Work Text:
Now
They haven’t been this close in sixteen years.
“Morning,” Jared says, still groggy with sleep, sitting down in front of his screen and placing his safety-cup of coffee carefully in its designated holder.
“Morning, sleepyhead.” Jensen looks wide awake, and his smile is a little strained. He must have had a long day.
“Did you get any sleep at all?”
Jensen’s smile vanishes altogether, as though the effort of keeping up appearances is too much. “We still haven’t found the problem.”
“Hey,” Jared says, tapping the screen. “Look at me.”
Jensen finally meets his gaze, and Jared can tell that he’s terrified.
“We have air for six more days. We’ll get to the problem. I know we will, okay? We’ll fix it.”
—
Then
Jared kisses Jensen for the first time when he’s sixteen and Jensen is twenty.
Jensen’s adoptive mothers are fostering Jared. Kim Rhodes is a cop and her wife, Samantha Smith, teaches Medieval Studies at the university.
It happens on a winter evening just a couple of weeks before the winter holidays. Jared and Jensen have been on their own at home, at which Jared has been staying for six months. It’s the happiest he’s ever been in his life — as happy as he can be given that he’s spent the last six years in the foster system. They’ve been hanging ornaments on the giant Christmas tree in the Rhodes-Smiths’ living room when Jared leans in and brushes his mouth against Jensen’s, both of them in awkward positions on their knees in front of the tree.
Jensen tastes like the hot cocoa they’ve just been drinking, and his black sweater is fuzzy and warm where Jared’s fingers curl into the front of it. He stays frozen for a moment, and Jared is just beginning to wonder if he’s going to be pushed away and punched hard in the face when Jensen cups his chin and kisses him back, his other arm going around Jared to pull him in close against Jensen’s body.
“I’ve wanted to do that forever,” Jensen says when they pull apart, his voice no louder than a whisper even though they’re alone at home, his arms still holding Jared. It’s the safest and most loved that Jared’s felt in his entire life.
The feeling doesn’t last.
—
It’s all great for a while. They sneak kisses when no one’s watching, and Jared sometimes crawls into Jensen’s bed at night when he can’t sleep, although they both have separate rooms. They don’t have sex, but Jared doesn’t need sex from Jensen, not at that point in his life. He’s got a past, a history of violence and bad experiences that he hasn’t shared with anyone in his foster home yet. Jensen doesn’t seem to mind that Jared isn’t interested in sex. He seems to know exactly what Jared needs, with his mouth pressed against the top of Jared’s head and his fingers tracing gentle circles on the small of Jared’s back, lulling him to sleep.
In the mornings, they all breakfast together before going their separate ways. Samantha and Kim have two more foster children, Felicia and Rekha. Felicia is a senior in Jared’s school, and Rekha is a couple of years younger than him.
Jensen crunches into his toast, his foot against Jared’s under the table, and gives him a secret smile.
—
“Bye!” Gen calls as she drives off, waving to Jared.
Kim steps out of the house as Jared walks up the drive, smiling as he reaches the porch and pulling him into a quick hug. “How was your date, baby?”
“It wasn’t a date,” Jared says quickly. “We were working on that project for school. We’re just… we’re friends.”
“I’m sorry.” Kim tucks a strand of hair behind Jared’s ear. “Do you want it to be more?”
“No.” Jared takes a deep breath. “I love Gen, Mom. I do. But you know we met at the LGBT home.”
“I do, sweetie. I just… I thought you said you were bisexual.”
“I don’t know what I am, Mom. I guess… I just don’t like labels, you know?”
Kim pulls him into another hug, a longer one this time. She and Samantha aren’t his adoptive parents yet, but Jared has already begun to address them as ‘Mom’ and ‘Mama,’ just as their kids do. “I know the feeling,” she promises, squeezing his shoulder.
—
“You’re miles away,” Gen says, tapping the top of Jared’s head with her pencil.
“Sorry,” he says, guilty. “I was just…”
“Thinking about Jensen?” she says softly.
“I know it’s—I know we shouldn’t. I just… I can’t help it, Gen.”
“I know.”
“I just… I miss him so much when he’s away at college.”
“I know.”
“What am I going to do, Gen?”
“We’ll figure something out,” she says.
“Thanks for saying we.”
“Anytime. Now, can we get back to algebra? I’m sick of hearing about your love life while mine’s non-existent,” she teases, ruffling his hair.
—
“We have some good news.” Samantha smiles around the table, reaching for Kim’s hand. “You wanna tell them, honey?”
—
“Jared?” Jensen sounds groggy. It is past midnight, after all. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Sweetheart, you’re scaring me.” Jared can hear the bedclothes rustle as Jensen gets up. “Are you home? Are you okay?”
“Your moms are adopting me.”
“We knew that, Jay. Is something wrong?”
“They—they said all the paperwork’s come through. They just need my birth father to sign the consent forms.”
“Jared, I’m still not seeing the problem.”
“What about us?”
Jensen is silent for so long that Jared has to look at his phone’s screen to see if they’re still connected. “We knew it was going to happen,” he says finally.
“I know. I just… It just became real tonight, you know? When they said it’s all going to happen soon.”
“Don’t freak out, okay?” Jensen says, and his voice is so soothing that Jared calms a little. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Okay,” Jared whispers.
“Hey,” Jensen says, still in that gentle tone. “If you’re going to have a meltdown over this, just wait until I’m home so I can hold you while you’re freaking out, all right?”
Jared lets out a little laugh. “All right.”
“That’s my boy,” Jensen says. “You want me to play you something?”
“You should go back to sleep.”
“Nah, I can spare a few minutes. Been working on something new that I want you to listen to.”
“Okay, then.” Jared’s smiling into the phone. He hears some muffled sounds as Jensen goes over to his keyboard, and then Jensen begins to play.
—
“We were thinking of setting up a court date for next week,” Kim says at breakfast. “We should hear from your father’s lawyers by then. Is that okay with you?”
“Can we, uh… can we wait until Jensen gets back for Easter break?”Jared asks. He sees his foster moms exchange a glance. “I’d really like the whole family to be there, you know?” he adds quickly.
“Of course, sweetheart.” Kim kisses him on the cheek. “We’ll all be there when we make the adoption official. This is just a formal meeting with your biological father.”
—
So I’m meeting my dad for the first time in court next week, Jared texts to Jensen.
Shit. Are you okay?
Yeah, I’m fine. Your moms are going with me.
They’ll be your moms too. Pretty soon.
God, I wish you were here. When’re you getting home?
Soon. I promise. Hang in there, OK?
—
Now
The space station’s life support has three days left.
“They’ll bring us back, right?” Danneel asks. “They won’t just leave us to die.”
“Not if it’s more expensive to get us back than to let us die,” Jared says.
“Cheerful, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry. I guess it’s just hard trying to stay positive when I’m talking to Jensen, you know?”
“So he gets the optimism and I get the gloomy face? I’m flattered, Padalecki.”
“What’s making you so positive, anyway?”
“I guess I don’t really think they’re going to leave us here to die. Not while Jensen’s in charge, anyway. Right?”
“I know he’ll do everything he can.”
“He has to, right? Weren’t you guys, like, foster brothers?”
“It was a long time ago,” Jared says, staring down at his unappetizing noodles. “We, uh, we hadn’t even spoken to each other in about ten years until I got this job.”
Danneel watches him silently for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories.”
Jared reaches over to squeeze her hand. “It’s all right. It wasn’t all bad. And we have bigger things to worry about right now.”
—
Then
“It’s going to be all right,” Samantha says. She’s always so kind and reassuring that Jared almost believes her, but the butterflies in his stomach refuse to settle.
After a wait of around thirty minutes, they’re finally called in before the adjudicator. Also in the room are a serious-looking lawyer and a middle-aged man who can only be Jared’s birth father.
“I’m Caroline Chikezie,” the lawyer says, shaking hands with Samantha and Kim. “And this is my client, Jerry Padalecki.”
Jerry Padalecki is tall, taller than Jared’s six feet. He’s wearing a charcoal-gray suit and has dark hair with silver at the temples. “Jared,” he says, getting to his feet. He nods at Jared’s foster mothers.
“Uh, hi,” Jared says, not really sure how to address the guy. ‘Mr Padalecki’ sounds kind of ridiculous seeing that they have the same last name, but he’s not sure he wants to go with ‘Dad’ either.
“You’ve grown so much,” his father says, and Jared is shocked to see that his eyes are glistening. “You were so little when I last saw you.”
“Samantha, Kim,” their lawyer, Samantha Ferris, says. “It seems there’s a bit of an unexpected development in the case.”
“What sort of development?” Kim asks, turning to her.
“Apparently Mr Padalecki here has changed his mind about signing the consent forms. He’s petitioning to get custody of Jared.”
—
“He can’t do that,” Jensen says. They’re at the dining table, and his hands are clenched into fists. “He abandoned Jared. How can he be allowed to just waltz back into Jared’s life? Especially after what he did to his mom?”
“He’s served his time for the accident. It was involuntary manslaughter, Jensen.” Kim scrubs a weary hand across her face, and Samantha squeezes her shoulder.
“I don’t care what they call it.” Jared tries not to let his voice shake but doesn’t really succeed. Jensen shifts his chair closer to Jared’s. “He killed our mom and never bothered to look us up when he got out of prison.”
“Jared—” Samantha begins, but Jared cuts her off.
“I’m sorry. I know you guys are trying to make things better, but I need to get out of here. I need to go see my sister.”
His foster moms exchange glances. “Of course, sweetheart,” Samantha says. “You want us to take you?”
“I’ll go with him,” Jensen says, putting a hand on Jared’s knee.
—
Jensen stops the car a block away from their house and holds out his arms. “C’mere.”
Jared is across the bench seat in an instant, burrowing into Jensen’s embrace. “I’m so glad you’re here.” His voice is muffled against Jensen’s shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay,” Jensen says, his arms tight around Jared.
—
“Can he really do that? Not let us get adopted?” Megan asks, biting her lip. They’re sitting on the porch of the group home she lives in, Jensen in a chair across from them, trying to give them space.
“I hope not, Meg.” Jared’s arm is around her shoulders. Megan has to stay in the home rather than with Jared because she’d been sent to juvie after taking a baseball bat to their former foster father’s knee when he’d hit Jared so hard that he’d knocked him out cold. Megan had grabbed the bat and brought him down before calling the cops. Despite Samantha and Kim’s attempt to talk the state out of sending her to a home, the judge had refused to relent, and Megan is due to remain at the girls’ home for another two months before the Rhodes-Smiths can petition to foster her.
“But what does he want with us? He never wanted us before. Why change his mind now?”
“This may be a little hard to believe,” Jensen says, speaking for the first time since they sat down. “But maybe he really does feel terrible about what happened and is trying to make amends.”
“It’s too little too late,” Jared says, his voice hard. “I have a family who loves me, two awesome foster moms who want to adopt me, maybe even Megan. Why can’t he just let us be happy?”
—
“We have some good news,” Kim says that night at dinner. “Your mom and I met Megan’s parole officer today.”
“Yeah?” Jared asks, looking up from his lasagna. “Why?”
“We wanted to speed up the process of fostering Megan,” Kim explains. “And with everything that’s happened, the judge agreed that your sister should be with you right now. We’re bringing her home, Jared.”
“Thank you.” Jared leaps up and hugs them both, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. “Thank you so much. You don’t even know what this means.”
—
Their moms are out on a date night the next evening, and Felicia and Rekha have gone out with friends. Jared is working on his homework at the table in the back yard when Jensen comes out with a couple of glasses of lemonade. “Thought you might be thirsty.”
“Thanks,” Jared says with a smile. Their fingers brush when he takes the glass from Jensen, sending a tingle through his body.
“No problem.” Jensen sits down beside him. “You got a minute? We haven’t really had a chance to talk with everything that’s been going on.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“So how’re you holding up?” Jensen asks, knocking his knee against Jared’s.
“Okay, I guess. How’s school?”
Jensen studies his face for a moment, as though trying to decide how to respond to the abrupt change of topic. “It’s great,” he says. “There’s a pretty good astrophysics program I’m thinking of checking out. You know, for grad school.”
“You stealing my idea? We can’t both be astronauts.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would just be silly.”
“Master of reasoning,” Jensen teases, ruffling Jared’s hair.
“Knock it off,” Jared mutters, batting his hand away, but he’s smiling, too. There’s something reassuring about Jensen’s warm, solid form next to him. Jared can almost believe that everything will work out fine when Jensen’s beside him.
“I don’t want to be an astronaut, anyway,” Jensen says. “I think I want to go into research.”
“Yeah? You wanna work in a big office and boss people around while poor schmucks like me go out into space and do all the hard work?” Jared teases.
“Something like that.” Jensen leans in to touch Jared’s cheek. “I love seeing your dimples.”
“Sap,” Jared murmurs, closing the distance between them.
Jensen’s fingers tangle in Jared’s hair as they kiss, and they’re so lost in each other that they don’t notice they aren’t alone until they hear Rekha’s little squeak of surprise.
Jensen’s phone begins to ring at the exact same moment.
—
“That was Felicia,” Jensen says as he ends the call. “I gotta go pick her up. She’s stuck at some rave party she didn’t know her friends were planning on crashing. You all right, Rekha?”
Rekha is still looking from Jared to Jensen and back again as though she can’t believe what she’s seen. “It’s okay,” she says finally. “Go ahead.”
“We’ll be back soon,” Jensen says, shooting an apologetic glance at Jared as he leaves.
Jared turns to Rekha. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like that.”
“It’s… I can’t believe it. Are you and Jensen together?”
“I… I don’t really know. It’s complicated.”
Rekha lets out a small laugh. “I’ll bet it is. How long have you two been… you know?”
“A few months. Since Christmas, I guess.”
“Wow. Are you… uh, are you guys sleeping together?”
“What? No. It’s not like that. Jensen would never do that.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Rekha says. “I just had some mental images I can’t unsee. Although,” she adds, sitting down beside Jared on the couch, “they were kind of hot, too.”
“You can’t say stuff like that,” Jared says, throwing a cushion at her.
Rekha laughs. “But you love each other?” she asks, her expression sobering. “I mean, as more than foster brothers?”
“I don’t know,” Jared says honestly. “It’s not like we’ve had a lot of time to talk, with him being away at college.”
“But you want to be together? What’re you going to tell Moms?”
“I don’t know yet, but—you’re okay with it? You don’t think we’re… disgusting or something?”
“Oh, Jared.” Rekha reaches over to squeeze his hand. “I was a bit blind-sided, but I’d never think that of you. Or Jensen. You’re my brothers.” Jared winces. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “That came out sounding wrong, but you know what I mean.”
—
Jared’s lying in bed with his headphones on when Jensen comes in a while later.
“Hey,” he says, sitting up and tugging off the headphones. “What happened? Is Felicia okay?”
“She’s fine,” Jensen says. “She’s telling Rekha all about her big exciting night. Rekha seemed fine too. You guys talk?”
“Yeah. She was pretty cool.”
“That’s good, I guess.” Jensen sits down at the edge of Jared’s bed. “Jay… we have to tell Moms.”
“No, we don’t. Because there’s going to be nothing to tell.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I’m going to talk to Jerry in the morning.”
“Your birth father? About what?”
Jared takes a deep breath. “About going to live with him.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“I’m going to make a deal with him.”
“Jay, you’re scaring me.” Jensen shifts closer, taking Jared’s face in both his hands. “What’re you talking about? What kind of deal?”
Jared slides his arms around Jensen’s waist, pressing his forehead to Jensen’s. “I’m going to tell him that he can have me if he’ll let your moms adopt Megan,” he whispers. “She needs a home. She needs this home, Jensen. She needs to be loved more than I do.”
Jensen thumbs clumsily at Jared’s tears, his face wet with his own.
“Can you—can you stay with me tonight? Just for tonight? I don’t want to think about anything right now. I don’t want to think of anything except you.”
“Yeah,” Jensen says, his voice thick with tears. “Yeah, I can do that.”
—
Now
“They’re not coming for us,” Danneel says, reading the expression on Jared’s face.
“I think the expression is ‘collateral damage’.”
“Maybe Jensen can still do something.”
“There’s no time. We have less than twelve hours. We’d have heard something by now.”
It’s three hours later that they finally hear from Jensen.
“I’ve been in meetings all day,” he says, and what frightens Jared the most is the blank, defeated look on his face on the grainy video screen. “They aren’t willing to relent. They’re saying it’ll cost more to get a shuttle out to you than it’s worth.”
“Can they do that?” Danneel asks, her voice steady despite how pale her face is. “Legally? Are they allowed?”
“Legally, they aren’t. But they’ve got their asses covered by the lawyers. They’ll say it was out of their hands, and that lives were lost before they could do anything.”
“So what’s the plan?” Jared asks.
Jensen glances around, lowering his voice. “You’re in orbit at 17,000 miles per hour. The travel time for a shuttle to reach you is six hours.”
“Assuming that a shuttle is authorized to travel at all.”
“I don’t care if it’s authorized, but it’s going to take four hours for Misha to launch. There’s nothing we can do before the night shift begins and Pellegrino and his staff leave the building. If we try anything before then, they’ll have us arrested.”
“Why are they letting you talk to us at all?” Danneel asks.
“I guess they wanted me to give you the bad news in person.”
“So if I have the math right,” Jared says, “and even if everything goes as planned and you take off in four hours, we’ll still be dead before the shuttle gets here. We only have nine hours of air left. It’s already getting difficult to breathe.”
“No one’s going to die, Jay.”
“I think it’s a bit too late to hope that some miracle will save us before you get here, Jensen.”
“If you want to call your suits a miracle, sure.”
“Our suits?”
“Put them on before your air runs out. They each have a tank that’ll last you one hour.”
Jared and Danneel look at each other. “It’s worth a shot,” Danneel says. She turns back to the screen. “Thank you, Jensen. For what it’s worth, it was a pleasure working with you.” She gets up and squeezes Jared’s shoulder before leaving the cramped cabin.
“Hey,” Jared says, brushing his fingertips against the screen. “If this doesn’t work—”
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Jay.”
“Just let me say this,” Jared says softly. “I’ve been wanting to say it for sixteen years. I l—”
“Don’t. Jared, please don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re going to say whatever you have to say to me in person.”
Jared lets out a wet laugh. “You’re a complete asshole.”
“Yeah. You can kick my ass when I get you out of there.”
—
The next nine hours are the longest of Jared’s life.
Seven hours and forty-five minutes later, the station’s warning messages begin to sound.
“I just thought of something.” Danneel turns to him, her eyes wide and panicked.
“What?” Jared’s heart is already thudding painfully.
“Once the systems shut down, what is the airlocks can’t be opened? What if they can’t get to us because we’re locked in?”
“Fuck. You’re right.” Jared pushes his hands back through his already dishevelled hair. “We need to leave the station.”
—
The weightlessness of space is something Jared has always loved since he first became an astronaut, but this time it frightens him. He and Danneel tether themselves to the station with their cables, but they’re both basically floating in space with nothingness all around them.
They watch helplessly as the station shuts down abruptly. The absence of the vibrations of the station’s systems leaves them in a complete vacuum.
“Never thought I’d die like this.” Danneel’s voice is small and tinny in Jared’s headset.
“We aren’t going to die, Dan. Not like this.” Jared can hear her gasping breaths in his ear. “Hey, hey. Talk to me, okay? Stay with me.”
“I don’t know what to talk about. God, Jared, I think I’m going to lose it.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m terrified.”
“Me too.”
“Talk to me, Jay. Tell me about something. Anything. Let’s just keep each other distracted, okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’m kind of in love with Jensen.”
“I kind of know, doofus.”
“You do?”
“Honestly, everyone knows but you two. Why aren’t you guys together? Is it because his moms adopted your sister?”
“No, not really. It was my birth dad. He got custody of me and moved me away to England. I didn’t get to see Jensen again for years.”
“But you’ve been working together for the last year, right?”
“I guess too much time had passed, you know? We’d both dated other people, moved on. It was never the same again. I guess we kind of fell into the brother zone.”
“And now? Do you think you guys will get back together?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m going to see him again.” He smiles ruefully at her, but he can’t really see her face in the dim light from the stars.
“Don’t talk like that.” Danneel’s voice sounds strange.
“Dani? Can you breathe? Talk to me. Please!”
“It’s getting difficult.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“We should save our breaths,” Danneel says softly. She’s floating only a few inches away from him, but she could be light years away for all Jared can do to help her.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Don’t you dare leave me, Harris. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“You too. May the force be with you, Padalecki.”
—
Jared stays awake as long as he can. When he knows he’s about to lose consciousness in the rapidly thinning air, he tries to call Danneel’s name. There’s no answer.
—
Jared wakes to the feel of fingers stroking his hair. He squints at the white light above his face and tries to say something, but there’s a mask over his nose and mouth. He turns his head to the side.
“Hey,” Jensen says.“Don’t try to talk, sweetheart.” His face is streaked with dried tears, and his eyes are red and blotchy. Jared’s never seen anyone look so beautiful in his life.
“Danneel,” he tries to say, but only succeeds in making an unintelligible sound.
“She’s fine. She woke up a few minutes ago.” Jensen gestures to Jared’s other side, and he turns to see Danneel lying in the narrow bed next to his. She seems asleep.
“She’s resting. She’s going to be fine.” Jensen squeezes Jared’s hand. “And so are you.”
Jared raises his hand to his face and pulls the mask off. “Jensen,” he croaks out.
“Jay,” Jensen says, alarmed.
“I can breathe on my own. I’m okay.”
“You sound terrible.”
“And you look like hell.”
“That’s because someone almost scared the life out of me.”
“What happened? Are we on our way back?”
“Yeah. We’ll be home soon. When we found you guys, you weren’t breathing. I thought I’d lost you.” Jensen leans in close, burying his face in Jared’s hair. He’s shaking.
“You aren’t getting rid of me that easily, Ackles.” Jared tugs at Jensen’s arms and pulls him closer until they’re both squeezed together on the shuttle’s narrow medical cot, Jensen’s arms wrapped around him.
They may still be traveling through space, but Jared knows he’s already home.