Archive of Our Own

"We got a double homicide at the Roadway Inn on Jack Kultgen Freeway," Chris said, handing Jensen a cup of coffee and sliding in behind the wheel of the SUV.

"We got any other details?" Jensen took a long sip and closed his eyes as the caffeine hit his system. Yes, sir, nothing like that first hit of caffeine to get him moving. Just what he needed this morning.

"Rookie found the bodies. Pretty badly shot up. That's all I know," Chris said as he eased the vehicle into early morning rush-hour traffic.

People were milling around when they pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. Fortunately, the scene was taped, and no one came too close. The hotel wasn't as seedy as some out on the highway, but it wasn't high rent, either.

"Rodriguez, how you doing, man?" Jensen said to the patrolmen standing at the open door.

Carlos Rodriguez nodded to them. "'bout what you'd expect for this hour of the morning. You?"

"About that. What do we have?"

"Two dead. Multiple gunshots to the bodies. It's messy. Someone was mighty pissed off."

"And the rookie who found them?" Chris asked, nodding in greeting to Rodriguez.

Rodriguez shook his head. "The rookie, Birmingham, he threw his guts up. About like you'd expect. You guys can go on in. The coroner's about done."

The room was a mess. Blood pooled on the floor around the bodies and splattered on the walls and the bedspread. It never got easier to see this kind of carnage. "Doctor Gonzalez, what can you tell us?"

"Man and woman. Shot to death." He pointed to the bodies, both covered with white plastic sheeting. "We'll get them back to the morgue, and then we'll know more."

"Time of death?" Chris asked.

"5:00 am or thereabouts," Rodriguez said from the doorway. "Whoever did it didn't bother with a silencer. Woke enough people that someone called it in. If you guys don't need anything else, I'm going to start to interview the patrons."

"Thanks, dude." Jensen smiled at him. Rodriguez had the right instincts.

Both bodies were loaded onto stretchers and rolled out. He and Chris put on rubber gloves and started to look around the perimeter of the room.

"Any ID?" Chris asked, as he picked up a matchbook from the floor. He put it in a plastic bag and sealed it. "Hill's Tavern is a dive."

"Yeah. Plenty," Jensen said, opening the wallet he found in the purse. "Fuck. One of the vics is Katie Cassidy."

Chris whistled. "No shit. Are you sure?"

"Unless she snatched Cassidy's purse." Jensen put the purse into a bag. It had been off-white and probably expensive; now it was covered in blood splatter. "Positive ID won't come until we get it from the coroner."

"That wasn't her husband with her. Not that she wasn't known to step out on Padalecki now and then."

"Now and then would be something of an understatement," Jensen said. "The other victim is George Banks. According to his license, anyway." He sealed that into a bag, too.

"As soon as we get positive ID on the girl, we'll need to get our butts out to the ranch -- this one is so not a phone-in -- and tell Mr. Cassidy his baby girl's been murdered," Chris said, picking up his digital camera and starting to snap pictures of the scene. "Dude, that is so not going to go down well."

"I'm sure." Jensen pulled his pen and notebook out of his pocket and started taking notes.

"Ever been out here before?" Chris asked as he pulled the SUV onto the long driveway that led up to the Cassidy ranch's main house.

"Nope. I got no cause to be rubbing shoulders with the high and the mighty in Waco."

"Been here as help. Steve's band played a New Year's gig here about four-five years ago. Came as a roadie to see the place."

The lawns were perfectly manicured, and trees lined either side of the driveway. As they came around the curve of the driveway, a sprawling white house gleamed brightly in the morning sunshine.

Jensen whistled through his teeth. "Holy fuck! That looks like something out of a TV show. Like fucking Southfork or something."

"Dude, you're too young to have ever watched that show." Not that Chris was that much older.

"Everything lives in reruns and on YouTube." Jensen shook his head. "What the hell was she doing in a Roadway Inn?"

"About what you'd expect she'd be doing there." Chris parked the vehicle and they both climbed out. "She wasn't going to bring Banks back here. Daddy probably wouldn't approve. And her husband even less."

"Thinking, not. But she could afford better than that."

"It's a bed. Son, you know you don't need much more than that."

"For you and me, not so much. For her," Jensen tilted his head towards the finely carved wooden door and frame. "It's pretty downscale."

A maid in a uniform answered the door. Jensen flashed his badge. "Waco P.D. We'd like to speak to Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Padalecki."

Her eyes got wide. "Yes, sir." She opened the door for them to step into the foyer. It was decorated with white marble and bright white tile. A table sat to one side with white flowers in it.

At least they weren't kept cooling their heels in the foyer too long. There was a sound at the top of the stairs and a tall man, dressed in jeans and a western-cut cotton shirt, hurried down, his boot heels clicking on the polished wooden stairs. Padalecki, Jensen guessed. He was too young to be Cassidy.

Padalecki made eye contact with him and held it for a moment. All the air seemed to leave the room, and Jensen was forced to take a deep breath. Fuck. His body contracted, and it was all he could do to keep a neutral expression.

"Millie said you gentlemen wanted to see me?" Padalecki said. His voice was low and soft, but his tone was grim.

Jensen's pulse picked up. It wasn't that often that he felt this kind of pull towards someone. And it had never happened under these circumstances. But he was a professional, and by God, he'd act like one. "Yes, sir. We do. I'm Jensen Ackles, and this is my partner, Chris Kane. Is Mr. Cassidy here, too?"

"Right here," Cassidy entered the room from the other side, dressed similarly to Padalecki. "What can we do for you boys?"

Jensen took another deep breath. This was never easy. "I'm afraid we've got some bad news --"

"What's she done now?" Padalecki didn't sound angry so much as resigned. As if he thought he knew what was coming. And this wasn't the first time he'd had trouble where his wife was concerned.

"Your wife is dead." Chris said, without the usual sympathy Jensen would have expected from him.

"The hell you say," Cassidy said. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, they were shiny. But there was no emotion in his voice when he asked, "How?"

Before he or Chris could answer, Padalecki said, "Maybe we should take this into the office." He put a hand on Cassidy's arm and squeezed.

Cassidy nodded and moved toward the hall. Jensen and Chris had no option but to follow.

For a man who had just been told his wife was dead, Padalecki wasn't having much of an obvious reaction. Clearly, things hadn't been good between them, but Jensen had expected something more than resigned acceptance. From her father, too.

"All right," Padalecki said when they had reassembled in office. "What happened to Katie?"

"She was murdered. Shot. Early this morning." Jensen said. "We need to ask you some questions."

Padalecki closed his eyes. "Give me a minute, okay?" He walked over to the window, putting his big hands on the frame and leaning against the glass. "Damn," he said after a minute. Then he straightened. "I need to tell my son."

"We need to ask you a few questions, first. About your wife's activities the last day or so," Jensen said, gently. He hated this part. But if they were going to catch the person who did this, they couldn't let the trail go cold. "When did you last see her?"

"Yesterday afternoon," Padalecki said. "She said she was going out. We didn't expect her back before midday today at the earliest."

Cassidy nodded his agreement.

Their reaction was startling in its casualness. Jensen wondered if they weren't involved. But if they were, in all likelihood they'd be trying to hide their reaction. There would be more of a pretense of a normal reaction.

"Where is she now?" Cassidy asked. "We'll need to make arrangements."

"The coroner's got her body. He's going to do an autopsy on her and the man she was with." Oddly, Chris' tone was much more sympathetic with Cassidy.

"Who was she with?" Padalecki asked. But he didn't seem surprised by the revelation. "There were several men that she saw."

"George Banks. He mean anything to you?" Jensen watched him closely. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but none of Padalecki's reactions added up.

Padalecki just shrugged. "The name is vaguely familiar, but I can't place him."

"Did you know your wife's lovers?" Chris asked, sounding incredulous that Padalecki could be so cold about it.

"Some of them."

Chris was looking at Padalecki. "You got anything else you want to say about that?"

"Excuse me?" Padalecki was tall. He probably topped Chris by eight inches. And right now he was radiating outrage. "What were you expecting?"

"I'm not sure I'd be so calm if my wife were murdered with another man in a cheap hotel." The tone Chris used was just this side of polite. It lacked all of the sympathy it should have had.

Clearly, Padalecki thought so too. He blinked at the words. "It's not like I'm surprised that she came to a bad end." He also didn't sound completely indifferent anymore. Maybe it was starting to sink in.

"You're not pissed off that she got herself murdered." Chris' tone was drawing closer to the edge of rude -- which wasn't like him. Jensen wondered again what was up with him.

"Yeah, it was damned inconvenient of her to be murdered," Padalecki snapped.

"Jared. You shouldn't be saying that." Cassidy folded his arms over his chest. "Are you accusing my son-in-law of something?"

"No, of course not." Chris' tone was hard. What was going on with him anyway? "But now that you mention it, where were you last night and early this morning?"

Padalecki eyes narrowed, but he didn't hesitate. "I worked in my downtown office until 5:30 or so, drove home, and had dinner with DJ and my son. I went back to work in the office upstairs about 8:00 and then worked until 10:30. I watched TV in my room from then until midnight. Then went to sleep. I got up at about 6:30 and went out for a run. I worked in my office upstairs this morning."

"You recited that very well, almost as if you'd rehearsed it."

"In a way, I did," Padalecki said. His voice was even, but his full mouth was turned down in a frown. "I do the same thing almost every day. But you can check the security logs from the alarm system, if you don't believe me."

"You can bet we will be doing that, son," Chris said, writing it all down on a notepad.

"I had nothing to do with Katie's death. Am I a suspect?" Surprisingly, he didn't seem worried about it.

Chris gave him a look that Jensen couldn't read. "As I said, if it were my wife --"

"But she wasn't. And you know nothing of the arrangements we've made." Padalecki shot him an annoyed look.

"So why don't you tell us why you're so blasé about all of this. Most men would be screaming for justice or revenge."

"I'm not most men, detective," Padalecki said though his teeth. "Furthermore --"

"Jared. Why not let me --"

"That's okay, DJ." He turned to Jensen. "My wife and I had an arrangement. I stayed out of her life, and she stayed out of mine."

Given everything they'd seen so far, that shouldn't be surprising. "You didn't care that she slept around?" Jensen asked, not really sure he believed it.

Padalecki shook his head. "And she didn't care if I did. We agreed to be discreet."

"Except that she wasn't," Chris added. "All of Waco knew she stepped out on you."

"There wasn't a whole hell of a lot I could do about that." There wasn't any rage in the tone. It actually sounded as if he didn't care.

"Why'd you put up with it?" Chris made a point of looking around.

"Because my son --" Padalecki swore. "I have to go up to the school and get him, right now. I do not want him to hear this from anyone else. Despite everything, he loved his mother."

Cassidy nodded. "I'll finish up here."

Padalecki walked out of the room without a backward glance.

"We're not done with you --"

"We can finish this up later," Jensen said over Chris. "We're very sorry for your loss. We'll need one of you to come down to the morgue to identify her body."

"I'll send Jared down as soon as he gets back. He can answer the rest of your questions then." Cassidy sighed. "Like Jared said, it's not like anyone around here was expecting any other ending for Katie. I had hoped that making her marry Jared would help. And maybe for a year or two it did."

"You forced your daughter to marry?"

"She'd gotten herself pregnant at sixteen. I told her I'd cut her off without a dime if she didn't marry him."

"And Padalecki?"

Cassidy let out another sigh and looked down. "He was only seventeen himself, but getting him to marry her wasn't the problem. He was going to do that. It was not divorcing her once she went back to her old ways. I tried to offer him money. When that didn't work, I threatened to get his college scholarship revoked. That didn't work either."

Since obviously something did, "What worked?"

"I told him he'd never see his son again if he divorced her."

"And he stayed?"

Cassidy nodded. "Even with my influence, it would have been hard to keep the boy once Jared was out on his own. He's got an MBA and is now running the company -- and doing a damned fine job of it, too. I retired last year."

"So, he could have left any time. Why'd he stay?" Chris asked.

"You'd have to ask him. But I think he likes living here, likes having a family. I told him that I'd leave everything to Ryan."

"Ryan?" Jensen asked.

"My grandson. I would have offered it to Jared, but I know he wouldn't take it." And clearly DJ Cassidy couldn't fathom why not.

"Does he have any other family?"

"Jared? No. His mamma died a couple of years ago. S'far as I know, there's no one else. That might have been another reason he stayed. He had the means to take care of her after he married Katie."

Chris nodded. "Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Katie?"

Cassidy's eyes had that shine in them again, but he shook his head. "Despite what you might think, she was a sweet girl. She didn't like sitting still, but no one would want to hurt her."

"Can you give us a list of her friends?" Chris said. "We'd also like to talk to the staff here."

Cassidy opened the desk drawer and pulled out an address book as well as piece of paper and a pen. He wrote down several names and phone numbers. "These are her closest friends. They can probably tell you who I've missed. As for the staff, feel free to talk to all of them whenever you'd like."

"Do you know what bars she favored?" Jensen asked as he took the sheet with the names on it All they really had so far was the matchbook.

He shook his head. "Jared might."

Jensen reached into his pocket and pulled out one of his cards. "You can reach me or Chris at this number. If you think of anything else, please call."

"We'll be wanting to talk to both you and Mr. Padalecki again," Chris said, his tone softer than before.

Cassidy nodded.

As they turned the corner and headed out onto the highway, Jensen cleared his throat. "So, what the hell was that all about?"

"What are you talking about?" Chris kept his eyes on the road, not even glancing at Jensen.

Jensen didn't buy that innocent look. "You've got Padalecki tried and convicted without evidence."

"He's got motive, means, and opportunity." Chris' tone was hard, like he'd made up his mind without giving the guy a chance to defend himself.

"What? What motive? He's got a sweet deal with the old man. Who, in case you didn't notice, thinks mighty highly of him." He might have suspected Padalecki himself if it weren't for the old man.

Chris was silent for a moment. "Something just doesn't feel right with him. Katie Cassidy was a good-looking woman. Why wouldn't Padalecki care that she regularly cheated on him?"

Maybe he had a point with that. "Still, if they didn't get along, maybe it would have been better to let go," Jensen said.

"Yeah, that would have been what I'd've thought." Chris shook his head. "I just don't see a man being that casual about his wife without a good reason."

"You've really taken a dislike to him, haven't you?"

Chris snorted. "And you're ready to dismiss him as a suspect before we've even investigated."

"Man, that is so not true." For whatever reason, he didn't want Padalecki to be guilty, but that didn't mean he was going to ignore evidence. Jensen pulled out his cell phone and hit the number for the ME's office. "This is Ackles. We got anything yet?"

"You've given me, what, three hours? I'll call you when I have something?" Gonzales grumbled into the phone. There was a loud click.

Chris snickered. "You know Gonzales doesn't like being rushed."

"Yeah, I know. But I was hoping he'd found something." Jensen was ever hopeful things would move faster than they invariably did.

"Let's go check out the bar and then start on the girlfriends."

Even the night's most elegant bars were sad dingy places in the daylight. Hill's Tavern, however, was typical of less than elegant bars. The furniture was old and scratched. The walls had probably been white once. The place reeked of industrial strength cleaners.

"We're closed," someone from the back called as a bell rang when he and Chris came through the unlocked front door.

"Waco P.D.," Chris called back.

A woman in her mid-thirties, with shoulder-length brown hair, came out from the back wiping her hands on a dishrag. She was wearing an army-green tank top and dirty jeans. "What can I do to help you boys?"

"You the owner?" Chris asked, taking out his badge and flashing it for her.

She caught his wrist when he would have pulled his creds away and held it for a second to actually look at it. "I'm the owner. Samantha Ferris. What can I do for you, Detective Kane?"

"We're here about this woman." Jensen laid a picture of Katie on the bar.

She laughed. "Katie Cassidy. What's she done now?"

"She's dead. Murdered last night at the Roadway Inn a couple of miles from here. Was she a regular?"

Ferris' jaw went slack, and she swallowed hard. "She comes in...came in most weeknights for a drink or three. She usually stayed a while and then left."

"Alone?"

"Not usually."

"Do you have any idea what she did on the weekends?" Jensen asked.

Ferris shrugged. "Sometimes on the weekends, she'd go dancing at some of the clubs downtown."

"You know which clubs?" Even in a small town there were more than a few places to dance.

"Down near the university, I'm guessing. She never said. And it's not my place to pry."

"She hang out with anyone in particular?"

Ferris snorted. "Is that what you're calling it?"

Jensen gave her a look and made a motion with his hand.

"She left with whoever caught her eye."

"So no one in particular stands out?"

Her brow creased and her lips thinned. "There was one guy a couple of months ago. Had to throw him out a couple of times for harassing her. He wouldn't take no for an answer."

"She know him?"

"Yeah. She had gone home with him a couple of times, but Katie didn't like the same thing over and over." Ferris laughed, but there wasn't much amusement in it. "Said that if she wanted the same thing, she could just stay home." She shook her head. "If I had Padalecki waiting for me, I'd be staying in at night."

No way Jensen was going to touch that one.

"You got the name of that guy? The one that was bothering her," Chris asked.

"Yeah. Varse. Michael Varse."

"Know anything else about him?"

She shook her head. "He stopped coming in after I threw him out the second time."

They hadn't been able to find Varse. He hadn't been at his office or at home. None of the neighbors had seen him. They stopped at Jack-in-the-Box for lunch.

Jensen's cell buzzed as he started to pick up his burger. He wiped off his hand. "This is Ackles."

"Well, Detective Ackles, did you forget something you were supposed to do today?" And boy she sounded pissed about it, too.

"Annie. Damn, baby girl, I'm sorry." He closed his eyes. How could he have forgotten? "We caught a big case this morning and I just plain forgot."

"I saw that in the paper I was reading while I was waiting for someone to show up for lunch. The paper said someone important in town had been murdered."

"Yeah. Katie Cassidy. She was a very rich man's daughter. It's an important case."

"In that case, I might forgive you. But only if you promise to stop calling me baby."

Jensen laughed at that. It was an old argument. "Sorry, honey. You'll always be my baby sister."

"You do realize I'm almost twenty-seven, right?" She put just the right note of indignation in her voice.

But he knew she didn't really mean it. "Yep. Doesn't matter. You're always going to be the little bundle they put in my arms when you came home from the hospital."

"You were what, five?"

"Something like that."

"I'm about to get my Ph.D. Doesn't that count as grown up?" There was such a sigh in her voice.

"Not at all." He looked over at Chris, who was smirking at him. "It doesn't matter to Chris, either."

"Why not? He wasn't there when mom and dad brought me home." She sounded a little put out by that. But she'd always had a weird kind of relationship with Chris. He'd never quite understood why she tensed up whenever she saw him.

"It's a brother thing."

"Which he is not," she snapped and then sighed. "So, what are you going to do to make up for standing me up for lunch today? I drove all the way out here, too."

"I know. I'm sorry. I should have called you this morning. What's worse, I'm probably going to be working late on this tonight."

"I kind of figured that. So I just came back home." She paused for a second. "Look, I really want to see you before the barbeque this weekend, okay?"

"Barbeque?" He asked.

Chris made a snorting sound that didn't go well with the french fries he was stuffing in his mouth.

"This weekend. Mom and Dad? Ring any bells?"

"Fuck. I forgot about that, too. What do you want to see me about?"

"Not on the phone. I've got class tomorrow night and the next one, too. What about Thursday? For an early dinner? Maybe about 5:00?"

"Works for me."

"See you then. Love you."

"Me, too." Jensen closed his phone.

"She pissed at you?"

"Not too bad. Man, why didn't you remind me I was supposed to have lunch with her today?" He was usually more organized that this. But this case…it had thrown him off his game a bit.

"You didn't tell me you were supposed to be having lunch with Annie. And anyway, you could have set an alert on that phone of yours or, you know, put it on a calendar."

Jensen shrugged. The burger was greasy, but he was too hungry to care. "We'll split the list of Katie Cassidy's friends."

"Sounds good. Drop me by the station to pick up my truck."

"He's still not answering," Chris said, putting down the phone. "So, we got squat on Varse. I went by his house again after talking to Alona Tal, Cassidy's girlfriend, but there was still no one home. Neighbors don't have a clue where he might be. And not much from the first two of Cassidy's friends."

"Varse's friends say anything else?" Jensen asked, typing up his notes from the interview.

"Not much. He keeps pretty much to himself."

"Let's put out an APB on him and see if someone can find him."

"Done. And now I'm gone. I've got a date with Mary Anne Sinclair."

Jensen smiled at that. Chris had been trying to get the assistant DA to go out with him for about six months. Sooner or later, Chris's luck with women had to change. "Go. I've got some computer work to do on Varse and Banks."

"You don't think they're connected, do you?"

"Never know until you look 'em up." Jensen smiled. "Go. You don't want to be late."

"I'm gone," Chris said as he left.

Jensen got himself a cup of coffee and settled in at his desk. He ran the background checks, with NCIC and with other state agencies. Varse came up clean, and he was still waiting for the results on Banks. There didn't seem to be anything to tie them together.

An hour later, Jensen rubbed his neck and started to shut down his laptop. It was time to go and get something to eat, and maybe a beer. Just as he was about to stand up, his cell phone buzzed. He picked it up instead.

"Ackles," he said with a sigh. He was so not up for anything else tonight.

"Detective Ackles? This is Jared Padalecki."

Jensen recognized his voice, and his heart started to beat double-time. What was it about this man that unnerved him so? "What can I do for you, Mr. Padalecki?"

"I'd like to meet you, if you have time."

He looked at his watch and sighed. "Now?"

"If you have time."

"No problem. Where?"

"Do you know Sullivan's Diner, off La Salle?"

"Near the university? Yeah, I know it." It was one of the best and cheapest meals in town. "I'll meet you there in 30 minutes."

Padalecki was already in a booth, hunched over a cup of coffee, when Jensen arrived. He had a gut feeling it was a mistake to be here without Chris to back him up. It wasn't that he thought he couldn't handle anything Padalecki threw at him, but there was something else there. Something he did not want to think about too hard. And that made him even more jittery.

"Mr. Padalecki?" Jensen said as he slid into the opposite side of the booth. "What can I do for you?"

"After this morning, I assumed you had more questions for me. I thought I'd make it easier on both of us and answer them." He blew on his coffee and then took a sip.

"You could have done that this morning."

"I needed to get to my son before the newspapers did. He's only ten."

Jensen could understand that. "How is he doing?" That was probably a stupid question, of course, but it wasn't as if he didn't feel bad for the boy.

"About how you'd expect. I think he's trying to be brave, but..." Padalecki shrugged. "I'm going to see about getting him some counseling."

"That's probably a good idea. And very progressive of you."

Padalecki's eyes flashed with annoyance. "What do you think? I'd let him suffer though this alone because I wasn't that fond of his mother?"

"Of course not. But a lot of people don't believe in that sort of thing."

"Like you for instance?"

"What I believe in doesn't matter. But, as it happens, my sister is almost done with her schooling to be a psychologist." And Jensen was damned proud of her. It must have showed.

Padalecki smiled at him. "Actually, what you believe in does matter to me."

"I can't guess why." Jensen looked right at him and couldn't for the life of him gauge where Padalecki was coming from. "We're not here to discuss that or what my sister does. You were going to answer some questions for me."

"Is there any point now? I know you think I'm guilty, but I have no motive."

Who was this guy trying to kid? "Your wife was cheating on you. Very publicly. Even if you say you didn't care about her that still gives you quite a motive in anyone's book."

"I told you. She and I had an arrangement."

"So you say --"

"I could have divorced her at any time in the last ten years. Even if you discount my staying to finish my education, I've been out of school for more than five years. I have an MBA from Baylor. Trust me when I tell you that I can go anywhere I want."

He had a point about not having to stay. But there were other factors that didn't add up. "Then why didn't you leave her? You waiting on her daddy to kick it so you can inherit everything?"

"I signed a pre-nup that says I walk away with what I came in with. Which is to say nothing at all."

"So you get nothing for your troubles. Which is even more motive, since you get all her money." Jensen didn't actually believe that, but he couldn't completely discount the possibility. He could be wrong.

Padalecki rubbed his eyes. "I'm sure it could look that way to you."

"Her mama left her a tidy sum. You are her husband. You inherit it all." Jensen had seen people do a lot of evil things for money. And this was no small amount of cash.

"It's going to my son. I don't need it. I'm wealthy in my own right, now. I negotiated for stock options three years ago."

"It's a couple of million dollars. You don't make that much, even with stock options."

"Don't be so sure of that. And in a few more years, I'll have even more. I don't have to take the risk of killing my wife and hurting my son to get easy money. I'm all about the long view."

Jensen could appreciate that. Cassidy Energy had been a mediocre company when Padalecki had taken over five years ago; now it was a serious competitor in the world market. Even with the economy doing as poorly as it was, the company's stock had more than doubled in value. "Why did you stay?"

Padalecki shrugged, his big shoulders filling out the contours of his shirt. "My son has a grandfather who loves him to the exclusion of everything else. And while she wasn't much of a wife, Katie wasn't a bad mother."

"Still doesn't explain --"

"You never give up, do you? You should be out finding the person who killed my wife, not trying to pin it on me when it's pretty clear I didn't do it."

Jensen met his eyes and tried radiate his assurance. "Mr. Padalecki, make no mistake, we will find the person who did this."

Padalecki leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. "What are you doing about it?"

"I'm the one asking the questions here," Jensen said, also leaning back in his seat.

"Then ask."

"Even if you had an arrangement, and even if you didn't want her money, why would I believe you're not humiliated by your wife sleeping around on you? Publicly."

"You don't believe that I just don't care."

"You must have loved her at one time."

Padalecki snorted. "You'd think that, wouldn't you? But no, I actually married her because she was pregnant. And I stayed because I wanted a stable environment for my son to grow up in. Besides, I never cared that much about who she slept with, as long as it wasn't me."

"Say what?" Jensen stared at him. "You're joking."

"No. I am not." Padalecki's eyes were on his, boring into him.

Jensen felt like he was missing something major here. "Finish it."

"I'm gay, okay? I spent so much of my time in high school working to get a scholarship out of San Antonio that I didn't really have time to date."

Of course Padalecki was gay. Because Jensen could not catch a break no matter what he did.

"You are not going to tell me that you never had a date in high school." Padalecki was just too good-looking to believe that.

Padalecki laughed. "I mean, I did. But how was I supposed to know that kissing a girl wasn't supposed to leave me feeling like I was missing something?" He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I was seventeen and I had virtually no experience when I met Katie at one of those freshman introduction dances."

He fell silent for a count or two. "Jesus. She was sixteen and knew fresh meat when she saw it. That's what she liked about me. I didn't have a clue. Then she got pregnant with my kid, and that was all there was to that."

Jensen nodded. "When did you figure it out?"

"After I slept with her for a while and I was enjoying it less, not more." He shrugged. "As I said, I had nothing to compare it to."

Still, Jensen thought, he should have realized. Even if he hadn't ever done anything about it, Jensen had always known what he was. "And then?"

"We were married. We agreed to go our own ways. Discreetly. But Katie didn't know the meaning of the word."

"Does your father-in-law know about this?"

"Yes. All of it. When I was finishing up my BS in business, I told him I was going to leave with Ryan. He offered to pay for the MBA, if I went to work for him. He said he'd turn over the reins to me and let me run the show."

"Just like that?"

"We spent a lot of time talking about what I wanted to do with the company. He had had enough. He wanted to run the cattle ranch and go fishing with his grandson."

"That doesn't sound like a corporate guy." But Jensen knew that already. It had been DJ Cassidy's grandfather who had built the cattle empire and his father who built the business into a worldwide corporation.

"I'm more the corporate type than he is." Padalecki took another sip of his coffee. "Is there anything else you want to know?"

Jensen wanted to know what his mouth tasted like. What his skin smelled like. What it felt like to fuck and be fucked by him. "No. I think that covers it."

"Good." Padalecki smiled, his dimples coming out. "Am I still a suspect?"

"Does it matter that much?" Jensen tried to sound disinterested, but the look in Padalecki's eyes caught him and he swallowed hard.

"Yeah, it kind of does. If I'm a suspect, you probably won't go out with me." And Padalecki smiled, his dimples showing.

No man should be that adorable. Jensen choked. "What? Why would you think --"

His smiled turned smug. "I'm not stupid. I can see when someone thinks I'm attractive."

Damn. He couldn't quite believe that he'd been that obvious about his attraction. Then again, it didn't matter. He forced himself to meet Padalecki's eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you think you know about me, but I'm not --" He couldn't quite bring himself to lie. "I won't date a suspect."

The look in Padalecki's eyes said he didn't believe what Jensen just said. "I didn't think I was still a suspect."

"Even if you aren't a suspect, you're still a person of interest to the case. And could become a suspect again before we close the case." He sounded breathless. Jensen needed to get out of there as soon as possible, but he couldn't quite move yet.

"Chill out, dude. It's fine. I thought I saw something that I obviously didn't. I'm sorry."

Jensen didn't allow himself to close his eyes or sigh, though there was nothing he could do about the blush. He managed a small smile. "No problem. Really."

With one more hard look, Padalecki stood and tossed a couple of bills onto the table. "I've got to get home."

The waitress came by and smiled. "See you later, Jared."

"See you, Patty. Thanks," Padalecki said, and left. The bell on the door rang as he pushed through it.

Jared took a deep drink of his bourbon, closing his eyes, and leaning back on the soft brown leather sofa. Sadly, this was one of the only truly comfortable rooms in the house. DJ's wife had decorated the rest of the house in white and cream, with the most uncomfortable, fussy furniture Jared had ever had the misfortune to sit on.

When he'd first come to live here, he'd felt so out of place in most of the house. As the years went on, it got better, easier to live there. But DJ had never redecorated; he just replaced everything there with more of the same so it never changed.

Jared sighed.

What the hell had he been thinking to have that cop meet him at the diner? Oh, he knew himself well enough to know the answer to that. Especially now. Jesus.

This was already becoming a clusterfuck. First Katie, then meeting Jensen. Why now? And then Jensen being the detective on Katie's murder case just made it all the more so.

The light blinked on in the study. "Are you okay, son?" DJ's voice was sleepy.

"Yeah, just thinking." He took another sip of his drink.

"There was nothing you could have done." DJ poured himself a drink and sat beside him. "I loved that girl, but no one could control her."

"I know. I just keep thinking that maybe if we'd actually split up, it would have worked out better for both of us." Because if he regretted anything, it was that Katie wanted to be free of him and he didn't care enough to fight for it.

"You can't be over-thinking it now. It's done." DJ ran his hand through his long hair and let out a sad sigh. "I always knew how it would end. I just kept hoping that she might change."

"Things don't change unless we make them change. And we didn't let her." Jared closed his eyes.

If he'd been any kind of decent man, he wouldn't have let this go on so long. But it had been too easy to ignore. Too easy to let himself be taken care of.

"I don't know, son. If she wanted out that bad, I wouldn't have said anything. She made her choices."

That was too easy to say now. If Katie had wanted to leave, she would have had to fight to get out. And they both knew it. On the other hand, she never even asked. "But I can have regrets."

"I can, too. And I do," DJ said, and took another sip. "I'm not sorry I made her marry you. At the time, she needed that."

Jared put a hand on DJ's thin arm and squeezed a bit. "You did what you thought was right. That's all anyone can ask for."

"Where were you earlier?"

"Went to meet that detective at Sullivan's diner."

DJ gave him a strange look. "Why would you do that?"

"I wanted to explain about me. Going to him seemed like a good idea." It put him in control of where and when. And that seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Whatever you think is best. I'd avoid all of them. That other one, he seemed downright hostile."

"Yeah, I don't know what I did to him. Far as I know, I never met him before." It just wasn't that often that someone took such an active dislike to Jared.

"I'm sure it's because he thinks you're guilty of murdering Katie."

"Maybe." That seemed the most likely answer. That, or he had his own interest in Detective Jensen Ackles.

"You want to tell me why the fuck I'm sitting here with you in this dive instead of home having my evil way with Mary Anne Sinclair?" Chris tipped his chair back as took a sip of his beer.

Even if there was sawdust on the floor, his local bar wasn't a dive. The music was good, and the beer was cold. "For one thing, Mary Anne is too good for you. And for another, I know she went home before I called you." Jensen started to peel the label off the bottle he was holding.

"True. But I was going to give her a call later."

"Right." Jensen snorted. "So Padalecki asked me to meet him at Sullivan's earlier."

The legs of Chris' chair hit the floor. "Seriously? And you didn't call me? Dude, what were you thinking? That guy could be dangerous."

Oh, he was dangerous. Just not in the way that Chris thought. "He wanted to convince me he wasn't involved with his wife's murder."

"So did he manage to do that?" Chris asked, his eyebrow raised.

"Said he didn't care who she slept with because he was gay." Jensen sighed. He believed Padalecki.

Chris whistled through his teeth. "Fuck! No way. How'd he get that past the father-in-law?"

"He didn't say. Just that Cassidy knew." Jensen explained the rest.

"I knew there was something there. Something he was hiding," Chris finally said.

"As long as he stayed with her, no one questioned him." Jensen could understand doing that. If everyone thought you were married, they wouldn't automatically think you were gay even if you went to places you shouldn't. "They never connected the dots."

"And since the father-in-law knew, then there was no problem there." Chris tipped his chair back again. "What else did he say?"

Jensen took a long pull on his beer. "He asked me out."

After a bark of laughter, Chris smirked at him. "Ah. So we come to the real reason for this visit."

"Chris--"

"I'm assuming you said no and then freaked out."

Jensen wished he could resent Chris' attitude, but he was right. That didn't mean he had to admit it, though. "I don't date suspects." No matter how cute they were or how deep their dimples were. Or how much he really did want to.

Chris tilted his head and smirked. "I'm pretty sure you don't think he's a suspect. Pretty sure you never did."

Jensen scowled back at him. "He stands to inherit a couple of million dollars from Katie Cassidy's trust fund."

"Dude, you just finished saying that didn't matter. Still, I guess it'll wait until the investigation is finished." Clearly, Chris was delusional, or more so than usual.

"More like never, man." Jensen shot him a look. "Don't push me."

Chris sighed. "How do you live with that, man?"

"Just fine, thanks." Jensen stood up. He probably shouldn't have called Chris. But Chris' friendship was one of the things that grounded him. "I've got to go. We need to see if we can finally find Varse tomorrow. And the rest of Katie's girlfriends."

Jensen didn't like the sad look Chris shot his way. "You might think about not hiding from yourself quite so much."

It wasn't the first time he'd said something like that. Jensen shook his head. "I need to get some sleep."

"Why am I here?"

"Cause you're my partner," was the only possible answer.

The next morning they had Michael Varse picked up at his office. He and Chris kept Varse waiting in the interview room for about thirty minutes -- just long enough to make him nervous.

"Mr. Varse, I'm Detective Ackles and this is my partner, Detective Kane. We've been looking for you." Jensen sat down at the table, and Chris stood with his arms folded across his chest, not saying anything.

Varse looked up, his hands folded on the table. He was dressed in a rumpled gray suit. "I was out of town. At a conference for work."

"Your office secretary didn't know where you were when we talked to her yesterday," Chris said.

Varse just shrugged, unconcerned. "She never knows anything. Until I turn my travel voucher in, she won't remember that I was out. Did you talk to my supervisor?"

"She was out of the office as well."

They could have asked to talk to someone else, but the secretary hadn't seemed uninformed.

"Great. Okay. What did you want to see me for that I had to be picked up in a damned police cruiser?" Varse put his hands flat on the table and they shook slightly. "Do I need a lawyer?"

"Do you know this woman?" Jensen laid the picture of Katie down in front of him.

"Yeah. I read that she was murdered yesterday morning. Man, that just blows." He took a long breath and let it out slowly.

"Do you want to tell us about your relationship with Ms. Cassidy?" Jensen asked, watching Varse's reaction.

"Not that much to tell. She and I had a thing for a while. Then she dumped me without a fucking reason." His face was angry, but not with the suppressed rage that Jensen would have expected if he'd murdered her. Mostly Varse looked sad -- much more so than Padalecki.

"And how did you feel about that?" Jensen asked. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for with this guy, but he expected something...more.

"What do you think? I was pretty disappointed."

Everything they'd heard said that was an understatement. The guy was all over the place emotionally. "Did she promise to leave her husband for you?" Jensen asked.

"Not in so many words, but everyone knows she's unhappy with him. I would have made her happy." He sighed. "She never got that."

Chris tilted his head and said, "And of course, you tried to tell her that, right?"

"Right." Varse nodded. "More than once. But she wasn't listening."

"So you bided your time and waited for her?"

"Not a chance of that. I've gone on with my life," Varse said. "Wasn't going to wait for her." Something had changed in his tone.

Jensen looked at Chris.

"So, you've dated other people since then?" Chris asked.

Varse shook his head. "Haven't really met anyone else. Are we done here?"

"When was the last time you saw Ms. Cassidy?"

"Probably a month. I saw her in a bar -- Hill's."

"Did you try to talk to her?"

"Might've said hello. But she was with someone else."

"This man?" Jensen asked. He put down the picture of Banks.

Varse spent a moment or two studying the photo. "Could be. I don't remember. I thought about warning the guy she was with, but I didn't say anything."

After Varse left, Chris set a cup of coffee on Jensen's desk. "You know, you could at least make it taste better with cream and sugar."

"I like it black," Jensen said, taking a sip. Afternoon coffee was a requirement of life, the stronger the better. "What do you think of Varse?"

"Not so much." Chris rubbed the back of his neck. "Doesn't strike me as the stalker killer type. And I just talked to his boss. He was on a business trip. I still think it was Padalecki."

"I'm sure you do, man. We got nothing to pin it on him. He'll be here in a second to ID the body."

"Speak of the devil," Chris muttered, nodding toward the door.

Padalecki stood there, wearing a dark suit and boots. He looked huge and devastating. There was some part of Jensen that wanted to run his hands over the suit and then under it, but that part wasn't in control. He stood. "Mr. Padalecki. Thank you for coming down."

"Detectives," Padalecki said, nodding his head. "Can we get this over with?"

Jensen held out his hand. "This way." He led Padalecki toward the elevator.

The ID was quick. Padalecki hissed "Fuck." And nodded. Then he walked away. It was a common reaction. He caught up with Padalecki at the elevator.

"I have a few more questions --"

"Not right now. I'm sorry. I need to get back to work. And I need to finish up the arrangements." He wasn't quite as casual as he'd been earlier. Maybe it took a while for it to catch up with him.

"All right," Jensen said as they stepped into the elevator. "We can do it tomorrow."

"Thanks."

"Mrs. Morgan, thank you for seeing me." Jensen followed a uniformed maid into a formal living room. Chris was interviewing another of Cassidy's friends.

"You said you wanted to talk about Katie." Mrs. Morgan's voice trembled. Of all the people they'd talked to, she was the first one who seemed genuinely distraught over Cassidy's death.

"I understand you were good friends with her?" Jensen asked as she motioned for him to sit down on the white-on-white sofa.

"We've been best friends since grade school." She dabbed her eyes with a lace handkerchief. "I just can't believe she's gone. Why I just talked to her the other day."

"When was that?"

"The night before...," she said and sniffed daintily.

"Mrs. Morgan, Did she mention anything strange or out of the ordinary"

"Oh, please call me Allison." She sniffed again. "Mrs. Morgan is so formal. But no, she didn't say anything about, well, anything. We just talked about the sale going on at Saks in Austin and made some tentative plans to go there this weekend."

"Did she mention George Banks?"

Her brow creased. "Wasn't that the guy she was with when...?"

Jensen nodded.

"She didn't really mention him, either. But she doesn't talk about...them." Allison blew her nose.

"Was she upset or worried."

"Not any more than usual." She shrugged again. "I don't think Katie was very happy with how things had turned out in her life."

"How do you mean?"

"I think, and this is just my opinion, she didn't like her life."

Given what they knew about it, Jensen could buy that. "Did she want to do something about it?"

"She talked about maybe going to work for her daddy's company. But she only finished high school because her daddy made them give her a diploma."

Jensen raised an eyebrow at that.

"I know. I think she just wanted to be closer to Jared. He spends most of his time at work."

That was a twist. "She had feelings for Jared?"

Allison nodded. "I don't guess it matters much now, but yeah. She was kind of heartbroken when he rejected her."

"He rejected her?"

"A year or two after Ryan was born, he said he didn't want to sleep with her anymore." Allison said it as if there were more to it than that.

"Do you know why he suddenly stopped sleeping with her?" Though by now, Jensen could guess. "Katie Cassidy was a good-looking woman."

She shook her head, "I'm sure I don't know why." But Allison was a really bad liar.

"Are you sure, Allison? It could be important to the case. Could help us catch whoever did this to Katie."

Allison looked down. "I'm pretty sure that Jared is gay. Katie didn't tell me in so many words, but she implied that was why. And Katie was so hurt by it."

Jensen didn't say anything to that. It was a given.

"I just can't imagine how she must have felt to have the guy she loved decide he's gay after having sex with her for a few years."

"I'm sure it was very difficult for her," Jensen said. But he suspected that wasn't the half of it. "So, after she found out, she took up her old ways of running around?"

"More like found new ways. She was always a bit wild, but she didn't sleep around like she's been doing before Jared."

"She could have divorced him."

"I told her that. And you know, it would have been the best thing for both of them. But her daddy was adamant that she not break up the family. Probably because DJ had such a hard time when Kadie Mae died. She was Katie's mama."

"Getting back to Katie, she had a trust fund. Why did she have to listen to her daddy?"

"But it was only last year that it was turned over to her. By then, she and Jared had settled into a routine, I guess you could say."

"Do you think she still had feelings for Padalecki?"

"I think she might have. She wasn't feeling much for the guys she was dating."

"Do you think Padalecki knew about her feelings for him?" From everything Padalecki had and hadn't said, Jensen would be surprised if the guy had noticed anything about his wife's feelings.

"Probably not. Katie stopped talking to him after rejected her." Allison sighed. "To be fair to him, he probably didn't have a clue. She said more than once that she was going to divorce him as soon as she got her hands on her trust fund."

"He was okay with that? With her leaving?"

"I don't think he cared about anything other than work. And Ryan. He was a good daddy. Oh, and I think he liked DJ well enough. But Katie, I don't think he thought about her at all."

"Do you think he killed her?"

She was quiet for a moment. "No. I just don't see him doing something like that. I think they both just wanted to be free of each other. But not that way."

"So," Chris said, sitting down at his desk across from Jensen. "Both of Katie's friends said the same thing. She still loved Padalecki, but she given up hope of getting him back, and wanted out of the relationship."

"Yeah, they all back up what Allison Morgan said." Jensen made a couple of notes on the report by hand. He'd type them in later. "Rodriguez called and said he was going to canvas the motel again. Says something was bothering him."

"He's got good instincts." Chris was quiet for a couple of minutes typing into the report form. "I don't think Padalecki wanted out enough to kill her. If he actually did do it, which I admit looks doubtful, it was for the money."

"I wonder why he stayed." Because Jensen couldn't imagine being in that situation and not wanting out of it. Badly.

"I suppose people stay in bad situations for a lot of reasons. No one was abusing him or his kid. There wasn't a lot of impetus to leave." Chris wrote another couple of sentences on his report.

"He couldn't date who he wanted to. He had to have been worried about his reputation, especially given his wife's activities --"

Chris looked up. "Not everyone worries about being gay. Lots of folks accept it and move on."

Jensen gritted his teeth. "It's not like you're gay. So how would you know?"

"Some of my best friends are gay," Chris said with a smile.

Jensen cringed. "Fuck you."

"Not so much. Jen --"

"No. We are not going there." Or anywhere. Ever. If only he could get Chris to stop bringing it up.

"Tell me you don't think he's attractive."

"What part of suspect don't you get?"

"The part where you're lying to yourself."

It seemed like a personal affront to Chris that he didn't want to talk about being gay. Oh, Jensen knew what he was, but he wasn't going to do anything or say anything about it, no matter how much Chris nagged him. Or how much he might want to. The price was too damned high. "Do we need to discuss this now?" It was time to go home and have a beer and let this day and this conversation be done.

"You need to face it."

"Not today, okay." Jensen turned off his computer. "Tonight, I'm just going to go home. And tomorrow, we're going to try again to figure out who killed Katie Cassidy and George Banks."

Jensen parked his car at the curb in front of his house and yawned as he pushed open the car door. He shuffled up the walk, pulling his keys out of his pocket. The grass needed to be cut before this weekend's barbeque, but not tonight. A hot shower, and then a cold beer, and then --

"You know, you're not paying a bit of attention."

Even distracted, Jensen had his weapon drawn and pointed at the porch swing where Jared Padalecki was sitting with his hands in his lap.

"Jesus H. Christ!" Jensen holstered his gun. "Startling an armed cop is always a bad idea."

"Sorry," Padalecki said, standing up and moving toward him.

Oh, this was not what he needed right now. He should probably walk away -- or even better, run away -- but this was his damned house. Instead, he watched as Jared came to stand beside him, his body moving with more grace than a man his size should have.

"How did you know where I lived?" Was probably not the brightest thing he'd ever said to anyone.

Padalecki smiled. "I looked it up on the internet."

"I shouldn't be listed." But really, that was a stupid thing to say. You could easily find just about anything you wanted there.

"Only if you don't know where to look," Padalecki said, mildly.

They shouldn't be doing this on his front porch. "Why are you here?" Jensen asked as he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

He waved Padalecki into the living room. "Have a seat." It was a far cry from the Cassidy ranch, but it was his home.

Padalecki sat on the faded brown sofa, leaning back against the overstuffed cushions. "I wish the couches at home were this comfortable."

There were at least a hundred responses Jensen could make to that, but he just kept his mouth closed and nodded. Even if this guy had essentially barged into his house, his momma didn't raise him to be rude to a guest. "Can I get you a drink? A beer?"

"A beer, thanks."

Jensen retrieved it for him.

"You're not having one?" Padalecki frowned.

"Apparently, I'm still on duty." And that wasn't doing much for his mood.

The silenced stretched out, and Jensen tried not to watch as Padalecki took a long pull from the bottle.

"You were going to tell me why you are here?" Jensen sat down in the chair opposite the sofa.

"I just wanted to talk to you some more about the investigation. To see if you had any questions for me." Padalecki smiled at him, and Jensen's heart started to pound. Did he have to have dimples? Or be so tall? Or well built? Or so damned cute?

"Look, Mr. Padalecki, I am tired. It's already been a damnably long day --"

"Why don't you call me Jared?"

"Because it wouldn't be ethical. And unless you have something urgent, I think we can do this tomorrow? Preferably at the precinct." Maybe with Chris there. Maybe without Padalecki smelling so damned good.

"Maybe I have some information that's too important to wait." But if he had, he wouldn't have shown up here like this.

"Do you?" Jensen asked.

"No. I just wanted to see you." He kind of ducked his head when he said it, and no, it wasn't too adorable for words.

For a second, Jensen's breath caught. But he couldn't do this. "You shouldn't be here." He stood up and moved toward the door.

Padalecki stood too and moved toward Jensen, right into his personal space. It was all Jensen could do to stand his ground and not take a step back. But the day hadn't dawned when he was going to let anyone, suspect or not, intimidate him.

"I'm sorry to have barged into your home," Padalecki whispered. Close. Too damned close.

Jensen closed his eyes. "Oh, please." He'd meant it be sarcastic, but it came out strangled. He sounded...he didn't even know, definitely not like he was in control of the situation.

"Please what?" Padalecki voice was soft, and easy.

And then there was a huge warm hand on his face, and Jensen didn't need to open his eyes to know what was coming. There were a hundred, maybe a thousand reasons why this was a piss-poor idea, but in that moment, Jensen couldn't think of any of them. He tilted his head slightly, and Jared took that as an invitation.

His mouth molded perfectly to Jensen's, as if it had been created just for that purpose. Jared's tongue moved along his closed lips, making promises that Jensen was afraid he'd keep.

After a second or two, Jensen couldn't keep his mouth closed, and he allowed himself to be invaded. Those big hands slid along his back, and Jensen leaned into them. It didn't matter if it were wrong or right, or that maybe he shouldn't be doing it at all. No, all that mattered was how good it felt to be held and kissed.

Jensen made a strangled sound as Jared pulled back. "God. Please."

Jared leaned down and kissed him again, harder, with more intent. Jensen slid his hands into Jared's hair and then down his back, pulling him even closer. The hard muscles under his fingers were a temptation like none he'd ever known. He wanted Jared, wanted to lay him out and touch him, to be touched in return. He wanted more than that, too.

Oh, Jesus, what was he doing?

Jensen pushed him away and stumbled back a step, taking several breaths before he could speak. "What part of no didn't you get last time?"

"The part where you were kissing me. But clearly, the timing isn't right yet." Jared didn't seem upset by the rejection. Indeed, he looked as if he'd expected it.

"You're not going to argue?" Jensen asked, still sounding way too breathless.

Jared shook his head. "Nope. I know when to retreat. I'll see you in the morning at the station."

After the door closed softly, Jensen touched his mouth. What the fuck had just happened?

He stood there for a moment, shaking, and then took a breath. Okay. Fine. Let it go. He got himself a beer and sat down on the couch to watch what was left of the game. As much as he tried to concentrate, it was impossible to follow what was going on. The situation with Padalecki was such an enormous clusterfuck he had no idea what he would be able to do to mitigate it.

A half an hour went by before he turned the game off without knowing the score. He was too tired to think. What he needed was to sleep. Still half-hard, he climbed into bed, hoping he could just sleep it off. No such luck. As soon as his head touched his pillow, Jared's face filled his mind.

Man, Jared had looked good tonight. Tall. Huge. Jensen wanted to touch him again. To run his hands down his chest, and over his ass, and down his long, long legs. As much as it terrified him to want anyone that badly, it also filled him with a kind of wonder he'd never allowed himself to feel.

He slipped off his pajama bottoms and pulled the t-shirt over his head. The soft cotton of his sheet felt good against his bare skin.

He ran his hands down his chest, just touching before he let his fingers run over his nipples, plucking softly. The fantasy that wove through his mind was all about Jared. His big warm hands on Jensen's body. He reached into his night stand for the lube and poured some on both hands.

He gripped his hard cock with one hand, and slid two fingers of the other inside his ass. He sighed, rocking back onto his hand then thrusting forward.

It felt good -- great, even. But somehow, tonight, it just wasn't enough. There was more out there, and he wanted it. Wanted to taste and touch and fuck and be fucked by it. Closing his eyes, he gave himself up to the steady rhythm of his own hands. It didn't take long; fire danced down his nerves, and his body released the pent-up tension.

He sighed as he came, relaxing back into the bedding. Without even bothering to clean up, he turned over and let sleep overtake him. It wasn't perfect, but it was his life.

"We're going to see the rest of Katie's girlfriends today? " Chris asked.

"Yeah. The last two of George Banks's colleagues get back into town today, too." Jensen pulled the addresses off the printer and gave half to Chris.

"I'll meet you back here later to compare notes after lunch?" Without waiting for a reply, Chris put on his jacket and was gone.

Just as Jensen was about to leave as well, he saw Jared coming toward him. The kiss from last night played out in his mind and he fought not to blush. His heart started to pound when Jared smiled at him. Jensen took a breath. "Mr. Padalecki, what can I do for you?"

"I actually have some information for you today," Jared said, smiling.

"Let's go into the conference room?" Jensen suggested, holding out a hand in that direction. Whatever it was, they needed some privacy, that much was a given.

Once the door closed behind them, Jensen turned to face Jared. And oh, God, maybe he shouldn't have. The suit looked amazing on Jared, showing off his huge shoulders and narrow hips. Jared's body was an invitation for Jensen's hands to explore. He shoved his fists into his pockets. "What's so important you came all the way down here? You could have called."

Jared took two steps closer to Jensen than he needed to be, just invading his personal space. "There are any number of things I could say to that. But the truth is, I'm just being civic-minded."

Jensen's stomach dropped, and he had to fight to keep his eyes open and his breath steady.

"I assume you want the information about the case." Jared hadn't stepped back.

And Jensen didn't want to give up any more ground. "What information do you have for us?"

"George Banks used to work for Cassidy Energy. In accounting. He was fired for trying to embezzle money."

"Oh, really?" That was actually interesting. If he needed or wanted money that badly, maybe he was doing something else illegal to get it.

Jared took a folder out of his briefcase and handed it to Jared. "This is what we have in our files on him. I was thinking there might be a connection between him trying to steal money a year ago and getting killed now."

As much as it was Jensen's job to make those connections, Banks hadn't been their focus. They had all assumed that Katie had been the target and Banks the bystander. "Do you know anything about him? Like what he might have needed the money for?"

"No. Nothing. I don't think I ever even met him." Jared didn't sound all that sure about that.

"You don't know?"

Jared shook his head. "I don't remember everyone I meet. And there are hundreds of employees at Cassidy. It took a couple of days for me to place his name or I would have said something sooner."

"We'll check this out. If he had debts, they didn't show up on the credit check we did." Jensen would give a few people he knew a call and see what they could come up with. "Thank you for the information." He started for the door.

"It comes at a price."

All the muscles in Jensen's back tensed at once. "And what would that be?"

"Dinner tonight. Out." Before he could object, Jared held up his hand. "Not a date, just -- dinner."

He shouldn't. It was a breach of ethics to date a suspect. But they'd pretty much ruled him out as a suspect. And Jared had just said it wasn't a date. And Jensen wanted to. Maybe he needed to. "All right. Just dinner. This is not a date."

As soon as Jared left, Jensen read the file and then pulled his laptop out. The data didn't match what they'd found out about Banks.

Later in the afternoon, Chris came back slumped into his desk chair. "You want to get a late lunch?"

Jensen shook his head. "Nope. Busy. Padalecki came by with a folder on Banks."

"Where did he get that?" And Jesus, Chris still sounded suspicious.

Jensen explained about Banks working for Cassidy Energy and the whole embezzling.

"At Cassidy, he used a different social security number as well as a different middle name."

"I can tell by your expression we got a hit on the other one?"

"Yeah. Seems Mr. Banks has had some serious financial trouble."

"Say what? How serious?"

"He was in debt up to his ears. Seriously. He also had several jobs in the last year and half since he was fired from Cassidy."

"Well, fuck. That puts a completely different spin on things, doesn't it?"

Jensen laughed. "You could say that. We need to rethink this."

One of the guys from the unit walked by on his way out and said good night. "Good night," Chris called.

"I'm going to stay and see what else I can find out," Jensen said. Admittedly, part of him was looking for an excuse.

"Nope. Let me do it. You've been here late all week. Send me the file and then get out of here." Chris was already reaching for the paper file.

As much as Jensen wanted to argue, to say he'd stay, the truth was he didn't really want to cancel on Jared. He saved the file and emailed it to Chris, then stood up. "Okay. I'll let you look at it."

Chris shot him a look, but took the file. "Maybe I'll find something else."

Jensen looked at himself in the full-length mirror on his closet door and grimaced. He really needed to get some casual clothes that weren't ragged jeans and old t-shirts. Not that it mattered. This wasn't a date. And Jared wasn't going to care what he was wearing.

The doorbell made him jump. He laughed at himself as walked out of his bedroom and down the stairs.

Shaking his head at his own stupidity, he opened the door. And forgot how to breathe. Oh fuck. Jared stood there dressed in blue jeans that showed off his narrow hips and a light blue polo shirt that he filled out perfectly. He looked...Jensen didn't have enough adjectives in his head to describe how good he looked.

Jensen closed his mouth and tried to push the image out of his mind. But Jared was right in front of him, smiling for all he was worth. He stepped back and let Jared into the house.

"Hi," Jared said, and then looked closer. "You okay, man?"

"What? Yeah. Fine." Jensen hated it that he stammered. He took a breath and faced Jared. "We should go." They needed to get this evening over with as soon as possible.

"Sure. I thought I'd drive since I know where we're going." Jared put his hand on the doorknob.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Jensen asked as he locked the door.

"I thought we'd do steaks."

Okay, so that wasn't going to be so bad. He'd been half afraid they'd end up at some high-end restaurant where he'd be totally out of place. Jensen could always eat a steak.

He stopped halfway to the curb. There was a limo parked in front of his house. A big, fat-assed black limo with tinted windows and a uniformed driver. "I thought you said you'd drive," Jensen choked out.

Jared smiled. "I meant I'd have us driven. Then we don't have to worry about how much we drink."

"You're going to try and get me drunk?" Jensen wanted to laugh. Or cry. This was going to be a disaster.

"Of course not," Jared said, smiling. He held the door open. "Why don't you get in?"

Oh, he was not sure about this. The only other time he'd ridden in a limo had been his grandmother's funeral. This wasn't quite the same thing. Not at all, but he got in anyway because there didn't seem to be anything he could do to convince himself not to.

The interior was every bit as luxurious as he'd thought it would be. Deep leather seats and enough room to stretch his legs out completely and not hit the back of the front seat.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Jensen asked. Maybe it would be a short drive.

"Austin."

"I've never heard of it." And he thought he knew most of the major restaurants in Waco.

"It's the capital of Texas."

"I did know that. I meant --"

Jared just smiled.

"There aren't any good steaks to be had in Waco?"

"This place is special."

And no one would know him or Jared there. "It would have to be to drive an hour and a half to go to it."

"The company's good, too." Jared's smile widened. "Do you want a beer?"

"Of course you have a refrigerator in this thing." Jensen shook his head. This was a ridiculous display of wealth. He wasn't sure how he felt about it, either. Sure, he'd thought about what it would be like to have money to burn, most people did, but this was a whole other planet from the one he lived on.

Jared handed him a beer. "Have you found anything yet?"

"You know I can't talk about the case." What Jensen wanted to talk about was why Jared was doing this. It seemed a long way to go for a seduction that totally wasn't going to happen.

"Why don't you tell me about yourself?" Jared asked with a smile.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one asking questions?" Because he needed to keep reminding Jared, and maybe himself too, that this wasn't a date. And it really wasn't a seduction.

"Didn't your mama ever tell you not to answer a question with another question?" Jared's tone was sweet with a hint of amusement behind it. "Where were you born?"

"Dallas." There was a part of him that wanted to ask a few questions himself, but they weren't about where Jared was born.

"How'd you end up here?" Jared asked before Jensen could decide what else he should say.

"After college, I didn't want to go back to Dallas. And there was an opening here. Plus Chris was here already."

"Your partner? You're friends with him?" Jared asked. Why should that be a surprise? And why would it make Jared's shoulders go stiff?

"Since junior high." Jensen took a pull on his beer. "Is there something specific you want to know?"

"Everything about you." Jared leaned back against the plush leather seat. "Anything you want to tell me."

Jensen's stomach twisted a little, but not in a bad way. "That's a tall order. And really, not that interesting."

"I don't know about that." Jared smiled, and his dimples showed. "I think you're very interesting."

No. No. He couldn't be charmed by Jared. It was too damned dangerous. "Then let's not play twenty questions, okay. We're not on a date and we're not going on a date."

If he'd just cut Jared off at the knees, then why was he still smiling like that? "Feel better?" Jared asked.

He was losing control of this situation, again -- if he had ever had it to start with. What possessed him to agree to this? "Look, can't we just go somewhere local?"

"We're already halfway there. Am I making you nervous?" Clearly the idea pleased Jared for some reason.

"Not so much. I..." What? What could he say? That Jared's very presence made him want things he had no business wanting? That he was inches away from allowing himself to run his hands down Jared's hard thighs and bury his face in Jared's chest? Jensen cleared his throat. "Look, I'm fine. Why don't you tell me why we're doing this?"

Jared held his hands out. "I thought it would be fun. There's no ulterior motive."

Yeah, right. Jensen didn't believe that for one second. There was always an ulterior motive.

The restaurant was nice enough. The food was very good, and the service was excellent. But there was absolutely no reason to drive all the way to Austin for any of it. Jensen was grateful when they were finally back in the limo headed toward home.

"Allie Morgan called me and told me she'd talked to you," Jared said once they'd hit the highway back to Waco.

Jensen sighed. "I told you I can't --"

"She told me about Katie. I didn't know she felt that way." There was something infinitely sad in his voice.

"Would it have mattered?" Because Jensen couldn't believe that Jared actually cared that much.

Jared ran a hand over his face. "I think that if I'd known, I would have pushed harder for a divorce."

It wasn't any of his business, but Jensen had to ask, "I still don't get why you stayed. I mean --"

"Katie was good to Ryan when she was around. Which admittedly wasn't all that often. DJ and I took care of most of the parenting. It was easier to stay at the house."

Jensen could understand staying in a luxurious house with a staff. "They took care of you and your son. Let you go to work without worrying about him?"

"Pretty much. I had all these ideas for renewable energy for the company. DJ was pleased to let me have free rein." Jared shrugged. "Maybe if I had left when I realized that it wasn't going to work, she wouldn't have felt the need to go out and do what she did all the time."

"You can't know that," Jensen said. And rehashing it now wouldn't help.

"I have to live with the fact I hurt her. I didn't want to, you know. I thought she didn't care about me one way or another. Maybe if she'd said something..." He let out another long sigh. "I wasn't thinking about her, only myself, and of course, Ryan."

"After you told her you were gay, there wasn't anything she could have said or done to change that." Telling Jared wouldn't have gotten her what she wanted and she probably wanted to save what was left of her pride.

"Still..." Jared trailed off. They were quiet for a couple of minutes.

"Can I ask you something personal? Off the record." This was probably a mistake, but Jensen couldn't quite let the thought go.

Jared let out a nervous laugh. "I thought all of this was off the record."

"It is." Jensen waited a beat. He hadn't actually answered.

"What do you want to know?"

"What made you finally realize you had no choice?" Jensen had tried so hard not to be gay, and there was some part of him that still wished he wasn't. He'd never had anyone to ask about it before.

"I had a business ethics teacher who was openly gay." Jared's expression was bittersweet. "I crushed on him so hard. I did every assignment, asked questions in class, and lapped up every single word he said. All without realizing why I was doing it."

"Did you get involved with him?"

"No. He was very good to me, gentle. But he was in a committed relationship."

Jensen wasn't sure why that bothered him. "So, what happened?"

"I figured it out. It was hard to admit. But I would jerk off thinking about him and come so hard that I couldn't see straight. I had to think of him to get it up the last couple of times with Katie."

Jensen understood. He'd done that rather than admit he didn't want to be where he was. "Man, that just blows."

"Yeah. It was a while before I actually did anything about it." Jared sighed. "It was hard to admit what I wanted."

Okay, yeah. Jensen could totally understand that. "But you did, right? Admit it to yourself and to Katie? Even not knowing how it would turn out."

Jared nodded. "I couldn't lie to Katie. All she did was shrug and make some nasty little comment. It didn't seem like she cared at all."

"What about your father-in-law?" Because DJ Cassidy seemed to be the linchpin here.

"I was more nervous about telling him than I was with Katie."

"You cared that much about his opinion?"

"He'd been like the father I'd never had. Oddly, he said that if I didn't divorce Katie and was discreet about it, he was okay with it."

"What did you do about…" Jensen didn't even know how to ask that. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.

"I went to a bar and... well, you know, picked someone up."

"Did you enjoy that?"

Jared looked out the window. "It served a purpose."

"I guess that it did," Jensen said. It had come out more harshly than he'd meant it. But the idea of Jared picking someone up for sex bothered him in a way that he knew was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it.

Jared's eyes flashed. "Judgmental much?"

"I didn't mean it like that," Jensen said. In fact, there were times when Jensen had done the same thing. Though he'd never told anyone about it. Not even Chris. "Did you ever think about risking a relationship?" Jensen had no idea what he'd hoped to get as an answer. It wasn't as if he had any thoughts of a relationship. Not in this town. Not in this lifetime. "I mean, wouldn't it hurt you in your business ventures."

"Renewable energy is slightly more liberal than the old oil barons of the past."

"So you'd do it?"

He looked right at Jensen. "In a heartbeat. If I could find someone who wanted to take the risk with me."

The limo pulled onto his street. Breathing deeply, silently, Jensen tried to calm his pounding heart. It wasn't a big deal. Nothing was going to happen. He'd get out of the car and go into his house and forget this night ever happened.

Jensen didn't look up when Jared touched his wrist. After the last time, no doubt Jared thought he'd be easy. That if he gave Jensen enough to think about that he'd fall right into Jared's arms. But that wasn't going to happen.

And then he looked at Jared. Who the hell was he trying to kid?

Jared's hand cupped his jaw and Jensen tried and failed not to lean into it. This was a slippery slope. Worse yet, he was pretty sure he was too far down it to consider reversing course.

What he needed to do was look away before he could get caught in the light in Jared's eyes. But Jensen was frozen, his eyes glued to Jared's. When Jared's mouth finally closed over his, Jensen moaned softly. Jared's lips were so soft, tasting of beer and steak. All the things that were lush and good in life.

They'd kissed before, but this was different -- slow, sweet. Lush. Jensen's heart hammered painfully against the wall of his chest. He was shaking. Even as he tried to hold back, to hold on, in the end, he let himself fall into the kiss and wallow in it.

Jensen buried a hand in Jared's hair. He opened his mouth wider, his tongue swirling around Jared's, wet and warm. The muscles in Jared's back flexed under Jensen's hand as he shifted on the leather seat.

Jared moved his mouth down Jensen’s chin to his neck, nipping gently. As hot breath and sensation washed over him, Jensen shuddered, his eyes squeezing shut.

Oh it was good. So good. He never wanted to stop kissing Jared. How could anything that felt this good be something he shouldn't be doing? It would get him into trouble, yes, but nothing that felt this wonderful could be wrong.

"Mmm..." Jared murmured. "You taste awesome."

Jensen nodded, his mouth not working. He leaned forward for another kiss and Jared obliged him, but not enough. Not nearly enough. He traced his tongue over Jared’s mouth and moved around his jaw, biting gently. The feeling of stubble scratching against his mouth turned his insides to fire.

After several more long lush kisses, Jared gently pulled back and then pulled his shirt over his head.

Jensen glanced nervously at the panel between the front seat and the back.

"It's sound proof," Jared said, brining Jensen's attention back to him with a hand on his cheek.

Jared's chest was sleekly muscled, his stomach well-defined. When Jensen tried to draw in a breath, it sounded like he was wheezing. He couldn't help himself, he ran his fingers over the tanned hard skin.

Jared let out a little sound of pleasure, and that was all it took for Jensen's mind to shut down completely. He put both hands flat on Jared's chest and pushed him slowly down onto the bench seat. It wasn't nearly big enough for the both of them, but Jensen didn't care. He had to touch. Had to taste.

His hands, of their own accord, reached for the snap on Jared's jeans. He eased Jared out of his underwear, palming the length of him.

Jensen didn't have much in the way of experience, but he knew what he liked and what he liked to do. Without any warning, he lowered his mouth to the head of Jared's cock, licking the pre-come from the crown.

Jared moaned, his hips jerking up. The sound went right through Jensen, making his cock ache more.

With his heart beating double-time, he opened his mouth and took in as much of Jared as he could. Not all of him, not by a long shot, but he wrapped his hand around the base and moved it up and down with the rhythm of his bobbing head.

It didn't take long for Jared's hand to touch his head, but Jensen wasn't going to stop, not now. He'd quickly become addicted to the sounds Jared was making, to the earthy smell of Jared's body.

The first taste of come in his mouth was still a surprise, but he swallowed and kept moving until Jared finally stilled.

For a few seconds, Jared lay across the seat, breathing hard. "Wow," Jared said. "Just wow."

Jensen didn't know what to say. He was so hard that he was afraid if he moved at all, he'd come in his pants.

Slowly, Jared raised himself on his hands and leaned into Jensen, kissing him slowly. Jensen made a mewling sound that should not have come out of his mouth. Before he could be humiliated by it, Jared reversed their positions, opening Jensen's shirt and kissing down his chest.

"Please," Jensen moaned when Jared seemed in no hurry to move things along.

"You have a problem there, don't you?" Jared nuzzled the front of his jeans but still made no move to open them.

If Jensen had been in his right mind, he would have been able to think of something other than a moan to get Jared moving.

Finally, Jared opened his pants, and kissed him through the cotton of his underwear. Jensen thrust up into his face, and Jared just laughed.

Jensen whined again. He was so hard he couldn't form thoughts, couldn't move. If Jared didn't stop teasing him, he was going to come without any help at all.

But Jared seemed to realize Jensen had reached the end of his tolerance. He swallowed Jensen all the way down in a single go. Wet heat surrounded Jensen, and it was all he could do not to let loose immediately. One up and then down movement and Jensen was done for; he came hard, groaning.

It took a couple of minutes for Jensen to catch his breath. When he opened his eyes, Jared was leaning over him, smiling. Pleased.

Jensen was okay with that. He should, by all rights, be freaking out. Here he was, lying across the back seat of a limo, half-undressed, having just had sex with a man. A man who was, at the very least, a person of interest in an ongoing murder investigation.

And all he wanted to do was kiss Jared again.

Jared seemed to know what he was thinking. He leaned down and kissed Jensen very softly. "We picked an interesting place for this."

All Jensen could do was nod and groan. "The back of a car. God, it's like high school. A really upscale high school."

Jared kissed him again and started to do up his own clothes. Jensen did the same, tucking and buttoning. When he was done, he reached for the handle of the car, unsure of what to say. Before he could open the door, Jared's hand on his arm stopped him.

"Can I see you tomorrow?" Jared leaned in and pressed a kiss to the side of Jensen's neck.

For a second, Jensen leaned into it. Maybe they had time for more... But no. He nodded. "Yeah. That would be good. Give me a call, okay?" Jensen got out. And did not look at the driver as he walked towards his house.

Jensen went into his house, directly to his bedroom, stripping off his clothes and climbing into the shower. Part of him hated to wash Jared's scent off his skin, but he needed to be clean to sleep.

When he was done, he dried off and got into his bed, resisting the urge to bury himself under his blankets.

God, what had he done?

After all this time and a lifetime of denial, he'd actually given in. It wasn't the sex. That was bad enough, but he'd done that before. Anonymously, of course and with no emotions involved. But this…this was a whole new level of intimacy.

And God, it had been beautiful. He'd loved every second of it. From the earthy smell of Jared's skin to the bittersweet taste of his come, nothing in Jensen's life had been so satisfying.

He wanted to do it again. Preferably as soon as possible. But Jared was going to come at a price that Jensen wasn't sure he could pay. And yet, now that he'd finally tasted what he'd wanted for years, there wasn't any way that he was going to be able to live without it.

He had to have Jared again. And not just his hands and his mouth, either. No. Jensen wanted it all. It was like a gateway drug, and he was going to be an addict.

He turned over and tried to get comfortable. But the bed was hard and cold. He wished that he had asked Jared to spend the night, to help him hold the dark at bay. But it was too soon for that.

Christ, what was he thinking? He turned over again -- and still couldn't find a comfortable position. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He drifted, thinking about the feel of Jared's mouth on his body, the taste of his cock. What would it feel like to have Jared fuck him? Because he wanted that, wanted it more than he wanted his next breath. How could it be wrong?

He pushed the blanket off and glanced at the clock. 3:15. He needed to get up in a few hours.

What the fuck was he going to do? He finally fell asleep without an answer.

Jared set the security alarm and headed toward the library. Even though he was dead on his feet and still wearing his grimy clothes, he wasn't going to sleep without some help.

Surprisingly, the lights were on.

"DJ," he said, "What are you doing up so late?"

DJ raised a tumbler of amber liquid to his lips. "I could ask the same of you. Where were you?"

Jared tried not to bristle at the question. "Out to dinner."

"Kind of late for that." His tone was not even the slightest bit accusatory. Just curious.

But it grated on Jared's nerves anyway. He went to the bar and poured himself a couple of fingers of bourbon. DJ cared about him, he knew that, but that didn't mean he had to answer him. "I didn't realize I had to report to you."

"You don't. But your son missed you at dinner," DJ said. "And you smell like sex."

Jared sat down on the sofa and put his head into his hands. "I know my timing sucks, but…"

"That young cop, right?" It wasn't even a question, really, more of a request for confirmation.

Maybe DJ knew that he'd never felt a pull like the one he felt towards Jensen. "I guess it showed."

"I've never seen you take to anyone like that," DJ said, tossing back the last of his drink. "Where'd you go tonight?"

"Took him to Austin for a steak. In the limo." He knew DJ would understand that.

"Gratuitous display of wealth?"

"Pretty much."

"How'd he take it?"

"About how I'd expected. It made him uncomfortable." It was pretty clear the money issue was going to be a problem between them. But it wasn't going to be the biggest of them.

"You surprised by that?" DJ stood up. "Most people react one of two ways. Your pretty cop will get used to it."

"I don't know what I'm going to do, though." If things worked out the way he was hoping they might, then he was going to have to make some tough decisions. One way or another, Jensen was going to shake the shit out of Jared's life.

"He's that special, then?"

"Yeah." Oh, he was more than special. He had Jared thinking about things he'd never thought he'd find.

DJ leaned against the doorframe. "Enough so that you can live with everyone knowing about you? Speculating on why Katie was the way she was?"

"I don't care so much about everyone. You and Ryan, that's about it." And if it came down to it, he'd live with their objections, better than he'd thought he'd live without Jensen.

"I'll be happy to see you settled and happy." DJ sighed. "I would not be happy to have you and Ryan move out."

That wasn't a promise he could make. "Whatever happens, you'll never have to worry about being part of our lives. I promise you that."

The tension went out of DJ's shoulders, and he straightened up. "I'll see you in the morning."

"'night," Jared said to the already empty room.

"You look like you had a rough night. Did you sleep at all?" Chris asked as he sat down at his desk the next morning.

Jensen fought not to yawn. "What makes you think I didn't sleep?"

Chris raised an eyebrow and waited.

Damn him. "I might have gone out to dinner."

Chris' expression didn't change.

"With Padalecki."

Chris whistled through his teeth. "Fuck. Seriously? You had a date with a murder suspect?"

"He's not actually a suspect anymore. Alibi and all." Jensen didn't mean to sound as defensive as it came out. "And it wasn't a date. It was just dinner." In Austin, with sex afterward.

"Far be it from me to point out that you're splitting hairs." At least Chris was smiling when he said it.

And Jensen could feel the blush stretch across his face. And he didn't even try to meet Chris' eyes.

"No way." Chris sounded something very close to shocked. "Really?"

Jensen couldn't lie to him, but he damned well wasn't going to confirm it. The skin on his cheeks burned. "Let it go, please."

"No. No. This is like the first time I've ever heard you admit -- well, sort of admit -- to doing anything --"

"Please, Chris. Not now." He was just too tired and too strung out for this to happen now. Chris knew him too well.

Something must have gotten through, because Chris sighed. "Okay. But you're going to tell me about this later."

"Fine. What do we have? Anything yet?"

Chris blinked at the subject change, and then nodded. "We got Banks with a serious money problem that didn't show before because it's under an altered social. And Rodriguez hit pay dirt. He found a security cam at the gas station across the street. So, we just got a blue sedan that was at the scene with a guy in a ski mask which no one reported. The security cam has the car coming into the parking lot at 5:00am and leaving again at 5:20."

"Did you look at it?"

"Yeah," Chris said, handing him a CD.

Jensen watched it. "Look," he said, pointing to the guy in the ski mask who was getting out of the car. The picture was too grainy to actually see any details, but the sleeve on the man's shirt pulled up and the edge of a tattoo was showing. "Could be gang related."

"Let's print that and see if we can ID the tat."

"I'm on it."

"I think we might have just gotten another break with this case," Chris said, handing him the photo of the tattoo. "We got a match from the computer recognition on the partial tat we got on the guy getting out of the car at the scene."

Jensen looked at it and the other photo. "Yeah. I don't recognize it."

"Seems Rodriguez knows this group. He's been following them for a while. His brother ran afoul of them in Dallas. Says they're just infiltrating this area, branching out from Dallas," Chris said, sitting in the chair in front of Jensen's desk.

"Yeah? Can we connect this guy to Banks?"

"Rodriguez said he's got a contact with them. He should be back to us shortly."

As if that conjured him, Rodriguez came in. "Banks owed them money and couldn't pay. They got tired of his excuses."

"And Cassidy?" Chris asked.

Rodriguez sighed. "Had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Shit. That sucks," Jensen said.

"Yeah, it sure does." Chris looked over at Rodriguez. "Are they willing to give up the shooter?"

"From what I've heard, they were making an example of Banks. So, I got no idea on that one. Maybe." Rodriguez shrugged.

"Yeah, but they hit Cassidy, too. Which was freakin' sloppy of them," Chris said.

"We got no way to ID them," Rodriguez said. "I'll check around and see if I can find out anything else."

"Thanks, man," Chris said. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. "I'm on my way out, too."

"Another date with Mary Anne?" Jensen gave him a friendly leer, and was surprised when Chris frowned.

"Nah. It wasn't going to work out."

Jensen looked up at that. "What? Why not? You chased her around for six months before she finally said yes. And now after, what, two dates, you're done?"

"I know." Chris let out a sigh. "But it wasn't there. When I kissed her -- no spark. Nothing."

"She feels the same way?" He hoped so, because after that long chase, it didn't seem fair otherwise.

Chris ran a hand over his face, and nodded. "It was all chase and no substance. Again."

"Do you ever think that your standards are too high?" Jensen asked.

"Dude, that is so rich coming from you." He sighed again. "For me, I am not going to settle for less than the real thing."

Jensen might have made a joke about sleeping alone forever, but really, what Chris said was true. "So, where you going?"

"Dinner with David and Jamie. I haven't seen them in a month."

"Give 'em my love." Jensen watched him start to walk away.

"Will do."

Jensen closed his laptop and looked at his watch. Fuck. He was going to be late again. His cell buzzed. "Ackles."

"It's Jared." He cleared his throat. "Do you want to get together later?"

Jensen let out the breath he'd been holding all day without realizing it. "Yeah. Yeah, but it's going to have to be late. I'm meeting someone for dinner."

"Okay, that's good for me, too. I can get Ryan into bed." The answer was easily said, but there was a question in there, too.

Jensen wasn't up for even beginning to discuss his family with Jared. Not yet. "Do you want to come by my house about 8:30-9:00?"

"Sure. I'll see you then."

"You're late," Annie said when he came through the door. She was sprawled out on the couch with the Xbox controller in her hand.

He leaned down to give her a hug and kiss her cheek. "I know. I'm sorry. We got some last-minute information just as I was trying to leave."

"Is it anything you can tell me about?" She always asked, even though he was sure she wasn't all that interested in the details of police work.

"Not really. But it looks like we might be able to wrap up one of our current cases pretty soon." For which he was extremely relieved. He wanted this one over and done with. Then, maybe, he could start to deal with what was going on with him and Jared. But really, he knew there was nowhere for it to go. And no future for them. The ache in his chest notwithstanding, he had to face that soon --

"Jensen?" She snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Where are you?"

"Off somewhere else," he said with a smile he had to force. "Where did you want to go for dinner?"

"How about getting a pizza?"

"You don't want to go out?" Poor graduate student that she was, she was usually happy to have him take her out to dinner.

"Not tonight. I wanted to talk to you about something important." She leaned back, looking up at him, a bit tense.

"What's the problem, baby? Can I help with anything?" Because there was nothing he wouldn't do for his baby sister. Nothing.

"It's me who wants to help you." She kind of smiled as she said it.

That wasn't how it was supposed to be. Looking at her, with that intense stare she had going on, he had a bad feeling about what she might want to say. Jensen sat down next to her. "What are you trying to say?"

She took a long slow breath. "That I've had a couple of long talks with dad."

"About what, exactly?" Because she could not be talking about what it sounded like she might be talking about. And if she were, he was totally not going to discuss it with her. Ever. Under any circumstances. It was too old and too late.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe that subject that we all don't talk about," Annie said.

Jensen closed his eyes. There was no way this was going to happen. "No."

"Jen --"

"No. Just don't. Please don't." Jensen stood and turned away. She was a freakin' psychologist and he'd been half expecting something like this for years now. "We are not going to do this. You cannot be involved."

"Do you really think I'd stop loving you because you're --?"

And no, he knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't. "Please. Don't say it." He put a hand up to forestall her.

She probably thought that it would be okay, that she could make it right between him and his father. But she couldn't. No one could. Besides which, this wasn't her problem. And he'd be damned if he was going to put her in a position where she had to choose.

"Not saying it won't make it any less true." She sat up and folded her arms over her chest. "Really. We need to talk about this."

"God, you sound just like Chris. And really, we do not need to talk about this at all." He wasn't going to take the risk of a full-scale war or, worse, total alienation from his family. Because she might accept it, but the rest of his family would not.

"You know that's another subject we really should talk about."

What the hell was she talking about now? "What has Chris done?"

"One thing at a time," she said, waving her hand. "Look, Jensen. It's not like mom and dad don't know, okay?"

"Of course they don't know." Because if they did know, they wouldn't speak to him anymore. While he might be an adult, he still loved his parents and the rest of his family. He didn't want to lose that.

"Trust me on this. Unlike you, I've actually talked to them about this," she said with a sigh.

"About me? You talked to them about me? How could you do that?" Rage flooded through him and then just as quickly started to dissipate as soon as he looked at her. She was his baby sister. Misguided though she was, she was trying to do her best for him. He let out a breath. "They'll never want to see me again."

"Good Lord, what are you talking about?" she asked, sounding confused. "They've seen you plenty since we first talked about it."

His knees gave out and he sat back down on the couch. "What? What are you talking about?"

"It's not like they didn't know before that, either." Annie put a hand on his arm. "Really. Jensen, It's not the secret you seem to think it is."

It had to be. There was no way things could have changed that much without his knowing about it. "Dad said if he ever caught me doing that again, he'd throw me out and never let me see you or mom again. Ever." He met his sister's eyes. "I believed him."

"You were fifteen. They might have wanted you to like girls, but they aren't stupid. And after you followed Chris to college and then here, I think they figured it out. Even without you ever admitting it."

He stopped breathing for a second. Because he could not have just heard that. "What did you just say?"

Annie looked at him like he was nuts. "What? That you followed Chris to U of T and then here?"

His heart started again with a dull thud, and he had to force himself not to laugh hysterically. "Because he was my best friend."

She just nodded.

"Not for any other reason." Because really, he did love Chris. And maybe at fifteen he might have thought it was something else, but one kiss cured him of that notion.

Annie was looking at him like he was not very bright and she was humoring him. "You were involved with him."

"Not so much."

"Dad caught you."

"It was one kiss. That's all it ever was. Dad caught us and blew up." Even thinking about it now had the power to make his stomach twist.

"You know, he does regret what he said to you that night." Her tone was soft and soothing, as if she really did understand what their father's anger had done to him.

"I didn't know." Jensen didn't believe it either. Because too much time had passed for it to even be a possibility anymore.

"He was planning to say something to you this weekend."

"And you're paving the way."

"Something like that."

"Lucky you." Jensen sighed. "Why now?"

"He and mom want to see you happy. They finally decided they didn't care who it's with. Both he and mom love Chris. They thought it was time to, you know, accept him."

Jensen could tell she didn't get it. "Chris is straight. We've never been involved."

She blinked. "No way. Why did you --"

"Because there were two places hiring when I finished my degree. And I didn't want to live in the same city as mom and dad, so I applied to Waco."

"If Chris is really straight, why did he want to kiss you then? Why hasn't he ever gotten married?"

"He was curious. And I thought...well, never mind what I thought. And he's not married because he's got really piss-poor luck with women." He met her eyes. "Why haven't you found anyone?"

But she just shook her head. "We're not talking about me. We're talking about you."

Or not. "We're not doing that either."

"Jensen --"

He was so totally done with the conversation that it was not even funny anymore. "I can't. Let's order a pizza." He pulled out his cell and punched up the speed dial.

"Twenty minutes," Jensen said, closing his phone.

Annie was sitting with her arms folded over her chest, glaring at him for all she was worth. And it finally struck him that she wasn't a little girl anymore. She really had grown up. When the fuck had that happened?

"You and Chris --" She sounded like she couldn't quite believe it.

"No. Really. I don't know how you thought…what you thought. But no. And let's not talk about it anymore."

"I have to tell mom and dad --"

"How are your classes going?"

She sighed. "The ones I've been TAing? Fine. Almost done. And I'm going to defend my dissertation at the end of the summer." She launched into a story about one of her classes.

He and Annie had made small talk during dinner. She'd tried to bring the subject of their parents up again, but Jensen had cut her off at the pass. It was way too much to think about right now.

Jensen was throwing the pizza remains into the trash when the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," Annie called from the other room.

And he'd just gotten to the edge of the living room in time to see Jared walk in.

Jared looked at Annie and she looked up at him.

"I'm Jared Padalecki." He held out his hand, smiling, dimples out in force. But the smile didn't reach his eyes.

Annie blinked and then smiled brilliantly. "I'm Annie Ackles. Jensen's sister." Her hand was swallowed in Jared's. "I was just leaving."

"Baby, you don't have to go yet," Jensen said, carefully not looking at Jared. His sister was far too perceptive to trust.

"Yeah, I do. I've got a long drive back tonight." She hugged him. "I'll see you on Saturday."

Then she was gone. Leaving him standing in the middle of his living room, facing Jared. And fuck, he looked delicious, edible. Huge and formidable, but tempered with an adorable smile. Last night had only given him the barest hint of what Jared might taste like. And God damn him, he wanted more than that.

"Are you all right?" Jared asked.

What he didn't want right now was to talk. He was all talked out. Besides, if he talked about it, he'd never be able to do it. So, he just nodded.

And amazingly, Jared seemed to understand that. He opened his arms and let Jensen walk right into them. Jensen sighed and rested his head on Jared's shoulder.

"Rough day?" Jared whispered.

"You don't even want to know." Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply, just savoring the masculine smell.

"Yeah, I really do. I want to know everything about you."

That made Jensen smile. "You sound like a chick."

"Because you know so much about chicks," Jared chuckled.

"Fuck you." But he wasn't that far wrong.

"I'd rather fuck you. But I'm flexible on the subject."

All the air left the room, and it was all Jensen could to stay upright and breathing. He felt hot and cold and weak. His chest ached. And he wanted.

And yes, there was some part of him screaming that he should push Jared away, make a run for the door, get out while he still could. But it had already gone too far. Beyond that, he didn't want to stop or to run. He wanted Jared with a bone-deep want that overrode everything else.

Jared put his big hands on Jensen's shoulders and squeezed until Jensen looked up. Then he leaned down and kissed him.

After a second or two of Jared's mouth on his, Jensen's mind shut down. He couldn't think, didn't want to think. Didn't want to know anything other than the feel of Jared's mouth on his, Jared's hands on his body.

Upstairs, on his bed, naked and stretched out under Jared's hands, he gave himself up to what Jared was promising him, gave up a lifetime of saying no. It wasn't perfect. It terrified him, but it exhilarated him, too.

The touch of Jared's hands and mouth only made him hungrier. It was too much and never going to be enough.

He was turned and spread and licked and kissed until he was mewling like a cat. Maybe he should have been humiliated to be so out of control, but Jensen reveled in it, couldn't keep track of what each specific sensation was. No way he could even begin to process it.

Jared's tongue inside him was filthy dirty and the most amazing thing he'd ever known -- until it was replaced by Jared's cock. It burned and he loved it, and then the burn turned to pleasure and he loved it more. Each press of Jared's cock into him lit fire through him, until he couldn't hold on anymore. The world raced by him, lighting him up with pleasure like none he'd ever known.

And then it was done. He lay on his stomach, Jared's hands smoothing across the sweat on his back.

There were no words.

"Things any better now?" Jared's voice broke the silence.

"Yeah, much." Lying in Jared's arms gave him a peace that Jensen could not believe he'd lived without for most of his life.

"Still don't want to talk about what happened with your sister?"

Jensen just wanted to sleep. "I don't even know where to start."

"Why was your sister here tonight?"

"To tell me my father wanted me to be happy."

"Don't most fathers want that?"

"I wouldn't have thought he cared about my happiness." Jensen wanted to leave it there, but that wasn't fair. "My father caught me kissing a boy when I was fifteen. To say he didn't take it well would be something of an understatement?"

Jared tensed. "What did he do?"

Without him saying more than a few words, Jensen could feel Jared's protectiveness. It was sweet, but seriously misguided. Jensen was the protector. "It was like seventeen years ago, there's nothing you can do about it now."

"He's still alive." His tone was flat and dry and deadly.

A warm feeling eased into his chest. What surprised him the most was how much he liked how it made him feel. "Apparently, he regrets what he said."

Jared's body relaxed next to him. "Dare I ask what it was?"

Jensen sighed. "He basically said that if I ever did anything like that again, he'd throw me out and never let me see my family. And it was a long time before he warmed up to me again."

"Betrayal much?"

Jensen had never considered it that. He closed his eyes. Oddly, at the time, he felt his father was right. That what he was, what he wanted, was wrong. "I tried so hard not to want it. I tried to date women and I just couldn't. Finally, I just gave up trying. When it got too bad, I'd go up to Austin for a night."

"Until now." Again with just a few words, Jared managed to convey how important that was to him.

And more than anything, Jensen wanted to give Jared that hope. But he had no idea how this was going to work out. "Why is this happening now?"

"Because this kind of thing always has the worst timing ever. And with you, you know, maybe it's been building for a while." Jared sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Are you leaving?" Jensen tried not to sound hurt.

The look on Jared's face said he was doing the same thing. "Do you want me to?"

"No." Absolutely not.

"I was just going to use the bathroom." He stroked his hand down Jensen's back slowly and then stood and walked across the room to the door.

Jensen's heart beat a little faster. Man, he loved the way Jared's hard muscles moved under his skin. It made him want to touch Jared, to smooth his hands over the tanned flesh, to lick along the ridges of Jared's six-pack stomach.

When Jared came back, he lay down and pulled Jensen into his arms. "I'll have to leave early in the morning. I want to be home when Ryan gets down for breakfast."

"How's he doing?"

Jared shrugged. "Not so well. He's angry and lashing out. He's going to start to see a counselor next week. Until then, I'm spending as much time with him as I can. The funeral is tomorrow."

"What time?"

"11:00. Viewing before that. It's going to be a long day." Jared pulled him closer.

"I'm sure. Would it help or hurt if I came." Obviously, Jensen wanted to do whatever he could to help.

"Seeing you can never hurt me."

Jensen smiled. It was a nice sentiment, but seriously unlikely. "You don't know me very well."

"I'm hoping to change that soon." But Jared sighed. "You know, I wasn't expecting this to happen with us. How is it I meet you during one of the most awful weeks of my life?"

"Didn't you just say it always happens like this?" Jensen asked. "The truth is I wasn't expecting to meet you at all." He still wasn't sure how it had all happened.

"So," Jensen said as he slid into the passenger side of Chris' truck. "What do you know about my whole fucking family thinking I'm involved -- and I mean that romantically -- with you?"

"What makes you think I would know anything about that?" Chris didn't even look at him when he said it, and his cheeks were red.

"Dude, this is me. Annie could not have made that all up out of nowhere." His sister was damned perceptive, but she couldn't have come up with this particular scenario on her own. She had help.

"Fuck. You got to promise not to kill me, okay?" Something in the way he said it made the little hairs on the back of Jensen's neck stand straight up.

On the one hand, this was Chris; on the other, it was his sister. "Not without knowing what you said."

"Okay so it was about ten years ago --"

"Ten years?" Jensen choked. "What the hell --"

"Let me finish. Your sister got it into her head that she wanted…"

"What?"

Chris coughed. "Me."

"The fuck?"

"Seriously. I mean, she was, like, a baby."

"My baby sister," Jensen reiterated just to make sure that Chris understood the gravity of the situation.

"Right. So, I might have implied that the reason I was saying no was that…"

Sweet Jesus, no. He could tell by the look on Chris' face that was exactly what he'd done. Jensen wanted to hit his head on the dashboard. "You told her you were already involved with me?"

He nodded. "I didn't actually say that. I said it was because of you -- as in you'd kill me if I looked at her wrong -- but she took it that way. And then I just never corrected her."

"Because that way, she'd never ask again." He was sure it made perfect sense in Chris' mind.

"'zactly."

How had his life become a TV sitcom? "Except that she still believes it, and so do my parents."

"The hell you say. I though they didn't know about...that." Chis did a complicated hand gesture that Jensen assumed meant gay.

"Seems that they all do know." Jensen looked out the window. "And given my father's reaction when I was a teenager, I wouldn't have thought it was something they'd ever accept."

A big smile crossed Chris' face. "Of course, they know me and they love me."

"You don't care that they think you're a --"

"Gay? Why would that bother me?" Chris shrugged like it didn't matter.

Jensen envied him his casualness. "What if someone at work thought it?"

"We got rules against them doing anything legal-wise. So if they can't fire me for it, then what do I care?"

"They could leave you without backup." Jensen had heard more than one horror story in his life.

"You're not going to leave me without backup. And really, I don't think anyone else would either. They might not like it, but they aren't going to get me killed over it."

How he could be so sure of that, Jensen had no idea. "You really believe that? Because I don't. Cops are notoriously conservative."

"Dude, I wouldn't be working with them if I actually thought that. Sure, some might be assholes, but really, most of them are okay." Chris put the truck in gear.

"It's not that easy," Jensen said.

"Yeah, it is." And that was Chris for you, always wanting to believe the best of people, despite being a cop for all these years.

There was nothing Jensen could even say to that. "The funeral is today at eleven," Jensen said after a couple minutes of silence.

"You're going?" Chris didn't actually sound that surprised.

"I thought I might."

"Things moving along?" The request for information was pretty clear, if tentatively asked.

"I don't know. But...maybe." Jensen looked out the window. "Too soon to tell."

Chris cleared his throat. "Um...do you want them to? Move along that road, I mean?"

He'd never been able to lie to Chris. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. That a problem for you?"

Chris snorted. "I just got done telling you that I didn't care if someone thought I was gay when I was not."

"Not the same thing."

"For the record, then, not only don't I have a problem with it, I'm happy for you. And you really shouldn't even have to ask. If you want, I'll go with you to the funeral."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate it," Jensen said. "First we'd better get to work."

After he and Chris had gotten back from the funeral, Jensen worked on typing up his notes. His desk phone rang. It was an internal call, but they all came up as Waco PD on the display rather than saying who it was. "Ackles," he said into the phone.

"Jen. This is Rodriguez."

"How you doing, man? You gonna come by the house tomorrow for the barbeque?" he asked.

"Yeah. Was planning on it. But I got some news on your shooter. He turned up in a dumpster out back of the motel where Katie Cassidy was murdered."

"Great, another homicide." Jensen brought up a new document on his laptop. "What do we know?"

"Looks like the gang didn't want any loose ends. I don't know all the details yet, but the shooter was sloppy and shouldn't have killed Cassidy."

"Anything else we know?"

"The gun that killed the shooter was with him, same gun that the shooter used on Banks and Cassidy."

"And wiped clean?"

"You must be psychic, man," Rodriguez laughed. "So yeah, nothing we can trace. We got no witnesses and not much evidence."

"So, pretty much it's done?" Jensen asked.

"You just have to file your report, man."

"Thanks for all your help on this one, Carlos. See you tomorrow."

Jensen put down his phone. That was it. Poor Katie Cassidy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong guy. Man, that just sucked.

Jared took off his jacket and tie and threw them over the back of the sofa. Everyone had finally cleared out of the house. Allie Morgan and two other friends of Katie had supervised the cleanup and stowing of all the food.

By all rights, he should be asleep by now. He went to the bar and poured himself a generous bourbon. Instead of sitting down again, he walked to the French doors that led out to the garden. The lights hadn't been turned off yet.

It was beautiful. Lush. Everything he'd ever promised himself he'd have when he'd been growing up poor in San Antonio. But all of this hadn't helped Katie find happiness, and it hadn't helped him either.

So what, then? Did he leave it all behind and find something else? What about Ryan? And did he want to leave DJ alone? He took a sip of his drink.

Ryan would be ten on his next birthday. Not quite a little boy anymore. Not quite grown up either. Whatever Jared did, he was going to make sure it had as little impact on Ryan's life as possible. But he needed to live his life completely on his terms now.

He sighed. It had only been five days. How could things have changed so damned much in so short a time?

One thing he did know was that Jensen was going to be a big part of his life from now on. Maybe they'd take it a bit more slowly as they eased into whatever this was, but he knew that he wanted Jensen. It didn't matter how long they'd known each other; Jared knew it was right.

Without a doubt, nothing was going to happen unless he made some major changes. Living out here would not be conducive to his developing relationship. Money would no doubt be an issue, too. And Ryan. And DJ. And probably Jensen's family as well.

Okay, yeah, maybe he was getting ahead of himself. Maybe Jensen wasn't as...no. After last night, and then this morning, it was clear that Jensen was feeling the same thing that he was. There was a connection between them. And it went way beyond the fantastic sex.

"You should be asleep by now," DJ said, from the door.

Jared jumped. "Too strung out." It wasn't the right time for this, but really, there wouldn't ever be a right time. "You know I'm not going to be able to stay here now?"

For one second, it looked like DJ might argue that point, but his shoulders slumped and he nodded. "Yeah, I was figuring that. You seem pretty serious about that cop. Though God knows, it hasn't been that long."

"Sometimes it doesn't take a long time." Oh, there were still a thousand things that could go wrong with this, and he wasn't deluding himself that it would be easy, but there was something there, and Jared would work hard to make it right.

"No. Kadie Mae and I knew from the moment we met. Was hoping that with the way Katie felt about you, it was going to be the right thing. But…" DJ trailed off with a shrug.

"You knew how she felt? Why didn't you tell me?" Because that would have made things so much easier to decide. If he'd known she cared, he would have cut her free. And himself, too. "You knew I wasn't going to return her feelings."

"I hoped for a while --"

"I was honest with you. Years ago." And he'd known then it was time to leave, but DJ had made it so easy to stay.

"I guess," DJ said, looking down. "I guess I just didn't want to believe it. I hoped you'd change your mind."

And Katie had suffered because of it. Admittedly, it wasn't just DJ's fault. He'd stayed. "I think we both were pretending. And we both let her down. All I see here are my failures."

"When were you thinking of going?" DJ's voice shook, and that bit into Jared's heart.

"Probably after school lets out for the summer. Ryan can still work on the ranch this summer. But I'm going to find a place closer to town."

DJ just nodded and went to the bar. He poured three fingers of bourbon into a tumbler and drank half of it.

"You'll be welcome wherever we move to. Always. You could even stay with us --"

But DJ was already shaking his head. "I couldn't leave this ranch. My granddaddy built it from the ground up. It's my home."

"Don't think I'm not going to miss living here." Jared held up his hand before DJ could make that offer. "But it's not somewhere I could bring someone else home. It's Katie's home and always will be."

"I hear what you're saying." But it didn't look like he wanted to -- which Jared could understand. "I thought you were happy here."

"I was content. But this room is the only room aside from my bedroom where I'm completely comfortable. I want my own house, where I can put my feet up on the furniture and spill beer on the carpets."

DJ finished his drink and put the glass back on the bar. "We can talk more about this in the morning."

"Good night," Jared said as DJ left the room.

There was some part of him that wished like hell he could call Jensen and just talk to him. They hadn't been able to exchange more than a few words at the funeral. Jared looked at his watch. It was a forty-five minute drive to Jensen's. And it was too late to go there.

Maybe he'd just go for a drive. It was really too late to go very far. After he'd changed into something comfortable, Jared pulled his car keys off a hook as he opened the door that led to the garage.

The low rumbly purr of a finely tuned engine distracted Jensen from his thoughts. No one in his neighborhood had a high-end car, and when it shut off in front of his house, he could make an educated guess about who it was.

It hadn't occurred to him that Jared might want to see him tonight, especially this late. On the other hand, Jared probably wanted to talk about things, which was something Jensen wasn't crazy about. But that's what people in relationships did. At this point, he should probably admit there was a relationship.

And that brought up a whole other list of questions and possible answers, and Jensen was too tired to even think about it.

It took a few minutes for the knock on the door to finally happen.

When he looked through the window, unsurprisingly Jared stood on his porch, looking better than he had a right to in faded jeans that clung to his thighs and a threadbare t-shirt.

"Jared?" Jensen asked as he pulled open the door. "Is something wrong?"

Jared just shrugged. "I wanted to see you."

"Come in," Jensen stepped back. "I'm glad you came. We didn't get much chance to talk this morning."

"I know. I appreciate that you and Kane came today. It made things..." He looked down and shrugged again.

"What?" Jensen whispered softly.

"Would it be horrible if I said it just made things easier to bear?"

"No, not at all. I was glad to be there. I want to help." Jensen took a tentative step forward and started to hold out his hand.

With a faint sound, Jared stepped beside him, and wrapped his arms around Jensen's shoulders, burying his face against the side of Jensen's neck. For a long time, he just breathed in and out wetly against Jensen's skin.

"I feel like such..." Jared sucked in a breath. "I should have known how she felt. I should have realized that living in DJ's house was stifling both of us. I should have done something before this happened. She didn't deserve this."

"No one deserves it. But it wasn't your fault, seriously." Jensen ran his hands up and down Jared's long back. "She was a grownup, too."

"That's the trouble. We were kids when we started, and we, neither of us, got a chance to get past that. I loved living there, having money for the first time, especially at first." Jared held him a little tighter. "I just didn't notice that it was starting to extract a price."

There was literally nothing Jensen could say. Living in your wife's family home must be like never having moved out at all. Except, of course, that there were perks most people couldn't even imagine. Jensen being one of those people. He held Jared, letting him ramble.

After a few more minutes, Jared brought his head up. "Thanks."

"No problem." Jensen pressed a quick kiss to his mouth and stepped back. "Do you want to sit? Maybe I could get you a beer?"

Jared laughed a little. "No, thanks. I've had too much to drink already. I just --"

The cop in him wanted to say something about drinking and driving, but Jensen sat down beside Jared and put a hand on his arm.

"I didn't mean to dump all of that on you." Jared ran his hand over his face.

Jensen longed to say that was what he was here for, to hear whatever Jared wanted to tell him, but maybe it was too soon to say that, even if it might be true. "Friends, you know?" he said, instead.

"A little more than friends, I think," Jared said, leaning in to kiss him lightly. "I talked to DJ tonight. About moving out."

"How'd he take it?"

"Well enough. I don't think he really understands why I want to go. When Katie was alive, it was easy to stay. But now that she's gone..." He trailed off and looked up. "Thing is, it's not my house. And as much as I thought I wanted to live on the ranch in that big white house, I need my own place."

"I totally get that." Jensen yawned. "It's been a really long day for you. Come to bed?"

"Thanks," Jared said, standing and pulling Jensen to his feet.

He slid into Jared's arms, strong and solid, and breathed in deeply. There was something about the smell of Jared that was starting to mean a great deal to Jensen.

Jensen woke when Jared rolled out of bed. He squinted at the clock. It was too fucking early to be awake.

"I've got to get back. I want to be there when Ryan wakes up," Jared said, leaning down to kiss him.

"Yeah. Of course." Jensen mumbled. "Havin' a barbeque later this afternoon. Meant to tell you yesterday. My folks and some of the guys I work with will be there."

"Are you sure you want me there?"

"Yeah. You and Ryan -- there'll be a bunch of kids. And DJ too, if he wants to come."

"I'll ask him if he wants to come with. I'm not sure he will, you know, given everything. Ryan and I will definitely come by. What time? Should we bring anything?"

"Maybe 2:00 or so. And just yourselves."

"I'll see you then," Jared said, leaning down and kissing him one more time before he was gone.

Jensen turned over, hoping for a few more hours sleep. After twenty minutes, he got up. Probably should start cleaning up, anyway.

Jensen's folks arrived early, ostensibly so that his mom could bake a couple of pies for the barbeque later, but really she brought a ton of potato salad and coleslaw with her. She ran him out of his own damned kitchen as soon as she arrived, and Jensen retreated to the porch steps with a beer. His father found him there about half an hour later.

"Son," his father said, sitting down beside him. "We need to talk."

Jensen had several things that he'd planned to say if this moment actually came, but he couldn't remember any of them. "People are going to be here, soon."

His father looked over to where his mom was setting napkins and paper plates on the picnic table. "This probably won't take too long. Let's go inside."

For a second, Jensen closed his eyes. "All right."

He led his father into the small den off his living room and waved him to the sofa. "Look. We don't have to do this now." Or ever, for that matter.

His father shook his head, clearly determined to do this. "It's gone on too long already. Why don't you sit down?"

"That's okay. I think I'm just going to stand." Maybe he was going to need a quick exit, or maybe he would feel safer on his feet. He wanted to be open with his family, but he just wasn't sure they were ready for this... "Why now?"

"Don't you think it's time?" his father asked, a note of strained amusement in his dry tone.

"I'm not involved with Chris," Jensen said, starting with the easy stuff. Maybe his father would let it go with that.

"So, your sister tells us." His father's smiled looked forced. Where was the righteous outrage?

As he'd done with his sister the other day, Jensen really looked at his father. His father had aged. His hair was completely grey, his face marked with more wrinkles than Jensen remembered seeing in the past. "Then you don't have to worry about acknowledging him as my…whatever."

"Is there someone else? Someone important to you?" It sounded like that was important to his father, like it mattered that there might be someone in Jensen's life.

Still, Jensen hesitated. He wasn't sure what Jared was yet -- except that he was important. Jensen looked down, unable to meet his father's eyes. "Maybe."

Alan cleared his throat. "We'd like to meet him."

"Why?" Because even though he knew his father was trying, it didn't mean it wouldn't all go to hell was soon as they met. Jensen knew without even thinking too hard about it that he'd never be able to live through that scene from his teen years again. It would kill him.

"Because you're my son, and it's time for us, for me, to accept you as you are." His words were stilted, like he was forcing them out, but damn, here he was saying them anyway -- saying something that Jensen had never even hoped he'd say. And if he could try, then so could Jensen.

"Okay, yeah. Soon." As soon as he knew a little more about where he stood with Jared. "But why now? After so many years? If things had changed with you, why wait to say something?"

Now his father was the one looking away. "They didn't change overnight, son. It took a while for me to see reason."

"But I've been here all this time, thinking you would --"

"Even then, it was an empty threat. I wouldn't have disowned you." Alan let out a sigh. "I thought you understood that."

"No. I didn't. I believed you." Like any fifteen-year-old who loved his parents would. "I tried hard to never --"

Alan closed his eyes. "I'm sorry for that. I wanted you to be something that you can't be."

"Why did this take so long?" Jensen drew in a shuddering breath. Relief mixed with acid in his gut.

"I've been waiting for you to say something to us. Anything that would let me know you're ready to forgive us," Alan said.

His eyes stung, and Jensen closed them and then opened them again. "I never expected you to change your mind."

"We, your mother and I, thought you'd acknowledge Chris. And that would be our sign that you knew --."

That made Jensen laugh. "Except for the fact --"

"We know that now." He bit his lip. "I feel even worse. It was something of a comfort to know you had Chris. Now, I know you haven't had anyone. I wish I'd said something sooner."

Jensen's chest felt like it was going to explode. "I made my choices --"

"Based on something I never should have said." Alan stood. "For what it's worth, I’m sorry."

"Me, too."

"You've got nothing to be sorry for." Alan put a hand on his shoulder. "Really, son. We're so proud of you for everything you are. Not just being a police officer, everything. We both just want you to be happy."

Jensen wasn't going to humiliate himself by crying, so he nodded because he couldn't speak. His father squeezed his shoulder again and left him there.

After the conversation with his father, Jensen needed a second. He sat down on the sofa in his small den, trying to still the shaking in his hands. So much time. It didn't seem possible that things could change so fast.

Good God almighty. He needed to focus and get his mind off everything his father had said, or he'd fall apart. And he had a whole houseful of people going to be here in about an hour who would be expecting him to barbecue a metric ton of meat shortly thereafter.

He sat back and closed his eyes. Life was so damned strange. After a second or two more, he touched the speed dial and listened to it ring once. "Jensen?" Jared answered.

"Hey," Jensen said. He didn't really have anything to say. As stupid as it was, all he wanted was to hear Jared's voice.

"Everything okay? Did you talk to your dad?" Jared sounded concerned.

"Yeah." Jensen let out the breath he'd been holding. "It turned out okay. You'll be by later?"

"Me and Ryan. DJ's busy with something." Jared paused for a second. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. Pretty much. I'll tell you about it when I see you." Jensen ended the call.

He looked out the door of the den to see Chris coming down the stairs, probably from the upstairs bathroom. He opened his mouth to say something, but Annie stalked into the room.

"Kane! I want to talk to you," she said, in a really scary voice. Jensen wondered what the hell Chris had done to her.

Chris looked startled by her tone, and it was pretty clear what was running through his mind. "There a problem, baby girl?"

"First, you can stop calling me that. And second, yes, there is a problem." She reached Chris and then hit him hard on the shoulder.

Chris rubbed his arm. "Ow! What was that for?"

"You lied to me."

"I didn't actually lie," Chris said, looking down at his feet.

"You implied heavily enough to mislead. That's still a lie."

"Okay, yes. But --"

"All you had to do was tell me no," Annie said, and her tone was somewhere between hurt and angry.

"If I remember correctly, I tried that. And you weren't going to take no for an answer."

"If you'd said you weren't interested, I would have. But you went on and on about what Jensen would say."

"You were seventeen. What do you think I was going to say to that?"

"You might have admitted what you felt. I saw how you looked at me."

How he looked at Jensen's seventeen-year-old sister? How was that? Even ten years later, if it had been anyone other than Chris, Jensen might have interrupted to punch the guy in the face.

"I repeat: you were seventeen. Even if that were true, which I'm not saying it was, but even if it were, you were too damned young for me to be looking at, let alone anything else."

Annie folded her arms across her chest and scowled at him. "Instead, you lied to me. I couldn't believe I'd misread that so badly. I questioned my own judgment for years after that."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't going to get involved with you," Chris said.

Damned right he wasn't.

"Because I was too young and too inexperienced?" There was something in Annie's tone that immediately had Jensen alert.

"Pretty much."

"What's your excuse now?" Annie asked.

No. Jensen did not just hear his sister say that to his best friend. And from the stunned look on Chris' face, he was thinking the same thing.

"What?" Chris choked out.

She put her hand on his face. "What about now? I am neither young, nor innocent."

"You're still Jen's baby sister, and he'd still kill me."

Possibly. The look on Annie's face was saying she had been thinking about this for a long time. And she was twice as stubborn as anyone he'd ever met.

"His sister, absolutely. But the days of him having anything to say about who I sleep with are long over."

Jensen might have to concede that.

But it didn't look like Chris was going to get with the program. "Annie --"

"No. If you don't want me, fine. Tell me, and I'll finally be able to go on. But I need you to say, one way or another."

"What are you talking about?"

Her hand dropped. But she was still looking him. "I have wanted you since I was sixteen years old. I've slept with other men, and even a woman, trying to get you out of my system. But there has always been something in me that wouldn't let it go."

And that was more than Jensen had ever wanted to know about his sister's sex life.

She let out a long sigh, and went on, "Maybe I subconsciously knew that you weren't with Jen. You never acted like lovers, even when no one was looking. Maybe I saw that."

"Annie --"

"Let me finish," she said. "Do you know why I broke up with my last boyfriend? I said your name instead of his at a critical moment. He didn't appreciate it."

Yeah, Jensen had seen that look before.

And Chris pretty much didn't have a hope in hell of getting out of this now. "Jensen will kill me."

"This is not about him. It's about me, and maybe you." She took his hand. "If you want."

Annie leaned up and kissed him.

Jensen thought perhaps it was past time for him to get the hell out of here, but there was no way he could get past them without being seen, and right now, they didn't need that.

After another second, she stepped back and tugged Chris' hand. "Jensen's guest room."

Jensen would have laughed at the look on Chris' face, except that he was too busy being shocked by his sister dragging Chris back up the stairs.

By mid-afternoon, his house was packed with people. Chris and Annie still hadn't made it downstairs, but no one seemed to have noticed. Jensen was at the big stone grill starting to put meat onto the fire for a long slow cook. He looked up, and Jared and his son were standing on the deck.

Jensen's mouth went dry. He closed the lid over the grill and walked across the lawn. Damn, Jared looked good in his jeans and a faded Baylor t-shirt.

"Hey," Jared said, coming down the three steps with his hand out.

Until he'd shown up, Jensen hadn't really let himself think he might. "Great to have you both. There's sodas on the deck in the blue cooler and beer in the red one. And Ryan, there's a bunch of kids playing football in the field at the end of my yard." He pointed back past the grill and the people. "I think they could always use another player, if you're interested."

Ryan looked at his father, and Jared nodded. "Thanks." The boy took off across the yard.

God, Jared looked good enough to eat. Jensen licked his lips. "I should introduce you around."

"Or not," Jared said. "Most people know my name already. It's a pretty small town."

"Can I get you a beer, then?" Jensen looked at him and then at the cooler on the other side of the deck. "The ice is half-melted in the coolers. There are some really cold ones in the kitchen."

Jared followed him back inside. As soon as they were out of sight of the crowd in the backyard, Jensen leaned into him, and Jared's arms came around him, his hands stroking up and down his back.

Jensen felt better than he had all day. "I'm so fucking glad to see you."

"How did it go?" Jared asked, still smoothing his big hands along Jensen's back. "You didn't say anything on the phone. I thought you might be upset."

"No. I'm good. It went about like my sister said it would. I just couldn't believe that it happened."

Jared put a hand on his cheek. "You okay? Seriously?"

"Yeah. I just wish I'd known before this."

"I've found that everything happens in its own time." Jared let out a sigh.

"What?" Jensen asked. Because he could hear it, even if Jared wasn't saying anything.

"It was such a relief just to tell DJ that I wanted my own house."

"He okay with it?"

Jared shrugged. "I think he's trying to be. He loves me and adores Ryan. No matter how much time we spend with him, it's not going to be the same as living with him."

Nothing he could say to that. "You have to be able to live your own life."

"I know. And I want to. It's past time for me to be a grown-up."

Jensen chuckled. "You look grown up to me."

"I'm glad you think so. Sometimes I feel like I never grew up." Jared tightened his arms and leaned down and kissed him quickly.

"Even if the rules are easy to live with, you're still living under someone else's rules. Do you want some help looking?" Jensen offered -- and then felt like an idiot. The kind of place Jared would get wasn't even in the same stratosphere of price ranges he would think about.

"I want a place you're going to be comfortable coming to." Jared cleared his throat. "And maybe living in."

They weren't even close to being ready to think about that. But maybe it was in the background somewhere. "You can't hide how rich you are."

"I'm not trying to. But I don't want a house full of stiff white and cream furniture."

Yeah, that would be so difficult to live with. Jensen snickered. "I guess not. We should probably get that ice and get back out there."

"You know, that's fine, but if I don't get to kiss you right now, I'm going to die from want." Jared slid both his arms around Jensen again and held him close.

Something warm and nice settled into Jensen's belly and he tilted his head up. "We can't have that now, can we?"

Jared lowered his mouth, and Jensen's hand went up to the back of his neck to guide him down. Kissing standing up was still not graceful. Jensen might be six feet tall, but Jared was a fucking giant.

Oh, God, kissing Jared would never, ever get old. As Jared's tongue moved in and out of his mouth, he groaned softly. God, he tasted so good. So, damned good --

"Jensen, your mother says there's not enough --" Alan stopped when he caught sight of Jensen and Jared.

Every instinct Jensen had was screaming at him to jump away, to try to mitigate what they'd been doing. But he'd done that before, and look at where it had got him. So, slowly, he pulled back from Jared. Beside him he could feel Jared tense, and he knew without even looking that Jared would play it any way he wanted.

"Dad," he said, slowly moving out of Jared's arms. "This is Jared Padalecki. Jared, my dad, Alan Ackles."

Braced for the worst, he was pleasantly surprised when his father held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Jared."

"And you, sir," Jared said, shaking it.

There was a moment of dead silence as Jared and Jensen's father looked at each other. He could almost see his father assessing Jared. But that was okay.

"Your mom wants more ice for the coolers," Alan said, nodding his head toward the door.

"We actually came in here to get some." Jensen pulled a bag of ice out of the freezer and handed it to his father.

"And got sidetracked, I see." There was still a note of tension in his voice, but damn, he was trying.

And that was good enough for Jensen. "Yeah. It happens to the best of us."

Before his father could answer, there was a sound at the kitchen door, and a disheveled-looking Chris and Annie came in.

Alan laughed. "Clearly you didn't get as sidetracked at these two."

Jensen didn't think he'd ever seen Chris blush that badly. Annie, on the other hand, looked like the cat who'd got the cream.

A second later, everyone cleared out, and he and Jared were alone again. Jensen's stomach settled down. "You know, this isn't going to be easy."

"Oh, I have no doubt of that. But I also think it's going to be worth it."

He looked up at Jared and nodded. "Yeah. It will totally be worth it."

--finis
6/1/2011