![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Caught Inside, 1/4
-- 1 --
Kahului airport is small, shockingly so after the chaos of LAX, as though the nonstop flight's brought him much further than from Los Angeles to Maui. Jensen shoulders his duffel and heads for the National counter, threading his way through groups of people greeting each other with leis and hugs. He's been to Hawaii once before, but that was Oahu, and he was 14, on a Christmas break trip with his family, and all he really remembers is hanging out on the beach with Josh, hitting on girls, thousands of miles from home and feeling like anything was possible.
A dozen years ago, but he feels about a million years older now.
The air is soft and clean, the wind fresh off the ocean, and though he's tired from traveling all day, the long, tropical twilight is still bright enough that it's easy to follow the small highway south, then west along the coast. Steve's directions aren't overwhelmingly clear--no surprise there--but Jensen sees the street he needs right as he passes it, and is able to turn around without too much trouble. The neighborhood looks quiet and neat, nothing extravagant or up-scale, just a bunch of small, older houses plunked down on the flat land between the mountains and the ocean. He double-checks the number next to the front door as he pulls off the street onto the worn-down grass that clearly serves as the parking area, and feels fairly confident as he walks up to the small, wood-frame house.
His knock is answered with a "C'mon in," from somewhere beyond the screen door, but the voice doesn't sound familiar, and he steps in hesitantly, calling out, "Hello? Steve? It's Je--" He stops as a short guy in jeans and a threadbare t-shirt emerges from the hallway.
"Hey," the guy says, and Jensen says, "I'm looking for--this is Steve Carlson's place, right?"
The guy's nodding. "Yeah, this is Steve's place. Jensen?" Jensen nods, and the guy shrugs. "Steve's working down at the café 'til 8 or so, maybe later if someone asks him to sit in. I'm Chris. He know you were coming?"
And, well, there really isn't an answer for that. Steve's told him to come anytime, more than once, but Jensen's never quite been able to say yes, hasn't ever said it, not even when he'd gotten home late the other night after another round of annoying clubs and annoying not-quite-friends. He hadn't said anything, had just looked at Travelocity, for the hell of it, and there was a fare that didn't make his stomach drop (though that might have been mostly because it was past closing time and he wasn't firing on all cylinders by a long shot), and now there's a guy he doesn't recognize leaning up against the kitchen bar in Steve's house and looking right at home and anything Jensen thought he might have known is pretty much in the trash.
The guy, Chris, tells him to stick around; offers him a beer, which he accepts, and a joint, which he doesn't--he doesn't smoke up with people he doesn't know, and besides, Chris's expression isn't half as welcoming as his words seem like, though he's not unfriendly, either, exactly. Probably a lot more friendly than Jensen would be in his position, Jensen thinks, holding the cold bottle by the neck and looking out at the green of the overgrown back yard and the mountains behind it while Chris fiddles with a guitar and works on his own beer.
The sun's been down for a while when Jensen hears the front door open and a familiar voice calling out, "Hey, Chris, we got company?"
"Looks like," Chris calls back, and then Steve's there, features hard to make out in the moonlight, but Jensen stands up and says, "Hey," and Steve stares at him for a second and then laughs, pulling him into a hug.
"Jen," he says, his arms solid and strong, and Jensen feels himself relax a little. "I gotta say I'd pretty much given up on you ever actually coming."
Jensen laughs awkwardly. "I... probably should've called first. Made sure it wasn't, y'know, a bad time or whatever."
Steve makes a rude noise and pulls him into another hug, like it hasn't been a year since they've seen each other and three months since they last talked. But that's Steve for you. "You must be hungry," Steve says, pulling him back into the small house, and Chris picks up his guitar and his beer and follows. "I brought food, there's plenty."
Dinner is chicken satay and grilled fish--onaga, Steve says--and rice and stir-fried vegetables, all tipped out of to-go boxes to mix haphazardly on mismatched plates. There's not much Jensen needs to say to bring Steve up-to-date on his life--he wouldn't be here if anything beyond the occasional guest spot on crappy cable shows had panned out since he left Days--and it's pretty clear what's new with Steve. Chris doesn't talk much, at least not while Jensen's been around, but he's clearly a fixture, and yeah, that might have been something Steve could have mentioned. Then again, he probably would have, if Jensen had called.
It's been a long day, what with getting up at ass o'clock to get to the airport, and Jensen's falling asleep on the couch before he even finishes eating. And maybe that's not such a bad thing, really, because yeah, he hasn't seen Steve in a while, but getting shown to a guest bedroom while Chris strolls on into Steve's wasn't exactly what Jensen had in mind when he got on the plane this morning. Not like that issue's going to go away overnight, but... whatever. Scarlett O'Hara may have been a shallow little bitch, but she wasn't stupid.
He wakes in unfamiliar darkness and finds his way to the bathroom. There's another door off the hallway; it's closed. He goes back to the couch, picks up the light blanket that had been spread over him, and lies down again. He's trying not to listen, for voices or anything else, but there's nothing to hear except the trees and shrubs rustling in the never-ending breeze.
Jensen half wakes up when Steve pads through the living room in the dim light of dawn, the sound of a door closing unmistakable in the quiet. He's not sure how long after that Chris wanders through, but Jensen would recognize the sound and smell of coffee being made if he were blindfolded and drunk. It doesn't take him long to brush his teeth and splash some water on his face, and find his way to the caffeine.
Breakfast with Chris and no Steve--who Chris says is out surfing, in a tone that says it's something Jensen should already know--is less than relaxing, though the coffee is undeniably good. When Jensen says he'll look for a hotel room, though, Chris snorts and shakes his head.
"Hotels here are a million bucks a night. There's an old sunroom that's got a bed in it--it's full of guitars and crap right now, but we can clear it out."
That's not the most inviting offer Jensen's ever gotten, but when he tries to decline, Chris just pins him with a look. "I know you and Steve haven't talked much recently, but you have met him, right? " he says, with enough attitude to be insulting, but not enough that Jensen feels like the punch he feels coiled up in his shoulder is justified. "You think he'd let you go to a hotel?"
"I'll try not to get in your way," Jensen finally says. "I probably won't be staying very long." Chris doesn't argue with that, and the conversation kind of dies out at that point. When he finishes his coffee, Jensen heads for the shower, and after that he figures even wandering around town is going to be better than hanging around waiting for Steve to get back. Chris apparently spends his time writing music or something; Jensen doesn't really want to know, since it only underscores how much more Chris belongs here than he does.
Once Jensen's outside, it's harder to stay annoyed. Not impossible, but harder. The air is warm but not too hot, and clean, and there are flowers everywhere. The bare-bones directions Chris offers--turn left and you can't miss it--turn out not to be based entirely on Chris's attitude and at least some in that there's all there is, really. He thinks some of the streets look familiar from getting lost the night before, but now, in the sun and on foot, he can see that there's an actual town. Tiny--not much more than a collection of buildings straggling in a T along the coast road and one main street--but real, an odd mix of art galleries and tourist trash, organic groceries and an honest-to-god hardware store, like he hasn't seen since the last time he visited with his grandparents in the flat Texas country.
The Pacific's there, too; dominating the view. Even when he can't see it, he knows it's there, and it's different somehow from the same ocean that he doesn't even notice anymore in California. He stands at the western edge of the buildings and watches the waves move in toward shore. Nothing big; Steve must be somewhere else. Jensen finds himself wondering idly why it is that he's lived near the ocean for years now and never treated it as anything but an outdoor party venue.
On the way back to Steve's, he barely avoids being run over by a group of guys coming out of what he'd thought was a not-yet-open café at the one big intersection in town. They're loud, laughing and cat-calling back through the door, but smiling at Jensen as they crowd past, t-shirts and board shorts and flip-flops making even the ones a lot older than Jensen look a decade younger. Impulsively, he grabs the door before it closes after the last of the guys--really tall, with floppy dark hair--walks out.
After the full-on sun, inside it's hard to see. A deep voice says, "Hi, can I help you?"
Jensen hesitates, blinking furiously, and his eyes adjust enough to see the lone figure at a table, staring expectantly at him. Otherwise, the room is deserted. "Uh, hi, sorry. Are you--the door was open."
The guy smiles at him, broad and friendly. "Not officially, but as long as I'm here, I'm not really ever closed."
Jensen nods, looking around curiously. The small room is nothing much more than a bar and a dozen tables with a tiny stage in the corner, but it's got a vibe about it that Jensen likes. Friendly.
"So," the guy says. "Can I get you anything?"
"Oh," Jensen answers. "Uh, I was--I had something earlier, but--"
"Coffee?" Before Jensen even answers, the guy's behind the bar, reaching for a carafe and a thick, white mug..
"Yeah, that'd be great," Jensen says, and it is: nothing fancy, but smooth and rich, and strong enough that Jensen can almost feel the caffeine hitting his bloodstream. Whatever else is or isn't happening on this trip, at least his standard for coffee is being met.
"Sorry I don't have much actual food--it's either your basic surfer's special or… well, that's about it."
"The surfer's special…?" Jensen's not really hungry, just curious.
"Scrambled eggs and Spam."
There's a split second of utter silence, because, seriously, what the hell do you say to that, Jensen thinks, and then the guy's laughing, a low, rich chuckle that's almost a purr.
"Jeff," he says, holding out a hand. His grip is warm, strong, as direct as his smile, and it takes no time to cover the basics: Jensen's staying with a friend in town who's surfing at the moment, which is where Jeff would damn straight rather be except he's got to get his books dealt with.
"I should let you get back to that, then," Jensen says, starting to put the mug down.
"Nah, man, you're fine," Jeff says. "Your buddy'll be up soon; the crowd that probably ran you over was on their way down. Winds pick up in the late morning around here, enough to get some serious action for the windsurfers. Everybody else gives way around ten or eleven."
He waves vaguely at the empty room. "Grab a table, chill. I'll give you a pass on the Spam, since it's your first day in town--the girl who waits tables for me at night spends her days preaching the gospel of organic. Got some of her muffins and stuff here, if that works for you."
Anything labeled organic usually makes Jensen want to run screaming, but given the alternative, he lets Jeff hand him something that looks vaguely normal and settles with plate and mug at a table by the window.
He wishes he had a book with him. He could call someone, but that seems sort of obnoxious. A book would be lower-key, while still giving him something to do instead of sitting here like an idiot. He drinks his coffee and pulls the muffin apart on the small plate.
Jeff goes back to his accounting, and Jensen's thinking about taking off when the door opens and Steve walks in, saying, "Pretty, pretty waves this morning, man."
Jensen looks up, and Steve stops. "Jensen?"
"Oh, he's one of yours, is he?" Jeff says.
"Yeah," Steve says. "He is." He smiles at Jensen, and lets the door close behind him. "He been treating you right, Jen? I'd hate to have to call him out..."
Jeff clearly finds the concept of Steve picking a fight as ludicrous as Jensen does, which is good, because if Steve had changed that much, Jensen really did come to the wrong place.
"Mike's not far behind me," Steve's saying to Jeff. "You want me to fire up the range?"
"Might as well," Jeff answers. "I've got about another ten minutes of patience with this financial shit but it'd be a shame to waste it."
Steve laughs but Jensen thinks he sounds a little off.
"Hang tight for a couple of minutes, Jen?" Steve says, and it's not Jensen's imagination at all, Steve really is feeling awkward. With a jolt, Jensen realizes it's because of him. And that's not something he's ever seen before, not even when they were walking away from each other.
"Yeah," Jensen says. "I'm good."
Steve disappears into the back. Jeff mutters under his breath and sorts through his papers. Jensen drinks his coffee and plays with the muffin and watches the people wander by outside the window until Steve comes back out, juggling his plate and silverware while he pours himself a mug of coffee and tops off Jeff's and Jensen's, too.
It's a lot of motion for a guy Jensen once described as never having met a couch he couldn't take over, but then again, it's the first time they've been alone in almost a year and maybe Steve doesn't know what to say either.
"You look good," Jensen finally says. It's trite, maybe, but it's also the truth. Steve's darkly tan, hair bleached lighter than Jensen remembers, still damp from the ocean, and beyond the superficial, he looks like he's happy.
"You don't," Steve answers, blunt and honest as always. "Still too handsome for your own good, but..."
Jensen half-shrugs. His face is his meal-ticket, that's never been a secret.
"Jen," Steve says, in between bites of the previously mentioned scrambled eggs and Spam, which looks about as appetizing as Jensen had imagined. Steve's shoveling it in like he's starving, though. "Why now?"
Jensen finishes his coffee before answering. "I don't know," he finally says, getting up to reach for the carafe. Jeff's disappeared; Jensen can hear noises from the back, but he's not sure when he left. "I guess... I just, I came home the other night, and I realized, fuck, I haven't done any work I liked since... ever, seems like, and I go out and party and I don't even know the people I'm hanging out with and I don't really want to know them, and I got to thinking about when was the last time I really enjoyed being with someone and, dude, it was you."
He doesn't really need more coffee, but he needs something to do so that he doesn't have to have this conversation face-to-face. But it's Steve, who can out-wait anything and anyone, so when Jensen finally turns around, Steve's still watching him.
"C'mon," Steve says, standing up. He drops his plate and stuff in the sink behind the bar, and pours himself more coffee. "Bring it," he says, motioning to the mug Jensen's still holding. "I'll bring 'em back later." He yells back to Jeff that they're going, that he'll be in later to deal with the suppliers, and follows Jensen out the door.
It's still brighter than hell outside, and for supposedly being paradise, Main Street, Paia looks disappointingly like every town Jensen's spent his life trying to get out of. Except of course, when he turns to follow Steve and the deep blue of the ocean overwhelms everything else.
Steve doesn't say anything, just starts off down the street, with his same long, easy stride. Jensen thinks about asking where they're going, but he doesn't really care, so he keeps his mouth shut and falls into step. He half-expects Steve to take them down to the long curving beach he can see beyond the edge of town, but Steve turns the other way, dodging back through some scrubby, sandblasted-looking trees, twisting and turning until they come out to a clearing with a wide-open view of a rocky bay.
Jensen stands there and lets the sun and the wind do their thing. He wants this, wants Steve, and when he boarded that plane in LA, right up until he'd walked in the door at the house he'd thought it was his for the taking. He knows why he came, but then he looks at Steve and it all falls apart.
"Okay," Steve says, quiet and steady. "So, Chris."
Jensen wants a do-over. He wants to go back to the other night, go the fuck to bed instead of buying that damn plane ticket, get drunk and get in a fight, or take off for Europe, or even beat his head against the wall, but not end up here, now, with Steve saying Chris like that. "You could've told me you were living with someone."
Steve rubs his hand across his mouth. "'Living with' is a bit of an exaggeration. And, y'know, if you'd called, I could've said something."
"Yeah, okay." Jensen shrugs. "And who is it who always said you don't need to call ahead, just come, come anytime, come and stay, Jen, it's Maui, you'll love it and there's always room for you?"
Steve sighs. "There is room. I am glad you're here. Dude, I'm glad to see you. You weren't happy in LA, I could see it the whole last year. This thing with Chris, it... man, I'm still glad you're here."
No, really, let's still be friends. Jensen's mouth is sour, and not only from the coffee. "You guys been together a while?" he says, gritting his teeth. " He seems..." He can't quite get nice out, though it's probably true, at least in any other circumstances. Steve wouldn't be with him if he were a prick.
"It's--I mean, it's not, I don't even, he lives in, like, Nashville and LA, he's only here part-time. I don't even know where it's going or if it's going."
"He seemed pretty at home," Jensen points out.
"We met last fall. He was here on vacation, and we hooked up. He's a musician too, we started writing together, and, you know, when I invited him to stay it didn't take him a year to show."
Jensen takes a breath, lets it out slowly. "Okay. Okay. I'm an idiot, I think that's established, but I'm guessing his invite didn't come framed in you packing your shit and clearing out."
Steve's quiet for a long couple of seconds before he says, "Okay, fair enough. I'm still glad you're here, and--I know this is really fucking awkward, but are you... I'd really like it if you could stay. For however long."
Jensen wants to say no, but hell, it's Maui, right? At least he's not in LA. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
Steve might be sure, but Jensen's willing to bet Chris isn't going to be nearly as welcoming when they walk back into the house with the news that Jensen's not turning right back around and leaving. He's ready to collect on that unspoken bet when he sees something flicker in Chris's eyes at the news, but Chris only shrugs and cocks his head at Steve.
"Hell," he says, a full-on smirk curving his mouth. "Guess we're finally gonna clear out that dump." Steve groans and Chris laughs. "No way, Carlson. You can't actually be expecting your buddy here to sleep on that couch?"
"It's not that bad," Steve says, looking at Jensen. "You were out pretty deep when I left this morning..."
"Oh, no," Chris says. "One night, jet-lagged and with a contact high from the good stuff doesn't mean anything."
There's more going on there than just hospitality, and Jensen doesn't have a clue what it is, so he keeps his mouth shut. Steve looks like he wants to argue, but finally sighs.
"Yeah, you're right." He walks past Jensen to a door on the far side of the living room, opening it and cursing under his breath. Chris smirks. Curious, Jensen goes over to join Steve and almost feels like groaning himself when he sees all the crap piled in the room. It's not even a real room; it looks like it started off life as a lanai or something. There's a futon and maybe a small table underneath everything, but he's not really sure.
"Okay," Jensen says. "I know you're, uh, organizationally challenged--" Chris snorts somewhere behind them "--but this is pretty impressive, even for you."
"Hey," Steve says, mildly. "It came with the house." Jensen wanders in, sidestepping a couple of stacked amps, and pokes at a box of books and papers covered with Steve's chickenscratch handwriting. Steve sighs again. "Okay, yeah, some of it's mine."
"I need more caffeine before we deal with this," Chris says, heading for the small kitchen. Jensen isn't exactly sure why he's so gung-ho on making a place for Jensen to stay. He figures it probably has something to do with how the spare room is about as far away from the other bedroom as possible, and he can't really argue with that.
"You sure a hotel isn't gonna be better?" he asks, low.
"Not unless you want to be somewhere else, man," Steve answers.
"Nah," Jensen says, after a long couple of seconds. "I'm okay." He could probably say it with more enthusiasm, but Steve doesn't push him on it and that's good enough.
It ends up being mostly Jensen and Chris who clear the room out; Chris shoves Steve toward the bedroom after an hour or so, to catch some sleep before he goes back and does whatever he does at Jeff's during the evening. As much as Jensen doesn't want to admit it, it's easier without Steve. Part of that is because he and Chris just start tossing shit out, but the rest is because Chris ends up having a bitchy streak a mile wide that feeds into Jensen's inner snark.
They get the room to the point that they can shove the rest of the boxes into the cheap, pressboard cabinet that's acting as a wardrobe--Jensen didn't bring so many clothes that he needs to worry about how much closet space he has--and he doesn't guess Steve'll care that he's wedging odds and ends up on the shelf. Chris clears out a corner for guitars and amps, then gets distracted leafing through staff paper littered with bits and pieces of unfinished songs.
"Those yours, or Steve's?"
Chris looks up. "Steve's, mostly. Couple of these we were workin' on together, a while back. I mean, yeah, I've got my own mess. But there's some good stuff here, should get him working on it again."
"I thought Steve was playing a lot, over here," Jensen says. "That's the impression I got, I mean."
"Yeah." Chris shrugs. "He plays down at Jeff's a lot, over at a couple places in Lahaina some, too. But he mostly plays old stuff--stuff he wrote a while ago, I mean. It's--this place isn't the Taj Mahal or anything, but it's Maui. It ain't cheap. It's not easy to make time for writing."
"I guess," Jensen says, but that doesn't really sound like Steve. As long as Jensen's known him, he's always writing. Then again, Jensen's cleaning out Steve's spare room so he'll have some place to sleep, so, really, what does he know anyway? He stacks the papers neatly in the box and goes to help Chris haul the last bags of trash out to Steve's old van.
"The dump's not too far away," Chris says, digging around for flip-flops and car keys. "No sense having all this shit sitting around until pick-up day."
"Get it the hell out of here before he starts going through it for stuff he can't live without," Jensen agrees. "Want some company?"
Chris looks a little surprised, but nods, and Jensen climbs into the passenger seat before either one of them can change their minds. They ride out past old sugar cane plantations and up into the foothills. Chris doesn't exactly play tour guide, but he points out a couple of places, waves his hand up at the mountains as they pull into the dump.
"Haleakala," he says. "They bus the tourists up, but it's worth it even so." He drags the last box out of the van and tosses it on the trash heap. "Steve'll get you up there at some point."
Jensen wants to ask if it's part of the standard welcome package, but it sounds bitchy even in his own head and he's not in the mood to start something with Chris. On the way back, Chris pulls over on the shoulder of the road, next to a rickety old shack that Jensen eyes dubiously.
"Trust me," Chris says, clapping him on the back. "The whole island would grind to a halt without a plate lunch." Jensen doesn't think Chris dislikes him enough to give himself food poisoning, too, so he follows Chris's lead and they end up standing under an umbrella eating paper plates of chicken and shrimp and a couple of scoops of rice. Before they leave, Chris goes back and orders a shave ice, hands it to Jensen and opens the driver's door.
"What's this for?" Jensen asks, juggling the freezing cold paper cone as he gets in.
"We can share," Chris says. He pulls a joint from his back pocket and lights it before merging back onto the road. "Take turns," he adds, around a lungful of smoke.
"Is this the part where you tell me you're a better driver fucked up than you are sober?" Jensen knows he's got a mildly disapproving look on his face, but he takes the joint when Chris hands it over.
"Nah," Chris says. "But it is the part where I tell you I've driven this road a hell of a lot more fucked up than I'll be from splitting a joint."
"How comforting," Jensen deadpans. Controlled substances notwithstanding, Chris is paying reasonable attention to the road, but when Jensen licks his hands where the shave ice is melting over them, lurid red and toothache-sweet, even on top of the smoke, he can feel the quick flickering glances. He offers Chris the shave ice with as innocent of a look as he can plaster on his face, and it's a bitch of a thing to do with a friend's boyfriend, with Steve's boyfriend, but hell, he's not the one who came up with any of this.
Chris manages to get them home without killing anything or anyone. Jensen follows him into the house, blinking at the shade after the sunshine outside. He's buzzed and loose, a little sleepy; takes the beer Chris hands him because why not, though the first swallow tastes truly disgusting on top of the sweet stickiness still in his mouth from the ice.
It's the middle of the afternoon, and aside from moving a few boxes he's accomplished jack shit today, and starting in drinking isn't likely to change that for the better. On the other hand, hell, he's on vacation, right? What else is he supposed to be doing?
Not a whole lot, he figures, walking into his brand-new, solo bedroom and raising the bottle again.
He wakes up starving--his body clock is fucked--but when he stumbles out of the bedroom looking for something to eat, it's to find a scrawled note from Steve telling him he's welcome to forage for himself or join them at Jeff's. "Them" is the problematic part; Jensen's tempted to eat what he can find and stay away, but he's supposed to be an adult, so he should probably act like it and not sit in his bedroom and sulk.
He showers quickly and doesn't spend a lot of thought on what clothes he pulls on. From what he's seen of the town and of Jeff's place, nobody's going to be paying much attention. There doesn't seem to be much of a reason to drive, either; it'd taken all of five minutes in the morning to walk along the road to town. Out of habit, he checks his phone for messages, but isn't surprised when there aren't any. Nobody he's been hanging out with lately is going to miss him enough to track him down, and his agent's assistant is probably thrilled to not have to take his calls in the first place.
There's still a surprising amount of traffic and people are wandering aimlessly along the sidewalk. The door to the cafe is open; crowd noises and music and good smells spilling out to greet him before he even edges his way inside. Steve's up on the tiny stage--Chris, too, which is almost enough to turn Jensen right around, but Steve looks up and catches sight of him. He smiles like he hadn't been expecting Jensen to show, and it's too late to run.
"No pouting," Jensen mutters to himself.
"Oh, baby, you can pout at me anytime." A tiny redhead holding a tray full of glasses grins at him as she elbows her way through the crowd.
"Down, girl," Jeff says, from the other side of the bar, and she sticks her tongue out at him. Jeff waves Jensen over, which means he's really stuck staying, so he pastes the hey, happy to be here look on his face and works his way over to the bar. Jeff pulling a beer out of the ice and handing it to him as soon as he gets there goes a long way toward making the sentiment less of an acting job and more like reality.
"Sorry," Jeff says. "We're working on not scaring the new kids as soon as they walk in the door, but it's slow going with Miss Danneel."
"Oh, please," the girl says, her grin unrepentant. "I was totally nice. And I need three more drafts and a couple of fingers of tequila. Call brand." She turns her smile on Jensen while Jeff starts pulling the beers. "You didn't mind, did you, sugar?"
"Dani," Jeff says and she sighs.
"Right, right," she says, rolling her eyes. "Behaving now. You meeting anyone? 'Cause we're a little strapped for space tonight..." There aren't actually that many people in the place, but it's not a big room to start with, and everybody's spread out and occupying all the tables.
"Jensen's here for a while, staying with Steve," Jeff says, before Jensen can answer and Danneel mmm's thoughtfully.
"That's not going to help with a table," she says. "Unless you're okay drinking standing up?"
"I was kinda hoping for some food," Jensen answers. The beer's going straight to his head. "Even one of those muffins from this morning would be good."
"Oh, you're the muffin guy--you made Sandy's day," Danneel says, catching Jensen by the elbow and towing him around the bar. Jeff's distracted by somebody yelling in from the door, so Jensen's on his own. "She'll make room for you." They stop in front of a couple sitting at a table that's more like a tray, tucked in right at the end of the bar. Danneel introduces him and hands him over with a flourish before heading back to pick up her order.
Sandy's as small as Danneel, but there's still not much room at the table because the guy she's with--Jared, Danneel said--is big. Tall, and young, and when he smiles, Jensen recognizes him as one of the guys who'd nearly trampled him earlier that morning. His smile still makes Jensen feel a hundred years old. They squeeze over and Jared stretches out a long leg to snag a chair from the table next to them and Jensen figures he might as well get something to eat. If he had to do it over, he'd probably stay in, but it's too late to do anything about it now.
Sandy turns out to be on a break, so she leaves after a couple of minutes, promising to bring Jensen food. Jared must be about as laid-back as they come; he doesn't take any offense when Jensen doesn't feel like being chatty. Because he really fucking doesn't, not when he can't avoid what's going on up on stage. Chris’s voice is strong and soulful, more country than Steve's, but they share the stage like they grew up on it together, blending rather than competing and there's not much Jensen can do about it.
So, he sits and eats what Sandy puts in front of him. Jeff sends over a second round and Danneel stops by to hiss something catty to Jared about the guy in neatly-pressed khakis and a button-down who's more or less sucking up all of Sandy's attention. Jensen doesn't really care, but it's better than thinking about Steve or Chris. Or Steve and Chris. He finds himself paying a little more attention to the mini-drama at the table than he planned, but it's worth it to actually be in a conversation when Steve takes a break and heads on over.
For all that it's a weird situation, awkward any way he tries to spin it, Jensen finds it way too easy to slide into the routine of Steve and Chris's life. Sleep late, smoke up when Steve comes back in from surfing, lie around during the day, hang out at Jeff's at night. Jared's usually there, same table in the corner, and apparently since Jensen sat there that first night, that's where he's supposed to sit all the time. Jared's not pushy about it or anything; it's just been a while since anyone's automatically assumed that Jensen's a part of their crowd. It's a little odd, but fine; it gives Jensen something to do while Steve's singing and somebody who's not Chris to talk to. Sandy never lets either of them finish a beer before she's bringing another round; Jeff leaves his coffee there, and his cigarettes, so he's there off and on as the nights go on; and Danneel gravitates there, whether or not she's working. Between the four of them, Jensen's pretty sure there isn't a piece of gossip in town that he hasn't heard.
Mostly, he kicks back and listens, which, as long as he treats it like researching for a character, isn't as boring as he expects it to be. He knows that Danneel used to be Jeff's full-time waitress, but now only comes in a couple of nights a week, and that she and Jared are always talking a completely foreign language of waves and planing and loops and anklebiters. He could ask for a translation--he gets the feeling Jared would go into ridiculous detail, he's that kind of a guy--but Jensen's really not that into it.
He figures out that Jeff owns the house Steve's living in, plus one other place in town, as well as the house semi-attached to the bar on the oceanside.
"It's a big thing around here," Jared explains, with one of the painfully earnest expressions that Jensen wants to laugh at, but instead finds himself sucked in by. "Nobody likes it when property goes to developers. They like to keep it local."
"Right," Jeff says, rolling his eyes. "And guess who lets himself get suckered into the fixer-uppers, especially the ones that are barely a step up from being condemned."
Jared laughs, like it's a familiar complaint, and everything keeps rolling right along.
There's the hissing whenever Sandy's boyfriend shows up, because nobody likes a poser from upcountry walking in and looking down on them all for living and working in the hippie town, especially not when he's making a killing off buying as much property as he can and flipping it to the highest bidder, no matter what they want to put on the land. Jensen's not exactly sure when Sandy has time to be with the guy, because whenever he sees her, she's always going full-speed, everything from being out on the floor at Jeff's or helping Steve or dealing with her catering, or any one of a half dozen other things. Her cell phone is always out and Jensen wouldn't be surprised if half the island's on her speed-dial.
He works out that Chris has come and gone a couple of times and that the general consensus is that Steve's pretty okay with it but nobody knows for sure, because, damn, that guy is good at saying only what he wants to say. It doesn't surprise Jensen at all that Steve keeps his shit to himself--he's always been private like that. In a way, it's a relief, that there's something about Steve that he still knows.
Jensen and Chris get along okay, as long as Jensen doesn't think too hard about how he'd expected things to go before he actually walked into Steve's house. When he does, Chris is happy to meet him halfway with the bitchy comments, which Jensen can at least respect.
Chris doesn't say anything the day Steve follows Jensen east along Hana Highway to the airport to return the rental car. Jensen's been there for ten days; every time he mentions anything to do with LA, Steve changes the subject smoothly enough that Jensen's sure that he and Chris are the only ones who notice.
It's not what Jensen wanted, but it's a break from real life. He tells himself it'll be enough.
The next week, Steve has a gig in Lahaina, with Chris sitting in. Jensen tags along and ends up out behind the club with his dick down the throat of a wannabe surf bum, with ripped abs and eyes that are vacant and blurred, little more than advertisements for the local, homegrown bud.
Nobody says anything until they're back in the van, all nice and chummy, Steve and Chris up front and Jensen lounging in back, and even then it's only Chris smirking and drawling, "Hell, at least one of us had a little fun tonight."
"Some of us don't have our fun on tap," Jensen answers. Chris's grin turns sharp and hungry and Jensen tells himself he doesn't really care that Steve's avoiding his eyes in the rear-view mirror. When they hit the edge of town, though, and he can see at least one light on at the cafe, he sits up straight and says, "Drop me at the corner."
Steve does look at him then, and Jensen meets his eyes squarely. He's really fucking not in the mood to go back and watch the happy couple settle in for the night and he's pretty sure Steve figures it out. If he hasn't, Chris can fill him in. It's late, way past three, and they haven't seen a car since they got ten minutes outside Lahaina. Steve doesn't say anything as Jensen gets out, not even when Jensen smacks Chris on the arm as he's sliding out and says, "Not that I think you would, but don't wait up, kids."
Truth be told, it's late enough that Jensen's a little surprised Jeff hasn't just left a light on by accident. The door's not locked so he half-knocks and sticks his head in. Jeff's still there, coffee mug in hand, and Jared's sprawled out across three chairs, with a row of empties in front of him, the fruity Australian beer that nobody but Jared will touch. The place has been cleaned up for the night and most of the lights are off, but they look like they're settled in for a while yet.
Jeff nods at him and says, "You're on your own," waving at the bar. Jensen grabs a bottle out of the cooler and drags a chair over to the table.
Jensen doesn't really have much to say; getting out of the car was almost as much of a surprise to him as it was to Steve, but he's fine just joining the lazy conversation. It was a quiet night in town and the weather is looking good for the next few days and Jeff might have to call somebody about his produce delivery. Jeff asks how Steve's gig went and Jensen says he thinks it was fine. Jared checks the time and groans, hauls himself to his feet and says something about how Jeff's evil, keeping him out until four when he knows Jared has to be in Lahaina with the accountants before eight. He slaps Jeff on the back and says, "Later, man," to Jensen and is gone before his words actually register with Jensen.
"Accountant?" Jensen says, staring at where the door's swinging shut, like that's going to explain how he just heard one of Jeff's surf-bum friends say what Jensen thinks he heard him say.
"Accountants," Jeff says. "Plural. And probably agents and marketing directors and who the fuck knows what else. Maybe a stylist, which I'd pay cold, hard cash to see how that would go down." Jensen's face must look as blank as his brain feels, because Jeff snickers and says, "I guess we forgot to mention the defending-world-champion thing."
"Uh, yeah?"
"Small towns, y'know?" Jeff laughs. "We're so damn used to everybody knowing everybody else's business, we forget to do formal introductions."
"So, I'm guessing he's not the kid down the road who hangs out and has big dreams for someday."
"No, more like the kid down the road who walked out of high school and into the pro windsurfing circuit." Jeff reaches back and snags the carafe off the bar and fills his mug again. "Hasn't put a foot wrong since."
"Okay," Jensen says. "Good to know, I guess. Anybody else I should be keeping an eye on?"
"Danneel's pretty damn good herself, when she's not banged up."
Jensen nods, not entirely surprised; it explains the incomprehensible conversations between the two of them. He eyes the way Jeff's draining his mug almost as fast as he'd filled it.
"You planning on sleeping anytime soon?" Jensen asks, arching an eyebrow. "Because as far as I can tell, you and decaf don't live in the same world."
Jeff laughs. "Used to be, I'd cut it fifty-fifty with Jameson. No real worries about getting to sleep then, just about where I'd be when I woke up."
"Or, you know, if you woke up."
"Yeah, that, too," Jeff answers, falling quiet for a few seconds. "I figured it's late enough that I'd push through 'til it's light. Have a go-out before I crash. Steve can take care of stuff here until I rejoin the living."
Jensen nods and it gets quiet again. "I've been in LA for six years now," he says, looking down at the bottle in his hands. "Never much thought about the ocean or anything." He glances up and Jeff's watching him, like he's waiting to hear what Jensen says next and not like he can't figure out why the hell Jensen's talking. "Never thought much about why, not until I got here and... it's right there."
"People who come here," Jeff says. "Most of them ... You'd be surprised how many miss that."
"Good for me then, I guess." Jensen shakes his head. "So now that I've noticed, what do I do with it?"
"Up to you." Jeff finishes his coffee and puts the mug down on the scarred wooden table with a healthy thump. "But there's a spare board out back, and the last time I checked the off-shore buoy it's looking like almost glass this morning. Perfect day to give it a try."
There's a voice inside Jensen's head that's laughing at even the thought of trying, the low, mean snicker that's somehow become his default. Just hearing it is enough to make him nod his head and accept the invitation he's seeing in Jeff's eyes. "Yeah," he says. "I could do that."
Jeff drives an old Jeep--Jensen is somehow unsurprised--with some complicated arrangement that keeps the surfboards stable even with the soft-top down. He fills an even older thermos with another gallon or so of coffee and once they stop by Steve's so Jensen can change, takes off across the island. "There's this little cove, down by Kihei--sandy bottom, not too wild."
"Good," Jensen yells back over the wind.
Jeff laughs and reaches over to knock open the glove compartment. "For the cold feet," he says, handing Jensen a flask.
"Thanks," Jensen mutters. He downs a shot, which doesn't come close to taking the edge off, but he's probably a lot better off without throwing tequila into the mix. Jeff grins at him, but doesn't say anything else until he pulls over and stops on the side of the road. There's nothing but what might be a path disappearing into the trees, but Jensen climbs out and takes the surfboard and tells the stupid voice in his head to stuff it. It takes long enough to get through the trees that the voice comes back, stronger than ever, asking just what the hell Jensen thinks he's doing, what he thinks all this might accomplish, but then they're out onto a rocky little beach and he has other things to think about.
Jeff's patient and relaxed; he's maybe more into Jensen getting the hang of it than Jensen is, but that could be that layer of whatthefuckever that Jensen's let cover him. The waves are tiny, small enough that Jensen wouldn't have thought they were worth anything, but they're perfectly formed and just enough that he can get the feel of moving on the water. When he actually manages to stand up all the way in, he can't help laughing from sheer glee.
"Thanks," he says, after they've finished the coffee and are on their way back across the island. "That can't have been what you normally do--"
"No," Jeff says. "I can surf any morning, though. Been a long time since I got to convert someone."
"Yeah, well, I don't know if I'm ready for the whole crack-of-dawn thing--"
"First thing in the morning isn't the required part." Jeff smirks at him, obviously very pleased with himself.
"We'll see," Jensen says, getting out of the Jeep and reaching across to shake Jeff's hand. "Thanks. Really."
"My pleasure," Jeff says, shifting into reverse. "See you tonight."
Jensen waves and walks into the house, definitely not thinking about how he's expected somewhere.
Chris is in his usual morning fugue state, shirtless, with one hip against the bar that separates the kitchen from the front room, cargoes riding low and his eyes fixed on where the coffee's dripping slowly into the glass carafe. "Aw, fuck," he says when he sees Jensen stripping off the rashguard Jeff had tossed at him. "Not another one."
Jensen borrows a little of Jeff's self-satisfied smirk and keeps going right on through to his bedroom. He's too tired to do anything but strip and fall into bed naked, but he thinks he might still be smiling even as he's falling asleep.
Jensen takes the next morning off--every muscle in his body is fucking killing him--but the day after that, when he hears Steve walking around early, he steels himself and crawls out of bed into the coolish morning air. Steve's smile when he walks out of his bedroom is worth being vertical in the dim grey light.
"Jeff said you could handle Baby Beach," Steve says.
Jensen figures Jeff probably isn't trying to kill him, so he grabs a pair of flip-flops and the board Jeff wouldn't take back and follows Steve out to the van.
The waves are definitely bigger, and it's right on the other side of the bay, which means a half-dozen people are waving at them as they go by.
"Jen," Steve says. "I know Jeff said this, but it never hurts to hear it every morning. Pay attention to the water, man. You won't like how it teaches respect."
The waves are still sort of ridiculously small when Jensen thinks about it, but he makes himself ignore the potential for embarrassment and start slow, catching the first few on his knees before he even tries to stand. Steve stays back, and gives him his space; Jensen can't decide if it's because of everything they're not anymore or if it's because he's giving off some kind of don't condescend to me vibe. In the end, he figures it's just Steve, letting him work shit out on his own.
It should be awkward, but by the time Jensen works up the nerve to paddle out on the other side of the shorebreak to where Steve's sitting and waiting for the real waves, there's not much left but the water and the sun, skidding in and out of the high clouds that pile up over the coastline. It's not quiet, with the wind and the waves breaking over the sand, not to mention the occasional voice calling out a greeting or laughing in satisfaction, and it's not all that isolated--the road that runs along the coast is right up at the top of the beach, and the town itself straggles out along the horizon--but there's a definite peace.
Jensen can feel it, almost touch it. He can see it written all over Steve's face. He just needs to figure out how Steve lets it in.
Chris blows through one afternoon while Jensen's messing around with one of the fifteen guitars they have lying around the place. Jensen makes it through a couple of chords, stuff he's heard Steve working on, before he screws up. He eyes Chris, waiting for the laughter, but Chris just picks up his own guitar.
"Like this," he says, and Jensen follows.
Surfing's all well and good, and it works muscles in ways not even the most sadistic trainer Jensen's ever had has dreamed of, but he still makes it out for a run a couple mornings a week. Nothing major, only around the neighborhood and down to the path along the beach if he's feeling ambitious. It's not a big place; it doesn't take long before he gets to the point that he's at least nodding to familiar faces, and occasionally even saying hi when he runs into them later in town.
Somewhere along the line, he starts sticking his head in at the hardware store. It's one of those places that has everything from frying pans to doghouses to fancy little glass knobs that hang at the end of the chains that control ceiling fans scattered in the same aisle as plumbing supplies and spackling. The house is apparently in a hell of a lot better condition than when Jeff first bought it, but there are dozens of tiny things that Jensen notices that aren't that big of a deal to fix. Steve won't let him pitch in on rent--Chris rolls his eyes at the non-discussions that ensue whenever Jensen even tries bringing the topic up--but if Jensen's quick enough, and sneaky enough, there are all kinds of things he can get done before Steve notices.
Replacing the drawer pulls and cabinet knobs in the kitchen isn't going to qualify Jensen for houseguest of the year, and the only person in the world who'd believe he'd be doing this is probably his mom, but there's a strange sort of satisfaction in getting it done. Jensen's not going to argue with that.
The days tend to blur together, in a good way, but still a blur, and somewhere near the end of a month, Jensen realizes he's gotten out of that LA habit of always checking his phone for messages. He's talked to his agent exactly once--she's got nothing for him, which isn't a surprise--and there really isn't anyone else he much cares about. Half the time, he's not even sure where the thing is, but when he thinks to check, there are two calls from Josh. No message so Jensen figures it's not an emergency, but he calls Josh back anyway.
"Wow," Josh says. "Look who remembered how to use his phone. Hang on a minute while I go buy a lottery ticket, see if my lucky day holds."
"There's this thing they call voicemail," Jensen answers. "The phone goes beep and if you can form words, you can let people know why you're calling."
"There's this other thing called a calendar, and if you pay attention to it, you don't do things like miss your little sister's birthday."
"Fuck," Jensen sighs, looking around for a wall to beat his head on. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
"Well put, dipshit." Josh's voice isn't unkind, which Jensen actually appreciates, given that he probably did a lot of damage control upfront. "Good to know you're not dead; some of us actually work for a living, so call me back when I'm not doing that; call Mom, too. Later, bro."
The phone goes dead and Jensen stares at it for a couple of seconds before he scrolls through his contact list and finds Mackenzie's number. She's probably in class, but he can at least leave a message and start to apologize.
"I know I'm supposed to be mad at you and all," Mac says, picking up on the first ring, "but it's not like you ever remember stuff like this anyway."
"Stop letting me off the hook," Jensen says.
"I'm not, not really." Mac sounds tired, but Jensen knows better than to ask, not after the tenth Just because I'm a girl and the baby of the family doesn't mean I'm not allowed to work for what I want explosion last year. "I just miss talking to you."
"Don't know why," Jensen says. "It's not like I have anything exciting to talk about most of the time."
"I like it when it's just you," Mac answers. "Nobody ever said you had to be a star before you could call home."
It sounds an awful lot like It's okay if you're a screw-up, you can always come back and be normal, which Jensen knows isn't what Mac, at least, is saying, or even implying, so he makes himself leave it alone.
"That's your cue to talk, genius," Mac says. "Tell me what not-exciting things are going on in the City of Angels."
"Uh, I'm actually not there?" Jensen says. "I'm in Hawaii. Maui."
"See? That's not boring. Tell me everything."
"Not much to tell," Jensen says, settling back on his bed. "Been hanging out with Steve."
"Wait. You guys got back together and that's not excit--"
"No," Jensen says, ready to kick himself for letting that slip. "No, we're not back together. I--he's with somebody else. We're just hanging out."
Mac's quiet for a while. "Okay. I know I'm just your little sister, and that means you don't think I know anything, but... are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"I'm fine, Mac."
"Right. Like you were fine when he left and you've been fine ever since?"
"Mac," Jensen sighs.
"Jensen," Mac sighs back. "
"It's okay," Jensen says, dredging up as much conviction and sincerity as he can find. "It just… is what it is."
"Okay," Mac says, after another long pause, in that voice Jensen knows means I don't believe you but I'll let you get away with it. "I have to go to class now, but I'm really glad you called. Don't go so long next time."
"I won't," Jensen says. "Thanks, Mac. Happy birthday."
"And you owe me a present, don't think I'm forgetting about that. Pearls are always nice."
"Later, brat," Jensen says, and Mac hangs up giggling.
It really isn't that big of a house, just one main room with the kitchen separated by a bar, a bedroom cum storage room cum lanai and an actual bedroom barely big enough for a king-sized bed. The bathroom--thankfully--had been the first thing Jeff had dealt with after buying the place, but it's still an old plantation worker's house. Tiny, even by L.A. standards. The fact that it takes almost a month for Jensen to walk in on Chris and Steve is definitely due to how hard he’s been working to keep from doing exactly that. It's inevitable, though, and he tells himself he's damn lucky that he happens to actually look before he pushes the screen door open.
His brain's telling him--in increasingly shrill tones--to step back before they notice him and they all end up spending the next week avoiding each other's eyes, but he can't tear himself away. It's not that he can even see that much--they're on the couch, and the back of it's blocking almost everything out--but he doesn't have to see to remember--to know--the way Steve feels moving against him, how he tastes.
Jensen loses track of how long he stands there in the door, but he finally manages to make himself step away and go find someplace else to be, even if it is only wandering in and out of the tourist traps, pretending to look for something to send Mackenzie for her birthday.