Glowing Like the Metal on the Edge of a Knife Epilogue

[eachdraidhean]

Jared came round lying in a hospital bed, the clean white sheets a stark contrast to his bruised skin. He whimpered and opened his eyes a crack, looking around the room.

He saw Jensen curled up on a couch on the corner of the room, fast asleep, Misha standing by the window and Jeff sitting beside the bed, his head in his hands.

“Hey.” Jared’s voice was hoarse, dusty.

“Hey yourself.” Jeff looked up and smiled, getting to his feet and bending down over Jared, carefully squeezing his hand. “How’re you doing, Sammy?”

“You do know that Sam isn’t real, don’t you Jeff?”

“Good to have you back, Jay.” Jeff grinned at him. “Let me wake Jensen up.”

"What happened?"

"We'll fill you in on that later. Just rest up for now, okay?

Misha grinned at Jared over Jeff's shoulder.

"Good to have you back, man."

Jeff walked over to the couch and crouched down, speaking softly to Jensen until the other man roused and blinked sleepily at him.

“He’s awake?”

“Yeah.”

Jensen scrambled off the couch and was across the room and by Jared’s side in seconds.

“You okay?” Concern etched his face and Jared raised a hand and touched his arm.

“I will be.” He sighed happily when Jensen brushed the hair back from his face. “Did we save the world?”

“I guess we did.”

“Isn’t there a reward for doing that?” Jared sounded adorably groggy from the drugs in his system.

“Yeah, we get our own private island with free pizza for the rest of our lives.”

“Yeah? Sweet. Do we get a boat too?” He snuggled back against the pillow as Jensen took his hand.

“Mmm hmm. And there’s a beer fountain …”

Jeff grinned at them, and pulled open the door, looking round for Misha, but he'd already gone.

“I’ll give you guys a moment and go and let the nurses know Jay’s awake.” He paused before he left. “You did good, both of you. I might not really be your Dad, but I’m proud of you all the same.”

He smiled sheepishly and they grinned back.


~*~*~*~*~*~


Jared spent the next two days in the small hospital, until the staff were sure he was okay. The healed wound over his heart had perplexed not only the local doctors, but a specialist or two that had been contacted when it was first thought he’d need cardiac surgery. While he lay in bed, Jensen and his visitors filled him in on exactly what had happened. The doctor assured him that his memories would return, but it might be in fits and starts.

Jensen was sleeping in a cot in Jared’s room that a nurse had arranged for him, so when Jared shot awake on the second night, clutching his chest, Jensen was straight there, wide awake and running a soothing hand over Jared’s shoulder.

“You … you stabbed me through the heart!” His fingers rubbed over the scar.

“I told you, Jay.” Jensen said softly.

“I know, but it didn’t seem real. Now I remember.”

Jensen sat back, but kept a reassuring hand on Jared’s arm. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Misha promised it would work, but … I killed you, Jay, even if it only was for a moment. I killed you.” Jensen’s voice had fallen to a whisper, and now it was Jared’s turn to do some reassuring.

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“Doesn’t make me feel better about it. What if he'd been wrong? What if love hadn't saved you? You’d have died in my arms.” Jensen trembled, and Jared realized they’d be living with the aftermath of what they’d been through for a long time to come.

“You saved me, Jen, and you saved the world.” Jared cupped his friend’s face, and Jensen leaned into the touch.

“I didn’t care about the world, I only cared about you.”

Jared pulled him closer, until Jensen was lying on the bed beside him, and curled around him.

"Wait. Love saved me?"

"Mmm hmm. Can we talk about that later?" Jensen buried his head in Jared's shoulder and Jared grinned.

“Okay, but I'm holding you to that. Sleep here tonight. I need you close.” Jared kissed Jensen’s forehead, and Jensen nodded and gratefully snuggled closer.

In the morning, the nurse found them wrapped around each other, and let them sleep way past hospital breakfast time. Theo had spoken to her and implied that they deserved a little special treatment, and she knew that the hunter might be an arrogant ass most of the time, but when it came to dealing with the kind of thing that had gone down in the mountains, he knew his stuff. He'd saved her daughter from a werewolf two years back, so she happily kept an eye on the two men.


~*~*~*~*~*~


The hotel stayed closed that summer, and Theo and Matt came up with a story that would have made the Winchesters proud. Once Jared got out of hospital, he wanted to go back, see the place again for himself, so Jensen went with him. They stood on the side of the serene lake in awe that it still looked the same after everything that had happened.

They drove a little further into the mountains and Jensen cracked open a couple of beers. Their friendship had returned in force, and the other things that lay between them now had mainly gone unspoken of.

“We could get a place up here, deep in the mountains, away from Hollywood.”

“We? I thought you liked girls. Girls with breasts, remember? I haven’t grown a pair Jen, still just flat muscled me here.”

Jensen slid a hand down Jared’s stomach, over the swell of his half hard cock in his pants, and cupped his balls.

“That’s the only ‘pair’ I need Jay, and from what I can remember, they’re pretty impressive.”

Jared grinned smugly. “You remember?”

Jensen shook his head and grinned back. “I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday.”

Jared choked with laughter on his beer, spraying the mouthful across the dashboard.

“Oh god, you’re not going to burst into song, are you?”

“It’s a tempting thought, given my mouth isn’t busy with anything else right now.” Jensen teased.

“I can fix that.” Jared put the bottle down and reached for Jensen, pulling him closer across the divide of the seats. He kissed him, long and slow, fulfilling a need that had been gnawing at him for years. When the need to breathe made him pull back, Jensen sang very softly across his lips.

“Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night,“ Jensen’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned at Jared. “I can see paradise by the dashboard light.”

Jared pulled further away and howled, never letting go of Jensen. He wiped the tears of laughter away from his eyes with his free hand.

“You’re a dork, you know that, don’t you?”

Jensen nodded. “I’m your dork, Jay.” He was suddenly nervous. “If you still want me?”

He could tell by the look in Jared’s eyes and the way he kissed him soundly that he did.


~*~*~*~*~*~


They went home, to opposite sides of the country. Commitments meant that they couldn’t spend time with each other straight away. Jared’s latest movie was premiering at a quirky theatre in New York, and Jensen wrangled himself an invite.

After all the times Jared had climbed him like a tree in front of the press or wrapped his long limbs around him, kissed him, goosed him, picked him up or simply hugged him, Jensen guessed it was time to get his own back.

He walked casually along the red carpet, to where Jared stood talking to Kirsten from E!. she spotted him and beckoned him over. Jared’s face brightened into a huge grin as he saw him, and he reached for him wrapping him up in a bear hug.

“Jensen Ackles! Here to support your ex co-star?”

“That I am.” Jensen smiled. “And to do something I should have done a long time ago, Kirsten.”

“Really? And what’s that?”

Jensen could see Jared looking at him with a puzzled expression on his face.

“This.”

Jensen turned to Jared and cupped his face in his hand. He gave his friend seconds to object, to pull away and laugh it off as a prank, and he would have gone with it, but Jared just stared at him. Jensen leaned forward and kissed him, a soft, almost chaste kiss against his warm lips, but Jared took it further, and kissed him back, firmly, possessively, and then, to the delight of Kirsten and the rest of the assembled crowd, he dipsmooched Jensen, who squeaked at the sudden movement, and grinned up at Jared.

“So is that a yes to Montana?”

“It’s a yes to everything.”

Amidst cat calls, whistles and hollers, Jared kissed Jensen again and for the next month, whenever the interview aired, and it aired often, it was accompanied by Faith Hill’s “This Kiss".

"It's the way you love me, it's a feeling like this, it's centrifugal motion, it's perpetual bliss. It's that pivotal moment, it's impossible, this kiss, this kiss? Unstoppable....."

THE END!!


AUTHOR'S NOTES

First of all, a huge thank you to Apieceofcake for the wonderful art work she did to go with the fic. She really captured the heart of the story in pictures.

Thanks to the mods of the rpf_big_bang community. I've only written a couple of short RPS fics before this, and it gave me the opportunity to work on a decent sized RPS fic.

The story itself was born out of jet lag. After a longer than expected trip home from the States in August, I was curled up on the couch suffering from jet lag and ended up watching Galaxy Quest. Next thing I know, it's two days later, and I've written the best part of a 10,000 word draft based around the vague thought that an SPN version of Galaxy Quest would be fun. As for Meatloaf, don't ask where the idea to include that came from. I just don't know! I'm gonna blame the jet lag for that too.

The hotel is real. It's called Many Glaciers, and during my trip to the States, I was lucky enough to head up there one evening while I was staying in East Glacier in Montana. It looks like an over-sized Swiss chalet, and sits on the edge of a mirror like lake surrounded by mountains.