By Kelly and Merrin

Jared knows if he walks down B hallway between second and third period, he'll get to walk past Sandy McCoy as she's heading into AP Euro. His class that hour is up the stairs and on the other end of school, and most days he barely slides into his seat as the bell rings, but it's worth it to get to see her an extra minute or so out of the day. Especially since it's the second to last day of high school, he doesn't want to miss one of his chances to see her.

Never mind that he sees her right after lunch in AP Government, and that they're both heading to Virginia Tech in the fall. It's a giant campus—Jared helped his brother move in three years ago and had gotten lost just trying to find the car again—there's no telling if he'll ever see Sandy while they're both there.

Sandy rounds the corner in front of him as he passes Ms. Heinsey standing outside her journalism class. Ms. Heinsey is old and slightly deaf and has always had a soft spot for him, for reasons Jared can't fathom, as he's never taken one of her classes. Still, she shouts, "Good to see you, Padalecki!" at a volume sure to make his ears bleed, and he looks over at Sandy in time to see her burst into laughter with her friends. Ears flaming, he's actually a little late to Calc, and Mr. Siavoshi sighs as he puts a tardy on the attendance sheet.

It's his second to last lunch in this cafeteria, and since Jared has late lunch and Sandy has early, he doesn't have to spend it craning his neck around to wherever she happens to be flirting with her boyfriend. Chad's spending lunch in the library, making up his Environmental Science final, so Jared eats in the courtyard with some of their other friends, and doesn't really have a lot to say. Chad will listen to his gathered Sandy trivia, but not too many other people have the patience for it.

Chad's already in the class room when Jared gets to Government, his feet kicked up on the chair in front of him. "J-dog!" he says, kicking the chair forward a bit. "Saved you this seat."

Jared doesn't like the seat though, not a good angle for where Sandy usually sits, so he bypasses that chair and sits down behind Chad, even though it means he has to sit next to Bradley Martin, who doesn't have a problem with farting in class.

"Better out than in," is what he generally says when it happens, which Jared has never found particularly funny.

Doesn't bother Chad a bit though, he just turns around in his seat. "Can't fucking believe we have to be here today," he says. "We took the AP, didn't we? Why are we here in class?"

Jared shrugs, watching the door. "Because if they catch you skipping again you won't get a diploma?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Chad waving off his concerns. "Like they really want me to stick around another year. McNabb is weeping with joy that I won't be here anymore."

Thinking back on all of Chad's run-ins with the vice principal and his enormously thick file somewhere in the bowels of the counseling office, Jared's sure that's pretty accurate. "Still, though. Wouldn't want to take any chances."

Chad says something to that, but Jared doesn't even hear him. Sandy walks in right at that moment, smiling and happy and so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her. Her disgustingly hot boyfriend, Mike, has his arm around her, and Jared would be jealous except that Mike could kill him with his pinky finger, and Jared isn't into pain. They sit down in their normal seats, side-by-side toward the front right side of the class room, and Sandy is perfectly in Jared's line-of-sight.

Jared stares at her, at the fall of hair on her shoulders, the smile in her eyes as she talks to Mike, the way she crosses her ankles and tucks them under her chair. He doesn't hear Chad trying to get his attention until Chad hauls off and hits him in the arm. Hard. Not as hard as Mike could, probably, but pretty freaking hard still.

"Never mind," Chad says with a disgusted snort. "I know exactly why we're here and not playing Halo. You need to get your Sandy fix."

Jared panics, because Chad is kind of loud and takes great pride in not giving a shit. Sandy doesn't turn in their direction though, so he's pretty sure she didn't hear. "Shut the fuck up, Murray," he hisses instead.

Jared never gets to hear whatever witty comeback Chad might have come up with, because Ms. Pyle comes in the room just then, and starts calling roll. Her thing is to ask a question every time she calls roll, so she can get to know the class better, she says. Jared thinks it's just so she can get the class to talk at all.

"So," she says, slipping her zebra-striped reading glasses down onto her nose. "Today's question, since you should all have final answers by now, is what you're all doing next year! Where you're going to school, if you're joining the Peace Corps or the military or a traveling circus, anything!"

Jared can't think of any kid in the AP Government class that would be doing anything but going to college somewhere, and this proves to be the case as roll gets called. Most of the kids have known for a long time, and there are a lot of Techs and JMUs and a couple of UVA answers tossed about, with somewhat friendly mocking from each side.

Eventually, Ms. Pyle gets to "McCoy, Sandy." Jared already knows the answer to this question, and it had made all of his college decisions that much easier.

But instead of saying, "Tech" like a dozen other kids ahead of her, like Jared himself planned to say when Ms. Pyle called on him, Sandy says, "Actually, I just got my letter yesterday. I got pulled off the wait list at Trinity University, in Texas. So I'll be going there."

The roll call goes on, but Jared doesn't pay attention at all. He's too busy wondering how in the hell a disaster of this epic proportion could have happened, that Sandy would be interested in going to a college he'd never heard her talk about—hell, never heard of period. Ms. Pyle must have called his name a couple of times, because by the time Jared clues in, most of the class is looking right at him, but not Sandy.

"Uh," he says, even though he knows the answer. Thinks he knows the answer, and it sure isn't Tech anymore. "I'm not sure yet."

He ignores Chad's attempts to question him about it, subtle as they aren't, and writes "Trinity University—Texas" down in his notebook to research later when he gets home.

--

So it turns out Trinity is right off the highway, which Jared wouldn't have expected from all the idyllic pictures of the campus he'd found on the website. And it's small, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of way, and his dad nearly had missed the exit for campus.

There are signs when they hit the off ramp, funneling cars into one entrance on the south side of campus, which Jared eventually learns are where all the dorms are. There's an ocean of orange shirted people milling about a couple of cars stuffed full of boxes and bags. Jared's among the first of the freshman to arrive.

His dad stops the car where one of the orange shirted girls directs him, and Jared rolls down his window. "Where are you headed?" she asks, leaning in the window and smiling.

"Uh." Jared checks the paper he'd printed out before they left Virginia. "Beze 212?"

"Awesome," she says. "Why don't you go pick up your key right over there, we'll help with the boxes."

Jared and his dad both get out of the car. "Yeah, that sounds good," Jared's dad says. "May as well do this now. It's only going to get hotter, and it's already a million degrees."

"It's a dry heat," Jared says, hand waving the issue even though he's already sweating.

Jared signs in at res life, gets his key, and heads back out to the car, which he finds almost entirely empty except for one lone box right behind the front seat. He picks it up, turns to walk to his dorm, and realizes he has no clue where it is.

He stands there for just a minute, looking at all the buildings that look so incredibly alike. "Uh."

"Looking for your dorm?" A different girl in an orange shirt stops in front of him. "I'm Sarah, you are?" She sticks her hand out and Jared juggles the box around to shake it.

"Jared."

"Where are you headed?"

"Beze."

"Gotcha, follow me."

So Jared follows Sarah to Beze, where he finds his dad and a line of orange shirts with all of his boxes and bags from the car. Jared unlocks the door and it takes all of them about five minutes to take all of his worldly possessions inside. The people in orange leave almost immediately after, presumably to go help more freshman.

"Whoa," Jared says, actually taking a look around the room.

"Yeah, the guide book wasn't lying about the rooms being huge," Jared's dad says.

"Yeah, really," Jared says. Even with two beds, desks, and the walk-in closet plus the fridge-microwave combo that comes with the room, there's plenty enough space left over that he and Stephen could have a couch if they wanted to.

"Which bed is going to be yours?"

"I was thinking I'd wait until Stephen gets here and then we could pick," Jared says.

"Okay," Jared's dad says, putting the duffel bag he's been carrying down on the floor. "But this one's got a view of the courtyard, look at that."

Jared sits down on the bed, then lies down, closing his eyes. As he sits up, he can see the twisted forms of the oak trees through the window. "Yeah, okay, that is pretty cool," he admits, and puts the duffel bag on the bed to stake his claim. He only feels a little guilty about it. He'll let Stephen have first pick of the desks to make up for it.

"We should go figure out what else you have to do," Jared's dad says, so they head back out into the heat.

Jared had only carried one box upstairs, but it's hot enough just standing still that he sweats through his shirt in about five minutes. He and his dad find Sarah again, who directs them over to the Bell Center, to get the rest of his orientation material.

They follow the signs to the Bell Center, which turns out to be the athletic center. More students must have shown up while Jared was taking his stuff upstairs, because the line snakes around the floor of the basketball court.

It takes about thirty minutes for them to progress to the first station, which is apparently where they take pictures for their ID cards. "Over here, please," a middle-aged woman says, calling him to stand in front of the blue screen. "A couple steps to the left—great, smile!"

"Huh?" Jared says, looking up just in time for a camera flash to go off.

"It'll be just a second," the woman says. She sits down at a laptop. "What's your last name?"

"Padalecki."

She looks up. "Spell that?"

"P-A-D-A—"

"Got it," she says. She clicks through a couple of screens, and a printer cranks to life, spitting out what Jared is dismayed to realize is his Trinity ID. He takes it off the printer and winces. He's coated in sweat, with his hair stuck to his forehead. That would be bad enough, though it's a pretty accurate rendition of what he looks like in the summer. But no, on top of that his eyes are huge and wide and his mouth is actually, swear to God, hanging open in surprise.

"Yeah, that is a doozy of a picture," the woman agrees. She doesn't sound like it's bothering her at all.

"Can I get a retake?" Jared asks.

"Sorry, love, there's a line," she says, pointing. "Next!"

To his credit, Jared's dad does a reasonably good job of hiding his smirk. "No one really looks at those pictures anyway," he says.

The line moves a little faster after that, and Jared gets the rest of his orientation schedule, a list of volunteer and student representative organizations. People are so cheerful and welcoming at every station that it creeps Jared out a little. Finally they reach the end, and his dad claps him on the back. There are two orange shirts at the exit doors, answering questions and directing people on where to go to next.

"Where's a good place for lunch?" Jared's dad asks one of them.

"Are you looking for quick and easy, authentic Texas, or tourist Texan?" the guy asks.

Jared and his dad exchange a look. Jared doesn't really understand the question, but the designation between authentic and tourist kind of scares him. Apparently it worries his dad too, because he says, "Tourist."

"You should go to the River Walk," the guy says. He and the girl standing across from him argue about the easiest way to get there and the best place to park, and Jared hopes his dad was paying attention, because at this point he's not sure if he needs to head north or south.

He was, and they find the River Walk with no problems. It's pretty hot and crowded, obviously the tourist destination of San Antonio. Jared tries as much as possible to stick near to the storefronts, since the sidewalks are narrow and crowded and right on the river. The very last thing he needs out of this day is to have his dad fish him out after he tumbles in. The water looks pretty gross anyway, though the people in the little tour boats that float past every so often seem happy enough to be out on it. A lot of the restaurants have tables right along the water and they end up picking a Tex-Mex place whose outdoor tables look really awesome until they step through the door into the blast of air conditioning. As soon as he feels that cold air hit his skin, there is no way Jared's going back out into the heat.

The restaurant's pretty packed but there's an open table at the window, overlooking the promenade.

They order a pitcher of iced tea and Jared drinks three glasses of it in rapid succession. The food comes out quickly, huge delicious burritos with lots of guacamole. Jared has a short but awesome relationship with his burrito, then eats the rest of the tortilla chips and salsa.

"I don't think Trinity's dining hall understands what it's getting into," Jared's dad says, laughing.

Jared waves down the waitress. "Excuse me, miss? Could we get some more chips?"

After he finishes his burrito, Jared's dad says, "So what are you thinking of Trinity so far? Are you liking it?"

"Yeah," Jared says. "I mean, you know, what I've seen of it, I really like."

"Good to hear it," Jared's dad says. "I'd hate for you to get all the way out here and decide you really wanted to be at Tech."

Jared shakes his head. "Nope. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for letting me come to Trinity."

"As long as it's what you really want, I'm happy for you."

Jared thinks about Sandy, how she laughs and her dark shiny hair and how smart she is, how completely brilliant she is in every way. "It's what I really want."

"I don't know if I ever said this, but I'm pretty impressed with you," his dad says.

Jared looks up. "Yeah?"

"Oh yeah. Going to school all this way from home . . . we can't just drive up and visit for an afternoon, you know. You're going to have to learn to be your own person, and I'm proud of you for taking that risk."

Any wetness in Jared's eyes is totally because of the jalapeños in his burrito. "Thanks, Dad. I appreciate it."

The drive back to campus is short, and there isn't a parking spot to be seen anywhere. "I guess that's my cue to take off, then," Jared's dad says, double-parking outside of Jared's dorm. "Got to make that drive back in time for work on Monday, anyway."

"Okay," Jared says, and yeah, that's definitely a lump in his throat. He swallows it back.

"Thanks for driving out here with me, Dad."

"Wouldn't have missed the chance to sing Springsteen all across Tennessee for anything." His dad claps him on the shoulder. "You take care of yourself, you hear me? And call your mom again sometime in the next couple days, when you get the chance. It'll do her good to hear your voice."

They'd called her when they passed San Antonio city limits to let her know they were close, but it's a good idea. "I will." Jared goes around to the driver's side and his dad pulls him into a tight hug. "Have a safe trip, okay?"

"Will do," Jared's dad says, and yeah, Jared's not the only one who ate the jalapeños. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Bye." Jared watches as his dad shuts the car door and pulls away. He waves until his dad turns the corner and is completely out of sight.

--

There's another orange-shirted person banging on doors when Jared goes back upstairs. "Hey, you in 212?" the guy asks. Jared wonders if there's a hotness factor to Trinity applications, because all of the upperclassmen helping today have been attractive, and this guy is one damned good looking dude. It makes Jared feel a little self conscious as he nods the affirmative.

"Just reminding everyone about mentor night out," the guy says, flashing some seriously straight white teeth. "You know who your mentor is, right?"

Jared had gotten a call from his a couple of weeks ago, when he was still back home. The guy had kind of seemed like a flake, talking to people in the background while he asked Jared questions about school and his family. But whatever, he seemed nice enough.

"Yeah, Mike something?"

"Rosenbaum?" The guy laughs when Jared nods. "That'll be interesting. Anyway, just meet where he told you to meet him. It's kind of mandatory."

"Yeah, not a problem."

"I'm Jensen, by the way. Your RA. I don't think we've met."

"Not unless you're one of the orange shirts that carried boxes into my room earlier."

Jensen laughs. "Dude, I've climbed those stairs so many freaking times today, who knows?"

"Yeah."

"So who are you, Jared or Stephen?"

There's construction paper on the door with his and Stephen's names on it; Jared guesses Jensen doesn't have the whole floor memorized. "Uh, Jared."

"Awesome. Hey, remind your roommate about mentor night out when he gets in, I've still go the rest of the floor to do."

"Yeah, sure," Jared says. He opens his door to find a guy in his room, sitting forlornly in one of the desk chairs. Jared wonders if this is Stephen, except this guy doesn't have any stuff with him. All the bags in the room are still Jared's. "Are you my roommate?"

"Nah," the guy says, pointing at the bathroom door. The bathroom connects on the other side to another dorm room. The fact that all the dorms at Trinity were suites had been a major selling point, even if Sandy hadn't already been going here. "I'm your suitemate. Ted." He's a few inches shorter than Jared, with dark hair and some freckles on his nose.

"Hey, I'm Jared." Jared sits down on one of the beds, feeling awkward and picking at a loose string on his shirt. "So, uh, what are you . . ."

"Sexiled," Ted says.

They've only been there, what, five or six hours? "Seriously?"

"Can you fucking believe it? He's with one of the orange shirt girls. An upperclassman."

"Maybe it's someone he knows from home?"

"The guy's British. I don't think there's anyone from home here."

Jared only wishes he had that kind of game. "Whoa."

Ted just looks kind of miserable. "I know."

"So." Around now is when Jared would normally offer a game of Mario Kart, or an episode of Family Guy, or any number of TV-related time wasters, except he doesn't have a TV yet. "Hey, what do you know about computers?" he asks instead.

Turns out Ted is kind of a genius, so Jared gets him to hook up his laptop to set up his school email account. There are step-by-step instructions, but Jared bets it's definitely safer to let someone else take care of it. He might end up wiping his hard drive accidentally.

"That's not actually possible," Ted tells him.

"Regardless," Jared says.

They both try really hard to ignore the sounds coming through the paper-thin walls between their rooms.

Stephen still hasn't shown by the time Jared has to leave to meet Mike. Ted's still sexiled, but he's meeting his mentor the same place Jared is so they walk down together.

Mike isn't hard to find. He's wearing a truly heinous tie-dye shirt in which the predominant color is hot pink, and is yelling, "I am Mike Rosenbaum. If you're in my mentor group, get your ass over here," at the top of his lungs. There are a few freshman gathered around him, trying not to stand too close, or look like they're standing near him at all. Jared watches jealously as Ted wanders over toward his mentor group. His mentor seems to be nice, calm, well dressed, and much, much quieter.

"Hey, bean pole," Mike says. "What's your name?"

Jared introduces himself and watches the other kids in the group wince a bit as Mike turns to the crowd in front of res life. "Hey everyone!" Mike yells. "This is Jared! Jared is right here!"

Jared gives an awkward wave. Apparently Mike has done this to the others in their group, so the response from the crowd is pretty lackluster. Jared gets a few waves before everyone turns back to the conversations they'd been having. He scans the crowd for Sandy; he hasn't seen her since he got here and he's a little worried she's moving into a crowded dorm at Tech right now.

"Hey, bean pole. Jared." Jared stops scanning the crowd for short brunettes and turns back to Mike. "You have a car?" Mike asks him, at a normal volume. Jared shakes his head. He had a car at home, but his mom wanted Megan to be able to drive herself to school and he had to leave it.

"Cool, you can ride with me." Mike grins slightly maniacally, and Jared starts praying then and there that he arrives wherever they're going in one piece. Mike must have noticed Jared's worried look, because he claps Jared on the back, really hard, and says, "Don't worry about it, man. I am an excellent driver."

Mike isn't actually lying. It might just be that he doesn't want the second car with the other half of their mentor group to get lost downtown, but Jared will take what he can get. Mike takes them to a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint with five-dollar large pizzas and a pretty lax carding policy. Not that Mike lets any of them take advantage of it. "Dude, you cannot play broomball smelling of beer."

"Broomball?" someone asks.

"Like hockey, but with brooms instead of sticks, a tennis ball instead of a puck, and no skates," Mike says.

Sounds easy enough, Jared thinks. He's not sure he could have done skates; way too massively uncoordinated. But walking around on the ice? He can manage that, no problem. They drive to the rink and Jared is handed a broom and he still thinks he's got this down, that this can't possibly be that bad. He takes a few steps out onto the ice and sees Ted near the opposite goal, shoving at ice shavings with his broom. There's a girl a couple feet away from him, a short, brunette girl, and it isn't until Jared's halfway across the rink, headed toward Ted, that the short, brunette girl resolves into Sandy.

And it's right then that he completely loses it and falls backwards on the ice.

--

Ted swears later that Jared lost consciousness and came to talking about robots and dancing mice, but sadly, Jared remembers every single second of every mentor in the place, along with half the freshman, circling around him in the center of the ice. Four different people holding up a different number of fingers, two different people asking him to name the President, the date, his dog. "How would you know my dog's name?" he asks, trying to sit up. The hot pink on Mike's shirt makes him kind of nauseated now.

"Yeah, you're all right," Mike says. He grabs one arm and another mentor grabs the other and together they haul Jared to the benches along the wall of the rink. "You just sit the rest of this one out," the mentor who isn't Mike tells him.

Jared has no intention of going anywhere near the ice again, so he does what he's told and watches the action from the sidelines. He looks for Sandy again but everything's moving a little too quickly for him to follow.

"Hey."

Jared turns a little too quickly, and almost falls off the bench when he sees Sandy standing not two feet away. He manages to catch himself before he totally eats it.

"Are you okay?" Sandy says.

Jared reaches up to poke at the knot on the back of his head. "Yeah. I'll be fine."

"You look kind of . . ." She trails off. "I mean—do I know you from somewhere?"

"Um," Jared says. He kind of wants to be able to say something, because Sandy just approached him on purpose and is trying to have a conversation with him, but his brain is just not providing him with anything useable.

She stares at him really, really intensely for a minute. "I do know you, don't I? You went to high school with me. It's Jared, right?"

"Um. Yeah," Jared says. He can't even begin to describe how much it sucks that she's not certain of his name.

"I didn't know anyone else from Virginia Beach was going to Trinity," Sandy says. "How did you hear about it?"

"Uh. From you," Jared hears himself say, and immediately wants to kick himself for saying it.

Sandy's staring at him with a look of pretty much abject horror and not saying anything at all. "That's kind of weird, Jared," she says finally. "That's really weird." She walks away and joins a small group of girls near the half wall surrounding the ice, her back to him as she talks to her friends.

Jared tells himself it could be worse, but he's pretty sure it can't right now.

--

The other bed is made when Jared gets back to his room. There might be a lump of a person under all the blankets, but Jared isn't sure. He leaves the light off regardless and wanders around with just the light from the bathroom to make the other bed by. He figures he'll meet Stephen in the morning and falls into bed, asleep almost before he can pull the blankets all the way up.

He doesn't meet Stephen in the morning, or the next afternoon, or at any point during the next three days of orientation. He does climb the Tower, call his mother, register for classes, find his mail box, figure out which dorm Sandy is in, and attempt intramural sports for Hallympics. Classes start tomorrow, and he figures Stephen's got to get up sometime.

He figures wrong. There's the occasional sign of a human presence: Jared will wake up and see a t-shirt on the floor where there wasn't one last night, or the blinds will be closed when he left the room with them open. So he's pretty sure that he does have a roommate.

"It's just, don't you think it's weird?" Jared says to Ted at breakfast. "We've shared a room for three days and I've never seen him once!"

"I'll trade you," Ted says. "I saw mine naked last night. Twice, with two different girls."

"How is that even possible? I don't even know how to get with one."

"First off, it might help if you were interested in more than one girl. You are kind of killing your own chances from the start there. Although I've got to say, it's not doing you any favors that you're a total creepy stalker about Sandy."

"Keep it down!" Jared hisses. He's hoping that maybe, if he's really lucky and doesn't mention anything about it, Sandy will put their entire conversation at broomball out of her head and will never associate him with it again. It's going to be kind of hard to manage that if Ted is going to yell about it in the dining hall.

"Sorry. A total creepy stalker about . . . a girl who will remain completely nameless, but is definitely not named Sandy."

"I kind of hate you," Jared tells him. "I never should have told you anything about her."

"Yeah, but you did, and now you have to live with the—oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"What?" Jared follows Ted's line of sight to a brown-haired guy with a smirk on his face and a girl on either side of him.

"That's him," Ted hisses. "That's Ed."

"You mean Ed as in—?"

"Good morning, Theodore," Ed says, walking right up to their table.

"Hi, Ed," Ted says, sounding like it's causing him physical pain to say it.

"How are you this morning?"

"Oh, I'm fine," Ted says. "Peachy. You?"

"A bit knackered," Ed says.

"I wonder why," Ted says loudly.

Just then, Ed seems to notice Jared. "I don't believe we've met," he says.

"Jared Padalecki," Jared says. "I think we're suitemates."

"Ah, right," Ed says, extending his hand. Jared shakes it.

One of the girls giggles and says something in Ed's ear. Ed nods and says, "Yes, well, we'd best be getting food and then going. We'd hate to be late for class." There's something about the way he says the word class that makes Jared totally doubt that that's where they're going. "Goodbye, Theodore. Jared." He nods at them and then heads toward the food, a girl at each side.

As soon as Ed's out of sight, Ted says, "That was both of them. Both of the girls I walked in on him with last night. Together!"

They're both silent for a few seconds, contemplating. "I don't think I am ever going to have that kind of game," Jared says.

"I hate my life," Ted says. "Seriously, that is just not even fair."

Jared nods, finishing the last bite of his omelet. "So, what's your first class?" he says, in an effort to derail the line of thought that's leading to him imagining exactly what Ted and those two girls might be up to.

"Calc I. You?"

"Intro to American History. In. . ." Jared checks his schedule. "Storch. Where are you?"

Ted fishes a campus map out of his backpack. "Where's Storch? Oh—yeah, I'm right around there, too. You want to walk up together?"

One thing Jared hadn't expected about Trinity is the freaking huge cliff that divides the south end of campus and the dorms from the north end of campus, where the academic buildings are. The stairs leading up the side of the cliff are epic. There are two landings along the way, presumably for the people who have to pause and catch their breath before they can make it to the top.

Jared doesn't have to stop, but he's definitely dripping in sweat by the time he arrives at Storch. He's glad he and Ted got here fifteen minutes early—it means he's got time to go to the bathroom and mop up some of the sweat before class starts.

Intro to American History is pretty much exactly what Jared's expecting—lots of introductions, going over the syllabus. He recognizes a couple of faces. One kid, Andrew, is in his mentor group, so he figures he's set if they have to do any partner work. There's going to be a lot of reading, but nothing he can't handle, and he was good at history in high school, got 4's and 5's on his history APs. The professor seemed nice enough, too—he figures they'll get along just fine.

Jared's not so sure what to expect out of his freshman seminar. Over the summer they'd had to fill out dozens of forms, the vast majority of which Jared took very, very seriously. He angsted for like three days over his roommate preference form (which clearly did him a whole lot of good in the roommate department), but he hadn't known what to do with the freshman seminars form. None of the fourteen choices had sounded all that appealing, so he'd ended up just closing his eyes and picking the first three his finger landed on.

Jared got assigned to the seminar he'd listed as number one: Religion and Childhood. He's having a hard time getting excited about it. He's just hoping that it'll be mostly painless, and that maybe if he's lucky he'll make a couple of friends out of commiserating over the reading.

Except that when he walks in the door, Sandy's one of three kids sitting in the front row. Their heads all turn, and the look on Sandy's face—shock, suspicion—makes him want to run out of the room immediately.

Instead he steels himself, sits down a couple of rows back, and says, "Hi, Sandy."

"Hi, um, Jared," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm in this class." He pulls out his schedule and holds it up—stupid, it's not like she can read it from this far back. "Uh, I mean, I didn't know you were going to be in it or anything." He immediately wishes he could shut himself up.

Sandy exhales. "Right. Look, Jared, do you think we can maybe not talk?"

"Sure!" Jared agrees.

The hour feels like high school all over again. Jared doesn't pay a bit of attention to the prof in front of the class, just watches the sway of hair against Sandy's back, the graceful way she holds her pen. He looks away pretty quickly when she sneaks glances over her shoulder to see what he's doing, but he meets her eye more than once. At the end of class, she leaves in a pack of girls before he even gets his books together.

--

Jared grabs lunch at the student union and checks his mail, even though he's not really expecting anything. There's a flier about some frat mixer that Jared may or may not attend and a cheesy, slightly glittery card from his mother, wishing him luck in his first week of classes. He shoves them both in his bag. His afternoon class is Intro to Computers, since Jared failed the computing test they gave everyone during orientation, which didn't surprise him at all. What does surprise him is walking in and finding Ted's in the class as well.

"Dude, didn't you build your computer?" Jared asks, sitting down at the terminal next to Ted.

"Yeah," Ted says miserably. "But I think I failed the ethics part."

"They were pretty easy questions. 'If someone offers you an illegally downloaded program you . . .'"

"I know! I should have gone for the 'don't take it and turn them in' answer."

"But hey," Jared says. "At least this should be an easy A for you."

Ted rolls his eyes. "Yeah, and a waste of a semester."

Jared shrugs. He's about to tell Ted about Sandy being in his seminar class, but the lights go down and their professor starts introducing them to their start menu, so Jared doesn't really get an opportunity.

After that hour of torture, Ted heads off for his next class and Jared, whose classes are over for the day, heads back down the hill. Jensen's door is open and he calls Jared's name as he walks past. "So, how was your first day of class?" Jensen asks, gesturing for Jared to come in and take a load off. Jared sits gingerly on the edge of Jensen's bed. Because he's an RA, he doesn't have a roommate, so he's got enough space to have pushed two beds together to make one very large one. Jared eyes the posters on Jensen's wall. They're all for bands Jared's never heard of.

"Not bad," he says.

"Anyone interesting in your classes?"

"There's this girl," he says, and Jensen smirks.

"Yeah? Tell me about her."

And just like that, Jared finds himself talking Jensen's ear off about Sandy, about how perfect she is and how much he admires her, what her dreams are for after school (he'd heard her talking to friends back at school), just everything.

"So you've talked to her?" Jensen asks at one point.

"A couple of times," Jared says. "In school and stuff. When I fell at broomball."

"You know this much about her and you've only spoken a couple of times?"

"No! It was more than that." Like the time Jared tripped up the stairs in high school and Sandy leaned over the railing and said, "Hey, are you okay?" Or in study hall, when Chad threw a paper airplane across the classroom and it landed in her friend's hair and Sandy marched over to their side of the room with it and said, "Is this yours?" low and steely enough that Jared had actually been scared of her for a little while. "We've spoken more than that," he tells Jensen now.

"Jared, you're not the first person to follow a girl to college. I mean, most people have actually dated the people they follow, and not just admired from afar. But whatever, it happens."

"I think I freaked her out."

"Well, give her some time. Make other friends. Keep yourself open to other girls. Just be patient."

"Yeah," Jared says. "I can do that." He guesses the conversation's over now, and Jensen probably has better things to do with his afternoon than talking to Jared about his not-at-all-girlfriend. "I guess I should go."

"Cool. And you can come talk to me whenever, you know. That's what I'm here for." Jensen smiles and it lights up his whole face.

"Thanks," Jared says, and trips on Jensen's doormat on his way out.

--

Jared's got some reading he could get started on, but none of it's due until the day after tomorrow, and today was kind of a long day, what with the hideous, crippling embarrassment. It's just now starting to set in that he's going to be spending the entire semester in freshman seminar with Sandy. It's not the first time that he's been in the same class with her—they were both on the AP track at Cox, so the potential for class overlap had always been high—but, seeing as how she wasn't sure about his name at broomball, it may be the first time that she's actually aware of it.

In high school, whenever he'd thought about Sandy actually acknowledging him, he'd been thrilled about the prospect of it—maybe because he'd figured that when she spoke to him he'd be cooler, smarter, funnier than he is usually. Instead he stumbles over his words and sounds like a freak and yeah, okay, it's not that surprising that Sandy has that effect on him, but he isn't a freak, really. He would have loved being in the same class as Sandy if he could just stare at the back of her head all semester, like he did in high school. But he's pretty sure she's going to be looking out for that sort of thing.

The whole mess is really stressing him out. There's no way he's starting on homework that isn't due for two days, and plus, he's really due for some Call of Duty.

He checks to see if Ted's around, but the only thing he hears through the bathroom door is this muffled knocking coming from the other side, and it's sort of rhythmic, and then there's a soft moan and yeah, Jared can say with 100% certainty that Ted's not home.

It's kind of better that Ted's not there though. It's been a couple weeks since he's played seriously, not just goofing around with Chad and their friends on the mic trash-talking each other, but he can still beat the crap out of these random guys he's playing against. It's great, too—perfectly quiet in his room, nothing to distract him.

Except there's a heavy thump from behind him, and Jared jerks up, startled, to see this thing looming over him, and he screams—

Just as the thing resolves into a skinny kid with long brown hair. Who just fell out of Jared's roommate's bed.

"Um," Jared says, pushing his hair back off his head. "I guess you're Stephen?"

"Sorry to interrupt your game," Stephen says in a completely flat monotone. He gets back in the bed, pulls the covers back over him, and doesn't move again.

Jared stares at the bed for a solid two minutes. "What the—Stephen," he whispers. A little louder: "Stephen!"

The lump on the bed doesn't move.

"Hey, Stephen, you alive under there?" Jared says, pulling up the edge of the covers. From what he can see, Stephen is already sound asleep. He doesn't so much as budge, either at the sound of Jared's voice or at the light in his eyes.

"Huh," Jared says, dropping the blanket. It's pretty hard to get back into CoD after that.

--

The first week of class is pretty boring. Most of the professors are easing them into things, going over the syllabus and giving them copious notes on their reading assignments. Turns out, though, that they were really just lulling Jared into a false sense of security. In the second week of American History, Dr. Blevins hands out the guidelines for their first paper, fifteen pages long with documented sources and an annotated bibliography, and Jared hyperventilates a little looking at his topic choices. Religion and the colonists, European invasion of the Native Americans, nothing he can b.s. his way through.

In his seminar, where he's been mostly able to avoid meeting Sandy's gaze while he watches her from across the classroom, Dr. Nolan passes around hand outs on the group project they'll be starting on.

"It'll be pretty intensive group work," Dr. Nolan says, "and I expect everyone to do their share. There will be an individual grade as well as a group grade, and I will expect a participation report from every group member."

All things Jared is fine with; he'd always ended up being the group member that pulled their grades out of the toilet before. He looks around the room, trying to single out the people he'll try to get in a group with. He briefly toys with the idea of asking Sandy, but he's not sure he needs the humiliation of being shot down in front of the entire class.

Doesn't matter anyway, because Dr. Nolan has beaten him to the punch. "I've split you up into groups," he says. And then proceeds to rattle off people's last names, pointing them into various sections of the classroom. He hears, "Padalecki, Stephens, McCoy, and Conners, over here," and gets kind of a queasy feeling in his stomach. He feels like he can hear Sandy's completely silent disappointed groan from across the room.

Jared moves reluctantly to the desks the professor pointed at, and nods a greeting to Evan and Stacy, the other two in the group.

"Can you believe this topic?" Stacy asks, pointing at the hand out. "Socialization in Pre-Modern Europe from the Roman Empire to the Christian World."

Evan grimaces. "What time period do we have?"

"Early Middle Ages," Sandy says, standing over Jared. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Jared nods and gets up to follow her to the window. "Look," she starts. She barely comes up to his sternum, but it doesn't really make her any less intimidating. "This is kind of weird for me and I'm not entirely happy about it, but I don't want to ask Dr. Nolan to reassign the groups just because you're kind of creepy. So just try not to talk to me that much, okay?"

His hearts beating a little too fast in his chest, and he squeaks out, "Okay," which, when faced with all the possible responses he could have had, is apparently the best he can manage. He follows her back over to the others and tries not to look too closely at her the rest of the class period. He's happy they're in the same group though, and that he didn't have to arrange it. Maybe now he can prove he's really not that creepy after all.

The hour goes pretty quickly. Sandy kind of takes charge of the group, which Jared could have predicted. She's definitely the leader type. She assigns the parts of the project for everyone, and Jared notices that she very carefully gave him absolutely nothing that would involve him getting to work with her, though he'll have some research overlap with Stacy.

"Does that work for everyone?" Sandy asks, glaring at Jared.

Everyone nods, and then class is over until Wednesday.

In comps for monkeys (which is what Ted has started calling Intro to Computers), Ted figured out how to get around the firewall so he and Jared can get on Gchat together. Jared doesn't even wait for the lights to go down for class before he messages Ted about his group project.

ted: creeeeeeeepy stalker
jared: i didn't pick the group! nolan assigned us.
ted: what'd she say?
jared: uh . . . she told me to not be creepy
ted: so don't be creepy.
jared: thanks for the advice

Jared doesn't notice Dr. Barrett coming down their row, checking on their progress formatting a Word document, until he's at the very next computer, checking Ashley's work. Ted pokes him in the side, pointy finger digging into his ribs, and Jared closes the whole window just as Barrett turns to his monitor.

"You haven't done a lot yet, " Barrett says, frowning at Jared's mostly empty document. No, he hadn't. He'd been too busy relaying the events of his last class to Ted.

"It's kind of confusing," Jared says, attempting to cover.

Barrett spends the next ten minutes breathing over Jared's shoulder, pointing at the different short cuts on the menu and the formatting choices. He finally moves on to the next row and Jared opens the chat window again.

ted: dude, why didn't you just alt tab to the window?
jared: ??

Ted demonstrates. Jared presses alt and tab and marvels at the active windows changing on his monitor.

Ted is shaking his head.

ted: you really do belong here, don't you.
jared: yep.

--

Jensen's door is open when Jared gets back to the dorm. Jared spends about a second feeling guilty about bothering Jensen for the third time in a week, but the guy's door is open; it's basically an invitation.

"Uh, hey, Jensen?"

No one's in the room, and at first Jared thinks he must have misinterpreted the open door policy of his RA, but then the toilet flushes and Jensen comes out of the bathroom, rubbing wet hands on his jeans. "Jared!" he says. "Got a Sandy update?"

Jensen sits down on the end of the bed. He motions Jared over, and Jared sits down at the other end.

"We're in the same group for this freshman seminar project," Jared says. "Dr. Nolan assigned it. I didn't try to get in her group or anything."

"Okay. So that's good. That should give you plenty of chances to talk to her, and you've got a built-in conversation topic."

"She said she didn't want me to talk to her that much," Jared says.

Jensen looks at him, one eyebrow raised. "She said this specifically?"

"Yep."

"Okay, so don't talk to her too much." Jensen rests his elbows on his knees. "That's pretty easy. Look, you're trying to keep from freaking her out, right? Just do your part of the project, and don't ask her anything you couldn't ask the rest of the group. It'll be fine."

"You think so?" Jared says.

"It definitely shouldn't hurt anything." Jensen glances down at his watch. "Shit, how'd it get to be three already? I'm late for a meeting. If you want to talk about anything else, I'll be back in an hour or so."

"I think I'm good, but thanks." Jared follows Jensen out of his room. "Have a good meeting!"

"Catch you later!" Jensen says as he jogs down the hall.

--

"Jensen says I should try not to freak her out."

Ed's finally decided to give class a try, so Ted can finally use his own Xbox in his own room. They're talking through the headsets. "Haven't I been telling you—hey, watch it!"

Jared shrugs as his alien falls off the walkway again and respawns. "Oops."

They're playing online but they've got the sound turned off. Jared's pretty sure the rest of the people on his team are insulting his manhood, but whatever.

"Dude." Jared can hear Ted glaring from the other room.

"Yeah, sorry."

"Anyway," Ted says. "I've been telling you not to be creepy."

"I haven't been creepy! Anyway, Jensen says I should try talking to her about school stuff, not anything—" He trails off as he dies again, right as the match ends.

"Do you even want to play?"

Jared shrugs. "Maybe we should switch to two player."

"So I'm the only one who knows how bad you really are?"

But Jared's really not bad, and Ted knows it. He beat the single player version in three days after Halo 3 came out. He's just distracted.

Jared's all set to respond, but a shadow falls over his hands and fucking Stephen is looming over him again but by the time the skinny shape resolves into Stephen, Jared's already shrieked into the head set like a big shrieking girl.

"Dude, what was that?" Ted yells from the other room just as Stephen says, "Uh, sorry," and shuffles past him to the bathroom.

"Nothing," Jared says, as his heart rate drops back to normal.

"Are you sure? You want me to come over there and hold your hand or something?"

"Shut up. Just set up the game."

They start a two player match and because they're not talking, Jared kills Ted six times in the first five minutes.

"So Jensen backed up my 'don't be creepy' advice?" Ted asks, and then whoops as he sneaks up behind Jared and kills him from behind.

--

Jared's mom calls him about three minutes after he gets out of class on Friday. "Hi, sweetie," she says when he picks up. "How'd your first week of classes go?"

"Just finished the last one," he says, veering off the path back toward his dorm and making for a nice-looking patch of grass under a tree instead. "If you'd called about three minutes earlier I would have still been in class."

"Good thing I waited until right at lunchtime, then, huh?" She laughs. "So, first week of classes. How was it?"

"Classes were fine," Jared says, parking himself on the grass. "Not a whole lot happened yet."

"I guess nothing much ever does, the first week," she says. "What about your roommate—what's he like? Your dad said you still hadn't met him by the time he left to drive back home."

"Oh," Jared says. "Have I ever got a story for you."

He tells her about Stephen, about the sheer unadulterated panic that was meeting him, and then he tells her about orientation and somehow, before he knows it, she's saying, "That all sounds lovely, honey, but you know, I've got to get dinner started. Your sister's going to be home from volleyball pretty soon."

Jared checks his watch. Sure enough, it's nearly five. "Huh. That went fast."

"She misses you, you know," his mom says. "I don't think she realized just how lonely she was going to be without you around."

"She just hadn't realized what it was going to be like to have your undivided attention on her," Jared says.

His mom laughs. "Well, there is that."

"Tell everybody I said hello, okay? I love you guys."

"Love you too, sweetheart."

Jared cradles his phone in his hand for a minute after she hangs up. It's weird to think of his mom making dinner by herself, without anyone around. He used to always do his homework in the kitchen while she cooked, checking every few minutes to see what she was making and asking if it was really going to be another ten minutes before the chicken was done. That was the way it went every school day, and it's odd to think that that's not a part of their lives anymore, for her or for him.

--

Tuesday means Bio and Asian Religions, both slightly boring but necessary for common curric. Bio is by far his largest class, maybe seventy students, and he generally sits in the back and naps on and off. The prof's got most of the notes online anyway, so Jared wonders why anyone bothers. Wednesday means History and more freaking out about the paper he has to do eventually, and then more seminar, where Nolan breaks them up into their groups again to discuss their project.

Sandy makes sure Jared's sitting as far away from her as possible before she grabs the empty seat next to Evan. "So, how's everyone's progress?"

Stacy actually has journal articles and things that she photocopied at the library to show to Sandy. Evan's got notes that he and Sandy took from a video Nolan gave them. "God that was boring," Evan says, and Sandy laughs.

"Remember that part?" she says.

"With the—" Evan starts, but they're both laughing too hard to continue, heads together, and Sandy puts her small, perfect hand on Evan's arm. Jared wonders what could possibly be so funny about childrearing in the Middle Ages, and says so.

Sandy's face kind of tightens up. "You just had to be there," she says. "What have you got?"

Jared has five hours of Halo yesterday with Ted, and a bunch of reading for his Religion class. "Uh, I looked some stuff up online," he says.

"What kind of stuff?"

This is the time, he thinks, that he should follow Jensen's advice and talk about school related matters. Except he didn't really look at anything, and he's got nothing to share. "I didn't write anything down yet."

Stacy looks kind of sympathetic. Who likes to be grilled about group participation? "It's okay," she says. "We've got time."

"Not a lot," Sandy says. "Get it together, Jared."

She spends the rest of the class turned away from him, talking animatedly to Evan about any number of things that Jared can't quite hear. Stacy asks him what things he's gotten involved in since the beginning of school. Since it's mostly just the gaming club, and they mostly meet online from their separate rooms, she monologues about how awesome her Adopt a Grandparent group is until class is over.

--

"I'm pretty sure they're just friends," Jared says. "Right? You could put your hand on a friend's arm." He puts his hand on Jensen's forearm.

Jensen twitches a little, then relaxes as Jared pulls his hand away.

"I mean, okay, it's a little weird," Jared continues. "But they've got to be just friends."

"It's very possible," Jensen concedes. "Or maybe they aren't. Jared, has Sandy dated anyone before?"

"Sure," Jared says. She dated Russell Trescott for three months when they were sophomores, Greg Manning all through junior year, and three different guys, all football players, all named Mike, when they were seniors, but from the look on Jensen's face Jared's pretty sure that's a little more information than he's looking for right now. Jared clamps his mouth shut on all that and just says, "She dated a few different people in high school."

"Did it make you jealous when you were in high school?"

Jared thinks about it. "Sure, in the sense that I wished it were me dating Sandy and not them, but at least she knew them! She just met this Evan guy!"

"You said they'd spent a couple of days working on this project for your class, right? Jared, they're probably still just getting to know each other. And even if they are dating, it doesn't mean they're on the fast track to marriage."

"Yeah." Knowing it isn't going to make Jared any less bitter. "It's just stupid, you know? I feel like I must have had some chance to impress her, sometime, and I totally missed it."

"I really doubt that," Jensen says. "It's not like there's one chance with a person, and if you miss it, it's all over. Don't beat yourself up too much. At the same time, Jared, I know I keep saying this and you keep ignoring me—there are other girls at Trinity. It could be worthwhile to get to know some of them, even just as friends."

Jared smiles at him. "Yeah. That's a good idea." Jensen's definitely right—there are plenty of other girls at Trinity. It's just that none of them is Sandy.

--

Jared landed one of the best schedules ever. Because comps for monkeys is an extra long period, he's only got it twice a week, so he's got a two-and-a-half-day weekend, starting at lunch on Friday. Last Friday he spent the afternoon playing Frisbee with a couple kids from his dorm. It's gorgeous out today, too, and a little cooler than usual—eighty-five is starting to seem cool—but he's spent all day today thinking about what Jensen said last night, about how he didn't just have one chance to impress Sandy after all, and he's come up with a plan. His plan is: impress her with his amazing freshman seminar project research skills.

He holes up in the library with his laptop and the JSTOR database. Pretty soon he's got about a dozen articles that relate to his half of the project, all of them dense as hell, but he's a man with a plan. He reads every single one of them, highlights the relevant bits, and makes a PowerPoint pulling everything together. They just started on PowerPoint in comps for monkeys, so Jared's finally learned how to change the colors and the fonts and stuff; it's a pretty good-looking presentation for the first time in Jared's life. And after about eight tries, Jared finally manages to get the PowerPoint saved to the USB stick he got during orientation.

Sandy lives in Murchison. Jared's never been inside, but her room is pretty easy to find. If he didn't know the number, he'd have known it was hers by the nametags on the door: stick figure versions of Sandy and her roommate with photographs of their heads cut out and glued on top. Jared recognizes the picture—it's Sandy's senior picture, the one that's in their yearbook. The Trinity application had asked for a picture; that must have been the one she sent in. Jared's really glad Jensen hadn't gotten that crafty with their nametags; he can't remember which picture he sent in on the application, but it's probably pretty awful.

It takes Jared a good minute more before he can steel himself to actually knock on the door. He figures he's come this far; he might as well go through with the rest of it. He really doesn't want all of that time in the library to have been in vain. He knocks—two raps, then another two, in case he was too quiet the first time.

Sandy's roommate answers the door, the girl whose name is Lindsay, according to the nametag. "Hi?" she says.

"Hey, uh." Jared clears his throat. "I'm looking for Sandy. Is she around?"

"Be right there, just a second!" Sandy calls from inside the room. She sounds happy, excited to have a visitor; Jared's feeling pretty good about this whole thing, until she gets to the door and starts. "Um. Jared. Hi."

Lindsay says, "Is something going on?"

"It's fine, don't worry about it," Sandy says, then slips through the door into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind her.

"Um." Sandy pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. "How do you know where I live?"

Jared stares at her for a second. "I . . . looked it up in the directory?" They got a listing of everyone's dorm room and extension on the first day of orientation.

"Oh, right." Sandy crosses her arms over her chest. She shifts her weight a couple of times. "Okay, but I mean. What are you doing here?"

"I did some work on the Religion and Childhood project," Jared says. "I put it all in this PowerPoint, with pictures and everything, if you want to see." He pulls the USB stick out of his pocket to hand to her.

Sandy doesn't make any move to take it. "I think you should show this to Stacy, Jared. She's the one working on your half of the project with you, remember? I think you should also maybe just talk to her about this from here on out, okay?"

Jared pockets the USB stick. "Um. Sure, yeah, that's fine, I'll see you around," he says in a rush, then clamps his mouth shut before he can say anything else terrible and awful and completely mortifying, and gets away from that dorm as fast as he can.

--

When Jared gets back to his dorm he makes a beeline for Jensen's room. The door's closed and locked, and from what Jared can see through the crack at the bottom of the door it looks like the light's off, too. He knocks a couple times just in case, but there's no reply.

Ted's there when Jared knocks on his door, at least. "Have you seen Jensen?" Jared says. "There's this thing, it just happened, I really need to talk to him."

"It's eight-thirty on a Friday night," Ted says. "He's probably out. There's some mixer over at Herndon—do you want to go?"

"I can't," Jared says. "I'm an idiot. I thought I had another chance with Sandy, Jensen said I had another chance with her, and I really freaked her out, I think, and she told me not to talk to her at all, and I really need to talk to Jensen."

"Ohhh-kay," Ted says. "You know what, I don't know where Jensen went, but you can talk to José. He gives good advice, too."

"I'm not following," Jared says, until Ted goes over to the mini-fridge and pulls out a very full bottle of tequila. Jared boggles. "What the—where did you get that?"

"Ed," Ted says. Which is how Jared learns that a) Ed's loaded; b) Ed's got some kind of totally foolproof fake ID; and c) Ed has explicitly told Ted that if the stash disappears from time to time, it's not going to be a problem.

"Wow," Jared says. "Wait, you're distracting me, I was telling you about Sandy."

"Nope, sorry, there's a ban on the word 'Sandy' until after you have taken at least three shots of tequila," Ted says, procuring shot glasses from a desk drawer.

The first shot is pretty nasty going down, but the second and third aren't so bad, and by the time he finishes taking all three he's starting to feel the tequila-warmth in his gut. "I was telling you about how my life is over," he says to Ted.

"You were," Ted agrees. "You want to play Wii?"

It turns out that being a little buzzed, playing Wii, and bemoaning the horrible turn his life has just taken is too much for Jared to concentrate on all at the same time. He can't do the tale of Sandy-related woe justice right now; he'll tell Jensen about it tomorrow.

Everything seems better with a little tequila in him, anyway. He and Ted play Wii tennis a couple hours, taking a few more shots of tequila along the way until they're both too tired and uncoordinated to continue, and then Jared goes next door and collapses into deep, blissful sleep.

--

Jared can count on two fingers the number of times he's been drunk before. He wasn't really part of that crowd in high school, and Jeff was too busy pretending he didn't exist to let Jared tag along with his friends. The point is, Jared's not sure what his usual is for being hung over.

But he sure as fuck hopes it's not waking up at six a.m. for the rest of his life.

He's not entirely certain, at first, that it isn't still the middle of the night. He can't remember the last time he woke up before the sun rose, and he doesn't have a lot of experience with pre-dawn light. But his alarm clock says 5:59 a.m. and he doesn't have any reason to believe it's not accurate. He gets up to pee and after jumping back because someone else was already in there (but not really, he's just not good with mirrors before dawn), he laughs very silently at the awesomeness that is his hair this morning. He thinks about showering but doesn't want to wake anyone else up.

He pokes the lump on Stephen's bed to see if he remembers what time the dining hall opens, but the lump on Stephen's bed turns out to be his comforter and a pile of t-shirts, and Stephen's MIA. It kind of weirdly makes sense—Jared figures he has to be awake sometimes. He checks the dining hall's schedule online and finds out it's two hours before he can give his stomach the breakfast tacos it's apparently craving. Just thinking the words "breakfast tacos" make his stomach growl. He climbs back into bed and channel surfs through the infomercials until he gets to the campus channel, which is playing The Matrix.

Jared figures that he'll fall back asleep at some point, but this turns out to not be the case. Since he's still awake by the time Neo goes to visit the Oracle, he gives up on sleep and grabs his laptop. He writes a long and descriptive email to Megan about the extreme evils of alcohol, and a much shorter email to Chad, which consists entirely of the sentence: Made a fool of myself in front of Sandy yesterday, got drunk, am now awake and hungover at six a.m. My life sucks. By the time he's done emailing it's only five minutes to tacos, which he figures he can waste by walking really slowly toward the dining hall.

It's open by the time he gets there, and he's the first in line at the Mexican station, around the corner from everything else. The guy at the grill takes one look at Jared's hair and laughs so hard he cries into his apron, and doesn't charge Jared for an extra taco.

"On the house, man. That's some shit crazy hair."

Jared takes the plate. "Uh, thanks?"

"No problem."

A couple of other students have wandered in by the time Jared sits down in the corner. They're all about as dressed as he is, which is to say they've got their bits covered by pajamas and not much else. He makes short work of the tacos (which are a delicious revelation he's had since moving to south Texas – eggs, potatoes, cheese, and salsa wrapped up in a tortilla? fucking luminary) and is taking his plate to the tray rack when he hears her laughing.

The tacos form a cold lump in his stomach as he peers around the tray rack. Sandy's sitting across one of the long tables from Evan, leaning across to spoon something into his mouth. Evan hitches his elbows up on the table and leans across just enough to kiss her nose in between bites.

Jared knows Sandy's an early riser. He hadn't staked out her house or anything, but they'd both done Model UN, and she'd always been the first person at breakfast. Jared always made sure to set his alarm extra early so that he could have breakfast with her—six tables away, of course—while she and Mike #3 shared pancakes. He guesses it's something else she and Evan have in common now.

Jared takes a short step forward, to do what he's not entirely sure, but he's still mostly behind the tray rack and his gigantic foot catches on one of the bottom rungs and sets it teetering. He manages to catch it before it actually falls over, but it tips enough that half the trays on the far side slide out of their spots and crash to the floor. It's enormously loud in the large, empty room and the handful of students eating breakfast all stare. One in bright orange pajamas starts a slow clap. Jared ducks down to pick up the trays and plates and stuff and by the time he looks back toward Sandy's table, she and Evan are gone.

--

Jensen's door is closed again. It's 8:15 on a Saturday morning, for God's sake, but Jared has to talk to him now. That's what an RA is there for, he tells himself as he pounds on Jensen's door. He hears a muffled crash and what might be Jensen cursing from the other side of the door before it's flung open.

"Jared, what? Is someone dying?"

The sight of Jensen in glasses throws Jared for a minute, and he can't remember why he needed to talk to Jensen. "You wear contacts?"

"Yes. What? Is there some kind of problem?" Jensen's got a death grip on the door and he's squinting into the morning light. Jared's not incredibly well versed in what hung over looks like, but he's pretty sure it looks like Jensen.

"Yeah," he says, "Sandy—"

Jensen rolls his eyes and collapses against the doorframe in an intensely overdramatic way. "God," Jensen says, face mashed against the door. "Come in, I have to sit down for this."

He pushes open the door for Jared and Jared only trips a little over the doorsill. "Dude, are you hung over?" Jensen asks him.

Jared thinks about it a minute and decides he's really not. He didn't have that much last night. "Uh . . . no?"

Jensen squints at him and Jared smiles a little awkwardly as he sits in Jensen's desk chair. Jensen sprawls back across his bed. "I'm listening," he says, waving his hand for Jared to spill.

So Jared tells him about the dining hall, and then he remembers that he never got to tell Jensen about last night either, so he backtracks to tell Jensen about that, and then goes back to the dining hall, and ends with knocking over the trays and having the dining hall lady glowering at him as he knelt in the middle of orange juice and left over eggs.

Jensen's laughing so hard he's rolling with it by the end of the story, which Jared's okay with because he just noticed the mashed egg and toast still stuck to the knee of his sweats, and he's pretty sure no one could blame him for picking it off and flicking it on Jensen.

"Okay," Jensen says finally, taking off his glasses to wipe the tears from his eyes. "Okay. So, Sandy."

Which completely makes Jared deflate a little. "Yeah."

"You know what I've said."

"I know I have to be open, keep my eye out for other girls."

"Are you doing it?"

Jared thinks about it a minute. "Not so much."

"Could you do me a favor?"

"Sure?"

Jensen sits up and edges over to the side of the bed. "Do not come by before noon on Saturdays again." He stops a second. "Unless someone is dying. Or bleeding."

Which is fair, Jared guesses. "Mmm, yeah."

"Also, please. Look at other girls. Learn their names. Stop stalking Sandy."

"I'm not stalking—" Jared starts, but Jensen holds up his pointer finger like Jared's mama does when he's arguing with Megan.

"No, I know. Just. Don't go to her room. Don't stop and watch her in the dining hall. Just walk away."

Jared nods. "Okay."

"Okay. Get out of here. I have at least five hours before I have to be anywhere."

Jared's almost out the door when Jensen calls after him. "And take a shower! That hair could kill someone."

--

Jared's group presents their project the following Thursday. Sandy's got no academic reason to keep talking to Evan, but he sees them together all the time. Jared spends a lot of time trying to make Evan die in a fire with the power of his mind—okay, not like actually die, but definitely stop dating Sandy—except it's totally ineffectual. He sees Evan kissing Sandy on the nose in the middle of the quad a solid two weeks after the project is over, and he's sure that if he went to breakfast early he'd see them holding hands and spoon-feeding each other oatmeal.

Not that he's been going to breakfast early. Not more than a couple of times a week, anyway.

At least the fact that they're dating is not bothering him as much as it did at first.

"I still don't see what she sees in him," Jared says to Ted. "He's funny-looking. And short."

"Maybe they have a mutual love of cashews," Ted says. "Look, Jared, my calc study group is coming over, so can we hold off on the Sandy talk?"

"Sure," Jared says, crossing his arms over his chest. "What are you studying for?"

"We've got a midterm tomorrow," Ted says.

Jared's stomach rolls over. He'd totally put midterms out of his mind. It seems like they're still at the beginning of the semester, or at least far too early in the semester to have to think about midterms. "Already?"

"We've got two," Ted explains. "It sucks."

"Oh," Jared says. He feels a little better. Just to be sure, he says, "So the rest of midterms don't start until later?"

"Not for another two or three weeks, I think," Ted says. There's a knock on the door, and Ted opens it to a tall skinny guy with glasses and a girl with brilliant red hair and about a billion freckles.

"Hi, Ted," the girl says. "Chace is running a little late, but he said he'd be here in a few."

"Okay, sure," Ted says. "Hey, have you guys met my suitemate? Jared, this is Ryan and Maggie."

"Hi," Jared says, shaking their hands. Maggie's got a surprisingly strong handshake. "You got a lot to study for?"

"We just need to cram a month of material we haven't learned, and we've only got one night to do it," Maggie says. "But you know, there's not much other than that."

Jared laughs. "Good luck. I'll let you guys get started."

"Don't worry, we're not doing anything until Chace gets here," Maggie says, just as a kid with messy blond hair runs through the door and nearly straight into Jared.

"Sorry I'm late," the kid says. "Hi, I'm Chace."

"Jared. Nice to meet you. Are you guys going to be here all night?"

"Until we've learned the material or collapse from sheer exhaustion," Ted says. "Whichever comes first."

Jared leaves them to their suffering. He spends about three hours playing Xbox with Chad and thanking God that it's Ted with the midterm and not him.

--

Jared's not thanking God the next morning when Dowling assigns a twenty-page research paper as the Asian Religions midterm, due in three weeks. It wouldn't be so bad if he could put it off until the last minute, then spend twenty-four miserable hours researching and writing the thing, but the professor shoots that idea right down. Since she think it's the first major research paper most of the kids in the class have written, she's set deadlines for topics, theses and bibliographies, outlines, and first drafts all along the way.

The next three weeks are going to freaking suck.

"Look at it this way," Ted says. "At least you still have a chance of getting an A in that class, whereas I know for a fact that I am now flunking calculus."

"You spent like eight hours studying for this final last night! How are you flunking?"

"Maybe not flunking," Ted concedes. "But pretty definitely a C. I ran out of time! I left the last three questions blank. The prof had to take the test away from me. It was awful."

"You probably didn't get a C. And anyway, maybe they'll give extra credit."

"You know what, I'm not going to worry about it until I get the test back. We don't have any homework for next week. I'm going to concentrate on enjoying my calc-free weekend to the fullest. Are you with me?"

"Sure," Jared says.

"Did you hear about the Phi Sig party? They're supposed to be getting a bunch of kegs and stuff."

"I didn't think you could have kegs on campus."

Ted shakes his head. "It's off campus, at the Phi Sig house. Hey, you should ask Maggie if she wants to come."

"Maggie, from your study group?"

"Yeah," Ted says. "She likes you."

Jared boggles. "She just met me!"

"So ask her if she wants to come to the party with you, get to know you a little better."

"Like—a date?"

"It's not a date if you don't call it a date," Ted says. "Don't call it a date, you don't want to freak her out."

"But I—"

Ted glares at him. "If you finish that sentence with 'am in love with Sandy', I am not going to be held responsible for my actions. Didn't you just spend all day yesterday telling me about how Jensen said it would be a good idea to meet other girls? Which is what I've been saying all along, never mind. The point is, just go ask her if she wants to go to the party. She's in Calvert, room 105."

"You mean right now?"

"I'm stealing your XBox and auctioning it off on eBay if you don't," Ted says. He looks pretty determined, and Jared really loves his XBox.

"I'm going, I'm going," he says, veering off toward Calvert.

--

Ted offers to drive that night, even though it means he's the DD.

"Dude, I can drive home or something," Jared says, even though he hopes Ted's going to politely decline.

"Nah, you and Maggie have a good time or something. Someone should."

Jared ends up squashed in the back seat of Ted's Civic with Maggie and two girls from her floor. Chace hitched a ride with them too, sharing the front seat with Maggie's roommate, Suz.

"So, like, you live with Ed Westwick?" Suz is asking. Jared would reach forward and pat Ted's shoulder in sympathy, but he doesn't have a lot of room to move. Ted groans and leans a little harder on the accelerator, trying to keep up with the car full of upperclassmen they're following.

Jared doesn't fit in the back of Ted's car when he has room to spread out. He fits even less when he's mashed against three girls. It's a little awkward to say the least. He's been trying to pay attention to the path to the Phi Sig house, but he lost where they were the minute they left the highway south of downtown. He's not entirely sure how they're ever going to find their way back to campus; none of them is particularly up on their San Antonio geography. It feels like they've been driving forever down twisty little suburban roads. He hopes Ted's paying better attention than he is.

The car in front of them stops eventually, parking at the end of a massive line of cars along the edge of this neighborhood. Jared hears the Phi Sig house before he sees it, and feels kind of sorry for their neighbors, because it really is just smack dab in the middle of a cul-de-sac. There's a Phi Sig sitting on the front steps with a money box and a stack of red cups. Jared, Ted, and Chace give him ten bucks each for a cup. The girls get theirs free.

There are more people than there is floor space inside, and the volume level goes so massively high Jared can feel the pump of the music in his molars. He loses Ted, Chace, and most of the girls almost immediately, but Maggie plasters herself to his side, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders to keep track of her. Jared recognizes a few of the older students from some of his core classes. One girl from Asian Religions waves as she presses past him.

He and Maggie give themselves over to the flow of the crowd, which eventually lands them in front of a keg. There's also some kind of trash can punch people are dipping into with their cups. Jared and Maggie exchange slightly queasy looks and go for the beer.

There are people pushing toward the keg from behind, so Jared steers them around it toward the back of the house. Maggie's trying to say something. She presses closer against his side, but he can't hear her. He leans in closer and catches "—outside?" He nods and veers toward the back doors.

It's slightly better outside—still roughly a billion people, but at least there's better air circulation. He takes a couple of deep breaths. People press in against him on all sides and he doesn't mind Maggie so much because at least he knows her, but he doesn't know any of the others. It's not entirely awesome. And the beer kind of tastes like cold, fizzy piss.

Further to the edge of the yard the crowd thins out more. He takes a few steps back from having Maggie pasted to his side.

"Having fun?" he asks, leaning down to say it loudly in her ear.

"Sure," she says. They both keep sipping from their cups.

"So, where are you from?" He has to repeat the question when she just stares at him.

"Houston," she says, and then points at him with a tilt of her head.

"Virginia Beach."

"Cool."

He tries to ask her a few more questions, but he can't really hear her answers. She asks him a few with some kind of elaborate sign language she doesn't really have room to execute, which he only interprets correctly about fifty percent of the time.

Jared keeps sipping at the cup until he goes for another and finds he's done with it. He waves the cup at Maggie and she nods, handing him her empty cup. "Wait here," he says, and heads back into the fray. Going against the crowd isn't easy, but at least he's tall enough that people see him coming. The music cuts out as he hits the back door and for a minute Jared hopes there's been some kind of complaint, but it turns out the Phi Sigs just needed some quiet so they could circle up and do a song chant thing.

He runs into Ted closer to the kitchen. "Having fun?"

"Dude, this party blows. I can't get any action!" Ted yells over the Phi Sigs. "They've all either slept with Ed or they want to. I cannot believe that fucker is ruining my night without even being here."

"Ed?" Some girl near the keg turns around. "Ed Westwick? Do you know him?"

Jared decides to be helpful. "Ted's his roommate." He dodges the elbow Ted throws toward his stomach.

"Ted and Ed! That's so cute!" The girl says. She looks around a bit. "Is he here?"

"No," Ted says. "He's got a rash he needs to medicate."

She wrinkles her nose. "Well, tell him I said hi," she says uncertainly. She takes her full cup of beer and heads off toward the other room.

"There's no way that's even going to spread," Ted says. "She's probably just going to come over and offer to lather him with cream."

Jared nods. It's kind of true. Then he grimaces as the music kicks back on.

Maggie's still in the back corner of the yard when he gets back outside. They sip awkwardly at their cups and Maggie tries some more interpretative dance questions, but they're both pretty relieved when Ted texts them about forty-five minutes later to see if they're ready to go. Jared's ears are still ringing the whole ride back to campus, which Ted manages to do by steering toward the Tower of Americas, and then to the highway.

--

"So the party was a bust?" Jensen asks. Jared can only see Jensen's head from where he's stretched out on the floor. Jensen's still in bed, but at least Jared waited until 12:30 to drop by.

"Not a bust, I guess. Just. There were too many people and the music was too loud and I couldn't really talk to her and the beer was—" Jared stops.

Jensen sits up a little to loom over Jared's head. "Yeah?" he says. "The beer was?"

"There. In a keg." Jared gestures, mimicking the outlines of a keg. "And I did not have any. Neither did Maggie. Or any of the other people I went with."

Jensen laughs and drops back down. "Good boy. Carry on."

"That's it," Jared says. "It was loud, we couldn't talk, there were too many people and I was really, really sweaty."

"So it was a bust."

Jared shrugs, shoulders rubbing against the carpet. "Yeah, I guess."

"Are you going to try again with Maggie?"

"Maybe," Jared says. "She's just not—"

"I swear to God, if you say 'not Sandy'. . ."

Jared laughs. "You and Ted, man."

"He's a smart guy." Jensen sits up again to loom over Jared. "Listen, give it another try. Somewhere you can actually talk to the girl."

"Talk to her."

"Get to know her," Jensen says.

"Yeah," Jared says. "I can do that."

"Of course you can."

Jared nods, but he doesn't get up quite yet, and Jensen doesn't kick him out.

--

"I meant to ask you, how'd it go with Maggie?" Ted says. "Other than the part where the party sucked."

"The party sucked," Jared agrees. "Maggie was fine, I guess. I don't know. Jensen says maybe I should give her another chance."

"Okay, so give her another chance. Ask her to another party or something."

Jared frowns. "Nah, Jensen said I should try to get to know her. I could barely hear anything she was saying last night."

"So ask her to dinner," Ted says. "I don't get you. It's like you're trying to make this hard on yourself. You've got this cute redhead, she likes you, so you ask her out and talk to her a little and see if you like her. I know she's not Sandy and all, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give her a chance."

"You're right. I'm calling her."

"You are?"

"I am. Right now."

"You should take her to the Liberty Bar," Ted says.

"To a bar?" Jared says dubiously.

"That's just the name. It's a restaurant, it's in this old house—just trust me, okay. You can borrow my car."

Jared might have been waffling before, but the offer of the car cinches the deal. He's mostly fine to just be on campus, not go anywhere else, but he misses driving, and Ted's pretty overprotective of his car—for the first three weeks at Trinity, Jared hadn't even known Ted had one. So he picks up the phone to call Maggie, because he might as well just get it over with now.

She sounds happy to hear from him, says yes when he asks if she wants to go to dinner on Friday, and that 7:30 would be good for her since she's got Ultimate practice until 6:30.

"I didn't know she played Frisbee," Jared says to Ted after he hangs up.

Ted shrugs. "Me neither. But there you go, that's why you're going out with her! You want to get to know her. And pay for her dinner."

The week pretty much flies by. Jared gets assigned two more midterm papers and discovers he's got an exam in Bio. Technically all of the above have been on the syllabi since the start of the semester, but he hasn't looked at the syllabi anytime in the past two months. So that's keeping him pretty busy, and on top of that he's putting a lot of time into gaming club—which, okay, is optional, but he really can't let Yarrick Messner get ahead at CoD again. The guy's way too smug about beating Jared that once as it is; Jared's got to keep him in line.

Jared sees Maggie coming and going from the Calc I study group a couple of times that week. They're meeting in one of the study rooms downstairs now.

"Ed kept trying to bring girls home while we were in the middle of our problem sets," Ted explains. "It was pretty annoying."

"Pretty annoying?" Jared repeats.

"Okay, I wanted to stab him with my pencil, but I'm trying to repress those urges," Ted says.

Jared waves at Maggie in passing a couple of times, but they don't really talk again until he's at her dorm to pick her up on Friday. His palms are sweating. It's not because he's nervous or anything; it's because that's what his palms do. They sweat. It makes it seem like he's nervous, though, and maybe he is a little nervous, because he's going on an actual date with an actual girl, and no matter whether he has a crush on her or not, that's still something to be nervous about.

It takes him a few seconds to psyche himself into knocking on her door, but he feels better when she opens it and smiles at him. She keeps up a steady stream of chatter all the way to the restaurant and doesn't even get upset when Jared makes about eight wrong turns in a row.

"I wouldn't know how to navigate, either," she says. "I'm still impressed that Ted got us back from Phi Sig okay."

"I'd still be driving in circles," Jared says.

"A week later?"

"You can't stop to ask for directions until it's been at least two weeks. It's a rule."

Amazingly enough, Jared turns out to be only a couple of blocks away from the restaurant, which is an old white house on a corner. It's got an upstairs veranda and a bright red sign emblazoned with the words LIBERTY BAR near the roof. It's also tilting so much to the side that Jared has to do a double take to make sure he's not going crazy.

"Oh, my friend Courtney told me about this place!" Maggie says, delighted. "It's protected by some historic society or something."

"It's like the leaning tower of restaurant," Jared says. He's a little worried that the place might come crashing down on their heads while they eat, but if it's protected by a historic society that probably means they're okay. Or maybe it just means they'll die a historic death. When they go through the front door, it turns out that even the floors are slanted. It's seriously disconcerting.

But the food is pretty cheap and very good, which is plenty to distract him from his impending doom, and it turns out that Maggie is really fun to talk to, now that they're at a place where they can speak with words and not gestures. She tells him all about the Frisbee team, and how she used to be a competitive show-jumper in high school, and how she's really embarrassingly obsessed with Alias.

"I've seen every episode since the pilot," she says. "Literally every single one."

"I used to rewatch the Star Wars trilogy once a weekend, when I was seven or eight," Jared offers. "I told people I wanted to grow up and be Han Solo."

"Oh man, I went as Princess Leia for Halloween for like four years running." Maggie grins. "I had my mom do the hair and everything."

There's really nothing not to like about this girl. She's funny and pretty and an ex-Star Wars geek. She insists on splitting the bill halfway, and when he drops her off at her dorm Jared means it sincerely when he says, "I had a really good time tonight."

"Me too." Maggie hesitates at her door, fiddling with her keys, and for once in his life Jared catches the signal—she wants him to kiss her. He tries to think of a reason why he shouldn't and can't, so he does. He has to bend over pretty far to fit his mouth to hers, but she stands on her toes to meet him.

The last person Jared kissed was Sarah Hoobler in the eighth grade. She was his first kiss, playing Spin the Bottle at Chad's birthday party. They dated for three weeks afterwards, until Sarah said she had a crush on Charlie Blackwell and broke up with him. Jared kissed her a few times before that, and he remembers it being weird and wet and kind of astonishing, that she would want to put her tongue in his mouth, that anyone would do that on purpose.

Kissing Maggie doesn't feel much different than that. It's nice enough, but mostly just funny and wet. He's not sure what the point of it is, and that's probably saying a lot, isn't it, no matter how funny and pretty she is.

Jared pulls away. "I'll talk to you soon, all right?"

Maggie grins. "Sounds good to me."

Jared's completely puzzled as he walks out of Maggie's dorm. He should definitely like Maggie. There's nothing not to like about her. But he should feel more when he's kissing her than just, this is okay.

"I mean, right?" he says to Jensen. Jensen's door was open when he got back to the dorm, even though it's 9:30 on a Friday night. "I don't want to lead her on if it's not going anywhere."

"How do you know it's not going anywhere?" Jensen says.

Jared sits down on Jensen's bed with way more force than necessary. "I don't know! I haven't really done much dating! How do you know if it's not going anywhere with a girl?"

Inexplicably, Jensen turns brilliantly red. "I, um. I wouldn't really know."

Jared stares at him. "What do you mean, you wouldn't know? You're, like, the best-looking guy I know. You've got to have had lots of girlfriends!"

"Not so much, no."

Jared keeps staring at him. He can't figure out a single reason why Jensen wouldn't have had at least eighty girlfriends by now. Possibly a billion.

"I'm gay, Jared," Jensen says.

"Oh!" Jared says. "Oh, that's—huh, really?"

"Yes. Really."

"Huh. Okay." Jared still hasn't stopped staring at Jensen. He hadn't really given that much thought before to what kind of people Jensen dated, and he'd never seen Jensen with a girlfriend, but it never occurred to him that there wouldn't be girlfriends at all. "Have you had a lot of boyfriends?" he asks. It's one of the most surreal sentences Jared has ever uttered.

"I thought you were here to talk about your love life, not mine," Jensen says, his expression somewhere between embarrassed and amused.

"You can't just drop this on me and expect me not to be curious!"

"I actually have to run."

"Seriously?"

"It's my friend's birthday," Jensen explains. "I'm running late. Look, about Maggie, if you're really sure it's not going anywhere, then you're right not to lead her on. But I wouldn't give up on her if you're just waffling."

It takes Jared a couple of seconds to get back on the Maggie track. "I'm not waffling. But you're—"

"Running really late," Jensen says, hustling him out the door and hurrying down the stairs. "I'll catch up with you later!"

"You better believe it!" Jared yells after him. After he's gone, Jared stands in the hall for a solid five minutes, completely reeling, before he goes into his room.

--

Jared doesn't talk to Jensen for a couple of days, partly because he's so busy all of a sudden, and partly because Jensen never seems to be around. Jensen's door is shut every time Jared passes it. Jared doesn't knock on it though.

Jared doesn't have a problem with Jensen being gay, or with gay people in general. He doesn't have best friends that are gay or anything—being out and proud wasn't really something that happened in his high school—but he's watched TV. He knows how to be sensitive.

He does get really busy. There's the paper for Asian Religions that he's researching and compiling a bibliography for, there's a powerpoint project due in comps for monkeys that isn't really that hard, just time consuming. Especially since, during assigned work time in class, he and Ted bicker about their high scores on Halo and CoD over Gchat instead of working on the project. He's got to be able to identify a bunch of something or other under a microscope for his bio lab in two weeks and his eyes cross when he looks at slides for too long.

And at some point he has to tell Maggie that it was great, she's a nice girl, but he's pretty sure he can't see her anymore.

"You're the last of the great romantics, Padalecki," Ted tells him. They're standing in line at the coffee shop in the library, after another completely unproductive hour in computers.

"I'm just saying, I feel like you should feel something, shouldn't you feel something?"

"Don't ask me, I'll be lucky if I ever get any play. Ever."

"He can't have slept with everyone already."

"Well no, it's only October. But even if he hasn't, they want to! All I have to do is mention where I live and they're all 'oh my god, do you know Ed?'" Ted says this last in a really high, whiny voice, about six times louder than his normal speaking voice. Jared glances around, a little embarrassed, and pats Ted's shoulder.

"You'll be fine. Maybe we can find you a nice townie."

They're closer up to the front of the line. Abby from his bio lab is working the counter today, and she smiles at them as they get to the register. "How's everything today?"

Jared's about to answer, but Ted beats him to it. "I hate my roommate. Do you know my roommate?"

Abby shrugs. "Who's your roommate?"

"Ed Westwick."

She wrinkles her nose. "Dude, the entire campus knows Ed Westwick."

Ted turns back to Jared and throws his hands up in the air. "See? God, she probably wants to sleep with him too."

But Abby snorts in disgust. "Yeah, if I want to catch something. Plus, he's kind of a douche."

Ted drops his hands slowly and turns back to her. Jared really can't stop laughing, but he tries just so he can watch this and tell their children about it later.

Ted just stares for a minute until Jared elbow-checks him in the stomach. "Please go out with me," Ted says. "I mean, are you busy on Friday?"

Abby laughs, blushing just a little. "No. I mean, yes!" she rushes to say. "No, I'm not busy, and yes, I'll go out with you."

"Thank you," Ted replies, before he walks quickly away, head ducked down.

Jared turns back to Abby, who's still blushing and giggling a little, looking up at him expectantly. "Uh, I'll have a vanilla latte," Jared says.

--

Jared hasn't talked to Jensen for five days. It's the longest he's gone without talking to Jensen since he got to school. He hasn't spoken to Maggie either, but he knows that isn't why he feels so directionless and weird.

"You can't avoid her forever," Ted tells him. "She keeps asking me about you."

Jared decides that breaking up with a potential, not-really-at-all girlfriend is something that should probably happen in person, so he heads over to Calvert on Thursday. He hasn't talked to Jensen, so he doesn't have a script prepared. He's still working on the opening line, just about halfway there, when he chickens out and goes back to his room to call her.

She doesn't seem too surprised. "I kind of figured when you avoided me for five days."

"I didn't—"

"You turned around and walked out of the dining hall when you saw me, Jared. You hadn't even eaten."

Right, now he remembers doing that. "Yeah, sorry."

"Whatever, we don't have to date. Just don't treat me like I've got a disease. I'm still in a study group with your suitemate."

"I won't, Maggie. It's not you, you're—"

"Don't tell me I'm a nice girl," she says, and she's laughing a little bit so Jared figures they'll be okay. One date shouldn't be that big of a deal.

"Okay, you're not a nice girl."

It's still easy to talk to her, even now, as easy as it's always been. But now that he knows there's not anything more to it than that, it's not fair to lead her on; he knows he's doing the right thing. He's sure of it. It makes it tough to hang up the phone somehow, though, knowing that this is it—that this is the end of things.

--

After the bio midterm, Jared is pretty much wrecked. He's got another two papers left for his other classes and the deadlines are coming up way sooner than he'd like, but he can't think about them right now. He needs about five hours of CoD or else the amount of critical thought in his head is going to make him explode.

It's the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday, and the bathroom door is open between Jared's room and Ted's, so Jared doesn't even think twice about heading into Ted's room to see if he's up for a CoD marathon. He gets out the word, "Hey," and then anything else he was going to say dies in his throat.

Ted's nowhere to be seen, but Ed's home. Ed's not just home. Ed's naked, and he's in bed with someone, and that someone is Chace, the guy from Ted's Calc group, and they're having sex, and Jared bolts out of the room. He tiptoes back to the bathroom and closes the door on his side as quietly as possible so that maybe Ed and Chace won't know he saw them. Jared wishes he didn't know he'd seen them.

After the door's shut, Jared leans against it, waiting for his heart rate to slow down. He closes his eyes but that only makes the mental image clearer: Ed's dick sliding in and out of Chace's—

Jared opens his eyes again, and Stephen's standing in the middle of the room. With great effort, Jared doesn't scream.

"My blood pressure can't take much more of this, Stephen," Jared says.

"Sorry," Stephen says, and shuffles toward the bathroom.

"You maybe don't want to-" Jared begins, but it's too late; Stephen's already inside. The bathroom door on Ted's side is still open, so Stephen can see everything that's going on over there. He doesn't back out immediately. Maybe what's happening in the other room isn't bothering Stephen. Or maybe, it occurs to Jared a couple of minutes later, Stephen didn't even notice.

--

Jared tries to put the incident out of his head, but he doesn't do a very good job of it. He'll be in the middle of working on his midterm papers when, out of nowhere, he'll remember the way Ed and Chace were moving together, sweaty and flushed, how Chace had his eyes closed while Ed bit his neck—

There's no reason why Jared should be able to remember the scene in so much detail, and seriously it's like his own brain is trying to torture him with it. And the worst part is that he keeps getting hard when he thinks about it, like, every time, without fail. It's probably something that would happen to anyone—it's a human reaction to seeing that. But it's still discomfiting.

He sees Chace in the hall a couple of times over the next few days, too. It could be for the Calc study group, except that Jared knows for a fact the study group is still meeting downstairs, and also that one of the times Jared sees Chace, he's leaving Ted and Ed's room with an enormous bite mark on his neck. It's really not helping Jared to forget he ever knew anything in the first place now that he knows that it's still going on.

--

Jared's at dinner with a couple of guys from his hall. It's just after five o'clock, which makes four hours since lunch—which is about the longest Jared can go between meals before he starts wanting to chew his own arm off for sustenance.

"Did you want to hear how my date with Abby went?" Ted says, thunking a tray down on the table. Without waiting for Jared to reply, he continues, "Sure, Ted, why don't you tell us all about it? Okay, so it was awesome, seriously, do you know that Abby is awesome? She is awesome."

Ted spends about five more minutes detailing the ways in which Abby is awesome, pretty much all of which Jared totally tunes out. He feels sort of bad for a couple of seconds, but then he figures Ted must have spent the vast majority of the time tuning out everything Jared has ever said about Sandy; fair is fair.

"I think we might be dating," Ted says. "Is it too early to say that? I mean, I think she really likes me, and not just in a, I'm saying this so it's not creepy that I really like her, way."

"So then maybe you're dating," Jared says. "I have no idea, Ted. Do I look like a dating expert to you?"

"Except we can't be dating, because then Ed will steal her away."

Jared chokes on water. "Um. I don't think so."

"That's what he does," Ted explains. "Every girl I have an interest in, Ed steals her."

"Has he ever gone after girls you were interested in specifically?"

"Not specifically, I mean, it's not like he knows who I'm interested in or anything. It's just what Ed does. He sleeps with girls!"

Jared waits until the other guys from their hall have gone to return their trays and turns to Ted. "Not exclusively," he says in a low voice.

"Not exclusively what?"

"He doesn't just sleep with girls," Jared says.

Ted's eyes go huge while Jared explains. "Seriously?" Ted hisses when Jared's done. "Chace? More than once? This is huge! How did I not know about this before?"

"I was trying to block the memory from my mind."

Ted shakes his head. "That's not the way to do it, yo. Trust me. You have to spread the misery around or else it gets to be too much to handle. But seriously, you're sure they've done it more than once?"

"I haven't exactly been counting," Jared says. "But yes. Definitely, like, at least three times."

"This is huge," Ted says again. "This is, like, the first and only relationship Ed has ever been in!"

"I wouldn't call it a relationship if it's just based on a week of random sex."

Ted snorts. "I would! And I think Ed would, too. Did you know he's never slept with anyone more than once? In his entire life, Jared, he said he'd never slept with anyone more than once. Do you know what he told me when I asked why? 'Because there are still so many beautiful people left.' I swear to God. I can't freaking believe this. Him and Chace! After all the pain and suffering of the last two months, my roommate gets a freaking boyfriend!"

Jared's not entire sure why he wants to know, but he asks, "Is it going to bother you?"

"Is what going to bother me? That my roommate is going to leave my maybe-hopefully-girlfriend alone?"

"No," Jared says. "That he's, you know. With a guy."

Ted shrugs. "I hadn't really thought about it." And that right there would be answer enough for Jared—if it's not something you have to think about, then it's probably not going to be a problem. "I would say it's fine as long as I don't have to see anything, but who am I kidding. It's Ed. There is nothing left to see with Ed. Except apparently Ed with another dude! This is so wild."

Jared feels kind of funny about the whole thing, about knowing that this is going on when it's obviously not something that Ed and Chace are broadcasting to the whole school, so he says, "We should maybe keep quiet about them, don't you think? I mean, if they want people to know about this, I figure they'll tell people. It's not really our call to make."

Ted holds his hands up. "Far be it from me to out someone who doesn't want to be outed."

"Thanks," Jared says. He feels a little better after that. He's not really sure why, just that he doesn't want to be responsible for making them go public if they don't want to, especially since he was the first to see them together. Maybe. On second thought, who is he kidding? It was probably Stephen.

--

As it turns out, Jared doesn't have anything to worry about: Ed and Chace get caught making out in the bathroom in Northrup, and Ed doesn't even bother denying what's going on.

"We had an actual conversation about it," Ted says to Jared at breakfast. "It was pretty surreal. Ed goes, and this is a direct quote, 'I've always been bisexual, Theodore. There just weren't ever any boys here that interested me.' Freaking blew my mind."

"Huh," Jared says, stabbing at his eggs. He's having the worst trouble getting them to stay on his fork this morning.

Jensen's door is open when he heads back to his dorm, and it almost seems rude not to drop in.

"Haven't seen you for a while," Jensen says, and it's true. Jared hasn't really seen Jensen at all since midterms started, hasn't really had a conversation with him at all since Jensen outed himself.

"Been busy." Jared sits on the end of Jensen's bed. "Midterms."

"And how have those been?"

Jared kind of groans, because just having Jensen ask reminds him that he's got about six more pages of the religion paper, the bio lab, and a presentation for his seminar to work on.

Jensen nods kind of sympathetically, like Jared's groan and subsequent pained expressions were enough of an answer. "And Maggie? What's going on there?"

Jared shrugs. "Not much of anything. I didn't really want to lead her on."

Jensen sighs and shakes his head, and it's confusing until he says, "Does this have anything to do with Sandy?"

It takes a minute for Jared to realize he hasn't even thought about Sandy in days, possibly a week. He's seen her in class, sure, but he hasn't been writing their names in hearts in the margins of his notebooks. The corner of his mind that used to be occupied completely with her is pretty much solely dedicated to replaying Chace and Ed in Technicolor about sixty billion times a day. "No!" he says, and then adds, "Really," at Jensen's skeptical look, though he can't blame the guy. Jensen did sit through Sandy 101 with Jared through the first half of the semester.

"So what's going on there?" Jensen asks.

"Nothing, I guess. I haven't really thought about her in a while."

"Really? Not at all?"

"I mean, beyond noticing her in class, I guess. She talks a lot."

"Sure. Well that's good. So anyone on the horizon instead?"

Which, for some reason, starts the replay of Chace and Ed, only instead of Ed it's Jared, and instead of Chace it's some faceless dude, and Jared shifts his bag over his lap so Jensen won't see how much the idea excites him. And that's pretty normal, right? To substitute himself into the scenario. He kind of wants to ask Jensen about it, but he doesn't know how. Jensen's looking at him expectantly, and Jared remembers that Jensen asked him something, but he can't remember what. "Did you hear about Ed?" Jared asks instead.

"Yeah, has that been bothering you?"

"Bothering me?" Not really, only he wishes he could stop reliving it. "No. I mean, it's great for Ted that he can bring his girlfriend back to his room and not worry about Ed hitting on her."

Jensen laughs at that. "Yeah, that'll be good for Ted."

Jared kind of wants to ask Jensen how he knew he was gay. He wishes Jensen hadn't run out after telling him weeks ago, because now it just feels weird to bring it up, even though they're talking about Ed. He wishes it hadn't been so long since he talked to Jensen, like they lost something in the time between.

"How are your midterms going?" he asks instead. It's just going to have to be something he figures out for himself.

--

Google and, by extension, Wikipedia have always been friends to Jared. He's always been a collector of random facts. The less he needs to waste space in his brain on a factoid, the more likely he is to remember it for the rest of his life. Names of all of Neptune's moons? He's never had it on a test, but he knows them all.

He makes sure that Stephen's down for the count—and Stephen has never not been completely dead to the world when he's horizontal—and opens Google in his browser. He types "gay" into the search bar and clicks "I'm feeling lucky." The site Google takes him to is gay.com, which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be a resource for connecting to other gay men in his area, which Jared is sure as shit not ready to do right now. Plus, all the pictures of extremely well muscled men in their underwear make him self-conscious. He's so not ready to deal with this.

He goes back to google and types "how do I know if I'm gay" into the search bar, and the "I'm feeling lucky" button again. That takes him to about.com. The answer on the page is probably the least helpful thing he's ever come across, but he clicks on the link at the bottom, the question "if I fantasize about other guys, does that mean I'm gay?" The answer there isn't entirely helpful either, but he finds a link talking about the Kinsey scale, which he remembers hearing about when that movie came out. He tables that in a tab for later and goes back to Wikipedia.

The article for gay there turns out to be an etymology of the word, which is also extremely unhelpful. He clicks the link for homosexual at the top. Wiki is probably way too academic for what he wants today, but he does find a description of the coming out process, step one of which is acknowledging to yourself that you're open to the idea of having sex with the same gender. It freaks him out to realize he's actually close to being in the process, but not enough to not click the ejaculation link a bit further down.

And it's not like Jared isn't familiar with what a dick looks like when this happens. He's got his own, for fuck's sake, and he's been pretty interested in making things happen for a while now. Also, there was the time Chad stole his dad's porn and they watched it in Jared's basement. Jared remembers being remarkably unimpressed with the girls and their giant, fake, implanted boobs. Chad made fun of him for it later on. "Whatever, my love for Sandy is pure," Jared said then.

But there's a video on Wiki of a dick ejaculating, and minus the chick's face and her giant boobs, it's a little more exciting than it used to be. Clinical and dry too, but Jared can feel a stir of interest that he's not particularly sure he knows what to do with.

He looks back at Stephen's bed, just to make sure the lump hasn't moved any, and types "gay sex" into the Google search bar. The first site is a free porn site and—after checking again to make sure Stephen is really asleep—he clicks the link. It's an entire page full of pictures of guys fucking, and Jared feels himself start to get hard. He palms his dick through his jeans, not entirely sure what he wants to do with it. He's a little scared of some of this shit, particularly the picture of two cocks in some guy's ass, but most of it looks pretty fucking awesome. He gets harder as he scrolls down the screen, and realizes he's been rubbing himself through pants without really thinking about it. He grabs a dirty shirt from the floor near his bed and unzips his jeans.

There's a video when he clicks on one of the pictures, just a minute-long preview before it asks you to pay a small fee to download the whole thing. It's just a blow job, one guy on his knees in front of another guy, but Jared refreshes the page about ten times. It's very low budget, home movie looking, but there are a lot of close ups of this guy's dick going in and out of the other guy's mouth, and Jared gets even harder, thinking about how that would feel, some guy's lips around his cock, mouth stroking up and down, warm suction on the sensitive skin. He flicks his fingers around the head of his cock, imagining a tongue against the underside. He's so close now.

He clicks through again, watching the slick, wet cock and wonders how it would taste in his mouth, what the weight of it would feel like on his tongue. He licks his lips, lets his mouth fall open as he imagines it. He just barely remembers to catch it in his shirt when he comes.

--

Jared's feeling okay about the whole thing. He's feeling really okay about it. He just got off watching gay porn and thinking about sucking dick and that's perfectly fine for about five minutes, and then he sort of wants to throw up.

Because it's like—he could write off the part where he was thinking about Ed and Chace over and over again, and that's not that big a deal really. It was a scarring experience; he's pretty sure anyone would have it branded on their brain. And inserting himself into the scenario, granted, that's a little weirder, but he can still write it off somehow. The Google thing, though, was stupid and a really bad idea and it's really unfortunate that time machines aren't real.

Failing the ability to go back in time and warn himself not to go there because it's a terrible choice, Jared spends fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to erase all hints of the words 'gay porn' from his laptop.

"It's under Tools," Stephen says from behind him. "At the bottom, where it says 'Clear all history.'"

"Okay, thanks," Jared says, blushing furiously. Maybe if he's lucky they can both pretend the past half-hour never happened and go back to not speaking.

"And if you're going to watch gay porn again, can you wear headphones?" Stephen says, deadpan. "It's kind of distracting."

Jared gapes and goes through about eighteen different responses before he finally just says, "Sure." It seems like the fastest way to get Stephen to roll over and go back to not communicating with him. Which, sure enough, he does, leaving Jared plenty of time to work on figuring out the best way to die.

--

The way Jared looks at it, he's got two options at this particular juncture. Option #1: He can try to talk to someone about this, figure out what's going on, and spend the next indefinite period of his life being embarrassed to the point of ritual suicide. Option #2: He can pretend absolutely nothing ever happened to make him suspect he might be anything that starts with the word 'gay'.

Trinity and midterms make the decision for him. For a couple of weeks he's drowning in papers and bio labs and all the reading he kept putting off, thinking he'd have plenty of time to catch up before it was going to be important—yeah, it's important now. Somehow he gets it all done, or enough of it that he's pretty sure he isn't going to flunk out of college in the first semester of his freshman year.

"I don't think Trinity lets you fail without some kind of warning," Ted says. "They've got some kind of system in place. I think it's got cowbells."

"So when someone shows up outside my dorm with cowbells, I know it's all over, it's time to start packing my stuff up then?"

"You should maybe be packing now. Aren't you flying out tomorrow?"

"Oh yeah," Jared says. He just finished his last bit of work before Thanksgiving break yesterday, but it hadn't really seemed like the work was done—all of his professors apparently thought it would be a good idea to space out the rest of everything they had to do over the entire last five weeks of the semester, so there's hardly been a break. Jared's giving himself Thanksgiving off because he's pretty sure he's going to go crazy if he doesn't, but the idea that he's actually going back to Virginia in the morning hasn't quite hit yet.

"Okay, Abby and I are taking off pretty early," Ted says, "so if I don't see you have a good break and stuff."

"Yeah, you too." It's kind of blowing Jared's mind that Ted's going home with Abby for Thanksgiving, that they got to that point of seriousness in the past few weeks. Jared has no idea how it happened. It only makes him feel marginally better that Ted doesn't either.

After Ted heads back into his half of the suite, Jared gets out his duffel bag and prints out his boarding pass, but he doesn't really make an effort to pack. He just kind of sits on the edge of his bed and thinks about—nothing at all, really, just stares at the floor, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Jensen knocks on the door frame—the door's already open.

"Catching flies there, huh?" Jensen says, walking in.

"Yeah, sorry, I was trying to pack." Jared indicates the empty duffel bag.

"Looks like it's going well for you there," Jensen deadpans. "Are you heading home for Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah."

Jensen scrunches up his face, like he's trying to remember. "Virginia?"

"Virginia Beach," Jared says.

"Yeah, that's right. You excited to see your parents?"

"I guess so, yeah," Jared says. He hasn't really given a lot of thought to it, and now that he realizes that he feels pretty horrible. His family's thrilled that he's coming home. Megan's emailed him three separate times this week to tell him just how excited Mom is (She's been baking, Jared. Do you know how many times in my life I've seen her bake before this? I'll give you a hint: the number looks like a goose egg.) and Chad's sent him a bunch of cryptic texts relating, in some way, to his living situation (ur just gonna hav to see it dude), so it's pretty clear he's going to be spending some time with Chad, too. He's sure it'll be good to see them once he's there. Right now it just feels weird, the idea of going back to Virginia after being here.

"Way to bowl me over with the enthusiasm," Jensen says.

"What about you? You going home?"

"Yeah, up to the Dallas area. Richardson?"

Jared shrugs. It's pretty pitiful how he still has no sense of Texas geography after three months in San Antonio. "You glad to be heading back?"

"Oh yeah," Jensen says, his face lighting up already just saying it, and Jared's full of questions all of a sudden, wants to ask if Jensen's parents know he's gay and if they do, how they took it, how Jensen told them. He'd wanted to know before, but then he'd just been curious. Now he wants to know for reasons he's been very much not thinking about for the past three weeks.

Before he can say anything, though, Jensen's making his way back toward the door. "I'm going to go check on the rest of the hall," he says. "But hey, it's been a while since you've stopped by. You know my door's always open still."

"Except before noon on weekends," Jared says.

Jensen nods. "Exactly. Have a good trip, and happy Thanksgiving!"

"You too," Jared says, and sets about very half-assedly packing.

--

The airport shuttle comes just after his morning class on Wednesday. The rest of his classes got cancelled, but not his seminar, and his prof offered them answers to questions on the final as incentive to come. Jared doesn't really like to remember that finals are coming, what with just finally finishing midterms.

He flops down in a chair near his gate. The shuttle came so early he's got maybe an hour and a half till his flight takes off. He sticks his ear buds in and people watches for a bit, craning his neck around to check out who's on the flight with him. And that's when he notices Sandy, sitting in the chairs that back up to his row, only about three seats down. She looks up just as he slides his gaze past her but she kind of huffs in annoyance, so he slips an ear bud out.

"I'm sorry," he says. He kind of expected his palms to get sweaty when he talked to her again, but nothing like that happens. He just feels normal. "I seriously didn't see you there when I sat down."

She looks like she wants to roll her eyes but is too polite to do so. "It's fine." She's flipping through a magazine, way too fast to actually be reading it.

"How were your midterms?"

"Just fine."

He watches her flip through her magazine for a bit and thinks she's still probably the prettiest person he's ever seen, but he just doesn't want her like he used to. Can't really imagine them together anymore, or doesn't want to, one of the two. He's had this weighing him down for weeks, and suddenly he thinks if he can't tell someone he'll bust open. "Sandy," he says, and she looks up at him, becomes slightly alarmed at the expression on his face. "I think I'm gay."

It kills him that even with her mouth wide open and her eyes bugging out, she's still gorgeous. "Oh my God, Jared, really?"

He nods miserably. "I mean, I think so. I guess? I don't know how you know."

She scoots a little closer to him, twists around in her chair a little so she's facing him more. "Well, I mean. The fact that you're questioning it at all—"

"Makes it more likely, right? Or maybe."

"My social psych prof said there's no such thing as gay or straight. That we're all on a continuum."

The websites Jared found said something a whole lot like that, but Jared's not entirely sure he wants Sandy to know he found out he was gay because of internet research. "I guess so," he says. "I don't know."

"You think you're just completely gay?"

Jared frowns. "It's kind of hypothetical at this point."

"Oh yeah?"

"Well. I mean. I haven't exactly got a lot of experience either way to base—"

He's interrupted by Sandy leaning forward and kissing him, right on the lips. He can't process at first what's happening, and by the time his brain catches up she's already leaning back. "So, anything?" she asks.

And he feels like. . . He's loved her so long that if he'd respond to anyone, it would be her, but there's nothing. His heart isn't racing, his palms aren't sweaty, and he kind of wants to rub her lip gloss off his face. "Mmm. . . nope."

"Congratulations," she says. "You're a gay man."

He's not sure who laughs harder after that. He wishes it were as simple as that, and then wonders why it can't be.

It's a Southwest flight so there's open seating, and they manage to snag two seats next to each other. Maybe a month ago Jared's not sure he could have pulled off a conversation with her. He'd have been too nervous, too over-eager to actually form sentences, but now it's the easiest thing in the world. She programs her number into his cell phone when they land in Norfolk, and tells him to text her over the break.

Megan comes running at him the minute he gets through the security gate, and he says a quick goodbye to Sandy as Megan leaps onto him, hanging from his neck and yelling that she'd missed him in his ear. Her feet aren't even touching the ground, she's clinging so hard, so Jared just walks them both over to where his mother is waiting. He drops Megan to give his mom a hug and she's got tears in her eyes that embarrass him a little, but not much.

The whole way home, Megan rambles about school and friends and everything that's happened since he left. "And was that Sandy you were coming out with?" she says, digging her finger into his ribs. "What was that about? Are you guys dating now?"

"Nah, we're just friends," he says, and it's so weird to say that about Sandy and mean it.

"Friends. Really." Megan draws out the word in the irritating way that little sisters everywhere seem to have. He shrugs and nods, just to annoy her.

Jared doesn't notice until they walk through the front door and into the living room, but his parents have gotten old while he's been gone. Not old-old, not grandparent-old, but there are streaks of gray in his dad's hair that he definitely hadn't had in August, and his mom's crow's feet are deeper, more obvious, when she smiles. It's just that it's the first time that he's been away from home for more than a couple of weeks at camp, but it throws him in a way he hadn't expected it would throw him—his parents are getting older, and he's never been able to see it so clearly before, never had a moment he could pinpoint where it was so obvious that they were aging.

It makes him love them more fiercely than ever, and it makes him want to tell them about him, wants so badly to hear them say that it's all right, that they love him, that this doesn't change a thing. He just has no idea how to tell them. He's never had to keep secrets from his parents before; he's never had any secrets he couldn't tell them. Well, except for the fact that he wanted to go to Trinity because of Sandy, but other than that. He's never been much of a secrets guy.

Every now and then, his mom will meet his eyes over the turkey, or his dad will hug him good night before heading off to bed, and Jared's pretty sure that they must know there's something. But neither of them raises it, and Jared can't figure out how to do it himself.

--

The day after Thanksgiving, he heads over to Chad's house. Chad's text messages have gotten increasingly frequent (u better get ur ass over here before i come smack u), and Friday afternoon he finally gets his act together and bikes the five minutes down the road to Chad's.

Chad's standing in the driveway waiting for him. "Jay-man!" he yells, even though Jared's all of five feet away. "Where the fuck have you been all my life?"

"Texas," Jared deadpans.

Chad rolls his eyes. "Get over here!" He pulls Jared in for a hug, giving him a huge noogie, then releasing him. "Look at you, you fucker, it's like you grew or something! You gotta come inside, see the humble abode!"

"You say that like I haven't been coming over since we were five."

"The humble abode is not the same humble abode you last saw."

"Oh really?"

Chad opens the garage door. "The humble abode has moved," he says. He points at the stairs leading up to the upstairs part of the garage.

Jared gapes. "No friggin' way, you guys cleaned out all that crap you had up there?"

"Biggest garage sale in southeastern Virginia, you better believe it."

Jared gapes when he gets to the top of the stairs. When they were kids, he and Chad used to find all kinds of awesome stuff for games and science projects up here, because Chad's parents hadn't thrown anything away since approximately 1960. The upstairs part of the garage had ivy growing through the windows and about six inches of dust on the floor. Now it's got new windows, scrubbed walls, and carpet on the floor, not to mention a futon and a freaking enormous widescreen TV.

Jared still hasn't quite managed to stop gaping when he turns to Chad. "This is awesome," he says with the utmost sincerity.

"I thought my life was gonna suck when I didn't go off to school with the rest of you fuckers," Chad says. "But you know what, they leave me alone out here. It took a month or so to get it set up, but now I've got a fucking sweet place, and Mom still cooks for me. It's Hannah Montana, dude. It's the best of both worlds!"

"I can't believe you just made a Hannah Montana joke."

"Dude, Miley Cyrus is fuckin' hot. You'd do her."

He wouldn't, actually. She was never really his type, but she's definitely not his type now. The chances of him saying that to Chad at this particular juncture are pretty much nonexistent, though. "I think I'll leave that to you," he says. "So, how's Tidewater Community College treating you?"

"Tidewater Country Club my ass. I thought community college was supposed to be easy. It's fucking not, man, no way. I go to school with all these people with, like, eight kids and a full-time job, and they're still kicking my ass at pre-calc. I don't know how they freaking do it. I've really had to step up my game. Bet you've got it easy out there in Texas."

"Not exactly." Jared thinks about way too many weeks of more assignments than he'd have thought he could possibly finish, coupled with nowhere near enough sleep. "It's still pretty hard."

"See, that's the thing they never told you about college." Chad sits forward. "Whatever happened to meeting girls and having a good time? Nobody said all this work was going to get in the way."

"It's a real bummer," Jared agrees.

"You glad you went out to Texas?" Chad says. "Sandy fall desperately in love with you yet?"

"Not yet," Jared says. He's really not sure he wants to go down that line of conversation with Chad. "So hey, your parents got you a widescreen?"

It's about the most obvious topic change in the world, but Chad doesn't seem to notice. "I got me a widescreen, bitch. You're looking at the best Ben & Jerry's shift leader Great Neck has ever known."

"They let you lead shifts now, eh?"

"Oh, fuck you, man. I have extreme skill with the scoop, I will have you know. You want to try this shit out? The color quality on this thing is sweet."

"You know it," Jared says.

Chad makes exactly no moves to get off the couch and turn on the TV.

"So you going to let me try see the sweet color quality on this thing or are you just going to leave me to stare at it all night?"

"Oh, bitch, it is on," Chad says.

It's easy to fall back into playing Halo with video games with Chad, like nothing's changed at all. For the time he's there, he can pretty much pretend that nothing has.

--

Around eleven on the night before he's due to go back to school, Jared's mom knocks on his door.

"Hey, sweetie," she says, pushing the door open.

Jared closes his cell phone in the middle of texting Sandy. He'd been hoping they'd be on the same flight back to Texas, but it looks like he's not that lucky. "Hey. You heading to sleep?"

"Just about," his mom says. "You mind if I take a seat?"

"Sure, sure." Jared scoots over to make sure there's plenty of space for her.

She sits down on the edge of the bed, leaning back against the wall. "It really sounds like you're having a good time at Trinity."

Jared's not really sure where she's going with that. "Yeah, I am," he says.

"I was just worried at first, that's all," his mom says. "I wanted college to be so good for you. And Virginia Tech, you know, Jeff would have been there, at least."

Jared raises an eyebrow. "You think Jeff would have helped me out at school?" Jeff's never exactly been interested in being Jared's best friend.

"You would have had someone familiar there, at any rate. A little taste of home."

Jared very carefully does not make any mention whatsoever of Sandy McCoy.

"Anyway," she continues, "I'm glad it's working out as well as it seems to be, for you." She looks like she's going to add something else, for a moment, but then the moment passes.

"Yeah," is all Jared says. "So am I."

"I think I'm going to head to sleep now. Love you." She leans in toward him for a hug.

He nods, the side of his face moving against hers. "Me too," he says.

At the airport the next day, she pulls him tight against her and cries against his shoulder a little, before releasing him to head toward the gates. He watches her smiling and waving and crying all at once and waves back one more time before he turns the corner and gets in the security line. With the way she'd gripped him in that hug, the way she looked at him as he left, there's no doubt in his mind that she loves him. That wouldn't change if he told her he's gay; it couldn't change. He's nearly certain it couldn't.

--

"Even Abby's sisters are awesome," Ted says. "They're all freaking card sharks, I lost like fifty bucks to those jerks . . . you're not hearing a word I'm saying."

"Huh?" Jared says, looking up from his plate.

"What did I just say?"

Jared thinks back. "Abby's sisters. Poker." He takes a bite of baked ziti. It's usually pretty awesome; today it doesn't taste like anything. Or maybe he's just not hungry.

Ted sighs. "Dude, what happened to you over Thanksgiving? Your dog didn't die or anything, did it?"

"I don't have a dog," Jared says.

"Really? I totally thought you had a dog. That's not my point. My point is, what the heck has gotten into you?"

I think I'm gay. Jared thinks the words really hard, thinks about telling Ted. He could tell Ted. There's no reason he couldn't tell Ted. Ted's his best friend here, and he saw the way Ted reacted to Ed and Chace; Jared can't imagine it would be any different with him. It's just—he doesn't know.

"I'm kind of jetlagged," Jared finally says, lamely.

It's not a lie, but Ted's totally got his number. "Just let me know when you want to talk about whatever it is."

"Sure thing," Jared says.

When he gets back to the dorm, he spends about five minutes playing CoD before he calls Sandy.

"Jared, hi!" she says warmly, genuinely sounding pleased to hear from him, and of fucking course that's the way his life would go—the minute he realizes he isn't interested in her anymore, she's happy to talk to him. "How are you?"

"Kind of freaked out," he admits.

"About the gay thing?"

Jared doesn't reply immediately, which is obviously answer enough, because Sandy continues, "What are you up to right now?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Do you want to get coffee or something? Talk?"

"Sure," Jared says, pathetically grateful.

They meet at the student center. Sandy drinks her coffee black, not even with sugar, and it makes Jared a little sad, now, that he knows this about her, that he spent all that time cataloguing the tiniest details of her existence but never actually knew her; if he's honest with himself, he never even really tried. There were plenty of times when he could have talked to her in high school—in AP classes, on Model UN trips—but he didn't. She'd been perfect, the best possible girl to love from afar—but he hadn't loved her, not really, and it's strange to think, now, that he'd been so sure that he did.

"So what's going on?" Sandy says, taking a seat by the window.

"Do you know Ted Easton?" Jared says.

Sandy shrugs, smiling a little; she doesn't know Ted.

"He's my best friend here," Jared explains. "I thought about telling him earlier."

Sandy takes a sip of her coffee. "But you didn't?"

Jared shakes his head. "I don't know why not. You know Ed Westwick?"

"I'm pretty sure everyone knows Ed Westwick."

"He's Ted's roommate," Jared explains. "And when Ed, you know, started with Chace, Ted was fine with it. He didn't freak out or anything. I don't know why I didn't tell him."

"You don't want things to change," Sandy says.

Jared takes a long sip of coffee. He's surprised to find that the mug is already empty. He must have guzzled it without thinking about it. "I guess not."

"You're going to tell him, though, right?"

"Soon."

"What about your family?" Sandy asks.

"Eventually," Jared says. "Not yet."

There's a pause while Sandy sips her coffee and Jared turns his empty mug around and around in his hands. It's not awkward, exactly; it's surprising that it isn't. It's nice just to sit here with her, to have talked about this with someone who knew about him already, even though it's incredibly weird, after all these years, that that person is Sandy.

Finally Jared puts his mug down on the table and says, "How was your Thanksgiving?"

Sandy smiles and tells him all about it. By the time Jared gets back to his dorm, he feels better about everything, even though nothing's really changed at all.

--

To hear his professors talk, it's like midterms ended eons ago instead of just before Thanksgiving—finals are just around the corner, no way the stress is going to let up until Christmas. Jared's got still more papers and projects and tests, on top of more reading than he's ever going to be able to finish.

Sandy's got this theory of pair studying: that going to the library with someone else will make you work harder so that you don't look like a slacker in front of the other person. Jared couldn't have even imagined meeting up with Sandy a couple of months ago, let alone being able to study with her without spending the entire time staring at her like a lunatic, but it's working out pretty well for him, actually. And she's right—it does make him try harder, since he's pretty sure she's going to judge the crap out of him if he doesn't get his work done.

"Where'd you go after dinner?" Ted says at the beginning of December. "You weren't in your room and you haven't been picking up your phone."

"I was at the library," Jared says. "Sorry. Sandy and I had a study date."

Ted boggles. "I thought I just heard you say that you and Sandy had a study date, but clearly I was delusional, because if you were going on study dates with Sandy obviously you would have told me before now."

"No, it's not—I mean," Jared begins, stumbling over words. "It wasn't a date. We've just been studying together."

"Since freaking when?"

"I ran into her in the airport on the way home for Thanksgiving and we started talking." Jared shrugs. "That's pretty much it."

"No you freaking don't," Ted says. "I've had to hear every detail of what this girl ate for breakfast for a whole semester, and now you try to get away with 'we just started talking' now that you're dating her?"

"We're not dating!"

"Oh really!"

"It's not like that," Jared says. "We're just friends."

The look Ted gives him couldn't be more dubious if he tried.

"I don't know what to tell you. I actually talked to her and realized I wasn't actually interested. I don't know." Except Jared does know, and there is something he could say that would make Ted believe him; he's just far too chicken to say it.

--

Jensen knocks on the door as he walks in. "How's it going?"

Jared's lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling; he rolls, scrambling to sit up. "Fine," he says reflexively.

Jensen looks around the room, like he's trying to find somewhere to sit, but Jared's and Stephen's chairs are both covered in dirty clothes, and Stephen may or may not actually be asleep in his bed. It's hard to tell. Jared shifts to the side to make space for Jensen on his bed.

"How was your Thanksgiving?" Jensen asks, sitting.

"Good. Fine. I think Sandy and I are friends now," Jared says. At Jensen's wide eyes he adds, "Sorry, that's really random. We were on the same flight back to Virginia. We talked and stuff."

"You're friends now?"

"Yeah," Jared says. "We're just friends. I don't think it's going to be more than that."

Jensen fixes him with a long look, the same kind of expression Ted gave him—that after everything Jared's put them through, he'd better explain a little more than that—and honestly if there's anyone he should be able to talk to about this, it's Jensen.

Instead of just saying it, Jared says, "How did you know you were gay?"

The look doesn't leave Jensen's face for a bit, like he knows Jared's hiding something, only asking this because he doesn't want to talk about Sandy anymore. But eventually he shrugs and answers the question. "I think I always knew on some level," he says. "I remember when all my friends stopped thinking girls had cooties and started chasing them instead of running from them." He shrugs. "I just never understood the attraction. Guys were more interesting to me."

"Yeah?" Jared says. His lips feel dry.

Jensen grins then, a little rueful. "It didn't hurt that, when I was a freshman, my fucking mom asked me why I never talked about girls or brought any girls home. I think she joined PFLAG that same week."

Jared laughs, he can't help it. "Seriously?"

Jensen just nods; he's laughing too, shaking the bed a little as he does. "Seriously, dude. After that, it was over. I knew, she knew, everybody knew."

"But I thought—" Jared gestures helplessly. "This is Texas!" he says.

"It wasn't all shits and giggles. You get your share of bigots here, just like anywhere else. They haven't lynched anyone in years, though."

"Oh." Jared's heart is pounding just a little, his secrets pushing against the inside of his lips, trying to spill themselves for Jensen.

"Yeah, oh. Why'd you want to know anyway?"

It's Jared's turn to shrug. "Just wondered," he says.

Jensen knocks his shoulder against Jared's and smiles when Jared looks at him, smiles like they share a secret now, and Jared guesses they do; he's just not sure what it is.

--

Jared doesn't have time to think about it at all for the next week, it's the last week of classes before finals and all of his profs are handing out study guides, predicting certain death—or at least certain failure—if Jared doesn't complete the entire thing before exam time. Jared goes from one study group to the next, mainlining caffeine, and the only thing that makes anything better is the certain knowledge that every other student on campus is feeling the same level of panic. Pretty soon there's a sign up sheet outside the study room on Beze second, and Jared notices as he passes by that it's a twenty-four hour sign up.

He even sees Stephen during study days before finals start, sitting up at his desk and working on some study guide from some class he hasn't been to since the beginning of the semester. "How did you even get that study guide?" Jared asks him, booting up his laptop.

"It was online," Stephen says, typing away at his keyboard. There are a few more study guides sitting in the printer that they share. And that's how Jared finds out that Stephen's been in two classes with him all semester, and only Jared actually bothered to attend class. He's definitely not sharing his notes, if Stephen asks.

Later, when he and Ted come back from tossing rubber chickens through the big sculpture in the middle of campus—a school-approved study break—Stephen has fallen asleep at his desk, cheek mashed against his keyboard.

--

It's Friday night, the last study day before finals start in the morning, and Jared's got Asian Religions bright and early Saturday morning. He couldn't believe it when he'd first seen the schedule. Who schedules finals on a Saturday?

He'd closed the student union down studying; the cleaning staff kicked him and two of his classmates out at midnight, pretty much chasing them out of the door with their dust mops.

"I mean, if we don't know it by now, right?" Kai says, and Jared nods. He's not entirely sure, but it's possible he didn't go to bed last night, and he's definitely feeling it now. He can barely feel his feet.

Jared's dragging even more by the time he gets to the dorm. He wonders if it's even worth the effort to walk up the stairs; he could sleep pretty well on the grass in the courtyard, and maybe the sun would wake him up in time for his final at 8:30. But there's no light out here, and he still has some reading to do.

He faces off with the stairs and hopes no one sees him as he basically crawls up them, hands and feet like a little kid, but it's too much effort to stand upright. It does the job. There's light from an open door as he rounds the corner to go down his hall. It's Jensen's room, and Jensen's in the doorway, limned in light and totally making out with some guy Jared's never seen before. Which is stupid—why would Jared have seen him before? Jensen's his RA. It's not like they're friends, like Jensen would have to introduce his boyfriend to Jared. He hangs back a bit, not hiding, really, except for how he's completely pressed up against one of the pillars, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible while he watches them kiss.

The guy is a little taller than Jensen. Not as tall as Jared, but enough that he has to bend down a little, lean into Jensen, catching him against the door frame. Jensen's totally into it, eyes closed, head leaning back, one hand gripping the guy's neck.

Jared feels a tug in his stomach, almost a physical pull, and he wants that. He's kissed Maggie and he's kissed Sandy and neither one of them made him feel half of what he's feeling now, just watching Jensen kiss this guy. He wants to kiss a guy, slow like he means it, like he's got all the time in the world. The more he watches, the stronger the pull gets, and he realizes after a bit that he doesn't want to just kiss anyone.

He wants to kiss Jensen.

He must have made some noise, he doesn't even know, but they're not kissing anymore, and Jensen is peering into the shadows in his direction while the guy nuzzles his neck and says, "Hey, ignore it, whatever," in muffled whispers.

Jared backs away and hides on the other side of the dorm until he hears the guy leaving, heading off to the other side of campus. Jared heads back around after he's out of earshot. He doesn't even feel tired anymore; he's too wired.

Jensen's door is still open when Jared heads down the hall. Jared's hoping maybe he can just slip by it, but Jensen calls his name as he passes by.

Jared stops just in the doorway. Jensen hasn't gotten much further into the room. For the first time, Jared notices how much taller he is, how far Jensen would have to tilt his head back to kiss him. It's not an enormous difference, but it's enough.

"What're you doing up?" Jensen asks.

"Been studying."

"You have a final tomorrow?"

Jared nods. "Religion."

Jensen winces. "That sucks, dude."

"Tell me about it."

"So," Jensen says, going for forced casual, "Did you see—"

Jared nods again. He kind of wants this conversation to be over. It feels awkward and stilted, like their conversations never are. "He your boyfriend?" he asks, quick and jumbled, tripping over his own words.

"Nah," Jensen says. "Just a date."

"You went on a date the night before finals?"

Jensen shrugs. "I don't have anything until Tuesday. Needed a break."

"I have reading to do."

Jensen catches his arm as he tries to leave, just a quick grasp of fingers around his wrist, but Jared's skin burns at the contact and he gasps. "Hey, you all right?" Jensen asks, stepping just a little closer.

"Fine, just tired. I can't remember when I slept last."

Jensen smiles a little then. He looks tired himself, dark circles under his eyes and everything. Jared wonders what he looks like; he hasn't looked in a mirror in a while. "Get some sleep," Jensen tells him. "Get up early if you still want to read, but get some sleep now. You're not going to get anything in your brain when you're this tired."

"Yeah," Jared says, backing out of the room. "Yeah, I'll do that. 'Night."

"'Night."

Jared heads back to his room. He brushes his teeth and tries not to look at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looks way worse than Jensen had, almost bruised around his eyes, like the walking dead. He gets into bed but as tired as he is, he closes his eyes and sees Jensen kissing that guy, Jensen's head tilted back, hands on the guy's neck.

He can't stop thinking about it, and he can't stop wishing it was him kissing Jensen instead.

--

It's not any better in the morning.

The Asian Religions final passes in a blur of too many essays in too little time, Jared's hand cramped up and hurting by the end of it. All he wants is to go back to his room and sleep, or, better, to be done with finals already, but instead he's got another ten pages of his freshman seminar take-home final to write before Monday. He already can't handle his life and then, when he gets back to the dorm, Jensen's door is open.

Jensen's reading on his bed, sitting with his back against the wall. He's wearing his glasses and an old gray t-shirt and jeans. His hair's kind of flat on one side, like he hasn't been awake for long, and it hits Jared hard in the gut: he wants Jensen. He wants to be in Jensen's bed next to him, wants to be able to reach over and kiss him; he wants to feel Jensen's mouth on him, wants it everywhere. He can't think of anything he's ever wanted more.

With Sandy, he'd fantasized about kissing her, there'd always been something cartoonish about it, something not quite real. He'd never really thought about it; he'd just assumed that once they were together they would click.

Every time he thinks about Jensen there's a tug in his gut, a twisting feeling he can't get rid of. At once it's kind of amazing and it makes him feel like he wants to vomit all the time, and it's too much, too raw and too strong. He can't deal with it right now. He's got a full set of finals for the rest of the week, barely enough time for eating and nowhere near enough for sleeping and definitely not a single moment for thinking about just how badly he wants his very male RA.

Jensen looks up finally, and Jared's still standing there staring right at him. Jensen quirks an eyebrow, opens his mouth to speak, and Jared jumps on it first, says, "I gotta go study" loudly and more awkwardly than he ever handled things with Sandy.

He sees Jensen a few more times during finals week, coming into Mabee as he's heading out the other door, walking up campus to take tests, mostly from far away. They don't talk again.

--

Ted finishes his finals on Wednesday. Most of his were take-home. He and Abby are heading out for Ted's mom's place the next morning. "Since I went home with her for Thanksgiving," Ted says into the mic.

"You think your mom's going to like her?" Jared says.

"I sure freaking hope so." While Ted's distracted, Jared kills Ted's alien twice in rapid succession.

"What the fucking—you can't do that!"

"Do what?" Jared says.

"Set me up like that!"

"All's fair in love and alien war," Jared deadpans, then cracks up while Ted sputters on the other end of the mic.

--

On Thursday Jared's finally done. By the time he walks out of his bio lab at noon he doesn't even care if he bombed every single one of his classes; he's just too glad to be done with it all. It still kind of hasn't hit that he's actually got a whole month of vacation, where he doesn't have to think about class so much as once.

He doesn't fly out until first thing in the morning, so he figures he's got plenty of time to take an extremely long nap before packing. He's not at all planning on Jensen sticking his head out of his room the moment Jared gets onto the hall, or Jensen saying, "Hey, Jared, you got a minute?"

Jared's heart rate kicks into overdrive at the very sight of him. "Um, hi," Jared says. He feels like he should have somewhere to put his hands; pockets are a good place for them. He puts his hands in there. "I really need to pack," he says.

"It'll just be a minute," Jensen says. "Can you come in?"

No, Jared wants to say, he can't, because if he's in Jensen's room he'll probably end up sitting on Jensen's bed, and if he's sitting on Jensen's bed he's going to be thinking about other things that could happen on Jensen's bed, and that's really not okay at all.

He can't come up with a quick enough way to turn Jensen down on the spot, though, and what's he going to do, ask Jensen if they can talk in the middle of the hall?

"Sure," Jared says awkwardly, and goes inside while Jensen holds the door.

Jensen sits down on the end of the bed, and Jared hesitates, thinking about all the wrong things, about what Jensen looked like kissing that guy and what he would look like kissing Jared, how Jensen's tongue would feel in his mouth—

Jared can feel his dick stirring already, and Jensen's looking at him funny, and if he doesn't sit down on the bed now it's just going to make things worse with Jensen, he's suddenly certain of it. So Jared sits on the far end of the bed and concentrates on the image of his Great Aunt Mary, and the horrible floral perfume she always wears and the way she always makes him kiss her cheek and he can feel the powder on his mouth afterwards, and that does the trick, all right. Pretty much any thought of a boner is gone after that.

Jared concentrates on it so hard that he nearly misses Jensen saying, "Did I do something to make you uncomfortable?"

It takes a beat for Jared to process the words. "Sorry?"

"Was there something I did? Because I know you saw me with Sergei, and look, Jared, if that makes you uncomfortable . . . I get that it's not something you're used to—"

"No," Jared says quickly. "No, it's totally fine, it's not a problem. I mean, I don't have a problem with it."

"Okay. It just seemed like maybe you'd been avoiding me since then, and I wanted to try to clear the air."

"I've just been really busy with finals," Jared says lamely.

From the way Jensen's looking at him, it's pretty clear that he knows it's a lie. There's being busy with finals and then there's making every effort to be on the hall only when you know your RA is extremely unlikely to be awake, like eight a.m.—but Jensen doesn't say anything. Instead he just keeps looking at Jared with this expression, like if he stares at Jared long enough Jared's soul will be laid bare to him. Jared's pretty sure it will, too: if he stays here any longer he's going to open up his mouth and everything will pour right out, everything there is to know.

So instead of waiting one moment longer Jared says, "I've really got to pack."

Jensen looks disappointed but says, "Okay, have a safe trip," and Jared flees the room like a coward, like the huge, ridiculous, relieved coward that he is.

--

Jared's totally exhausted, suddenly, so exhausted that he passes out right after packing and doesn't wake up again until his alarm goes off at five a.m. and he has to catch the shuttle to the airport. He falls right back asleep again after boarding the plane. Walking down the long, carpeted hallway away from the gate feels surreal, like he's not sure how he made it to Virginia in the first place.

It's only been a few weeks since he was in Virginia Beach, but his parents and Megan still crush him with hugs like he's been away for ages.

"Good to have you back, Jared," his mom says, and Jared's happy, in that moment, to pretend that he's exactly the same person that he was when he got on the highway headed west, that he can come home and have everything continue exactly as it used to be.

--

That works out just fine for Jared for the first couple days of break. He hadn't really thought about being home past the idea of the semester being over, not having to work anymore; and it's great to be home, for the first couple days, great to do nothing but sleep and eat and let his mom coddle him the way he never let her do when he was in high school.

After the first couple of days, though, he starts to get bored. He hasn't had this kind of time since the beginning of the semester, and even then he was busy with meeting people and unpacking and trying not to get lost all on the way back to his room when all the dorms look the same. He texts Ted and a couple of the other guys on his hall, but it's not enough to distract him from thinking about Jensen. There's no one he could talk to about it, either; Sandy's with her grandparents in California until a couple days before New Year's, and while she's promised to meet up with him when she gets back, he's pretty sure he's going to go crazy before then.

Chad's texted him a couple of times since he's been home, where r u man, we shuld hang. Jared's been putting off meeting up with him so far; he's not entirely sure why. By the fourth day of break he's pretty sure he's going to lose his mind if he doesn't see someone outside of his immediate family, so he rides his bike the five minutes over to Chad's house and knocks on the garage apartment door.

There's the sound of something crashing inside, and Chad calling out, "Just a minute!" before the whole garage door opens and Chad stumbles out into the sunlight wearing nothing but a ratty sweatshirt and a pair of shorts.

"Geez, Chad, did nobody tell you it's winter?" Jared says by way of greeting.

"Just woke up," Chad says, rubbing at his eyes. "How you doing? Long time, no see."

"Three weeks, give or take."

"That's like a lifetime in dog years."

"Did you really just call yourself a dog?"

Chad scowls. "I've been awake for approximately three minutes, cut me some slack. Now come on inside and tell me about the color of Sandy's toenails or whatever."

Jared's palms start sweating. He pushes them deeper into his coat pockets. "I actually, uh. Got over Sandy."

Chad laughs. "Good one, Jay. Also, I heard the sky is falling."

"No, really," Jared says. "I'm over her."

Chad's still looking at him like he has exactly no intentions of believing a single word Jared says, and why would he, really? Ted hardly believed it, and Ted's only had a few months of Sandy exposure. Chad had to listen to four full years of it, on a pretty much daily basis. And that's why his palms are sweating—because there's only one way out of this, really. He's got to tell him. If there's anyone he owes the truth to, it's Chad.

He takes a deep breath, exhales, and says, "Chad, I think I'm gay."

Chad stares at him. He cocks his head to the side a little. "You think you're gay."

Jared's heart is pounding, and Chad just keeps staring at him, his expression blank. He does it long enough for Jared to remember exactly how often Chad has always said, "That's so gay"—pretty much once every twenty minutes—and how there were like three gay kids at their school and they were all really flaming theater geeks, and how he has absolutely no idea what Chad thinks about gay people and what if he's a dick about it?

But Jared's already put it out there, and it's the truth, and he's not sure what else to do but stick to it. "Yeah. I'm gay."

Chad looks at him a second longer. "Okay," he says.

"Okay?" Jared says cautiously.

"Yeah. It's cool."

Jared's mouth drops open. "What, really?"

"Well, I mean, like, you don't have a thing for me, do you?"

"No!"

"And you're not going to jump me and suck my dick in the night, are you?"

"God, no," Jared says. The idea's pretty much the grossest thing he's ever heard of.

"Then yeah, it's cool," Chad says.

"Seriously?"

"Look, man, if you want me to be weird about it, I can be weird about it."

"No, that's okay. I'm just kind of surprised, is all."

"What, that I'm not being weird about it? I've got a gay uncle."

"Huh," Jared says. "I never knew that."

"He lives in Boston." Chad shrugs. "I don't know, man, if you're gay, whatever. It's really not that big a deal."

"Huh," Jared says again. He still hasn't quite managed to pick his jaw up off the floor.

"Can we go in the house now?" Chad says. "It's fucking freezing out here."

"Oh, yeah, sure," Jared says, following Chad inside, where Chad pulls on the biggest, wooliest pair of socks Jared's ever seen and covers himself with lap quilts before turning on the TV.

"How do you feel about N64? Little blast from the past?" Chad says.

"Great," Jared says, his heart still in his throat. "I feel great about that."

"Awesome, you can set it up." Chad grins. "I've got all these blankets here, I can't move."

Jared rolls his eyes. "Clearly not."

After Jared's been kicking Chad's ass at WaveRacer for a while, Chad says, "So who's the guy?"

Jared can feel his mouth kind of tugging to the side in the beginning of a smile. "How do you know there's a guy?"

Chad rolls his eyes. "You went off to college mooning over Sandy, and you come back at Christmas and you're gay all of a sudden? There's definitely a guy."

"You're right," Jared says, the smile all over his face now. "There's a guy."

So he tells Chad a little about Jensen, and Chad rags on him for having a thing for his RA—"Such a cliché, man. You gotta be such a cliché?"—and it's easy, really incredibly easy to talk to Chad about this. It's just like talking to Chad about anything else, just like it has been for the past fifteen years, ever since Jared met him in preschool, and he's incredibly grateful for it—that the guy who's been his best friend for his entire life would be so good about this.

"What about you?" Jared says finally, after he's talked Chad's ear off about the whole semester, Maggie and Jensen and everything.

"What do you mean, what about me? Are you asking if I had any big gay epiphanies?"

"No," Jared says, snorting. "I mean, you got a girlfriend?"

"Nah," Chad says. "Gotta keep my options open, you know how it goes."

"High school girls still turning you down, huh?" Jared says, laughing as Chad tries to give him a noogie. His chest feels light with relief now that he's told Chad, now that he doesn't have to wonder at Chad's reaction anymore, now that he knows that someone from home can know this and nothing with them will change, nothing that matters. He'd had no idea how much he needed this.

--

Jeff comes home from school four days later. It's not like it takes that long to get home from Tech, but he hadn't made it for Thanksgiving, some seminar for pre-meds or something. Jared never bothered to figure it out. He knows his mom is happy the whole family is together again, and Jared agrees with her for the first five minutes, but Jeff is Jeff, and the pompous doctor routine gets old pretty quick. Jared doesn't want to know what his cheeseburger is doing to his arteries, he just wants a cheeseburger. The headache after dinner? Was just a headache, not a tumor, and he doesn't smell almonds.

He's still in undergrad! He's not even a doctor yet, Jared whines to Ted on Facebook. Jeff's too important for Facebook, apparently, so it's a safe medium for complaint. And I'm not his guinea pig.

It takes Ted two days to answer, probably because he's trying to keep his mom from showing Abby all his naked baby pictures. When he finally does, he just says yeah, it sucks and then, hey, merry Christmas!

--

Megan slips into his room after the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. It's something they used to do as kids, all pile into the same room to wait for the morning, but Jeff hasn't joined them in a while.

"JT, you still awake?" she asks, hovering near the door.

"'Course," he says.

She trips over his shoes in the dark, cursing and then blinking furiously in the light when he turns on the lamp next to his bed. "Dude!" she hisses. "Warn a girl!"

Jared's still laughing when she sticks her knee in his back, shoving him over the edge of the bed to the floor. She dumps a pillow and a blanket after him, and he gamely shoves the former under his head and wraps up with the latter.

"So," she says, sticking her head over the edge of the bed. "Tell me about things."

"What things?"

She's turned out the light again, so he can only make out the bare outlines of her head as she looms over him. She shrugs, a big exaggerated gesture that makes the mattress squeak. "I don't know," she says. "Why haven't you talked about Sandy this trip?"

He shrugs now. "We're just friends. Really," he adds, because he can feel the weighty stare of her judgment. "Just friends."

"How did you follow a girl all the way across the country to just end up being friends with her?"

"I just . . . did?"

She gropes down in the dark to pinch him, misses, and knocks his alarm clock off the night stand instead. Jared yelps at the noise and Jeff, whose room is right next door, pounds on the adjoining wall. There's a muffled roar that might have been the words "shut up," but Jared's not entirely sure.

"Seriously, Jared."

"Seriously, Megan." He mimics her whine. "She wouldn't talk to me at all at first, but Jensen said—"

"Oh, Jensen said."

"What?" Something in her tone makes his heart pound and his palms sweat.

"You just quote him a lot."

"When?"

"At dinner, when mom was asking about finals and classes and stuff. Like the first day you got here and every day since. And Thanksgiving."

"He gives good advice."

"Sounds like it," she says. She lays back down on the bed, no longer looming over him, and though she keeps asking questions they're getting softer and softer, further apart, like she's trying to force herself to stay awake to ask them. Finally they stop altogether.

Jared lays awake a while longer, watching the shadows on the ceiling.

--

He hangs out with Chad and some of their friends from high school for New Year's. Chad had somehow managed to score a ridiculous number of handles from someone in his Biology class—"It pays to know old people."—that they feel honor-bound to make a significant dent in. Jared's pretty sure he's still drunk when he goes home the next afternoon.

He gets back on a plane four days after that, back to classes and papers and Jensen.

--

It's kind of shocking to Jared when he realizes how much he'd missed Trinity. He'd known he missed Ted and the gaming club and Sandy and, more complicatedly, Jensen—though he's amazed at how quickly the three weeks of Christmas break passed—but he hadn't realized that he'd actually missed Trinity the place. He'd missed the food at Mabee and the Large Interior Form and the fountain and the miserable climb up the stairs in the middle of campus that leaves him sweaty every damned time. Heck, he'd even missed his dorm room. He'd missed Stephen.

"I really missed you," Jared tells him around midnight on the first night back in the dorm, when he happens to catch Stephen leaving the bathroom.

Stephen stares at him with a completely blank expression, says, "Okay," and immediately gets in bed and goes to sleep. Jared grins at the blankets on Stephen's bed, feeling a little like a loon and not quite caring, because everything about this moment is exactly as it should be.

Ted doesn't get back to campus until the next afternoon. Jared had flown out early to make sure that he would have plenty of time to get settled in before classes started back up, but Ted seems to subscribe to the 'as much Christmas break as possible' philosophy.

"Jared!" Ted says the moment he gets back into the suite, dropping his duffel bag. "Get over here, you behemoth."

Jared's always been a big believer in hugs, so it's pretty awesome to find that Ted is right there with him. He wonders momentarily if there's anything weird about hugging a guy now that he knows he's gay—but you know what, fuck that, because he can over-think every single thing he's done in his entire life, or he can just decide that he's the same person he's always been and be done with it. He knows himself better now than he did before; that's the only thing that's changed.

"I freaking missed you," Ted says, releasing him.

Jared grins. "Me too."

"You want to get some dinner? My plane was delayed. I haven't had anything but airplane peanuts since breakfast."

Jared's stomach growls in sympathy. "You know you never need to ask me if I'd like to eat."

"Clearly it's been far too long since I saw you last," Ted says. "I'm never asking again. From here on out I'll just say, hey Jared, we're eating now."

"And I will say yes."

The dining hall was open but pretty deserted yesterday. Tonight, though, there are lines at all of the stations. Jared opts for tacos because no matter how many times he's been told that dining hall Mexican isn't particularly authentic it's still better than anything he's ever found in Virginia Beach, and anyway, he's seriously missed Mabee salsa.

He and Ted grab seats at a table with a couple of guys from Beze I and make small talk with them for a few minutes until the other guys finish eating and leave Jared and Ted alone at the table.

"So Abby had a good time with your family?" Jared says, bracing himself for the onslaught of 'Abby is awesome, did I mention that she's awesome, and also that she's dating me?'

"My mom loved her," Ted says. "My dad took me aside for an intensely horrifying conversation about condoms."

Jared bursts out laughing. "And how'd that work out for you?"

"I couldn't figure out how to tell him that I already knew all about them and had a whole pack of them in my bag." Ted shudders. "So I just sat there and nodded. It was awful. But I want to hear about your break. What'd you get up to? And man, you have got to get better about text messages. One text message in twenty-two days does not a correspondence make."

Jared winces. He really is kind of awful at texting. "Sorry. I'll do better."

"See that you do," Ted says, mock-stern. "So how was your break? And if you try to leave it at 'good,' I will smack you, don't think that I won't."

"Good." Jared barely gets out of Ted's reach. Ted has freaking lightning hands.

"Did you see Sandy at all?" Ted says, subsiding onto his side of the table again.

"Nah, she went skiing."

"So what did you do?"

"Ate, played video games, slept, hung out with Chad." Came out to Chad. Jared wonders how he'd say that to Ted. Chad knows, Megan sort of knows. His parents not so much, but he's pretty sure he knows how that conversation will go down.

"Yeah? How's Chad?"

Ted and Chad haven't met (Jared's pretty sure they'd hate each other) but Jared does forward some of Chad's more colorful emails to Ted occasionally. It's enough that Ted has a good idea of what Chad thinks about hookers and high-school junior girls and getting bums to buy him beer from the 7-Eleven on the Strip, which is actually a decently accurate view of Chad Michael Murray. Except that he was totally cool with Jared turning out to be gay, which Jared never would have guessed in a million years, and maybe he's been selling Chad short all along, by making it out as if those emails were all there was to know about him.

"He's fine," Jared says, after too long a pause.

"You all right there?" Ted says. "You seem kind of distracted."

"Sorry, just got a lot on my mind, I guess." Jared shakes his head. He could just say it right now and be done with it: Ted, I think I'm gay. It'll make Ted the third person he's told (fourth if you count the fact that Jared's pretty sure Megan suspects, even if he hasn't told her outright). And he's got to tell Ted, anyway; there's no way he cannot tell him. He really should have told Ted weeks ago.

He'll just say it and then be done with it; it'll be easy.

"Ted," he says. "I, um—"

But he never gets past there, because at that moment, as Jared looks over Ted's left shoulder, Jensen walks into the dining hall. Jared's breath catches in his throat. He'd known he thought Jensen was good-looking long before he had even the slightest idea that he might be gay, but something about seeing him right now just floors him—maybe because it's been a month since he last saw the guy, maybe since he's had a month of nothing but thinking about what he was going to do when he got back to school and saw him again. And apparently the answer is 'stare at him like a fool.'

Ted snaps his fingers in front of Jared's face. "Earth to Padalecki. You all right there? You just zoned out on me for a second."

"Yeah, sorry." Jared is turning red all over and he can still see Jensen across the dining hall. He's sitting at a table with a couple of girls now, laughing at something they said. Jared means to stop staring and totally fails.

"What are you looking at?"

"I'm not—" Jared says, far too late to stop Ted turning around. There's pretty much no one in that direction that Jared could possibly be looking at, save Jensen; there's no one else even remotely in his line of sight.

Ted catches Jensen's eye and waves to him before Jared can say anything. Jared slouches and tries his absolute best to pretend that he is not there.

Ted turns back to him. "Are you going to tell me what's going on with you anytime soon? Because fun as the guessing game is—"

"Ted, I'm gay."

Jared had been holding his breath but it's pretty anticlimactic, after all. "Huh," Ted says. "That explains a lot."

"Yep," Jared agrees.

Ted looks at Jared, then back over his shoulder, then at Jared again, scrutinizing. "And . . . wait. Jensen?"

Jared makes a panicked flailing motion with his hands.

"I'm going to take that as a yes. Well, huh. Since when? I mean, when did you realize?"

"After I walked in on Ed and Chace," Jared admits.

Ted bursts out laughing, then buries his face in his hands. "I'm totally surrounded by gay guys," he says. "Man, what are the freaking odds?"

"I don't think Stephen's gay," Jared offers.

"I don't think Stephen counts for shit."

"Sure he does!"

"I've seen him twice ever," Ted says, and okay, Jared has to concede that one.

"Sooo," Ted says, drawing out the word. "Jensen, huh?"

"Um," Jared says, trying to prevent the flush that's taking over his whole face and failing miserably. "Yeah."

"Since when?"

Jared thinks about it. "Since forever, probably. But I saw him kissing some guy in the hallway in November. That's when it clicked."

"So wait," Ted says. "You realized you were gay because you walked in on Ed and Chace. You realized you were in love with Jensen because you walked in on him and some guy. Man, if I'd had a revelation every time I'd walked in on Ed and somebody—"

Jared's still stuck a couple sentences back. "In love with Jensen?" he repeats.

"Well, are you?"

Jared frowns, considering. He'd always said he was in love with Sandy, but he'd wondered a little, too—was that really what love was supposed to feel like? Was that it? "I'm not sure," he says slowly. "Maybe."

"But you definitely really like him?"

There's a slow smile spreading all over his face; he can't help it. "Yeah."

"You are one seriously lost cause, my friend," Ted says.

--

Jared doesn't know why he was ever worried about what Ted would think. He rooms with Ed Westwick, for fuck's sake. Jared's revelation doesn't ruffle their friendship at all. And, thankfully, Ted stops asking a bunch of questions about Sandy all the time, and accepts Jared's "we're really just friends" response.

It does, however, lead to entirely different awkward questions. "So," Ted asks that night, while they're playing CoD 4 in their separate rooms. They're logged into a game with Yarrick and Brad, two guys from the gaming club, but they've turned the headsets off to everyone but each other. "Are you really gay? Or is it just Jensen?"

Jared's been trying pretty hard to not ponder that question. The Jensen thing had freaked him out enough, really, and he's been reluctant to speculate on any other guys he knows.

"Not sure," he says, trying not to get shot as he sends his guy darting across an open courtyard.

"How would you go about figuring that out anyway?" Ted takes some pot shots at him from a window, but misses.

"I have no idea."

"Well, what did Google tell you?"

Jared doesn't say anything to that, because he's too busy sneaking up the stairs behind Ted's guy, and he figures killing Ted and winning the round is better than telling him to shut the fuck up again. He never should have told Ted about the Googling incident—or a general overview of the Googling incident. He's successful just a few seconds later, and he crows his victory while Ted curses into his ear.

--

Classes start up again the next day, and Jared has to skip coffee and breakfast in the morning because for some reason Stephen turned Jared's alarm off instead of his own. He and Sandy have writing workshop—the second half of freshman seminar—first thing on Monday mornings. The gods of scheduling are harsh and cruel, but Jared figures it could have been math or something instead, and this really isn't so bad.

Sandy's saved him a seat in the middle of the room, and she waves him over as he rushes in. It gets him a weird look from Evan, who Sandy broke up with halfway through last semester. Eat it up, bitch, Jared smirks. He doesn't want Sandy like that anymore, if he ever had, but he still doesn't like that jerk. It's the principle of the thing.

He's nodding into his notes halfway through the hour, and Sandy starts kicking him in the thigh to wake him up. "You are snoring," she hisses at one point. Dr. Webber glares in his direction occasionally, but Jared needs the sturdy support of a giant black coffee to keep his head up at this point.

Class goes by pretty quickly, what with Jared sleeping through most of it, and Sandy drags him over to the coffee shop in the library before his next class. Abby's behind the counter again, and she pats his hand sympathetically as she adds an extra shot of espresso to his red eye.

He and Sandy go back outside to sit on the grass. It's still January, but Texas is freaking crazy with the weather and it's 60 degrees outside. It's the best way to tell the kids from out of state—they're all lounging in t-shirts while the Texans hurry past in their parkas.

Sandy waits until he's halfway through his coffee before she attempts to initiate a conversation. "How was break?"

"Good," he said. "I told Chad."

"Chad?" She looks confused for a minute. "Oh, Chad," she says finally, like she's saying the name of a particularly disgusting cockroach. "You guys are still friends?"

Jared could get defensive, but Chad was a douche to Sandy and her friends during high school, so he lets it go. "Yeah, we are."

"So how did that go?"

"Surprisingly well, actually. And then I told my suitemate Ted when we got back."

"So are you going to come out officially or anything?"

Jared starts tugging at the grass. "And do what, wear a sign around campus?"

Sandy slaps his arm. "No, I mean. You aren't going to hide it? I mean, you're sure?"

Jared shrugs. "I mean, yeah. I guess I'm sure. As sure as I can be without empirical evidence, I guess. And I don't see much point in hiding it if I want to have any kind of sex life."

"So you wouldn't mind coming to an LGBTSA meeting with me?"

"A who what now?"

Sandy pulls a flyer out of her purse. "They were posted at my dorm. Yours too, probably, if you bothered to read the bulletin board. It's the Lesbian Gay Bi Transsexual Straight Alliance. They're having a meeting on Thursday afternoon."

Jared takes the flyer, which indeed gives details to this effect, and also has the corniest clip art of a string of people holding hands under a rainbow. "Uh, yeah," he says, because Sandy is staring at him. "I'll go with you."

Sandy smiles and pats his arm. "Good," she says. "I think this will be good for you."

--

The rest of his classes are about as exciting as last semester's classes were. At least he's done with comps for monkeys, even if it means he and Ted aren't in any classes together anymore. They play CoD or Halo almost every night, sometimes with the other guys and sometimes not. There's a Stephen sighting at eleven a.m. on Wednesday, but he's just shuffling from the bathroom back to his bed and Jared barely gets in a "hey, man" before Stephen's out again.

The LGBTSA meeting is in the basement of the student center, and Jared meets Sandy at the bottom of cardiac hill to walk up together. The nostalgic sheen has worn off the staircase, and Jared's back to cursing its existence again as he pants for breath at the top of the hill. It's a cold day, so at least he's not sweating. Too much.

There's a sign on the bulletin board when they first enter the student center, and there are more signs posted along the hallway pointing them toward the basement—more of that same horrible piece of clip art. Jared's sweating again by the time they get down the stairs; he blames it directly on the poster.

Sandy's made sure they get there a little early, but there are already a few people in the room when they walk in. Jared doesn't recognize any faces, but Sandy seems to know people. A blonde girl across the way waves her over, and Sandy grabs Jared's hand and tugs him over.

"Emily, this is my friend Jared. Jared, this is Emily."

"Nice to meet you," Emily says, extending her hand.

Jared shakes it. She's got one of those limp handshakes he's always hated. "Nice to meet you, too," he says, regardless.

"I haven't seen you here before," Emily says. "Are you a new ally?"

"Er, no," Jared says. "I'm gay."

"Oh," Emily says. "Well, welcome! This is a safe space, so anything you want to say here is safe. Obviously."

"Great," Jared says, staring at her dubiously. She's a little too flustered and he's not sure why; it's kind of freaking him out. He eyes the room, looking for somewhere to sit that's a little farther away from her, but the place has filled up quickly in the last couple of minutes and the noise is starting to ebb, like the meeting's about to start, so reluctantly he takes the seat in the middle of the couch, between Sandy and Emily.

"Okay, folks," says a girl with bright blue hair seated near the front of the room, closing the door. "Presumably you're all here for the LGBTSA meeting. If that's not what you're here for, here's your chance to escape. No? No takers? Great, then let's get this party started.

"I see a lot of familiar faces and a couple of new ones, so let's do names along with anything else you want to say about yourself. I'm Kayla, and I'm the LGBTSA president. I like girls, long walks on the beach, and paintball. Girl to the left, you're next."

The girl to Kayla's left rolls her eyes. "I'm Sarah, and I'm Kayla's girlfriend. And I freaking hate paintball."

There are about a dozen people in the room, mostly girls. One other girl identifies herself as a lesbian, but the rest of the girls seem to be straight allies. There are two other guys there: Ian, who has purple hair and the most stereotypical gay accent Jared's ever heard, and Mark, who looks like a quarterback and who says he's bisexual. Jared immediately disbelieves him, for no reason he can think of other than the way he kind of looks like he wants to jump every girl in the room.

And then Sandy's done introducing herself and it's Jared's turn. "Um, hi, I'm Jared," he says. He tries to think of something not totally lame to say about himself and can't think of anything, so he settles for just saying, "I'm gay."

He's definitely not imagining the way Emily and a couple of the other girls are staring at him—like he's a particularly tasty-looking piece of food. He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable, while the last couple of girls introduce themselves.

Kayla says, "That's great, everyone. So, as most of you know, this is a safe space—that means that no topic of conversation is off-limits here, and no sort of discrimination will be tolerated. It also means that nothing anyone says here goes beyond these walls without that person's permission. Everyone clear? Good. All right then, Sarah, take it away."

"This week we're going to talk about coming out," Sarah says. "What was it like for you, and how did it go when you did it? Or if you aren't totally out yet, what are your feelings on coming out? Is it something you're planning on?

"I'll start," she continues. "I realized I liked girls when I was nine. I didn't come out to my parents until I was fifteen, but I think they knew before that. They were pretty cool about it. All of my good friends had known since middle school, so it was really, you know, not so bad. As for coming out at college—I mean, I was still dating my high school girlfriend when I started college, so it was just another thing I told people about myself. Hi, my name's Sarah, I play Ultimate Frisbee, and I've got a girlfriend. It was pretty easy, really."

Everyone's coming out story sounds pretty much just like Sarah's—told my family and my friends and everything was fine. Jared's pretty sure that's supposed to be reassuring, like everyone will still love him no matter what. It is reassuring, except that everyone he's come out to has already been great. It's just—he doesn't know. He's not sure what he was expecting out of an LGBTSA meeting. It kind of makes a horrifying amount of sense, when he thinks about it, that it would be filled with straight girls looking for their new gay best friend.

And really, what was he expecting out of this anyway? Did he think some random hot guy was going to ask him out? The only guys in the room are Ian and Mark, and neither of them is what he's looking for.

If he hadn't already told his closest friends he was gay, maybe it would make sense for him to be here, to come to a place that could give him the support he wasn't getting anywhere else—but as it is it's just a group of strangers asking him to talk about things he can already talk about with his friends, and it's uncomfortable.

"Wasn't that great?" Sandy says as they walk out of the building.

"Please never make me go back there again," Jared says.

-- Sandy corners him after the end of writing seminar and says, "Hey Jared, how's it going?"

"Fine," he says. "What's up?"

Sandy leans against the doorframe. "What are you doing on Friday?"

He eyes her, struck afresh by how very pretty she is; he'd had good taste back when he thought he was straight. She's got this sort of predatory gleam in her eyes, though, and he has an idea about what that means. "Not a chance in this world."

"You haven't even heard what I want to say!"

"I already told you, I'm never going back to an LGBTSA meeting again," Jared says.

"That's not what I was going to ask! A bunch of us are talking about going to the Bonham, and I figured you might want to come."

"To the where?"

"You are such a newbie," Sandy says, patting his hand fondly. "The Bonham. It's a gay club, in downtown. And it admits under-21s."

Jared freezes. "Clubbing isn't really my scene," he says. He went to Teen Night at Peabody's once, as a junior. He lasted right around fifteen minutes before he got too overwhelmed by the strobe lights and the crowd and all the random military guys hitting on girls he knew from his U.S. History class, and made Chad drive him home. Chad didn't talk to him for the better part of a week afterwards.

Sandy steers him down the hallway and out the doors into the brilliant January sunshine. "Listen, Jared," she says. "You want to meet guys, don't you?"

"I guess so?" Jared says.

"So come to the Bonham," Sandy says. "What's it going to hurt? You might even meet some guys, just think."

"I sort of doubt that," Jared says.

"Great!" Sandy says. "See you on Friday at nine." She hurries into Chapman for her next class, and Jared's left gaping, trying to figure out how the heck that just happened.

--

"What are you up to tonight?" Ted says, walking into the bathroom.

Jared's staring at himself in the mirror in pretty much total despair. He's wearing a button down and jeans and it feels like too much, like he's trying too hard; his hair's going about a dozen different places.

"Going clubbing," he says. It comes out sounding a lot like he's about to lead an expedition into enemy territory, which is not totally inaccurate; that's pretty much how he feels about the thing.

"I could have sworn you just said you were going clubbing," Ted says.

"It's Sandy's fault," Jared says.

"I could have guessed that."

"What are you supposed to wear for this sort of thing?" Jared asks, tugging at his shirt.

"Not that," Ed supplies from the bed.

"Nobody asked you," Ted says.

Jared pulls the button-down over his head, leaving the Trinity t-shirt he'd been wearing underneath. "Better?"

"Sure," Ted says.

"Not that either," Ed calls out.

"Still didn't ask you!" Ted says.

"I'm just saying," Ed says. "You're going to stand out like a sore thumb."

"Whatever," Jared says. He's pretty sure that's inevitable. "I'm running late anyway. See you later, Ted. Wish me luck!"

"Try not to catch the herp," Ted says.

"That's very helpful."

"I do what I can, my friend."

He and Sandy are riding over to the club with some guy who lives in Winn. When Jared gets there, Sandy is already waiting outside, in jeans, heels, and a tiny halter-top. She eyes Jared dubiously.

"That's what you're wearing?" she says.

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" he says, looking down at his shirt.

"I don't—ahh!" Sandy shrieks as a guy grabs her from behind. "Jesus, Ameet, you could have just said hi!"

"Oh, but it's so much more fun this way," the guy says, releasing her and turning to Jared. "This your friend?"

"Yeah. Ameet, this is Jared. Jared, Ameet."

"Hi!" Ameet says, shaking Jared's hand enthusiastically. He's barely taller than Sandy, and he's wearing eyeliner and a pair of jeans so tight Jared's not sure how he's still breathing. "I hear you're a Bonham virgin?"

"I guess so?" Jared says.

"Oh, you are in for something," Ameet says. Jared can't help blushing furiously at that; he doesn't even know why, and Ameet turns to Sandy with a grin. "Isn't he adorable?"

"I told you so," Sandy says, grinning back.

"Don't worry, you're going to have such an awesome time, I promise," Ameet says, unlocking the doors of his Civic coupe. "Sandy, you're in the back."

"I figured as much," Sandy says, scrambling into the backseat.

It's only awkward sitting in the front seat of Ameet's car for about three seconds, because after that Ameet's blasting dance music so loud that there's no chance anyone could be expected to speak anyway.

The club is downtown, literally a block away from the Alamo. It kind of weirds Jared out a bit to be standing in line outside a gay club and looking at the walls of the Alamo, but no one else seems to think anything of it. The bouncer barely glances at Jared's driver's license before slapping an under-21 stamp on his hand and waving him through the door. A girl thrusts a plastic bag at him and Jared grabs it, pushed into the crowd. Jared had been able to hear the bass from outside the club, but he'd had no idea how much of the sound that door was blocking—the bass pounds through his body, so heavy he can't help but move in time with it, taking a step for every thump.

Sandy grabs his arm from behind and steers him toward the wall. She says something to him that he can't understand. He shakes his head, and she beckons him down to yell in his ear. "Do you want a drink?"

Jared stares at her blankly until she flashes her 21-and-over wristband. Of course, she's got a fake. "Sure!" he says. She stares at him until he adds, "Um, Jack and Coke?"

She nods and disappears into the crowd.

Jared leans against the wall. There are way too many people in here, packed in and writhing against each other, and as out of place as Ameet's leather had looked on campus, Jared's definitely the one who's out of place here. Maybe Sandy had a point about the t-shirt.

He's still holding onto the bag the girl gave him at the door. He fishes around at the bottom, trying to figure out what's even in there. He feels some crinkly small packets and pieces of paper; coupons, probably. There's also a slim DVD case and something round and plasticy that, when he holds it up, starts buzzing in his hand. He nearly drops the whole bag.

"Oh, you got a vibrator," says Ameet, materializing out of nowhere. "All I got was a cock ring."

"Um," Jared says. "That's—do you want mine?"

"Please, like I would deprive you of your first vibrator."

"What makes you think, um." Jared can't seem to prevent himself from turning red.

"You're the most adorable new gay boy ever," Ameet says.

Jared completely gives up on not blushing. "What were they giving out the bags for, anyway?"

"It's free porn night. See the screens?"

"The huh?" Jared says, scanning the room, and—oh. There they are: huge projector screens with gay porn all over them. There'd been a lot going on when they'd first entered the club, Jared will give himself that, but it's still pretty impressive that he missed those.

"You're really cute when you blush," Ameet says, pinching Jared's cheek.

"Stop flirting with Jared, Ameet, you don't want to go giving him ideas," Sandy says, handing Jared his drink. "Ameet's got a boyfriend."

"Spoiling all my fun," Ameet pouts.

"Keeping Mark from slapping you," Sandy corrects.

"You know I like it when he gets all huffy."

"We're going to go dance now," Sandy says, grabbing Jared by the arm. She jabs a finger in Ameet's direction. "You behave yourself."

"I'll do my very best," Ameet says, hands up and innocent. "Scout's honor."

Sandy rolls her eyes and steers Jared toward the dance floor. "Here, give me your bag." She shoves the swag bag in her purse and then they're in the middle of all the people, really in the thick of it. There are some girls but mostly it's guys, endless guys dancing and grinding and making out in the middle of the floor. There's soft porn on the floor and real porn on the screens and it's just way too much for Jared to handle—he's half hard already, and horrified.

"Stop freaking out!" Sandy says. "You'll scare away all the cute boys who want to dance with you."

"I'm not—" scared of the club, Jared begins, but catches himself. They don't actually need to have this conversation. "I don't dance," he amends. "And what are you talking about? No one wants to dance with me."

"Sure they do," Sandy says. "Down that drink and let loose."

It's the weirdest thing—Jared's drink was full a minute ago, and suddenly now it's empty in his hand. Also he's somehow gone from kind of awkwardly twitching to actually moving with the music—at least sort of with it. He's never been much of a dancer but dancing doesn't seem to be the name of the game here so much as grinding, and the Jack and Coke is making that work out just fine.

Sandy disappears for a couple minutes, and returns with another drink. After that Jared's good; he's golden. Sandy slips away after that, is totally gone, and Jared experiences a moment of panic before he spots her dancing with Ameet across the way. His Sandy radar is slipping, he thinks, half-hysterically, and then he's not thinking about Sandy at all, because there's a guy in front of him, Latino and good looking. He's got on a sleeveless shirt and jeans tight enough to be part of the onscreen porn, and he's grinning at Jared and saying, "You mind?" as he steps into Jared's space.

All Jared can manage to say is, "Sure," and then the guy is dancing with him. For about a second Jared panics, unsure if he really wants to do this, but the guy takes all uncertainty out of the equation by grabbing Jared's hips and tugging him closer. And oh, it's good, it's shockingly good, the feeling of a guy pressed right up against him; he's not sure why it should be surprising. It's not like he didn't know he was gay, before—that'd been pretty apparent thirty seconds into his Googling—but he's never put it into practice.

The music's a little too fast for Jared to keep pace but it doesn't much seem to matter; the guy still has him by the hips and is keeping him there. He doesn't seem inclined to leave. It's too loud in the club for talking but there's a moment when the song shifts, the bass lets up, and the guy leans forward to yell in Jared's ear.

"What's your name?"

"Jared, you?"

"Ernesto!"

The name totally fits the guy, somehow—hot and Latino and totally unmistakable.

"How old are you, Jared?"

"Eighteen."

"Jailbait," Ernesto replies, grinning, which doesn't even make sense. Eighteen is the definition of totally not jailbait, but Jared's not sure the middle of a crowded dance floor is the place to talk about definitions, and anyway Jared's brain short-circuits when Ernesto pulls him closer and their hips line up.

"I'm twenty-one," Ernesto says. Jared's really not sure how he can be talking through the contact. "I'm a junior."

"At Trinity?"

Ernesto rolls his eyes and doesn't reply to that. "You got any plans later?" he says against Jared's ear.

Jared freezes. He just doesn't have any idea how he's supposed to react or even what he wants to have happen here. The hesitation goes on way too long, until Ernesto says, "Here, you know what, have a rain check," and swipes Jared's phone out of his pocket. He types his number in, hands it back, and says, "Call me sometime," giving Jared's shoulder a squeeze. Then he disappears into the crowd.

Jared's left gaping in the middle of the dance floor. He stays there for a long time, his heart racing, because really, that was crazy, did that really just happen? Then he goes in search of Sandy and Ameet.

He finds them booty dancing on the far side of the club. He's all primed to tell them what happened, try to dissect it, but Sandy looks like she's having a good time, laughing and grinding up against Ameet, and on second thought, Jared doesn't want to dissect anything right now. He's a little giddy and a little drunk and grinning and dancing and just not worrying about anything is way more fun, so that's what he does. He'll deal with it all later.

--

It's been fun, but Jared is more than ready to go when Sandy jerks her thumb toward the door, mouthing something over the music. Ameet drives them by the Taco Cabana on the way back to school. "You want?" he asks them, shouting a little over the disco in his car.

Sandy leans forward from the back. "Jared's always hungry, and I definitely want."

Ameet drops them and their tacos off in front of res life and heads over to the other side of campus to meet Mark. "I'm not going to waste this buzz," he says as he drives off.

"You ready to go back to the dorms?" Sandy asks him, back in the car.

"Not especially."

They decide to take their tacos on an impromptu picnic on the IM field rather than go back to their rooms.

"So. First gay club." Sandy does spirit fingers with the hand not holding her taco.

Jared is too busy stuffing half a taco into his mouth to say anything, so he snorts around the food and nods.

"You going to go out with him?"

Jared looks up from where he's ripping grass from the ground and shrugs. "I guess. Why wouldn't I?"

Sandy's inspecting her hair for split ends. Jared's not sure how she's supposed to see in the spotty light from the street lamp, but doesn't ask. "I don't know," she says. "You just seemed kind of overwhelmed."

"It was, I guess. Overwhelming. And loud."

"I know him, I think. If it's the same Ernesto. But how can there be more than one flaming gay named Ernesto at this school?"

Jared snorts. "What's he like?"

Sandy flips her hair back behind her shoulder. "Not entirely sure," she says. "He was just in my intro to philosophy class last semester. I mean honestly, screaming, flaming gay is the best way to describe him. He's not someone you could date quietly."

"Yeah."

"If that's what you're looking for," she prompts. Jared flings his handful of grass at her. Most of it never actually reaches her, and she primly picks off the blades that do. "Anyway," she says. "It would be one way to come out and come out big."

"But I went to a meeting and told everyone there."

Sandy stops fiddling with the grass still clinging to her sweater and gives Jared a pitying look. "Don't make me explain the difference between talking about your gayness in a 'safe place'"—she makes the air quotes—"and you walking across upper campus holding hands with someone wearing pink spandex."

"He has not—"

"Oh yes. He has. It was just the one time and I think everyone would agree that it was kind of disastrous, but it happened. I just want you to be aware."

"Huh." And it is kind of worrying, Jared guesses. Not coming out, because it's not a big deal to him, and he's already told everyone that matters—except his parents, but he's really not eager to have that conversation just yet. He's just not sure about the spandex. "What do you think, though?" he asks Sandy.

She shrugs. "I mostly just want to watch you make out."

Jared throws his handful of grass on her hair this time, mashing his hands into it to get it all tangled while Sandy shrieks his name as loudly and shrilly as possible. Dogs halfway across town are clutching their ears and crying, and Jared laughs as she tackles him to the ground.

Eventually they subside, lying back on the grass and watching the bugs flying around the lights along the track.

"I'm kind of in love with Jensen," he says. It's somehow easier to say now that he's not looking at her.

"Your RA?"

"Yeah."

"Is he gay? Does he know?"

"That he's gay? Yes, he does. That I love him? Not so much."

"Is he why—"

Jared cuts her off. "He's why I started wondering, I guess. But I've always been gay. I think. I mean, I must have been."

"I was going to say," Sandy says pointedly, "is he why you're wondering if you should call Ernesto, when clearly you should do this thing."

"I should?"

"Yes, even more now that I know you've got a secret crush. Nothing stirs a man like jealousy, Jared. Rule number one."

Jared laughs and rolls his head to look at her. "Really. That important?"

Sandy meets his eyes and grins. "Totally. Anyway, it's the least you owe me," Sandy says.

"Calling Ernesto?"

"No, letting me watch you make out. I mean, I did kiss you to help you find if you were gay."

"Bitch please, I found that out on my own. Gay.com was very helpful."

Sandy whips up to loom over him. "What? You Googled gay?"

"I had to do the proper research."

Sandy is still giggling when they head back up to the dorms.

"You should ask him out," she says, when they get to her door.

Jared nods. "I guess I will. But ask him out where?"

"It'll come to you."

Jared panics a minute at the thought of having to come up with first date plans all on his own. "No, it really will not."

Sandy just laughs. "Good night, Jared."

--

Jared waits a couple of days to call Ernesto. He doesn't know what to suggest for a first date. Ted is remarkably unhelpful in this scenario, regardless of the fact that he has a girlfriend and successfully negotiated a first date with her. "We got ice cream at Coates and walked around upper campus," he says. "It wasn't really much of a date. Why don't you go to that place you took Maggie, where was it?"

"The Liberty Bar? But what if we have nothing to talk about? At least I knew I could talk to Maggie."

"Didn't you talk to this guy?"

"Yeah for like two seconds. In a club."

"So?"

Jared shrugs. "It was loud?"

"Whatever, dude. I got nothing. You're on your own."

So Jared thinks of the things he likes to do (sleeping, eating, playing video games) and crosses off all of the things he's not sure (yet) that he'd enjoy doing with Ernesto (sleeping, eating, playing video games) and eventually settles on bowling.

"That'd be good, right?" he asks Stephen, even though Stephen is probably sleeping and possibly not there. Jared has learned he can be remarkably unpredictable. He likes to pretend sometimes, when—possibly—no one else can hear him, that he has a normal roommate he can talk to. "I mean, gay guys go bowling, don't they?"

"Really wouldn't know," Stephen says, and Jared jumps and shrieks only a little bit. Really, he is improving.

"Great," Jared says to the lump on Stephen's mattress. "Glad we had that talk."

He gets so desperate he thinks about asking Jensen, but even the brief thought of having that conversation makes him break out in a cold sweat. He's on his own.

He finally settles firmly on bowling, because even if the conversation sucks there's still an activity to occupy the time. And Jared really isn't that bad at bowling. He scrolls through his contacts on his cell phone, takes a deep breath, and hits 'talk.'

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's Jared, from the club the other night? I go to Trinity, I had the shirt on?" He kind of kicks himself for that reference.

"Omigod Jared! Hi! I was wondering when I was going to hear from you."

"Um," Jared says. "Now, I guess."

Ernesto seems to think that's hysterical. "You're cute, Jared. How've you been?"

Jared can't think of a single thing to say. Good, that's the word he's looking for, things are good, and the conversation could continue from there, nice easy small talk, except that he suddenly, desperately wants to not be on the phone anymore. He blurts out, "What are you doing on Friday? Do you want to go—"

"Oh, there's a party at Lowenstein's on Friday!" Ernesto says excitedly. "What do you think?"

Bowling. Now it seems like the stupidest idea ever, in retrospect; no way is Ernesto a bowling kind of guy. Jared's not much sure who would be a bowling kind of person. He doesn't even really like bowling.

"Sure," Jared says, trying to keep his deep, deep relief from coming through in his voice. "Sounds good."

"Great! I'll drive. Meet me in front of res life at nine. And Jared?"

"Yeah?"

"Try a different shirt this time, okay?"

Ernesto hangs up and Jared's left gaping, not sure how Ernesto managed to steal the entire conversation away from him.

--

Jared goes for a button-down, a tan flowered one that Megan picked out for his birthday last year. She'd sworn he could pull it off with Rainbows and khakis. He looks good wearing it with a belt and jeans, but:

"Gay," Jared says to the mirror. "I look really, really gay."

"You are gay," Ted says, walking into the room. "I mean, what does it matter if you look gay when you are?"

Jared completely and utterly fails to come up with an effective counterargument.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Ted says, grinning cheekily. "Have fun on your date, honeybunch."

"Bite me," Jared says, flipping Ted the bird as he leaves.

Jared's got just enough time on the walk to res life to realize that going on a date with Ernesto is a truly atrocious idea. He doesn't know this guy. And sure, the point of dating is to get to know people, but what's the point of getting to know Ernesto? There'd seemed to be a good point to it when he'd been talking to Sandy, but now he's a long way off from Sandy and her logic, and bolting is starting to sound like a really awesome option.

Not that he's going to. It's way too late to back out now. He'd be a huge jerk if he did, for one, and for two, Sandy would probably kill him. He's already at res life, anyway, and there's Ernesto, completely and utterly recognizable; there's nothing to do but go for it.

Ernesto's got a grin that's blinding even in the orange glow of the streetlight, and he's wearing a t-shirt and soft-looking jeans that are only moderately less tight than the ones he'd had on in the club.

"Hey there," Ernesto says. "You look good."

"So do you," Jared says—the obvious response, but it feels weird as hell to say it. Ernesto seems pleased, regardless.

"You ready?"

"Sure," Jared says. It comes out as more of a question than he'd intended for it to, but Ernesto doesn't seem to notice.

"Awesome," he says. He hits a button on his key ring and the lights on the BMW next to him flash.

"Nice car," Jared says. It feels like he should have somehow known Ernesto would be all kinds of rich. The car's got black leather seats and the kind of stereo system Chad would have killed for in high school.

"So Jared," Ernesto says, revving the car out of the lot. "You ever been to Lowenstein's before?"

Jared shakes his head.

"I could have kind of guessed that," Ernesto says. "You're so young and . . . fresh."

Dave Lowenstein, apparently, used to be a student at Trinity. He graduated sometime in the past few years, no one really knew when, after having been a student for some number of years, nobody really knew how many. He's lived in the same house since whenever it was that he was actually a Trinity student and has been throwing parties periodically since the dawn of time.

Ernesto parks on a quiet suburban street and rings the bell on a house that looks like all the others. Jared's half-expecting a mom and little kids when the door opens, but instead it's a guy with a huge shaggy beard, surrounded by a cloud of pot smoke.

"Welcome," the guy says. "Come in, make yourself at home. You partake of the good stuff?" He holds the pipe out.

"I'm good, thanks," Jared says.

"He's a good boy, Dave-o, he wouldn't do anything like that," Ernesto says, smacking the guy's hand away. He slips an arm around Jared's waist. "Come on, jailbait. Let's get you a drink."

"You know I'm not actually jailbait," Jared can't help saying.

"Yeah, but you've got that baby face," Ernesto says. "It's okay," he adds as Jared blushes. "I like the baby face."

Jared's really not sure what to say to that. Luckily Ernesto doesn't seem to be looking for a reply. Instead, he drags Jared to the kitchen, where Jared comes face to face with the most impressive collection of liquor he's ever seen in a house. It's a solid wall of liquor.

"What's your poison?" Ernesto says. "I'll make you something. You like sweet? Just sit back."

Jared's a little dubious at first, but Ernesto moves effortlessly through the kitchen, dumping shots from no fewer than seven bottles into a cocktail shaker and straining the contents into an oversized martini glass. The drink is brilliant, toxic green. Ernesto garnishes it with orange rind.

"Try it," Ernesto says.

Jared takes a cautious sip. It's shockingly sweet, so much so that he can barely taste the alcohol. "It's like a Jolly Rancher," he says.

"That was the goal."

Ernesto mixes something else for himself, a drink involving a lot of vodka and limoncello, and then they head back through the kitchen and into the party.

The house has a hodgepodge look to it, like every piece of furniture in it came from a different garage sale. It's a pleasant sort of hodgepodge, though, and the couch Jared sinks down into is super comfortable. He's very at one with the couch. He's also very at one with his drink. He's so at one with it that he's already finished the whole thing.

Ernesto says, "Do you want another?" and reappears, almost before Jared realizes he's gone, with a refill. This time, the drink's electric blue and tastes like raspberries. It's really, really good. The next one is orange.

"It's like Skittles!" Jared says. "I'm tasting the whole rainbow."

"I think this one's kind of drunk," says a guy on the couch opposite Jared. The room's pretty full, now that Jared looks around—there are a lot more people than there were a few minutes ago.

"You think so?" Ernesto says, giving Jared's arm a squeeze. "How you doing?"

"I really like this couch," Jared says earnestly.

The guy across the way snorts. "I think you've got yourself a lightweight."

"You're not going to pass out on me there, are you?" Ernesto shifts around so that his face is right in front of Jared's. It's kind of hard to keep Ernesto's face in focus. Jared grins at him, though. It's a good couch, and it's a good night.

"I'm happy to be here," Jared tells the room.

"Let's go for a walk," Ernesto says, hauling Jared up by the arm.

Leaving the couch sucks but walking feels good. Jared takes very deliberate steps as they do a loop of the downstairs. It's a bigger house than Jared would have thought, or maybe it's just that they're going really slowly.

"They've got a backyard," Jared says, peering through sliding glass doors and into the night. "I want to go lie down." It would be great to collapse onto some grass right now. Nice soft grass, go roll around all over it; that would feel awesome.

"The backyard's nothing but gravel and sand," Ernesto says, steering Jared away. "You don't want to lie down out there."

"Are you sure?" Jared says. "Sand can feel really awesome, too. This one time Chad stole a bunch of rum from his dad's liquor cabinet and we went down to the beach and drank it and the sand felt awesome, I mean really awesome."

"Were there broken bottles in the sand?" Ernesto says, amused.

Jared considers. "No. I mean, yes, but not where we were. They were really far away."

"Over here, cowboy, "Ernesto says, steering him toward the hall. There's a rug on the floor, though, that Jared only notices at the last second, and then only because he's slipping on it. He was too busy letting Ernesto lead the way to notice where his feet were going, and now he skids and crashes against Ernesto, knocking him into the wall.

"Ow!" Ernesto says, muffled, then makes to turn around. Jared backs up, giving him a little space. He's still crowding Ernesto, but Ernesto doesn't make any move to get away from the wall. Instead he's looking at Jared, and then looking at Jared's lips, and even Jared can't miss that cue. Ernesto's right there and he's looking and why not, really? Is there any reason why not?

There might be, but Jared's drunk and he and Ernesto are the only ones in the hallway, so Jared leans in slowly and kisses him on the mouth, slowly so Ernesto could pull back if Jared was wrong, if he didn't want it. But Ernesto does want it—he kisses back.

It's Jared who's abruptly not interested. Kissing Ernesto—it's nice, but it's just another mouth against his mouth, it's just saliva and flesh, and if he lets it go further from here it'd feel good but it wouldn't feel amazing, wouldn't feel totally fucking spectacular—and that's what he's after, isn't it? He's looking for spectacular.

It's all clear in that instant while his lips are on Ernesto's, totally clear. Then he pulls back and the clarity is gone. He's drunk and Ernesto's eyeing him, his expression totally unchanged.

"I can't do this," is the best Jared can manage, and then he flees onto the back deck. It's freezing outside—the temperature must have dropped a whole lot since they arrived at Lowenstein's house—but Jared doesn't want to go back inside, because Ernesto's in there, and he doesn't have any idea how to say to him, "I'm sorry I just freaked out on you, but this date needs to be over, can you please drive me home now?" He's a huge damned chicken, but he has no interest in doing it, no interest in facing this guy again.

Jared weighs his options, tries to think of who he knows who has a car and might, ostensibly, pick him up somewhere off campus sometime after two in the morning. There's not much of an option there, either.

Jared calls Ted.

The phone rings for a long time, so long that Jared works through all of the scenarios: Ted's drunk, Ted's sleeping over at Abby's and forgot his phone, Ted's in the middle of having sex with Abby and definitely, definitely not picking up his phone, and Jared is going to have to spend the night here, man up and talk to Ernesto or, worse, call Jensen—because Jensen would come get him, Jared knows that for sure, but that's pretty much a fate not worth contemplating.

"What's going on?" Ted says groggily, and Jared jumps.

"Ted! Hi!" The i in hi goes all long and molasses, the kind of accent Jared never had in Virginia and has been picking up in Texas, but only when he's tired or drunk as a skunk, and Ted can probably tell right off the bat which one of those is the case, since Jared probably wouldn't be calling at two in the morning if he were just tired.

"What's going on, Jared?" Ted sounds a little more alert now.

"I need a favor," Jared says. "I'll owe you big. I'll owe you huge! I'll owe you a pony."

"A pony?"

--

"This had better be one really awesome pony," Ted says. "I'm out front."

Jared presses the cell phone tighter against his ear and struggles upright. "I think I passed out on a deck," he says. His teeth are chattering as he staggers around to the front of the house and climbs into the passenger seat of Ted's car. "It was really nice outside. There were lots of stars, but there was glass in the yard."

"Oh-kay, drunk kid," Ted says.

"Only sort of drunk. Drunkish."

"Drunkish. Got it."

"Can you turn up the heat?" Jared says. "It's really cold."

"Yeah, that's because you passed out on a deck. In February."

"Oh!" Jared says, and leans against the car door.

Ted's shaking his arm. "Jared, you gotta get up. We're back at school."

"Huh?" Jared says. He squints at the streetlights and recognizes the dining hall. "Hey, we're back at school!"

"Yeah, I noticed," Ted says. "Seeing as I drove us here. And also I told you this three seconds ago."

"Ah," Jared says. He fumbles with the door handle and slides halfway out of the car. He's not entirely sure how it's possible, but he's pretty sure he got drunker on the ride home. Maybe there was something in those drinks that was like, heat-released. Maybe he had to be in front of a car heater to truly unlock the alcoholic potential.

"Ted, I think I'm really drunk," Jared says, leaning against the car.

"Whoa there, buddy. Hold on a second." Ted's out of the car and on Jared's side in an instant.

"You're really fast," Jared tells him.

Ted gets his arm around Jared's side and says, "Let's get you back to the dorm, up you go."

Jared tries walking but it's really hard. Now that they're back on campus there's all kinds of good grass that Jared could lie down on. It would still feel totally awesome, but Ted's adamant. He keeps insisting that they need to go back to the dorm instead.

The stairs are even harder than regular walking. Jared says, "Whoa!" as he nearly tumbles backwards down them.

"Geez, could you be a little louder?" Ted whispers. "You're going to wake up the whole dorm."

Ted herds Jared into the suite through his and Ed's room, even though Jared's got his keys out and was about to stick them in the door. He totally had it under control.

"I've got it," Jared says, batting Ted's hands away as Ted tries to help him with his shoes.

"Okay, it's all you," Ted says, holding his hands up and stepping away. "But how about you don't talk anymore, because you're being really, really loud."

There's a knock on Jared's door just then. "See," Ted hisses. "Who's there?" he says.

"It's Jensen. Is everything okay in there?"

"Yeah, we're good!" Ted says. He shoves Jared down onto the bed, one shoe still on, and drags a blanket over him. Jared's about to protest, because what's Jensen doing here anyway, but Ted glares at him with some serious crazy eyes and Jared decides he's going to keep his mouth shut so Ted won't have to kill him later.

Jensen's head pokes though the door. "Hey, Jared. You okay?"

Jared says, "I'm good. I'm just really tired!"

Ted fixes him with the crazy eyes and Jared clamps his mouth closed. "He's got a really bad cold," Ted lies, "and we went over to my girlfriend's dorm to get some cough syrup, only apparently nobody ever told Jared that you don't take the cough syrup with codeine until you're pretty ready to pass out. This fool downed half a bottle of the stuff all the way over in Murchison, and I just finished dragging him back."

"Half a bottle?" Jensen looks pretty dubious.

"The kid's pretty much the size of a Clydesdale," Ted says.

Jensen laughs. "Point taken. Things are under control here?"

"Oh yeah, we're good. I'll let you know if we need anything."

There's the sound of the door closing, and then Ted's right up in Jared's face.

"That," Ted growls, "is why you don't get sloppy drunk when you live across the hall from your freaking RA!"

"I owe you a pony," Jared reminds him.

"You owe me more than a pony," Ted says ominously.

"Mm," Jared says, and passes out.

--

Jared is not entirely sure how he manages it, but he and Ernesto don't cross paths for the next week. Ernesto's mostly on the upperclassmen side of lower campus and doesn't have any of Jared's classes, so it's not like it's hard—or like Jared is trying. It just doesn't happen. He's kind of glad though. The kiss wasn't awful, but it kind of felt like kissing Sandy, and it wasn't amazing. Not what he wanted.

He says as much to Sandy on the way to their seminar. "But not exactly like kissing me, right?" she asks. "I mean, you're still gay, right?"

"Mmm, yes."

"Thank God."

Jared rolls his eyes.

"No, really, Jared. I don't need to be able to turn gay guys straight or anything, but I am not a bad kisser, I'll have you know. It's not like I'm proud it did nothing for you."

"Sorry?"

"Oh, honey." She pats his arm. "It's okay. You're just hopelessly in love with Jensen. I don't mind."

She starts telling him (again) that he should say something to Jensen, so Jared tunes her out on the rest of the walk to class. Still Jared figures she has a fair point—about the kissing, not about telling Jensen. He's not sure what to do about Ernesto. He doesn't figure he needs to break up with him, since they aren't actually dating, and he doesn't figure he wants to go out with Ernesto again, seeing as it's pretty much a waste of time.

He waffles on the topic for the better part of a week and a half, until Ernesto calls him one day while he and Ted are playing Halo 3.

"Listen," Ernesto says, almost before Jared says hello. "I don't want you to blame yourself. It was a good time, but it can't happen again."

"What?" Jared wonders if Ernesto started the conversation with himself before he even dialed Jared's number, because Jared has no idea what's going on.

"No, it's okay. It's not you, baby. It's me. We had a good run."

"Uh, okay?"

"So you'll be okay? You want me to call someone?"

"No?"

"Okay. Well you have a good life, hon. I'll see you around." And he hangs up.

"Who was that?" Ted asks. Jared hadn't even had time to turn the headphones off, so Ted heard Jared's side of the conversation.

"Ernesto. I think . . . I think he just broke up with me." He relays the conversation to Ted, who laughs so hard he chokes. Jared goes over to Ted's room and pounds him on the back until Ted rolls away.

"Baby . . . " Ted gasps, "honey . . . "

"Oh my God, shut up."

"That's why he left you, man. You're such a ray of sunshine."

Jared goes back over to his room and picks up his controller again. It kind of annoys him, he thinks as he shoots at Ted's aliens. He's relieved, of course, he didn't really know how to go about the conversation anyway. But he doesn't really like being broken up with, either.

--

Maggie corners him in the dining hall after dinner a couple days later.

"Hey, Jared." She's got a funny expression, like something just bit her and she's trying to pretend it didn't. "You got a minute?"

"Sure," Jared says, walking out of Mabee as she falls in beside him. "What's up?"

"Is it true?" she says. When he just stares at her blankly, she adds, "That you're dating Ernesto Escobar?"

Oh. "This really is a small school, huh," Jared says.

"So it's true?"

Jared really can't figure out what to make of her expression, and he's still marveling, a little, that Sandy was so right—that going out with Ernesto would make his sexuality common knowledge.

"I went out with him once," Jared says. "And then we decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea to do it again. So no, we're not dating."

"Not anymore, you mean. But you're gay?"

"I—yeah," Jared says. "Yeah, I am."

It's kind of nice to be able to say it, to have it completely out in the open. He also, simultaneously, feels like he's going to throw up.

"Wow," Maggie says.

"What?" Jared's not sure what he's expecting of her. No one's been a jerk about this, as of yet, not even Chad. Maybe he's due for it.

"I guess I just wanted to hear it from you," Maggie says. "So, thanks."

"I didn't know," Jared says, abruptly understanding. "When I went out with you, I still didn't have any idea."

"Okay," Maggie says, looking slightly less pinched.

Jared's not entirely sure why it's important to him, but he says anyway, "Are you all right with this?"

Maggie makes a non-committal gesture. "Sure. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you, Jared—I'm not exactly thrilled to find out that my ex is gay—but it's cool."

Jared pauses. Her ex? We went on all of two dates, he wants to say. That's not a whole lot different than dancing with Ernesto at a club and then going to a party with him, and he definitely doesn't count as Jared's ex. But maybe, in Maggie's eyes, she is.

"Okay," is all he says. He's really not sure what to say after that.

"Guess I'll see you around, then," Maggie says, and abruptly Jared gets it. He might have known that they were over, beyond any shadow of a doubt, but she hadn't known any such thing. Not that he'd given her any kind of sign that he was still interested—that wasn't the point.

It had been like that with Sandy, for him—she'd never said no, not as such, and so in some secret place he'd kept thinking that maybe, maybe it could work out for them.

It's probably not true—there's not much chance that Maggie feels the same way for him that he did for Sandy or does for Jensen—but either way he's hurt her. That much is definitely true. But he's not sure what to say to her, not sure he could say anything to her about it that wouldn't just make things worse.

So he lets her get a good head start toward the dorms and then he makes his way back to Beze. It's the right move to let her go, not try to talk to her; he knows it is. It still doesn't keep him from feeling like a jerk.

--

The entire school knows. Not the entire school. The entire school doesn't care about a random freshman realizing he's gay. But the people Jared is around, the kids in his classes, his hallmates—they know. Jared can't tell if they're looking at him differently but they're definitely looking at him, period, way more than usual.

No one really says anything about it, although Jared's pretty sure Ben, one of the guys from Beze I, is avoiding him. He hasn't said anything about it to Jared, but Jared's pretty sure it's happening anyway.

It's not that big a deal, really—Jared's not that good friends with him—and it's kind of good to see that he hasn't dropped into some kind of la-la land where everyone's cool with homosexuality. Not that there would be anything wrong with that, except that, well. He's never lived there and he's kind of enjoying maintaining his grasp on reality.

He's still happy when Ted calls Ben a douchebag. "There's nothing different about you," Ted says. "So you like dudes. It's not like you're suddenly going to start hitting on every guy in sight."

People stop staring after a couple of days. Jared figures everyone's had enough time for the initial shock of it to wear off, and now it's just something that's faded into the school's background knowledge: Tyler Harvey is the star of the soccer team; Kelsey and Aimee Bixler are the hot sophomore twins who both have boyfriends from home; and Jared Padalecki is the latest in a long line of Trinity freshmen to realize he's not as straight as he'd thought he was. Nobody freaks out; it's not that big a deal.

So he's really not expecting it when Jensen ambushes him in the hallway a few days later.

"You busy?" Jensen says. "I wanted to talk to you, if you had a minute."

He's already kind of wedged himself into the doorway, and months of total avoidance somehow don't manage to trump Jared's general curiosity. As far as he'd been aware, Jensen had picked up on Jared's avoidance, hadn't really been trying to talk to him for weeks.

Jensen holds the door to his room open for Jared, and Jared follows him in. There's nothing weird about this. Jared was in here a dozen times before he had any idea that he was gay; there's no change now.

Except that when he looks at Jensen, sitting on the edge of his bed (so easy to push him backwards, so easy to kiss him) it's hard not to think about how very much he wants him. No change other than that.

Jared shifts uncomfortably on Jensen's desk chair. He's honest to God going hard in Jensen's room, and that needs stopping.

"So how have you been, Jared?" Jensen says.

Small talk. He's never really done small talk with Jensen, and it's sure as hell not going to distract him from his incipient boner. "Good," Jared says. "Fine. You?"

"I'm fine," Jensen says. He scratches at the edge of his neck where it disappears into his t-shirt; Jared really wants to lick that same spot. "Look, I just wanted to say—you know I'm here for you, right? And nothing we talk about goes beyond this room, I mean, unless you're talking about harming yourself or others, in which case it's a safety issue, but anything else."

Jared tries to keep from gaping, only it's really, really hard. "I'm not planning on harming myself or others," he says.

"That's good to hear!" Jensen says.

"Was there something I did that gave you the impression I was planning on it?" Jared asks.

"No!" Jensen says quickly. "No, definitely not. I just wanted to let you know that, well. Anything else you want to talk about is strictly confidential. Is there anything you want to talk about, Jared? Anything new in your life?"

It's such an obvious gambit that Jared would have to be pretty much brain dead to miss it. He still feels a little dumb for not figuring it out sooner. "You heard about Ernesto," he says.

"I did, in fact," Jensen says cheerfully. "Was this anything you were planning on telling me about anytime soon?"

Jared swallows. "I didn't really need advice about it," he says lamely.

"Okay, but after three months of hearing about how the flowers sang and the grass sighed every time you saw Sandy McCoy, wouldn't you think that maybe I might want to know that you were interested in dating men?"

"Um," Jared says, in the face of Jensen's logic.

"I know I'm your RA, but I'm your friend, too," Jensen says. "And as your RA, and also as your friend I just wanted you to know that if you want to talk about it—"

"I'm good, thanks," Jared says.

"—I'm here for you anytime," Jensen says, talking over him.

"Listen, Jared. I mean it. Talk to me. Even if it's about Sandy."

"It wouldn't be about Sandy."

"Do you think you'll talk to me sometime?"

Jared takes a long look at him, takes in the laugh lines at the edges of his eyes (Jensen's twenty-two but they're already so permanent that they don't even disappear when he's not laughing), the strong lines of his arms, the way his mouth's curved upwards in a wry smile, anticipating.

Looking at him like this makes Jared's chest hurt with wanting him, but now that he's talked to him again, now that he's back in Jensen's room—the idea of not being around him again is even worse than the idea of being near him, even with wanting him like this.

"Yeah," Jared says. "I think maybe I can."

--

It's weirdly easy to fall back into talking to Jensen. Jared stops by his room on the way back from classes and talks to him about schoolwork and the kids in his classes and pretty much everything under the sun.

Except for the part where Jared's gay and really interested in Jensen. Jared doesn't talk about that.

Jensen tries to get him to talk about the gay part, sometimes, but Jared's good at deflecting him. It's not that he doesn't want to talk to Jensen about being gay—he does, sure he does—but if he talks to Jensen about being gay, then there's not much chance Jensen's not going to ask him if he's interested in anyone, what he wants, and there's no way Jensen's not going to find out that Jared wants him. It's just a bad idea all around.

So Jared talks to him about anything and everything that isn't the main thing on his mind every time he's in the same room as Jensen, and everything is totally fine. Jensen isn't going to find out, and Jared can be around him again. It's great for all involved.

--

Sandy starts ramping up her campaign to have Jared tell Jensen about his "secret love" over the next few weeks. "It's not a 'secret'," Jared says, making air quotes. "I know about it. You know about it. Ted knows about it."

"But Jensen doesn't," she says, hissing because they are, in fact, in class. Dr. Webber glares at them from up near the front. Sandy grabs a sheet of notebook paper and scribbles on it. That makes it a secret!

Jared picks up his pen. I wouldn't even know how to start telling him. He slips it back to her when Dr. Webber turns to answer some kid's question.

She hands it back a few seconds later. Hey Jensen, I'm secretly in love with you.

Jared just rolls his eyes and crumples the paper. Sandy grabs a new sheet. No, really, the easiest way might just be to come out and say it. It's not like it's going to go away, is it?

I suck at talking to people, especially people I like.

Don't I know it. And here she has drawn a smiley face. I thought you talked to him all the time?

I do, but just about, like, stuff. Like you, last semester, and about classes and stuff. Just yesterday there'd been an intense discussion of their top five favorite movies, and Jared hadn't even heard of half of Jensen's list, which led to lots of Googling and Jensen showing Jared clips on YouTube.

Sandy frowns at the paper for a minute, as though it displeases her. But you know you can talk to him. That's more than you ever did with me, Jared.

But it was different with you.

Why? Sandy underlined the question, and Jared wishes he could adequately explain. Dr. Webber is pacing back and forth, doing the pointing thing he does when he's really trying to bring a point home. Jared hopes someone posts the notes online later, because this hour is pretty much a lost cause.

You were an ideal, he finally writes. I guess I knew we never stood a chance, because I didn't really want to. It was more like, guys are supposed to have a crush, and you were mine.

I can see that. You have a chance with Jensen. Tell him.

He could, he thinks. It might be the hardest thing he's ever done, but he could say it. Why couldn't he? Why in the freaking world? He's been obsessing so long over every little thing, just saying it should be easy.

--

"I mean, right?" he says to Ted, into the headset. Ted's attempting to sneak up behind his guy in CoD4, but is really unsuccessful. Jared takes care of him pretty quickly.

"Are we talking about gay dating advice again?" Ted asks.

"Certainly not," Jared says.

"Good, because if we were I'd have to tell you that I generally agree with what Sandy says about this particular subject, as I have no experience of my own dating men. But I'd only tell you that if we were talking about this."

Jared hisses as Ted succeeds in killing a couple of his guys. "It's a good thing we're not talking about it then."

"Indeed."

--

Easy, Jared thinks. This should be easy. Just open his mouth and say it. He's started thinking about it, like, every single time he sees Jensen. Which, granted, is not amazingly often. He sees Jensen less than he sees, say, Ed. Or Ed's ass, anyway, when he and Chace neglect to shut their connecting door. But way more than he sees his own roommate.

He practices sometimes, in his head. Never out loud, because he's seen that awkward thing happen in movies way too often, where the person in question is practicing the I love you's and the other person in question happens to be sitting behind a conveniently placed bush. So Jared practices in his head and avoids shrubbery as much as he can.

I have something to tell you, he will say to Jensen. And Jensen will nod politely and invite Jared into his room, maybe. And Jared will sit smoothly and gracefully (except probably not) on Jensen's bed, or maybe his chair. I'm in love with you, Jared will say. Also I'm gay? He should probably work on the actual speech part. Or maybe just lead with the gay. Although that might be implied in the loving. And Jensen already knows Jared's gay, seeing as Jared told him. He's getting himself all turned around. He should probably work on the actual speech part.

In retrospect, he maybe should have given more thought to his follow up than his lead in. He's coming back from classes on Tuesday and Jensen's carrying take-out back to his room from Mabee, and they meet up on the sidewalk on the way to the dorm.

"How're classes going?" Jensen asks.

And Jared, who has been saying I love you in his head since he turned the corner and saw Jensen, says, "I love you," to Jensen, out loud. It takes a few horrible seconds for his brain to catch up to his mouth and then to send a frantic message to his feet to stop moving, because Jensen has stopped moving, and Jared cannot get his brain to give him any kind of explanation for his outburst at all. He stares at Jensen and tries to think of something—anything—to say. "I—uh—gotta. A thing."

He turns around quickly, heading back the way he's come. Jensen hasn't said a word.

--

Jared skulks around upper campus for a few hours, sometimes muttering to himself about what an idiot he is, sometimes thinking about how the whole conversation should have happened. He tries not to think about Jensen's completely expressionless face. It should have been so different. He should have said it differently. The relief that he thinks he should feel for finally saying it to Jensen is just a cold pit of embarrassment.

He thinks about going to Sandy's room but doesn't; he doesn't want to have to tell the story to her roommate as well. He finally just goes back to his room, taking the long way that means he doesn't have to walk past Jensen's door.

He's in his pajamas, brushing his teeth and trying to figure out how to never actually interact with Jensen again, when there's a knock at the door. Of course it's Jensen, Jared thinks, hastily wiping at the toothpaste on his chin. His heart starts pounding in his chest. Jensen looks really good in the soft light spilling from the bathroom.

"Jared, look," Jensen says, face twisting in an "I will let you down gently" kind of way that Jared doesn't really want to hear.

He steps back, holds his toothbrush hand up. "No, hey, it's okay—"

"Just let me," Jensen says. Jared stops. "I just want to say I'm really flattered, okay? But there are rules about dating residents, and I can't."

Not "don't want to" but "can't," which Jared finds hopeful. "But you'd want to?"

At that minute Stephen's bed erupts and spits him out in a scramble of blankets and pillows. "All right, yeah. This is not a conversation I should hear," Stephen says, and brushes past both of them to the door.

Jared lets loose a slightly hysterical giggle, but it dies when he looks back at Jensen again. "See?" he says. "This is why. You're one of my residents. It doesn't really matter if I'd want to or not. I can't. End of story."

Jensen turns to go, hand on the doorknob. "Thanks, though. I guess. That was really brave, telling me."

Jared just nods and watches him open the door, step through it, and close it again. He stands there a little bit longer after that, replaying the whole thing in his mind, thinking about inconsequential things like how Jensen smelled, until he feels toothpaste dripping on his foot. Jensen said can't, he can't date Jared. Not doesn't want to. He puts the toothbrush back in the bathroom and gets in bed.

--

"Oh my God," Sandy squeals over breakfast the next morning. "Why didn't you come to my room immediately?"

Jared just shrugs and picks at his eggs some more.

"How did it happen? What did you say?"

Jared puts down his fork. "I just said what you told me to say. Just that I loved him."

"That's it? What did he say?"

"Nothing, I ran away."

Sandy stops looking eager and overjoyed. "You did what now?"

"I told him, then I turned and ran. He wasn't saying anything, it was weird."

"You didn't give him a chance," Sandy says, pointing at him with her fork and flinging eggs down the table.

"Whatever, I did my best, okay? Can't we just leave it?"

Sandy's fork drops to the table. "That's your best? Really, Jared?"

Jared scowls. "It's more than—"

"More than you ever did with me, I know, okay? But seriously, you are so much better than that now. You know what you want, finally, right? You have got to put more effort into getting it."

"Well fine, then. How would you do it?"

Sandy thinks about it a minute. "I don't know," she says finally. "I've never actually had to pursue someone. They always come to me."

Jared bursts out laughing and after a minute, Sandy laughs a bit at herself. "Yeah," she says. "I know how it sounds, but it's true!"

"So basically, you're no help to me."

Sandy smacks at his arm with her fork. "I didn't say that. I know all kinds of ways to lure a person in. The beckoning stares"—and here she demonstrates—"flipping my hair. Pretending to be fascinated by whatever he has to say."

Jared tries an exaggerated toss of his head like Sandy just did. It serves the purpose of both pulling a muscle and making Sandy laugh outrageously at him. "So yeah, that needs some work," he says, rubbing at his neck.

"You think?"

"But you'll help me?"

She pats his hand. "Of course, hon."

--

"I have a very important proposition for you," Ted says, walking into Jared's half of the suite through the bathroom. "You should sit down before I make this proposition. This is huge."

Jared sits down on the edge of his bed and looks at Ted. "I am sitting."

Ted pinches his thumb and index finger together and points at Jared. "Spring break. Mexico."

"Mexico?" Jared repeats.

"Mexico!" Ted says. "Think about it, it'll be awesome. Road trip to Mexico! Bars! Beaches! Babes! The babes are pretty much irrelevant to everyone in this room, since you are gay and Abby would kill me and I enjoy living, but it's still nice to know that they'll be there!"

"Mexico," Jared says again.

Ted frowns. "Can we try this again, but with a little more excitement on your part? Because really, the enthusiasm level is leaving something to be desired."

Jared laughs, then yells, "Mexico!" He throws his fist in the air.

"That's more like it," Ted says, "except that I'm not sensing total sincerity here."

It's not that Jared doesn't want to go to Mexico, exactly. It's just that he hadn't thought about what he was going to do for spring break yet, and he's not ready to commit to it without thinking about it. Plus, Jensen's going to be staying at school over spring break, working on his thesis, and Jared had been kind of hoping to . . . hang out with him isn't quite accurate, but hang around the dorms and talk to him a little. Looking at Ted's face, he's pretty sure Ted might smack him if he says so, though.

"I will consider and report back to you," Jared says.

Ted nods. "See that you do."

--

"What are you going to do if this guy ever does realize his enormous gay love for you?" Chad says.

"Stop calling you to whine about it?"

"You know what I mean," Chad says. "Are you going to tell your parents?"

"Huh," Jared says, sitting back on his bed.

"You might want to, because I don't know if you noticed this, man, but you are one good-lookin' dude. This guy's some kind of idiot if he's into guys and not into you."

Jared laughs. "You know there are other things going on here besides just being gay, right? Like how he's my RA?"

"Details," Chad says. "Look, he's going to come around one of these days."

Jared sees Jensen later that afternoon. Jensen's on the way down the stairs as Jared's heading up, and Jensen looks at him and grins and says, "Hey," and Jared's heart honest-to-God skips a beat. Jared goes back to his room and thinks about what Chad said, really thinks about it. If Jensen ever comes around, when he comes around, Jared's going to want to shout it from the rooftops. He's going to tell everyone he knows that this guy, this amazing guy, is his boyfriend; he's not going to be able to hide it, and more than that he's not going to want to.

And he isn't hiding it anymore—except from his family. Thinking about it now, he's certain of it: he's got to tell them he's gay. And he's got to do it before anything happens with Jensen. He doesn't want them to think it's because of Jensen—it's not because of Jensen. Jensen's awesome, but Jared would be gay even if Jensen weren't there, and he needs them to know that first.

He's going to call them tonight, Jared decides. There's no reason to wait, none at all. He's waited long enough as it is.

He decides on doing it right after dinner, but he can't manage to eat a thing; he's not sure why he waited even that long. His stomach's twisted up with nerves as he dials the number.

"Hello?" his mom says, and his insides jolt.

"Hey, Ma," Jared says, trying to sound calm.

"Sweetheart!" she says, pleased. "How are you?"

"I'm good, Ma, I'm good. How's everything?"

He listens for a couple of minutes while she tells him about Megan's soccer games and his dad's work and how they're thinking about starting to get the boat ready for the summer—"Boat season isn't that far off, you know."—and the whole time his stomach is in a slow roll, over and over. He's just got to tell her. It's only a few words—"Mom, I'm gay."—and then it'll be over with, be over and done.

"So tell me, how are you doing?" his mom says.

Jared's heart thuds. "Mom," he says, "I've got something to tell you."

"Okay, go ahead, then," she says. Her voice is calm and pleasant and Jared cannot do it, suddenly, he absolutely cannot do it. He needs to do it, he knows that, but not over the phone; not where he can't see her face. There's no way he can do that to her.

"Ted invited me to go to Mexico for spring break," Jared says instead.

"Oh, honey, that sounds wonderful!" his mom says.

"Yeah, I know," Jared says. He's all kinds of relieved at not having to say anything life-changing to her now. He's kind of an enormous coward. "Except that I was thinking about coming home for spring break instead. I mean, if that's okay."

"You know we'd love to have you," his mom says. "But Mexico! That sounds like such fun."

"I really want to come home instead," Jared says. "Can you tell me I'm not allowed to go to Mexico?"

"Why on Earth would I tell you you aren't allowed to go to Mexico?"

"So I can tell Ted you said I wasn't allowed," Jared says. It's good logic, if he does say so himself. "I really was planning on coming home. I just don't want him to think I'm ditching him or anything."

Jared's mom laughs. "Okay, you're not allowed to go to Mexico. Unless you want to! In which case, please go!"

"I'm going to leave off the qualifiers," Jared tells her. "So my spring break starts two weeks from Friday. Would that Saturday morning be a good time to fly in?"

"Whenever works for you," his mom says. "And Jared?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you very much, but sometimes you are kind of strange," she says.

Jared laughs, but a little grimly—she has no idea.

--

"My mom says I'm not allowed to go to Mexico," Jared tells Ted regretfully.

"Aww, come on, seriously?" Ted says. "Did you explain to her about how this is going to be the best spring break ever? Did you tell her that part?"

"I did, but she was pretty firm about it," Jared lies. "She really wants me to come home for spring break. And it'll be good, you know? Get to see my parents, Chad, my little sister . . ."

"Sure, it's great, except for how you aren't coming on the best trip ever!" Ted says.

"Other than that," Jared agrees. Later, at dinner, he says, "So I've been thinking," and tells Ted how he's decided he's going to tell his family, when he gets home.

"Man, coming out to your parents," Ted says. "That sounds almost as fun as going to Mexico, except for how it totally doesn't sound like any fun at all."

Jared has to admit he's got a point. It's not that he doesn't think his parents will still love him after he tells them, because he's positive that they will. Nearly positive. It's just that, yeah. A beach trip would be way easier. Still, he can't keep putting it off forever. It's not going to be any less true a year from now than it is now, and it'll hurt them worse if he waits longer; he knows it will. There's nothing to do but go for it.

--

Now that his spring break plans are final, now that he's decided he's going to tell his parents, spring break kind of terrifies Jared. Spring in general means it's that much closer to May, that much closer to Jensen's graduation, that much closer to Jared never seeing him ever again.

They haven't really spoken much at all since Jensen's let down, but it's been good to know, even though he can't—if he wanted to, even though he wouldn't—that he could talk to Jensen whenever he wanted. That he's just down the hall all the time. Jared gets to watch him from a distance on a semi-regular basis.

But that's going to be over soon, Jensen will be gone. Off to whatever awesome life he has chosen for himself, while Jared stays here.

And it's not that he wants that to be their end (regardless of the fact that there is no beginning and no 'them'), but he doesn't really see how it could be different. Not unless he also follows Jensen wherever he goes to grad school, or whatever he's doing after college. Jared could transfer; he's got good grades. It didn't go over too well with Sandy, but that doesn't mean that Jensen wouldn't appreciate the gesture. And besides, Jared never actually wanted Sandy, and didn't really try that hard. Trinity was just as good as anywhere for college, he hadn't really made any firm plans.

But Jensen? Jared doesn't want to rush things, particularly since their relationship has yet to start, but he's pretty sure this could be it, with Jensen. He can't let this opportunity get away from him.

--

Jared resolves, finally, to talk to Jensen again. Following him from Mabee back to the dorms and sometimes to Jensen's classes hasn't revealed anything about his future plans, and Jared's pretty sure he should draw a very firm line at digging through anyone's trash for, say, graduate school brochures.

He resolves, firmly, to do this on a Wednesday. Right after his seminar with Sandy. "Do you want me to come with you?" Sandy asks as they walk down cardiac hill.

"No?"

"Is that a question?"

"I mean, no. I think."

Sandy laughs. "I could wait around the corner if you need the moral support."

Jared honestly thinks about it a minute, but then remembers how he generally steps all over his own feet when talking to Jensen. That kind of embarrassment does not need an audience. "Yeah, no. Thanks though."

"I'll be there in spirit," Sandy says, waving as she cuts off to her dorm.

Wednesdays are dorm days for Jensen, so Jared knows he'll be there, door open for people to stop by and talk. Jared stands at the top of the staircase for what feels like forever, even though it isn't nearly enough time for him to gather his nerve. But then Ed walks out of his and Ted's room and calls a smarmily cheerful, "Why hello, Jared!" as he passes, that prick, and now Jensen knows he's out here.

He starts walking slowly down the hall, feet dragging before he even gets to Jensen's door. His palms are sweaty. He stops just outside the lip of the door.

"Hey," he squeaks, tries again. "Hey."

Jensen's at his desk, doing something on his computer. He turns when Jared's giant looming shadow blocks the sun from his room. "Hey, Jared. What's up?"

"Oh, you know. Classes." He gestures at his backpack. "Packing to go home."

"Yeah? Those are your spring break plans?"

Jared nods. "Yeah. Speaking of plans," he tries, so completely awkwardly. "What are you doing after you graduate?"

Jensen shrugs. "You know, summer job probably, some sort of fellowship, before I come back here."

Jared's pretty impressed that he can manage a follow up with his heart in his throat, but apparently he can. "You're doing what now?"

"I'm coming back here, for grad school. It's just a year program, but I'll be here next year."

"Really, that sounds interesting," Jared tries to say as casually as possible. It maybe works, because Jensen just nods. "Right, well." He points in the direction of his room. "I'm going to get going then."

"All right. See you around."

"Yeah," Jared says, choking down a nervous laugh. "See you."

--

The elation that he potentially has another year to stare longingly in Jensen's direction gets swallowed up by all the studying he has to do for midterms. There's a presentation for his seminar, and they didn't get to choose their partners, so he's not doing it with Sandy. Luckily, Bryce doesn't seem to be too much of a slacker. They meet a couple of times in the library and Jared offers to use his comps for monkeys skills to make their PowerPoint.

The seven-page paper for social psych is more troubling, but mostly because he hates Dr. Kearl and is pretty sure the feeling is mutual. He ends up leaving that one till the last minute and has to pull an all-nighter to finish it off, but it's done and somewhat polished by the time he hands it in during class.

Jared tries to get through it all by looking forward to spring break, but the thought of coming out to his parents still ties his stomach in knots, and it turns out concentrating on school work is somewhat better than thinking about the conversation he's going to have to have with his mom over the break.

Eventually, though, he makes it through all his tests and papers and can't put off packing any longer. Three hours before his flight on Friday afternoon, he's throwing almost everything he owns into his suitcase when Ted and Abby come into his room via the bathroom. Ted is wearing a giant sombrero that Abby keeps trying to take off his head. Ted all but smacks her hands away.

"You sure, amigo? Last chance!" Ted says.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Where the hell did you get the hat?"

"Duh, dude. We're in San Antonio! I got this at the grocery store!"

Abby finally manages to get it off his head while he's talking to Jared and holds it behind her back, arm outstretched, fending him off with her other hand. "You mean I got this at the grocery store, and you've been coveting it ever since."

"Aww, babe. What's yours is mine, right?"

Abby shoves him away and puts the sombrero on her head. "Get your own."

Jared just laughs. "So when are you taking off?"

"In a bit, our flight leaves at seven. Ed and Chace had a late test. Although who the fuck schedules tests for the day before spring break?"

"That guy?"

"Point."

Jared shoves the last t-shirt that will fit into his bag. He checks the clock. His taxi should be here any minute. "I guess I'll get going," he says. "Have a good break."

"You too, dude."

--

Jared's flight back to Virginia is delayed, so he doesn't get in until a little before midnight. Both of his parents and Megan are waiting for him in the airport. They all look tired—he figures they came straight to the airport and then decided it wasn't worth driving home again once they saw that his flight was delayed—but they're clearly happy to see him, too, all three of them. Jared's mom and Megan pull him into a three-person hug as soon as he's within distance, and his dad's hand closes over his shoulder, a warm, solid weight.

"Welcome home, Jared," his dad says. Jared gets a little choked up just hearing his dad's voice. It's because he's tired, that's for certain, but it's also the thought that hasn't quite been out of his head ever since he decided that he was coming home instead of going to Mexico: that this is it, the last time things are ever going to be exactly like this, the last time before it all changes.

He manages to dwell on it all the way to the car, even as Megan's telling him all about her soccer games and did he hear that Mrs. Fitzgerald, the European History teacher, is retiring at the end of the year? As soon as he gets in the car, though, a wave of tiredness hits him so hard that he spends the rest of the ride dozing against the window, and can barely do anything once they get home except stumble up the stairs and into bed to sleep.

--

Jared wakes up the next morning to the smells of coffee percolating and bacon frying in a pan. He follows his nose downstairs to the kitchen where his dad is reading the paper at the table and his mom is flipping the bacon with two forks, all the fixings for French toast on the countertop beside her. Jared pulls her into a bear hug from behind and laughs as she starts in surprise.

"You be careful when your mom's cooking bacon, now," Jared's dad says mildly, without looking up from the paper.

"Morning, Ma." Jared grins. She grins back at him, so obviously pleased to see him that he doesn't feel guilty at all. "Need any help?"

"I'm nearly done," she says. "You just grab yourself some coffee and relax for a while. You can start helping on the second day of your vacation."

"Sounds good to me," Jared says, and goes to the cabinet to pick a mug. His favorite is the one with Shamu on it, from when they went to Sea World when he was five. It's chipped and the graphics are fading off it, but it's been his favorite for far too long to replace it. He makes his coffee like he always has—"Want a little coffee with your sugar?" his dad jokes—and sits down at the table, holding the mug close to him, appreciating the feeling of coming all the way awake, and watching his dad work his way through the paper and his mom move competently through the kitchen.

He isn't thinking about anything more specific than that, and he really has no idea where the words well up from or why he can't keep them from spilling all the way out, but in the middle of drinking his coffee and watching his mother transfer the bacon from the pan onto a paper towel-lined plate, Jared says, "I'm gay."

Beside him, there's the rustling of Jared's dad putting the paper down, but his eyes are on his mom. She doesn't freeze or anything, doesn't drop the two forks in her hands or gasp. Instead she carefully lays the forks on the counter and turns the stovetop off. Her expression hasn't changed at all. "What did you say, Jared?"

Shit, Jared thinks, shit shit shit. He wants to backtrack, say he didn't mean it, anything to keep his mom from standing so perfectly still, like if she moves at all what he said will be true; anything to get his dad's eyes off the side of his head. And he didn't mean to say it, not now, not yet; not on the first morning of spring break. But it is true, and taking it back isn't going to change that.

So he looks his mom in the eyes and braces himself and says, slowly so there can't be any doubt of what he's saying, "Mom, I'm gay."

His mom says, "Oh," and then, "Just—give me a minute," and walks out of the kitchen. A tiny choked noise comes from the living room and then there are footfalls on the stairs, and it hits Jared suddenly, all at once, in a way that he'd had an idea of but never really thought all the way through: this, what he just did, it's changed things with his family, changed things with them forever, in a way that can't be revoked.

He turns toward his dad and before he can even register his dad's expression, he sees Megan in the doorway, her hand covering her mouth. Her hair's a mess—she must have just woken up and walked downstairs in time to see this all happen. Their dad looks pretty stunned but recovers quickly, even in front of Jared's eyes.

"Let me go check on your mother," Jared's dad says.

"Do you think I should—" Jared begins, but his dad shakes his head.

"Maybe not yet." He says it gently, and then goes after Jared's mom.

Abruptly, all of Jared's muscles unclench, and he can't stay in the room, not even a second longer. He bolts out the kitchen door and grabs his bike out of the garage, then pedals as hard as he can all the way to Chad's. The whole time he feels simultaneously like his throat is closing and like he's going to throw up. It had seemed so clear, in that split-second, that he shouldn't take it back, that he should stand by the truth, but after having heard his mother's ragged sound from the living room, seeing his father go after her, and seeing Megan with her hand over her mouth in the doorway, he's not sure anymore. He's not sure of anything.

He's sweaty and gross by the time he gets to Chad's, and he still doesn't feel any better.

"You look like shit," Chad says when he answers the garage door.

"I came out to my family," Jared tells him.

"Huh," Chad says. "That would explain the shit-looking."

"Yeah," Jared says, and laughter wells up in him all of a sudden—some kind of relief, that Chad is still Chad, that not everything has changed all at once.

"I think this calls for an epic CoD marathon," Chad says. "And possibly some booze."

Jared follows him inside, all kinds of stupidly grateful. He sets about becoming at one with Chad's couch and forgetting everything except the precise movements needed to kill men made of tiny pixels on a screen.

--

They don't leave the garage apartment all day. Chad's got a pretty solid collection of Lunchables in the mini-fridge, and a very solid collection of video games. Jared takes a couple shots of Chad's dad's Scotch, which burns like hell going down, and then passes out early on half of the L-shaped couch, his feet dangling over the edge. He wakes up a little after eight to the sound of his cell phone ringing. His stomach does a slow roll when he sees his home number on the screen.

"Hello?" Jared says.

"Jared, honey," his mom says on the other end of the line. "Come home." She disconnects before he has the chance to say anything. He's not sure how he would have replied anyway, so it's probably just as well.

"Chad," Jared says. Chad's asleep on the couch, drooling a little. Jared pokes him in the ribs with his toe. "I gotta go."

"Mmph," Chad replies, which Jared takes to mean okay.

Jared takes a slow, looping route home, circling past the public dock twice before finally giving in and turning onto his street. The sight of his house chokes him up a little—the cars parked out front, the daffodils poking through the dirt out front—but there's not much to do except go for it. He puts his bike in the garage, knowing that the sound of the garage door will alert everyone that he's home, and goes through the kitchen door.

His mom is sitting at the kitchen table, but pushes her chair back abruptly at the sound of the door opening and walks up to him, pulling him to her in a tight hug. "Hi, Jared," she says against his neck.

"Hi, Mom," Jared says, hugging her back. Maybe it'll be okay, he thinks—maybe it was just the shock and everything is going to be okay now, already.

But then she says, "You want anything for breakfast? I can make you something to eat," like nothing has changed at all, like nothing is wrong.

"Mom—" he begins, but she looks at him pleadingly and it's all too clear that she's barely holding it together, that if he talks about anything other than food she's going to break down right there in the middle of the kitchen. "Sure," he says, instead. "Food would be great."

"I'll make you some eggs," she says. She scrambles them with cheese and lots of salt and pepper, just the way he likes them, and he barely manages to choke them down.

"That was delicious, thanks," he says, and then flees to his room and pulls his pillow tight against his stomach and wishes, stupidly, he'd never said a thing.

His dad corners him that afternoon, in the hallway. "Just give your mother some time," he tells Jared. "She'll get used to the idea."

Jared's angry, abruptly, at his mom for needing time, at his dad for being the messenger, and he can't help lashing out a little, saying, "What about you, Dad? You need to get used to the idea, too?"

His dad doesn't rise to the bait. "You're our son," is all he says. "And we love you. She'll come around."

"I'm sorry," Jared says, ashamed of himself. "I'm not trying to, you know."

His dad claps him on the shoulder and says, "I know." And somehow that makes it better, just a little.

--

Jared's mom comes and gets him later, makes him run errands with her. She fills the silences between them with chatter about Jared's relatives, the other teachers at his mom's school, stories about patients that she's heard from Jeff, anything, it seems, so Jared can't initiate a conversation. It's strained and a little uncomfortable, but toward the end of the afternoon it starts feeling less weird, and by dinner Jared almost can't remember if he'd told her at all.

Megan and his dad are quiet about it, too, and conversation at dinner revolves around Megan's college search and the fishing trip his dad is planning with their next-door neighbor.

Late that night, after his parents have gone to bed and he can hear his dad snoring through the walls, Megan slips into his room. "You up?"

He scoots over on his bed and she flops down beside him. "So," she whispers. "I guess this explains Sandy."

"I guess we're talking about this now?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry, JT. It's just. It's not what I was expecting from you."

"Is it bad?"

"No!" she says quickly. She hugs him then, quickly but fiercely. "It's not bad at all. It'll take some getting used to, I think. But it's definitely a good thing."

Jared hugs her back, teary eyed and a little embarrassed and really, really grateful that it's pitch black in the room. This is what he'd needed, he thinks, someone to listen and accept and love him anyway.

Megan lets him go but doesn't go too far, sharing his pillow so they can whisper and not wake their parents up. "So it's Jensen, isn't it?"

"How'd you know?"

"He's the only one you ever talk about, really. Him and Ted, and you've already told us about Abby. Gay you might be, a boyfriend stealer you are not."

"So what you're saying is, I've got standards."

"One could say that, yes."

Megan's quiet for a bit, and Jared finds himself wanting to fill the conversation breaks like his mother had all day, but with Jensen, with his own thoughts and feelings, with what his life is like now. He just doesn't know where to start.

"How did you know?" Megan asks before he can begin.

"I don't know," he says. "Sometimes I feel like I must have always known, and that's why I was so caught up on Sandy for so long. You know, the unattainable ideal."

Megan pokes at him. "You could have 'attained' her," she says, air quoting him. "You never gave yourself enough credit."

"Well thanks," he says. It's not that he doesn't believe her, because he believes she thinks so. "But yeah. And then other times it feels like it just happened one day, out of the blue. And everything made sense."

"Tell me about him."

Jared laughs. "I've told you about him, at Christmas you told me he's all I've told you about."

"Well, I mean, you quote him a bunch. I want to know about him though. Is he hot? What's he like?"

So Jared tells her about Jensen, and she asks more questions, and it's almost dawn before they both fall asleep.

--

Jared spends a lot of time at Chad's avoiding his mom's painful insistence that nothing has changed and somehow the rest of spring break passes quickly. He's not sure where the week has gone when he's already back in the Norfolk airport, saying goodbye to his parents and Megan.

"Love you," his mom says, pulling him into a bone-cruncher of a hug. Jared hugs her back just as tightly. It's the first time that she's said she loved him all week.

He's kind of nauseated the whole plane ride back to Texas, though whether that's to do with motion sickness or the past week or both, he's not sure. He spends a few minutes leaning over the plane bathroom sink and feeling queasy, but it never quite gets bad enough to actually throw up. He's pretty miserable by the time he lands, so he doesn't even wait around to see if he can find someone to share a cab with back to campus.

--

Ted is already back, waiting to pounce on Jared when he gets to his room. He's tanned a dark brown and still high on spending a week in the sun with his girlfriend, even if Ed and Chace were also spending time on that particular beach. Jared's happy he's happy, but he also just wants to be left alone for a bit.

And he's obviously not too subtle about it, because Ted stops mid description of his journey through his second bottle of tequila (worm included). "So how'd the thing with your parents go?" he asks.

"They love me," Jared says.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"So did she flip?"

Jared describes his mother's complete lack of reaction, hiding at Chad's for that day, what his dad said about giving her time. Ted just listens, which Jared is grateful for.

"So it sounds like your dad was cool."

"I mean, I guess."

"I don't know, man." Ted sits down on Stephen's bed, which is generally a dangerous prospect, since Stephen is pretty much always in it. He must not be back yet, because there's no explosion of blankets. "You hear all those stories about parents, like, disowning their kids and shit."

"You're saying it could have been worse."

"She hugged you at the airport, right? It could have been a lot worse."

Jared hadn't really been thinking about it in those terms yet, and maybe it sucks that it helps to hear about how much worse other people have it, but it does and that's that. His mother didn't disown him, and she did hug him, and she does love him. She will get over this in time, because she loves him.

"Hey," he says. "You hungry?"

Ted laughs and says yes, and they meet some of their hallmates in Mabee for dinner.

--

There's an email from Megan when he gets back to his room. She wrote a lot about having to go back to school and wanting to be done already and her boyfriend being lame. She asks his opinion on a variety of subjects, including whether or not she should dump said boyfriend—Jared's answer is an immediate yes—and then at the end, almost hidden between other things:

Hey JT. Mom misses you already. I think maybe she feels bad about last week.

She's trying, he reminds himself. It's weird to be out of sorts with his mom, and he can't wait for the weirdness to be over.

Stephen must have gotten in while Jared and Ted were at dinner; there's a bag leaning against Stephen's bed that hadn't been there before. He's guessing Stephen's sleeping, but he's not going to poke the bed to find out.

--

Sandy almost spits her coffee across the table when Jared tells her. "You told them?" she asks, after she finally manages to swallow.

"Yeah, they're my parents."

"I know, I just. I'm so proud of you," she says. "And I had no idea you were going to do it."

Jared shrugs, poking at his eggs. "I had vague plans, but it kind of got blurted."

He tells her the whole story while they put their trays up and start up the hill for class. She stops halfway up cardiac and gives him a hug. He'd just finished telling her about his mom crying. Jared thinks he's pretty lucky to have such awesome friends.

So, Sandy writes in a note during class. What are you going to do about Jensen?

Jared hadn't even seen Jensen since he got back. Presumably, he existed on campus somewhere, Jared just can't substantiate it. Do about him? he writes back.

She rolls her eyes at him as she starts writing again. I know you're not taking no for an answer! What's your grand plan?

We've discussed me and plans and how they always fail.

You could always stalk him for six months. There's a smiley face on the end of that one, but Jared's still pretty hesitant to tell her that it was definitely not just six months, and more like five years. He doesn't need to respond anyway, Sandy's already writing another note.

She spends about five minutes covering an entire page before she hands the paper back to him. It starts: Well, I have one, then. I thought about it over break. What follows is a step by step instruction manual for implementing Sandy's dating plan. Jared keeps the paper and pulls a fresh one out of his notebook.

You think this'll work?

Please. Of course I do.

Jared reads over the instructions a couple of times during class. He's always been good at following directions.

--

Step one involves ordering soft serve from the dessert line at Mabee, which Jared decides to implement on the way back from class. No time like the present and all that. Besides, he's got instructions. Even he cannot screw up step-by-step instructions.

So Jared goes in and gets two servings to go. Jared's on a first name basis with the majority of the food staff at Trinity, and Sugar—no really, that's her name—puts extra gummy bears on his vanilla ice cream. She doesn't even blink when Jared asks for two. No one really questions how much Jared eats at this point.

Jensen's door is open when he passes by, Jared knew it would be. It's part of the instructions that he do this during Jensen's dorm hours, which Jared has had memorized for ages. He stops in the doorway, and then stands there kind of weirdly and awkwardly.

The instructions hadn't included a script.

Jensen's on his bed, channel surfing, one of his psych textbooks open in his lap. "Yes?" he says, muting the TV. "Problem?"

Jared shakes his head, and pulls out one of the ice creams. "No, they just gave me two, and I only ordered one. Ted's in class and Stephen's probably sleeping, and this won't fit in the freezer. It'll go to waste." He's actually surprised that all came out without him stumbling over something. Score one for Sandy's plan.

"Well that's no good," Jensen says.

"Nope." Jared takes a deep breath. "So. Uh. Do you like ice cream?" Which was supposed to come out want instead of like and be less of a completely inane question, but whatever. Jared's fine.

Jensen laughs a little, but not meanly. "Who doesn't? Are you offering?"

Jared holds out the ice cream in Jensen's direction. "Yes?"

"Sweet, come on in." Jensen waves him in the direction of the extra bed, which Jared plops down onto after he hands Jensen his ice cream and a plastic spoon.

Jared pokes at the gummy bears on his ice cream, burying them and digging them up again. "So," he says, still looking down, "how was your break?"

"Fine," Jensen says. "Actually, no, that's a lie. It was kind of miserable. But I'm thirty pages closer to being done with my thesis, so there's that."

Jared whistles. "How long is that thing going to be when you're done with it?"

"If you dropped the finished product from the top of Beze, it could injure you, let's put it that way," Jensen says.

"What's it about?" Jared says, because he's never actually asked.

"The effect of sugar on your memory function," Jensen says.

"Huh," Jared says. "That's kind of cool."

"It is," Jensen agrees. "It's a little hard to remember that when I'm busy wanting to stab myself in the eye, but it is kind of cool."

They're done with their ice cream now, and Jared suddenly remembers the next point on Sandy's how-to list: As soon as you are done eating, LEAVE!!

"You know, I should really get going," Jared says casually. "I've got a paper to work on."

"Good luck with that," Jensen says. "And thanks for the ice cream!"

As soon as he's on the other side of his dorm room door, Jared goes in for a silent fist-pump and calls Sandy. "I think it's working," he whispers.

"You put the plan into action?" she says.

"Step one: ice cream."

"And you left right after you guys finished eating."

"Immediately afterwards."

"Congratulations," Sandy says. "You are one step further toward dating Jensen Ackles."

--

Step two calls for asking Jensen to dinner at Mabee. Jared decides to do it the next night. It seems like it's kind of fast to be going for it already, especially since the whole genius of Sandy's plan lies in Jensen not noticing that Jared's dating him—"He's already turned you down once; we don't want to give him the chance to do it again," she'd explained. But the idea of waiting two days before continuing with the plan was making him a little twitchy, so he figures he'll let fate decide for him. If Jensen's door is open, he'll ask him tonight. If it's not, he'll go to dinner now and try again tomorrow.

Jensen's door is open, so Jared takes this as the sign from God that it so clearly is. "Hey Jensen," he says, knocking on the door and poking his head in.

Jensen looks up from his desk. "Hey Jared, what's going on?"

"I was on my way to Mabee. You hungry?"

Jensen glances down at the book that's open on the desk in front of him and frowns at it. "What the heck," he says. "It's not like I'm making any progress right now anyway."

Victory is mine, Jared thinks. He counts the victory as even more epic when they don't immediately see anyone they know in the dining hall, and end up at a table all to themselves.

--

Going at the steps in order seems to be working out just fine, so Jared moves right on to the next one, where Sandy wrote: ask him out for coffee and some help in a class he knows something about, whether you actually need tutoring or not.

In a stroke of sheer unintentional genius, Jared's social psych class is a major requirement for psych, so there's no way Jensen hasn't taken it. It's Jared's easiest class of the semester, never mind, but that isn't going to stop him from putting this part of the plan into action.

A couple of nights before the midterm, Jared stops by Jensen's room.

"Hey Jared," Jensen says. "How's it going?"

"Fine." Jared walks into the room. "You busy?"

Jensen closes his laptop. "What's up?"

"We've got a midterm in social psych coming up on Thursday," Jared says.

"Oh yeah? You started studying for it yet?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Then I'm sure you'll be fine."

That's not the answer Jared's looking for at all. "Well, sure," he says, scrambling to turn the conversation around, "except there are a couple of concepts I really don't get, and I was wondering if you could maybe go over them with me."

Jensen laughs. "I haven't taken social psych since I was a freshman, Jared."

"Come on, social psych's got to be easy for a psych major like you. It won't take long, and I'll spring for coffee."

"You didn't say there'd be coffee," Jensen says, standing up. "Coffee will get you everywhere."

Jared files this important piece of information away and says, "There will be as much coffee as you want if you can get me to understand social psych." He puts his social psych book in his backpack and makes for the snack bar.

The snack bar is pretty crowded for a Tuesday night at 10:30. Jared buys Jensen's coffee, extra large and black, and gets a Mountain Dew for himself, along with an order of cheese fries.

"You want anything to eat?" Jared asks.

"I'll just steal a couple of your cheese fries," Jensen says, clutching at his coffee like it might run away if he loosens his grip on it. Jared kind of wants to be the coffee.

"I wouldn't count on that, if I were you. You haven't seen how quickly cheese fries disappear around me."

Jensen grins. "I'll take my chances."

The place is so crowded that Jared's worried they aren't going to get a seat at first, but they get lucky—a pair of girls vacate a table by the window right as Jared's walking past, and he grabs it.

"So, social psych," Jensen says.

"Cheese fries," Jared counters, stuffing a handful in his mouth and nearly groaning. "I take back what I said. I am sharing these fries because they are delicious and you need these in your life."

"This is not my first experience of snack bar fries," Jensen says, taking a couple. He chews thoughtfully. "Huh. Those are really good today."

"I think it's the cheese-to-fries ratio."

"More cheese, less fries?"

"Pretty much," Jared says. "Dude, there's this place in Virginia Beach that makes the best cheese fries. They use Cheez Whiz, which sounds like a really bad idea, right, except they do something to the Cheez Whiz so it gets all gooey and delicious, and it's awesome."

"Somehow I think I would have to try it to believe it," Jensen says.

"I'd bring you back some but I'm just not sure they would survive the plane ride that well."

"That's a sad story."

"Tale of woe," Jared agrees. "Man, I miss those fries. And Y-Not pizza, holy crap, I would kill for a piece of Y-Not pizza right now."

"Life is hard."

"Oh, come on," Jared says. "There's something you miss about home."

Sure enough, Jensen spends the next five minutes waxing poetic about the extreme deliciousness of some kind of slow-cooked barbeque in Richardson that San Antonio has just not managed to replicate.

And then they're on the subject of home, what they miss about where they're from, and it's easy enough, natural, for Jared to say, "I came out to my parents. Over spring break."

Jensen stops licking the grease from the cheese fries off his fingers, which is really a shame—Jared was enjoying that. "Oh yeah? How'd that go?"

"Okay. Not, you know, amazingly or anything, but they didn't disown me."

"From what you've said about your family, they didn't really strike me as the disowning sort," Jensen says.

"Yeah. I guess it just, you know, wasn't my mom's dream to have a gay son. She's not going to jump up and join PFLAG." After it's already out of his mouth, he remembers that Jensen's mom really did jump up and join PFLAG. Hastily he adds, "I didn't meant it like that."

"It's okay," Jensen says, unaffected. "Jared, hey. She still loves you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah." Jared picks at his napkin. "I do know."

The cheese fries are gone and Jensen's coffee is empty, so they head back toward the dorm, talking about the weather and nothing that matters. When they get back to the hall, Jensen turns as he's unlocking the door and says, "Hey Jared?"

"Yeah?"

"Weren't we supposed to be reviewing for your social psych exam?"

"Oh," Jared says. "You know, that's okay, I can probably figure it out on my own."

He leaves Jensen shaking his head by the door.

--

"So how's everything going?" Sandy wants to know.

"It's fine," Jared says. "Everything's fine."

"Are you sticking to the plan?"

"To the letter. No random embellishments or anything."

"I'm very proud," Sandy tells him.

"There's just this one thing I've been wondering," Jared starts, then pauses. He's not entirely sure he wants to know what her answer is going to be.

"Yes?"

"At the bottom of the plan, it looks like there's a gap."

"A gap?"

Jared consults the plan. "Between 'do more things with Jensen, ask me if you need ideas' and 'congratulations, you've got a hot boyfriend'," he says. "Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks a whole lot like there's a gap there."

"It's not a gap. If you make it to that point in the plan and Jensen hasn't jumped your bones already, I'll be very much surprised."

Jared gapes at the phone. "I think maybe you're a little overconfident here."

"Calm down," Sandy says. "Jared. You are hot and gay and awesome, and Jensen clearly wants you. He only isn't going for it because he has this well-intentioned but totally incorrect idea that he shouldn't be dating one of his residents, even though it is against exactly no rules to do so. I have checked on this."

"You have?"

"I have," Sandy confirms, which, huh, is slightly reassuring. "Do you remember the point of the plan?"

"Getting together with Jensen?"

"Tricking Jensen into dating you without being aware of it, so that the next time the issue of dating you arises, he will already be doing it and won't want to quit because he'll already know exactly how awesome being with you is," Sandy corrects. "This is a war of attrition, Jared. Just give yourself enough time to break his defenses down."

--

"A war of attrition," Ted repeats. "So this makes you the enemy at the gates."

"I guess," Jared says. "How long does a war of attrition take, do you figure?"

"The siege of Leningrad lasted nine hundred days."

"Nine hundred days?" Jared does the math. "Ted, that's two and a half years. I can't last that long!"

"The Russians did," Ted points out.

"Does this make me the Nazis?"

"Anyway, you're not besieging a city. You're just waiting on a guy to get his act together. It shouldn't take that long. Probably."

"This is really not making me feel any better," Jared says. "I'm going to die miserable and alone."

"That's pretty unlikely."

"Did the Nazis even win the siege of Leningrad?"

Ted shrugs. "I never said it was a perfect metaphor."

--

"Oh, stop being such a whiner," Sandy says. "You're doing fine."

Jared's eaten lunch or dinner with Jensen half a dozen times in the past two weeks; walked to the library with him twice; brought him coffee from the snack bar once, on a night when he knew Jensen had a ten o'clock RA meeting and a chapter of his thesis due the next day, which earned Jared a grin so dazzling it nearly knocked him over; and sometimes when he looks at Jensen he thinks there's something there, that Jensen's cracking, but the next time he looks it's clear that nothing's changed, really, nothing noticeable.

"Just give it time," Sandy adds before she hangs up.

Ted printed out the picture from the Wikipedia entry about the siege of Leningrad and taped it above Jared's desk a week or so ago. Jared stares at it, Russian cannons and flames on the city walls, and says out loud, "I really hope this doesn't take nine hundred days."

--

It feels like a stroke of genius when he thinks of it, even though it's actually pretty ridiculous that it's taken him this long. It's not like he has that many favorite activities.

Jared picks 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night as his time of attack, because if there's ever a time that Jensen is going to be home and working it's then. Sure enough, as soon as Jared knocks on the door, Jensen calls out, "Who is it?"

"It's Jared."

"Is it important?"

Jensen probably wants to know if someone is bleeding or dying—which, by that standard, no, it isn't. In terms of the war of attrition, is it important? "Yes," Jared decides, figuring that the debate on the specific meaning of the word 'important' can wait for another day.

There's the sound of shuffling in Jensen's room, and then he's opening the door. "What is it?" Jensen says.

Jensen looks sleepy and haggard and stressed, and he's still so attractive that Jared aches with wanting him. "I have something I need to show you," Jared says. "It's in my room."

Jensen looks decidedly wary as he follows Jared down the hall, but when Jared points at the TV and the controllers he's got set up, he bursts out laughing. "You interrupted me in the middle of writing my thesis for video games?"

"Not video games," Jared says. "Vital decompression treatment. MarioKart therapy, to be specific."

Jensen looks like he might be kind of vaguely considering.

"Just a couple races. Long enough to take your mind off your thesis," Jared adds.

He can see the moment Jensen caves, and has the beanbag chairs pulled up and ready for that moment.

"Two races," Jensen says. "Also, I call Bowser."

"You can have Bowser," Jared says magnanimously. He's always been more of a Wario kind of guy himself.

Jared's exactly not at all shocked when two races turn into eight—it's MarioKart, after all—but he is kind of surprised at Jensen's skill level. He didn't know Bowser could race like that, and also Jensen's been holding out on him all this time. "You're sneaky," Jared tells him. "And underhanded. And possibly cheating."

"How am I supposed to be cheating when I've been sitting next to you the whole time?"

That's exactly how, Jared wants to say—it's hard to concentrate when Jensen's right there beside him. "You're very devious. I'm sure you could find a way."

Jensen snorts. "Please. You're looking at pure skill right here, born of many hours of practice. And crap, Jared. You were supposed to stop me after two races! What happened to that?"

Jared holds up his hands, innocent. "Got distracted, I guess."

"This is why I didn't bring video games back to college after freshman year," Jensen says. "Too easy to get sucked in."

"Sorry," Jared says. "Didn't mean to keep you away from your thesis this long." He doesn't actually feel guilty about it except for how Jensen looks a little stressed around the eyes again.

Jensen smiles, and the lines of worry wrinkle into laughter. "It's okay. I definitely needed the break. Thanks, Jared."

For the dozenth time in the past few weeks, Jared looks at Jensen, the way he's grinning at Jared and looking happy, and could swear he sees something there—sees Jensen wanting him back.

"Anytime," Jared says, swallowing. And then the moment has passed and Jensen's face looks no different than ever, nothing to see there but this guy Jared's all kinds of stupidly in love with. But he's no closer to Jensen wanting him back than he's ever been.

As soon as Jensen leaves, closing the door behind him, Jared flops backwards on the beanbag and lets loose an enormous sigh. "I'm going to be single forever," he says to Stephen's bed.

Stephen's bed doesn't reply. Jared really would have thought one a.m. would be a sleeping time for Stephen. He carries on with the conversation with the empty bed.

"At least you're single. I'm glad I'm not the only one."

"I'm not," Stephen says.

Jared shrieks, just a little. "You're not what?" he says, after his heart rate slows.

"I've got a girlfriend," Stephen says, sitting up.

"What? Since when?"

"October."

Jared soaks this in for a minute. "You've had a girlfriend since October," he repeats. "How did I not know about this?"

Stephen shrugs. "You never asked." He gets up and shuffles into the bathroom, leaving Jared gaping behind him. Stephen has a girlfriend. Since October. That's nearly six months that Stephen and the girlfriend could have been having sex in Jared's room, and Jared's never so much as known she existed.

Also, if Stephen has a girlfriend, that means that someone likes Stephen enough to date him. Stephen has managed that, and Stephen doesn't even talk.

"I'm going to die alone," Jared says to the wall.

--

By the beginning of April, Jared's at the end of the plan. Not the very end, because the very end would mean that Jensen was his boyfriend, but everything before that. So he's following Sandy's advice and doing more of what he's been doing—stopping by Jensen's room, going to the dining hall with him, dragging him away from his thesis to play video games. He's not getting any closer to the actual end of the plan, though.

"Is beating me at Mario Kart three nights in a row some kind of secret code for 'I love you'?" Jared asks Sandy over milkshakes. It's already hot, even though it's only April, but not hot enough to drive them back inside.

Sandy frowns around her straw. "Not that I've ever heard of."

"It's been a month," Jared says. "Shouldn't something have happened by now?"

"Jared," Sandy says. "I think maybe you're despairing a little. And despairing isn't going to help anyone."

"I'm not despairing! What makes you think I'm despairing?"

"I know the signs of desperation," Sandy says. "And trust me when I say that confessing your love to Jensen again will do you no good."

"I wasn't going to confess my love again." The thought may have crossed his mind once or twice, but he wasn't actually going to follow through on it. Not yet, anyway.

"Random acts of desperation will get you nowhere, Jared. Trust me on this."

"Okay. But seriously, what the heck am I supposed to do?"

"I don't really know what to tell you. Unrequited love sucks."

"You think it's unrequited?" Jared says, sitting up straighter. Because that's pretty much everything he's spent the past few months worrying about—what if Jensen doesn't want him? What if he's the only one who feels this way?

"I don't know! I don't think it is, but it's not like I've asked him. Don't you ask him, either. That counts as a random act of desperation."

"Wasn't gonna!"

"Look, either it'll click with Jensen or it won't. Obviously I hope it does, but the world isn't going to end if it doesn't, either."

"That's really not all that reassuring," Jared says. But he's going to carry on with the plan; he's not much sure what else to do.

--

It's already a little after one a.m., but Jensen's door is cracked and the light is on, so Jared takes that as the invitation to knock that it so clearly is.

"Yeah?"

"It's me," Jared says, poking his head in.

Jensen's sitting on his bed, a book open on his lap. He looks all kinds of tired and he's still stupidly attractive.

"Hi, Jared. What's going on?"

"Your door was open." Jared immediately wants to kick himself. He sounds like an idiot. "Uh, you want to take a break?"

"I'm supposed to be done reading this by tomorrow at nine." Jensen holds up the book. It looks to be a couple hundred pages long, and Jensen's got his finger wedged in maybe a quarter of the way through, holding it open.

"So we'll make it a really short break," Jared says. "Like fifteen minutes."

"You're kind of a terrible influence," Jensen says, shaking his head and following Jared down the hall.

Jared turns on the TV and the N64 and passes Jensen one of the controllers. Jensen's looking a little haggard, so Jared cues up Rainbow Road—Jensen's pretty much a genius on that course. Jared maintains that it was designed by Satan, but he figures Jensen will have a good time beating the crap out of him. Which, sure enough, is just what Jensen does.

"I really don't know how you do that," Jared says. "Seriously, every single time."

"You should really just bow to my superior skill," Jensen says, grinning.

And there's something about that grin that makes Jared say, "I'll show you superior skill," and dive across the beanbag to wrestle Jensen's controller out of his hand.

Jensen holds the controller high out of reach, but he takes the full brunt of Jared's body weight with an, "Oof!" falling backwards onto the beanbag.

Jared scrambles upward but the controller's still out of reach, Jensen laughing and holding it out of his way—and then everything changes: Jared realizes abruptly that he's lying all over Jensen and Jensen freezes, realizing it, too, and stares at Jared, wide-eyed.

Jared should move, he should really move, but he doesn't. Instead he looks down and says, "Jensen?" and still doesn't move, and Jensen doesn't, either, just keeps staring up at him.

And then it clicks, all of a sudden: Jared brings his hand up to hover just above Jensen's jaw, and he says Jensen's name again. Jensen swallows and doesn't take his eyes off Jared's face, and suddenly Jared's certain, completely sure. He leans down, so completely devoid of a smooth move that if Jensen hadn't tilted his head to the side at the last minute they'd have bumped noses. But Jensen does and they don't and then they're kissing.

It's every single thing Jared ever expected to feel when kissing someone, everything that kissing Maggie and Sandy and Ernesto just wasn't. Jensen's lips are smooth and warm against his, the tiniest, safest of kisses, and it's everything. There's a hot rush in his chest, spreading out into his limbs, rolling down his finger tips where they're wrapped around Jensen's arms, still pinning him back against the bean bag. Someone's making the most embarrassing breathy little moans and Jared's afraid it might be him.

At some point, between one breath and next, one kiss and the next, it occurs to him to wonder if Jensen wants to be kissing him, since Jensen didn't want to be dating him, didn't particularly want Jared to like him in the first place.

He pulls back, but not too far; he's pretty unwilling to move off of Jensen until Jensen is good and ready for him to do so. Jensen looks adorably bewildered to not be kissing anymore.

"Thought you didn't want to date me," Jared says.

"Dude, we've been dating for like a month already." Jensen arches up, trying to free his wrists to get at Jared.

But Jared doesn't let go. "No we have not," he says, almost automatically.

Jensen shoots him a 'bitch, please' kind of look, pretty impressive considering their current positions.

"What?" He laughs incredulously. "You knew? Why'd you keep—"

Jensen drops back onto the bean bag again and stops struggling. "It was kind of cute. No one's ever tried that hard before."

Jared drops his head to Jensen's chest. He can feel his ears burning red. "How did you know?"

"When have they ever given you two of something at Mabee for free?"

Jared lifts his head and thinks about it a minute. "I got a free breakfast taco once. For my hair."

Jensen sputters with laughter, his chest shaking against Jared's in an interesting way. Interesting to his cock, at any rate. "Only you, seriously," Jensen says. "So you did get two ice creams accidentally?"

"Oh hell no. It was a devious plan. A masterful devious plan to wear you down." Jared grins down at Jensen, stupidly happy. "So, what about those rules? The ones where we're not allowed to date?"

Jensen looks sheepish, just for a minute. "No rules, I lied. Do you realize how lame it is to date your residents? Mike did it last year when he lived on campus and we never let him hear the end of it. You guys are freshman, not supposed to be a viable dating pool."

Jared has stopped grinning. He feels slightly ridiculous now, because Jensen's kind of right. Who is he kidding with this, Jared's a massive dork and Jensen is older and hotter and could do so much better. He flushes red, he can feel it. He somehow can't get himself to move though; his hands are still locked around Jensen's wrists. "So." He stops. "Why—"

Jared's dropped down close enough that Jensen doesn't have to try very hard to kiss him again, and Jared doesn't do a lot of resisting. This time Jensen pulls away. "Do you even know how awesome you are?" He doesn't even wait for Jared to answer, but that's fine because Jared does not remotely know what he would have said. "You don't," Jensen continues. "You are hot and funny and awesome." Jensen shrugs like he doesn't have any other way to express his attraction, and Jared's pretty much fine with that. "Plus, I'm kind of in love with you, so."

Jared can't help but kiss him again, really. He lets go of Jensen's wrists in favor sliding a hand between Jensen and the bean bag, at the small of Jensen's back. Moves: he's got them.

Jensen runs his newly freed hands up Jared's shoulders and tangles them in Jared's hair. The kiss gets different than it was before: wilder, more urgent. Jensen's mouth opens against his, and Jared opens his too. Their tongues slide against each other and it's like everything he felt before times eleventy billion, times infinity.

They don't do anything but make out a lot, not even moving from the bean bag. Jared's painfully hard and can feel that Jensen is too, but, "I don't put out on the first date," Jensen tells him.

"This is like our twelfth date," Jared protests, but he's secretly kind of glad. He wants to have sex, really he does because he is a living, breathing member of the male species. But they aren't in any rush, and they are in the middle of his room where Stephen, Ted, or God or anyone could walk in and see them. Jared's kind of surprised it hasn't happened already.

So he stands up and reaches down to help Jensen get up, and then Jared can't help but kiss him again, because Jensen is so much shorter than him and he has to bend down to do it, and that's really kind of awesome for reasons Jared's not entirely sure of. Jensen wraps his hand around Jared's neck, all hot and hard up against him, and Jared cups Jensen's face, fingers curled back around his neck.

There is more of that, and Jared's pretty sure they could kiss for a million years and he wouldn't get tired of it. He knew, just knew there had to be something he was missing before, something more than just lips and saliva and a few swipes with the tongue. Something like Jensen.

"Okay really." Jensen pulls back and claps his hand over Jared's mouth. "Stop it with that thing. I've got to read so I don't fail out of college in my last semester."

Jared says, "I hear there are cowbells," against Jensen's hand, and even to his ears it ends up sounding like, "Ahere mph bllz."

Jensen laughs when Jared repeats it. "No, not really. Just a quiet, 'sorry 'bout ya, friend,' as they don't hand you your diploma. I do not need to be on the five year plan."

So Jared kisses him again, just really quick at the door because he can't not, and lets him go back to reading. "See you tomorrow?" he asks, as Jensen walks away.

Jensen turns back, kisses Jared again through the open door, like he can't help himself either. "Yeah, of course." And then walks down the hall and into his room.

Jared has finals to study for himself, things to do, sleep to get, but he mostly lays awake that night, touching his lips and smiling at the ceiling.

--

"You what?!" Sandy's shriek echoes across the dining hall. Jared looks around, smiling nervously at the people staring back at him.

"I'm sorry," she says, "because it sounded like you finally got my slow war of attrition to work and then didn't call me immediately after."

"It was two in the morning!"

"I don't care! Do you know how much thought I put into this? How much planning? I—"

Jared tunes her out, mostly, just nods in the breaks of her tirade and remembers how awesome it felt waking up this morning, knowing that Jensen loves him.

"Ugh, you are so hopeless," Sandy says, crossing her arms and pouting. Then she grins. "It's actually kind of adorable."

Jared smiles in what is most assuredly an incredibly goofy manner. "Yep."

Sandy leans forward over her fruit cup. "So tell me about it. All about it, and if you leave out details there will be punishments."

So Jared tells her about the video games and she teases him for the tussling and squeals a little when Jared tells her about the kissing, the awesome awesome kissing.

"I knew it!" she says, slumping back in her chair. "I just knew it. God, I feel so vindicated now."

Jared laughs. "Glad I could help out."

She waves her hand in the "no problem" sense of the wave. They're done with breakfast, so they drop their trays off and head up the hill.

--

It feels so incredibly mundane and normal to go to class when everything about Jared's life has suddenly changed, but there are finals and he has to, plus he's not sure that "finally hooked up with the love of my life" qualifies as an excused absence. So he grins his way through everything and doodles on his notes and actually takes some notes when he remembers that he needs to.

Ted meets him after class like they normally do on Tuesdays. He takes exactly one look at Jared in the bright sunlight in the middle of upper campus and says, "You fucker. It worked, didn't it?"

"What worked?"

Ted waves his hands expressively. "You, Jensen, Sandy's dating plan. It totally worked."

"How did you know?"

Ted points at his face. "You've got the glow, dude."

Jared is sure that Ted is sure he makes sense, but Jared doesn't quite follow. "Huh?"

"You know," Ted says. He holds up fingers for air quotes. "The glow.."

"Oh," Jared says. "But we didn't—"

Ted stops him. "There is no way in hell that I want details, man. Just." Ted punches his shoulder in an extremely manly fashion. "Way to go, tiger."

"Uh." Jared laughs. "Thanks?"

"You're welcome. Now let's get lunch."

They eat in the student union, because Ted's got class again right after and Jared's just as happy eating anywhere. Ted talks about his finals and this paper he has to write and how Abby's brother found him on Facebook. Jared sits and listens and thinks that his cheeseburger is perhaps the most delicious cheeseburger he's ever eaten, and also about Jensen.

Ted goes back to class eventually and Jared takes the steps on cardiac hill two at a time, scaring himself and the tiny blonde girl coming up as he's heading down. Jensen got out of class ten minutes ago and should be back in the dorm, door open for dorm hours. Jared's certain he can get Jensen to close it.

Sure enough, Jensen is sitting at his computer when Jared stops at the door. It's the first he's seen Jensen since last night and it's almost surreal, like he might have dreamed it. But Jensen looks up then and smiles a different smile than Jared's ever seen and he knows for certain that it really happened. Jared steps inside and closes the door after him, and Jensen reaches out to lock the bathroom door so his suitemates can't barge in.

Jared still hasn't moved from the door, like he's paralyzed suddenly. There are all these things he wants to do, and he can't figure out which he wants to do first. Jensen takes care of the problem; he gets up and crosses the room and doesn't stop until he's right up on Jared, arms wrapped around his neck and they kiss again. And again. They kiss until Jared is dizzy and breathless and they kiss some more. Jared's hands slip down to Jensen's waist, where Jensen's shirt is riding up just a bit, enough that Jared's fingertips hit warm skin and he pulls back, gasping and harder than he's ever been in his life. Fuck slow, if he doesn't come soon he's pretty sure he might actually die.

"Hi," Jensen says, lips moving against Jared's jaw line, breath ghosting down his neck.

Jared laughs a little bit, as much as he can when he's this turned on. "Hi."

He kisses Jensen again and slides his palm up under Jensen's shirt. Jensen's skin is smooth and scorching hot and Jared wants to taste it, to run his mouth everywhere his hands are going. He gets the shirt up around Jensen's shoulders before Jensen pulls back in protest.

"Dorm hours. Can't. Residents," Jensen says, punctuated by random kisses to Jared's face or neck. Jared doesn't even get to protest, to roll out his nine-point list as to why this is an awesome idea right now, because Jensen says, "Oh fuck it," and pulls his shirt off himself.

Jared pulls his off too, because if he's certain of one thing it's that there should be an equal level of nakedness. Jensen takes his hand and pulls him further into the room, only stopping when his knees hit the bed and he goes sprawling across it.

Jensen looks fucking amazing like this, shirtless and breathless. Jared can see the outline of Jensen's cock through his shorts, can see that he's hard, that Jared has made him hard, and he can't help but take a minute to stare.

"Jared," Jensen says. Just that, nothing more, but it's enough to get Jared moving, toeing off his shoes and crawling up the bed, bracing himself on all fours above Jensen.

Jensen arches up into him, mouth open against Jared's again. He wraps one of his legs around Jared's and tugs and Jared, who wanted to slowly ease down and savor the moment, ends up slamming down on top of Jensen so fast and hard they both groan, and not in the sexy way.

"Oops," Jared says, and then is immediately distracted by how awesome Jensen's skin feels against his. He had no idea his torso was this awesomely responsive, but there it is.

"Whatever, it's fine," Jensen says, but Jared doesn't remember what they were talking about.

He's pressed against Jensen from his knees to his chest, and it seems only natural and right and awesome to grind down against where Jensen has him cradled between his thighs. It is indeed the best idea he's ever had, so he does it a couple more times while Jensen pants, "Fuck yes," into his ear and slips his hands down the back of Jared's pants.

Jared doesn't especially know where to go from here, but he knows this is not the way he wants to get off the first time, this quickly and still in his jeans. He backs off a little bit, slows it down. Jensen's hands smooth up and down his back, like he knows what Jared needs before Jared does. He still wants to taste Jensen's skin, mouth along his spine, and because it's so conveniently close to his mouth, Jared starts at Jensen's throat. "Can I?" he thinks to ask, because it seems kind of rude to lick a person without asking.

Jensen angles his head back, which gives Jared better access. It's not really an answer, but it'll do. Jensen's skin is salty and warm and kind of exactly what Jared would expect out of skin, but also completely awesome and good because it's Jensen.

He skips down Jensen's chest, mouths along his collar bone. He knows girls like their boobs played with, he's never even thought about guys. "How about here?" he asks, flicking his finger over Jensen's nipple.

The sound Jensen makes isn't exactly words, but it does have a very, "yes, please" quality to it, so Jared licks there too. He stays there for a bit, because Jensen likes it, if the moans and the fingers clenching in Jared's hair are anything to go by. But he's got a destination in mind, a destination that's poking him in the belly, so he keeps heading down. "What about—"

"Yes," Jensen says, breathlessly. "Yes, you can lick anywhere you want."

Jared lifts his head up a minute. Jensen's hands are still in his hair, stroking now instead of clenching. "I just wanted to be sure—"

"That I liked it? Are you kidding me?" Jensen grabs Jared's hand and puts it on his cock. "Does it feel like I don't like it?"

Jared doesn't answer at first, just cups his hand around Jensen's cock. It's hot, so much hotter than the rest of Jensen's skin. "About that," he says, licking his lips.

Jensen flops back down against the bed. "If you must," he says, but he grins and Jared knows he's kidding because seriously, who turns down a blow job? Jared slips his fingers under the waistband of Jensen's shorts and tugs a little, and then has to stop to put his mouth on the jut of bone at Jensen's waist, just because he can. He pulls the shorts down and Jensen lifts his ass enough so Jared can slide them all the way off.

And then there is Jensen's cock. It's red and hard and leaking against Jensen's leg and Jared takes a moment to sit back and stare at it and think holy fuck, I did that to him. Jensen mistakes the pause for trepidation and starts to pull away. "Hey, it's okay," he starts. "You don't have to—"

Jared doesn't even bother to correct the misconception; he just leans forward and licks up the underside of Jensen's cock. Hot and salt and sweat and something bitter and tangy in his mouth, and Jared can't get enough of it. He licks up Jensen's cock some more, little tiny licks and big wet licks, whatever he feels like. Jensen's hands clench on the bedspread and in his hair. Jared puts his mouth around the head and sucks Jensen's cock into his mouth. He's a little too eager at first and chokes himself, but Jensen's hands ease around his face and pull him back just enough that he can breathe again.

"Here, like—" Jensen pulls his face down and then eases it back again, giving Jared a rhythm he catches onto. He's really not going too far down so he wraps one of his hands around the base of Jensen's cock, stroking up and down along with his mouth. He doesn't know when it occurs to him to look up at Jensen's face, but he does and then he can't look away, because Jensen is fucking gorgeous as he falls apart.

"Okay," Jensen says, hands clenching on Jared again, and Jared knows what's coming, can feel it in the way Jensen's balls contract against his hand, but he doesn't want to stop now. He keeps going, batting Jensen's hands away, and he swallows some of it and chokes on some of it and then some of it gets all over Jensen and the bed.

Jared is aching hard against the fly of his jeans, a wet spot rubbing pretty uncomfortably against the head of his dick, but he just nuzzles into the crease of Jensen's thigh, running his tongue up the line of it, while Jensen strokes his hair and catches his breath. He's not even prepared for it when Jensen surges up and tackles Jared onto his back. Jensen straddles his thighs and goes straight for the fly of his jeans.

"Fucking amazing," he says, when he gets Jared out of his pants. Jared's seen his dick before and he's not sure what's so amazing about it. Jensen swallows Jared down and goes way deeper than Jared managed, so yeah, he's had some practice, but it's hard to get jealous or fuck, even mind at all, because what Jensen is doing feels awesome. It's like Jared's brain is getting sucked out via his dick. He's pretty sure no one could have held out to the onslaught, and he can't even warn Jensen when he comes, it happens so quickly. His brain whites out for a minute or five. Doesn't matter, Jensen swallows it all and collapses on top of Jared, boneless and heavy and warm.

Jared turns his head, kisses Jensen slowly, lazily. He tastes himself on Jensen's tongue and it probably should be pretty gross but it's actually really, really good.

"So," Jared says, when Jensen has pulled away and tucked his head against Jared's shoulder. "That's gay sex."

"Yep," Jensen mumbles against his neck. "You going straight again?"

"Maybe just for comparison?" he says, and yelps when Jensen pinches him. "Or not. Clearly or not."

Jared isn't sleepy, and he doesn't really think that Jensen is either, but it's nice to lie there, breathe together, and run his fingers over the bits of Jensen's skin that he can reach. Jensen catches his hand and threads their fingers together, and Jared spends five minutes running his thumb over the lines on Jensen's palm. It's everything he wanted and nothing he thought he'd get. It's perfect.

--

Real life intrudes on Jared's happy place, and as much as he'd love to have sex with Jensen twenty-four seven, there are still finals and papers and class. It's just that in between there is Jensen, and so Jared goes to class and studies for tests in Jensen's room, sprawled across Jensen's bed while Jensen types away at his thesis. It ends up being almost exactly like their dating/not dating period, except there's way more nakedness and making out.

Jared soaks up this time as much as he can, because even though he's coming back next year and Jensen will be here, there's still the summer to get through.

"It's a long time," he tells Jensen once when they're naked and sweaty.

"About that," Jensen says. "I'm not working this summer, I wanted to take it off and, you know, revel in being a college graduate for a bit. So I was thinking, I've never been to Virginia Beach before . . ."

"Yes!" Jared rolls over and pins Jensen down, kissing his face and neck and shoulders. "A thousand times yes, you can totally visit."

Jensen stops him, holds him back a minute. "You can say that," he says. "What about your mom?"

Jared thinks it's kind of unfair to bring a person's mom into the conversation when they're still naked and sweaty, but Jensen does have a point. "You can meet them, they're coming to pick me up." Which is true, Jared's mom emailed him about their plans this morning.

"You just going to spring that on them?"

"No," Jared says. "I'll warn them."

He doesn't for a while, though. He spends a ton of time in the library, and in the study rooms in Beze, and in Jensen's room. He plays video games with Ted and goes for coffee with Sandy, because while he can play online with Ted from home and Sandy will be just two blocks over all summer long, it won't be at Trinity. It'll all be different.

Jared finishes his last paper with, seriously, two minutes before class time to spare. The next two days are the studies days before finals and he's finally started packing his room up. He didn't really accumulate much, and he figures his mom will probably take one look at his suitcase and boxes and repack everything anyway.

Every time he thinks about calling his mom to tell her that he really wants her to meet his boyfriend, he totally chickens out.

Finally though, she calls him. She's got a question about what he's bringing home and if he thinks they'll need to rent a U-Haul or something, and he just says it. "Mom, I want you to meet my boyfriend when you come," and it ends up being easier than he'd thought.

His mom is quiet for a long minute, quiet long enough that Jared wonders if he'd dropped the call. "Mom?"

"Yeah, honey, I'm here. And that would be—" She stops a minute. "That would be fine."

It's not a promise to join PFLAG, but it's more than Jared really expected, and he kind of wants to apologize now for being so pleasantly surprised. "That's great, Mom," he says.

"We'll be there on the twenty-second," she says. "I love you."

--

Instead of studying on the last day before his finals, Jared and Ted have a CoD/Halo marathon, to the point that Jared can't remember which one has the aliens and which one has the army dudes, and tries to use a shield when Ted launches a grenade at him.

"Epic fail," Ted says into the head set.

It's something like three in the morning and when the round ends, neither one of them make any moves to queue up a new one. They just sit in their bean bags in their separate rooms.

"What are you doing this summer?" Jared asks.

"Don't really know. Thought about working, thought about visiting Abby. I'll probably end up doing both. You?"

"I'll be lifeguarding again." He puts his controller down and gets a little more horizontal in the bean bag. "Plus Jensen's coming to visit."

"Yeah? Your parents are cool with that?"

"Well, they don't know they're cool with it yet, but they will be."

"Can't go the whole summer, eh?"

"Could you?"

Ted huffs a laugh. "Yeah, probably not."

"Rest my case."

"Duly noted."

"So hey," Jared says. "I was thinking. Next year I'll probably end up spending a lot of time at Jensen's apartment."

"Indeed."

"And you've had a lot to put up with, rooming with Ed this year."

Ted's "indeed" is infinitely more heartfelt this time around.

"So I was thinking, we room together next year and it'll be kind of like getting a single, only I'll probably keep some of my stuff there too."

Jared waits for the cry of joy and the overly elaborate thank you's, but it's all silence for the longest moment. Then he hears the door between their rooms opening and suddenly Ted's tackling him on the bean bag, hugging him. "Yes," he says. "Definitely yes."

Jared laughs and fights back, but Ted's kind of like an octopus, a really, really quick octopus. "Okay, okay. Get off already."

"No, seriously," Ted says. "I might have to make out with you, I am so happy. I think I finally see what Jensen sees in you. Kiss me, you mad fool."

Jared's laughing hard enough that Ted could have actually taken advantage of him, if Ted were into that kind of thing and Jared weren't already dating the hottest guy on campus, but Ted isn't and Jared is, and Ted just hugs him again before rolling away.

--

Finals pass in a blur of blue books and pencils and scantrons and what feels like a perpetual ache from writing too long. Jared's pretty certain he passed everything; Jensen made him study enough. He'll see when they mail his grades over the summer.

Way too soon it's the night before Jensen graduates, and Jared spends the night in Jensen's room. Ted left two days ago and Stephen just yesterday, so there isn't really anyone else Jared feels the need to say goodbye to.

Jensen puts on a movie but they don't actually watch it. Jared sees maybe the credits and then finds Jensen's neck much more interesting, and then Jensen's shirt comes off and whatever is happening on the TV is not nearly as interesting as Jensen's chest. Jared eventually gets Jensen naked and chases the flickering light from the TV screen across Jensen's skin, tonguing the patterns on his chest and thighs. He sucks Jensen down, and he's gotten a lot better at this in the last couple of weeks and doesn't choke at all.

Jared alternates sucking on Jensen's balls and licking the underside of his cock, along the vein. Jensen's got his hands in Jared's hair, not pulling or anything, just tangled up and keeping him close. It's such a thrill, still, that Jensen's panting, that Jensen's hard and his cock is in Jared's mouth. Jared hopes it'll never stop being a thrill to have this.

He pulls off for a second to get a better look at Jensen's face. "I love you," Jared tells him, completely unable to hold it in.

Jensen sits up a little and peers over the edge of the bed. "Did you really just interrupt a blowjob to tell me you love me?"

"Yeah," Jared says. "Guess I did."

"You're lucky I love you, too, you huge dork. Come here." Jensen pulls Jared onto the bed and kisses him. Jared loves kissing Jensen after he's been sucking Jensen's cock; he loves that Jensen loves it, too. It's all kinds of hot, and it makes Jared's cock throb against Jensen's hip. Jensen keeps kissing him but reaches between their bodies to work his hand around their cocks, pushing them together. It's good, it's so good, and Jared's so close—the feel of Jensen pulsing and coming is just about enough to push him over the edge, too, except that Jensen stills his hand, just keeps it wrapped loosely around their cocks.

"Jared, there's something I need to tell you," he says.

Jared leans on his elbow, looking at Jensen's face. Jensen's expression is totally blank. "Yeah, what?"

Jensen doesn't say anything for a moment that stretches on for ages, long enough for Jared to come up with all manner of possibilities, from "I'm not actually gay," to, "I've got terminal cancer." Then Jensen says, "I love you."

Jared gapes at him. "You fucker!"

Jensen cracks up.

Jared shoves him a little as Jensen doubles over laughing. "I thought you were going to tell me you were dying or something!"

"Not this week."

"How about not ever?"

"So we're shooting for immortality, huh? That's cool. I'll be your zombie boyfriend."

"Sounds hot."

"Braaaaains," Jensen intones, gnawing on Jared's ear.

And that right there is what Jared loves so much about Jensen—that they can be in the middle of having sex and he'll start talking about zombies.

Jensen eventually moves from Jared's ear down to his neck, then his collarbone, kissing as he goes.

"So," Jensen says. "What do you want?"

Jensen's got a really bad habit of asking that in the middle of jerking Jared off or sucking his nipples, so Jared's answers are usually completely incoherent. But today Jared's got an idea; he's been thinking about it for a while, had been thinking about it long before he ever knew that it might actually happen.

"I want your fingers in me," Jared says.

"Oh fuck," Jensen says.

"I'm not asking for you to fuck me," Jared adds quickly. "I was kind of thinking maybe not yet on that one—"

"Yeah, good idea," Jensen says. "And you don't have to do this, you know, if you don't want to."

Jared takes Jensen's hand and puts it on his dick, just to make sure Jensen can tell exactly how hard he is, still. "Trust me, I want to."

It takes a little bit of positioning to get Jared angled right—and hadn't that been a surprise about sex, how much positioning and re-positioning there needed to be—and he has a kind of hysterical moment when Jensen comes at him with his fingers covered in lube, because something about it is just so weird-looking, but once he gets over the shock of Jensen's finger pushing past the tightness of the muscle and takes a couple of deep breaths, it starts to get good—more that the idea that that's Jensen's finger inside of him than the actual sensation of it, but it's not all bad.

Except then Jensen says, "Move a little forward for me, can you?" and Jared shifts and Jensen's finger hits on what Jared knows, thanks to wikipedia, to be his prostate, only wikipedia had somehow totally failed to mention that it was going to change his entire life.

"Holy shit," Jared says. "Do that again."

Jensen does, and Jared rocks up against him until they find a rhythm that works, that has Jensen's finger hitting his prostate over and over until the pleasure is rolling over him in waves, that has him panting and saying, "Come on, come on," until Jensen bends to suck Jared's balls into his mouth and that's it right there—Jared comes all over his stomach.

Jensen's kissing him again before he even has the slightest chance to catch his breath, while he's still shaking a little from the force of his orgasm—light kisses, just pressing his lips to Jared's lips, his nose, his chin, and it's so good, every bit of it; Jared has no idea what he must have done to deserve something this good.

--

Jensen only got five tickets for graduation, and they went to his parents, brother and sister, and lone living grandmother ages and ages ago, so Jared sleeps in and takes his time with his five breakfast tacos. Jensen's assured him that he's really not going to be missing anything, and they'll meet up at the champagne reception afterwards. Anyway, the high is supposed to be 97 degrees today, so Jared's happy enough not to be stuck in a stuffy auditorium right now.

The reception's going to be in the courtyard at eleven. Jared wanders over half an hour early. He's already packed, for the most part, and he's done with finals; he's got nothing else he needs to be doing. He finds a spot under a shade tree and opens the paperback he brought with him and leaves it open in his lap, his finger marking his place. There are refreshment tables set up all over the courtyard, bottles of champagne on ice and little snacks. Student workers are fanning napkins and straightening rows of glasses, and, watching them, that's when it hits Jared, this feeling that's been building up for the last few days—it's the end of his freshman year, and the place where he started the year isn't anything like the place where he's ending it. It's a little staggering to think about how much more he knows now than he did at the beginning of the year, how much better he knows himself, and even more staggering to think that even though he came to Trinity for all of the wrong reasons it's ended up being so good for him, so right.

And it's weird to think that he's going to be going away from here, and that when he comes back he won't be a freshman anymore, won't be the youngest and newest around. The train of thought doesn't go any further than that. Jared sits back against the tree and just tries to imprint this moment on his memory: exactly the way everything is right now, so that he can call it to mind later, who he was now.

After a while the first people start to filter out of the auditorium and into the courtyard. Soon there are hundreds of graduates and their families crowding the place, everyone smiling and taking pictures and toasting each other. It takes Jared a minute to pick Jensen out of the crowd. He must have thrown his cap inside the auditorium but he's still wearing his gown, and he's flanked by people who can only be his family members—his brother and sister have the same face, the same walk.

Jensen spots Jared from pretty far away, too, though it probably doesn't hurt that Jared's standing off to the side and wearing Rainbows and shorts. Jensen says something to his family and then walks toward Jared. "Hey."

"Hey yourself," Jared says. "Congrats, college grad."

"Thanks." Jensen grins. Looking at him, there's nothing Jared wants more than to kiss him. He takes a step forward and puts a hand on Jensen's arm. Jensen shrugs, still grinning, a clear why not? if Jared's ever seen one, so Jared leans in and kisses him. Someone wolf-whistles, but they don't stop kissing until Jared pulls back to breathe, his nose still touching Jensen's.

"I think people are watching us," Jared says.

Jensen smiles. "I think so, too." He pulls away, but takes Jared's hand. "You want to meet my family?"

"Sure," Jared says, his heart in his throat.

He's not much sure what he was worried about. Jensen's dad shakes his hand and calls him son, and Jensen's mom kisses him on the cheek about three seconds after meeting him. Jensen's brother gives him a big grin, and Jensen's sister pulls him aside while Jensen's congratulating friends and whispers in his ear, "Jensen didn't tell me you were hot like burning."

Jared turns red pretty much head to toe, much to Jensen's sister's delight.

Jensen's mom collars him and insists that he come along for lunch. It's easy, hanging out with them; by the end of lunch, it's hard to believe that he's only known them for a few hours.

They drop him and Jensen off at the dorm before heading back to Richardson. "We'll be seeing you soon, won't we, Jared?" Jensen's mom says, pulling him in for a hug.

"I sure hope so," Jared says, and means it.

--

A bunch of Jensen's friends are having a post-grad party at one of their houses off-campus. The place is pretty crowded but nothing like the frat party or Dave Lowenstein's house, when he'd gone with Ernesto; it's a comfortable kind of crowded, where everyone who bumps into each other is friends. On the way inside, Jensen introduces Jared to a lot of people whose names Jared immediately forgets, and to a couple of others Jensen's talked about, his close friends: Chris, Steve, Tom.

"Keg's in the bathroom," Tom says, pointing.

Jensen makes straight for it, and grabs a couple of cups. "Here you go," he says after he's filled the first one, handing it over.

Jared stares at it. "Um, Jensen, I'm—"

"I'm not your RA anymore," Jensen says, grinning. "Just don't get yourself arrested."

"I'll drink to that," Jared says.

Jared spends the evening watching Jensen laugh and talk with his friends, with these people Jensen mostly isn't going to see again, at least not soon. And maybe it should make him feel like an outsider, but it doesn't—Jensen's got his arm around Jared's waist for most of the night, never more than a couple of feet away, never any doubt that Jared is here with him, that Jared's his. Jensen kisses him a couple of times, in the bathroom by the keg when they go back for seconds, out in the backyard looking at the wide Texas sky, and whispers all kinds of things in Jared's ear about what he's going to do to him when they get back to the dorm.

When they get back to the dorm, it's a little after two a.m., and Jensen doesn't manage anything more than couple minutes of sleepy kissing before he falls asleep with his head on Jared's arm. It's okay, though. Looking down at Jensen sleeping in his arms, it's more than okay. Jared's so in love with him that he can hardly take it, sometimes.

--

Jared's parents call at three the next afternoon. "Hey, sweetie, we're about to drive up," his mom says. "Where should we meet you?"

Jared gives them directions to the parking lot behind his dorm, laughing as his mom relays them over his dad's objections that it may have been nine months but he still remembers exactly where he's going.

"We'll see you in just a second," his mom says.

"Sounds good," Jared says. "Oh, and Mom? Jensen's going to be here. If that's okay."

"Jensen?"

"My boyfriend," Jared says.

There's just the slightest of pauses before she says, "Great, we'll see you both soon," and disconnects.

"You don't have to introduce me, if you don't want to," Jensen says, from across the room.

Jared closes the cell phone. He walks over to Jensen, takes his hand, and kisses him. "Yeah, I kinda do," he says.

Jensen doesn't let go of his hand all the way down the stairs and into the parking lot. Jared's grateful for it. He doesn't let go until his parents' minivan pulls up, his mom waving at him from the passenger seat.

"Hi, Jared," she says, jumping out of the car and hugging him tight. "So glad to see you."

"You too, Ma," he says.

She pulls back and says, "You must be Jensen," and extends her hand. And if she's not Jensen's mom, if she's not pulling him in and kissing his cheek from the start, she does sound genuinely pleased to meet him, is smiling when she turns back to Jared.

"So I understand you could use some help loading up the car," Jensen says.

Jared's dad laughs. "If you're trying to make friends, it's working."

Jensen grins at him. "That was the goal."

Jared's dad follows Jensen into the dorm, while his mom lags back a little. Jared slows down with her. "So," she says, nodding toward Jensen. "That's him, huh?"

"Yeah."

"He's cute," Jared's mom says, to his endless astonishment. "You sure know how to pick 'em."

Jared ducks his head, which does exactly nothing to hide just how red he's turning. "Thanks."

She laughs and puts her arm around his waist, tugging her close to him for a moment. "Love you," she says.

"Love you too," Jared says, past the lump in his throat.

Jared has a rather astonishing amount of crap in his room, after a year of living there. By the time they're done packing the car, all four of them are sticky with sweat and panting. "So, who's ready for a two-day car ride now?" Jared's dad jokes.

"Can't wait," Jared says.

"I'm sure you'll manage," Jensen says, grinning at Jared.

"Can you give us a minute?" Jared says to his parents. Before they're even all the way around the corner of Beze, Jared's kissing Jensen, kissing him like if he kisses him long and hard enough he'll be able to keep the memory on his lips even after he's out of Texas. He drags his thumb over Jensen's collarbone, damp with sweat, grips his biceps and doesn't let go.

"See you soon?" Jared says when he finally manages to pull back.

"You better believe it."

Jared backs away far enough that he can't touch Jensen then, because if he doesn't put some space between them he's going to start kissing him again and then he's never going to manage to leave.

"It was lovely to meet you," Jared's mom says to Jensen when they get back to the parking lot.

"Good to meet you, too, Mrs. Padalecki," Jensen says.

"I guess I'll talk to you soon or something," Jared says, grinning.

"Eh. That'd be okay." Jensen grins back and waves as they start the car and pull away.

The heat rising off the pavement makes Jensen a little blurry as they head out of the parking lot and toward the highway, and soon Jared can't see him at all. He barely can see Trinity now, either—just the tower sticking above the tree line and then it's gone, the last he'll see of it until September. It's good to have that to look forward to—to know that it's just for the summer, that Trinity will be waiting for him when he gets back.

"So," Jared's mom says, craning her neck to see Jared in the back seat. "When are you going to invite Jensen to stay with us?"

"Really?" Jared says.

She smiles. "Well, sure," she says. "You want to, right?"

"Yeah," he says, not quite believing it. "Definitely, yeah."

"So ask him. We'd love to have him." She reaches her hand back and Jared squeezes it. She's a little teary, but she looks happy about it.

And in that moment, in the car with his parents and two days of highway rolling out before him, Jared's certain that everything's going to be all right—that all is well.