charlie’s voice from behind him. Jensen froze and his blood turned cold. “Danny, long time, no see. What brings you by?” Charlie continued, nonchalant as we walked up behind Jensen, placing a too-firm grip around the back of his neck. Jensen forced himself not to cringe, not to add to the situation.

“Get away from him.” Danny’s voice was a low snarl, and the look in her eyes at flipped from heartbroken to angry in a blink. Jensen could feel Charlie’s grip tightening on his neck, and his heart stuttered as he tried to warn Danny away with his eyes.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Danny,” Charlie warned. “If you’re worried about the shiner, let me tell you that I had nothing to do with it. Our Jensen here is tremendously clumsy.”
“Bullshit,” Danny spat. “That’s complete bullshit. Now, let him go. He’s leaving. Now.”

Charlie laughed then, and Jensen’s heart sank even lower. “Oh, and you’re going to force him out. What? You think he doesn’t want to be here or something? If he didn’t want to be here, why hasn’t he left me? Because he loves me, that’s why. Right, Jensen?”

Jensen didn’t answer immediately, but the longer he waited, the more pressure Charlie put on his neck, until finally, he knew that he would have deep bruises, and he was seeing spots in his vision.

“Yes,” he gasped and was rewarded by the immediate lack of pressure as Charlie’s hand fell from his neck, down to the small of his back.

“See?” Charlie said, gloatingly.

“That’s not love, that’s force,” Danny said. “I’m calling the cops on you, and you’re going to jail, Charlie. Where you can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

It was like Jensen saw the very familiar switch from threatening Charlie snap into aggressive Charlie in the blink of an eye, and he knew that Danny could be in some serious trouble.

“You bitch,” Charlie growled, and took a step towards Danny.

“No,” Jensen yelled, putting a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie swung around and decked Jensen across the jaw. Jensen fell to the floor but panicked as Charlie turned to a now furious Danny. He sprang back up and tackled Charlie around the middle. They both hit the floor with an oomph, and Danny was yanking out her cell phone, dialing the police. Charlie jumped from Jensen’s arms and kicked him, hard, in the stomach. Jensen fell back to his hands and knees, and Charlie kept kicking, and kicking, until Jensen could feel vomit in his throat, and blood in his mouth. He vaguely saw Danny drop her cell and run to his assistance, only to be hit across the jaw by Charlie. She fell to the ground and didn’t move for a moment. In Charlie’s distraction, Jensen rose unsteadily, putting a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, and punching him in the face when he turned.

“Goddamnit, Jensen!” Charlie growled. “What have I told you? Stay down!” Charlie turned and plowed into Jensen, pushing him with great force across the short room and into the glass of the balcony doors. With a loud smack, Charlie shoved Jensen through the glass, which shattered around him, and fell atop him, Jensen’s head hitting the concrete with a sickening smack. Blood first started spreading from his head, and then slowly from all the cuts on his back.

Charlie straddled him, putting his hands around Jensen’s neck and squeezing. “You love me, Jensen!” he screamed and Jensen flailed, trying to land a solid hit while searching for air that he knew wouldn’t come. He didn’t see Danny come up behind Charlie, and only distantly heard the thunk as she slammed him over the head with their cast iron skillet. Charlie landed heavily on Jensen’s body and Danny struggled for a moment, trying to shove him off. Eventually, she succeeded and her frantic hands flitted over Jensen, not sure where to land. Jensen was still having issues breathing, and his vision was blurring with huge black spots.

“Oh, shit,” Danny breathed. “You’re losing a lot of blood, Jensen.”

She yanked at him, trying for gentle, until she helped him manage to crawl into the living room and collapse on the carpet. He could still hardly breathe and he could tell that Danny was very worried, by the silent tears that slipped down her cheeks.

Her hands kept flitting to his pulse point in his neck, checking to see if he was still alive. “Hang in there, Jensen. The police are going to get here soon.”

Jensen eventually found the determination to reach over, very slowly, and grab Danny’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” he managed to scrape out through his ruined neck, covered in bruises and blood and the fingerprints of a man he thought he loved.

Danny let out a small sob and her hand fell to Jensen’s cheek. “That’s my line,” she told him and that’s when he blacked out. When he awoke, he was in a hospital, hooked up to a million different machines that beeped at different times and lit up the otherwise dark room with weird neon light. Later, Danny told Jensen that when he had passed out, she was sure he was dead, that it was the scariest time in her entire life. His pulse was so weak, that she hadn’t caught it, and she freaked out, called the police three more times before the first of the cars arrived. She also told Jensen that Charlie had fallen into a coma, and given the circumstances, the police were not pressing charges against Danny. In fact, when Charlie woke up, he was certainly guaranteed time in jail. However, he did not wake up, and in a coma he remains.

Jensen didn’t talk for a long while, partly because his throat was damaged from Charlie’s strangling, and partly because he couldn’t bring himself to face the pain that surrounded him. He looked at his life, what it had become the past year, and he didn’t want to do anything, didn’t think he could. Until one of his professors informed him that, though he had missed the final exam, he could make it up if he hurried. All of his professors agreed, once they had learned of his stay in the hospital, to let him make up his final exams, and he barely graduated, with honors. School had always been a part of Jensen’s life where he could go, and know that even if he came with a black eye or split lip, he could still leave and feel fairly anonymous. He went to a fairly large public university, after all.

He didn’t like what his life had become, but after graduation, when he sat in front of his laptop for the first time in what felt like years, knowing that whatever he wrote, he could finally be done with it—that was when he finally felt safe again.