So here's the thing

You failed

Even as it's happening right now, this failure that's enveloping you and sucking the very breath from your lungs, you're taking the time to acknowledge it in a detached sort of way. A small part of your brain is repeatedly whispering that you let yourself down and you're just detached enough to notice that it sounds suspiciously like your girlfriend.

You're back in a place you swore you'd never be again. You told yourself over and over again that you wouldn't fall back into this. Hell you weren't even alone in the promise. Both of you had talked it out and come to what you thought was a definite agreement. There had been well thought out reasons, points were made, hell you'd even jotted down a few notes beforehand to make sure you didn't forget anything. It was understood that from that day forward you were putting it all behind you. You weren't starting over, you were just starting again from the last point you two had been at before you were fucking each other into even deeper exhaustion nearly every night. You let each other slide on the fact that, apparently, you were both seven year olds because the do-over was extremely necessary.

Calling it off was a good thing, really it was, and you know this. You really really do. It was possibly the most mature decision you'd ever made in your life, short of turning down any future low budget teen-scream films. The whole situation was far too self-indulgent and clandestine to be anything more than a healthy dose of excitement. That was all fine and good for the time being but where would that lead except to heartache or resentment? And you didn't want that, not with anyone but especially not with him. Because he was special to you. He'd taken up residence in your life, hell even in your heart when you were a little too drunk and open with yourself, and you couldn't see the whole friendship go up in spectacular flames when something finally blew up and out of proportion.

So really the only thing you could do was end it. That much was glaringly obvious even without both of your girlfriends entering into the equation. And ooh boy hadn't the girlfriends been an interesting thing to consider?

You'd almost lost yours all together. Calling out his name during sex was something not even you could charm your way out of. The ironic thing is that she found out about the affair after it was already over. There were ultimatums issued and at one point there was scary talk of your mother being called. Things were smashed and tears were shed and somehow you'd walked out of World War III with a scorned girlfriend you can barely trust now for fear of her giving you a taste of your own medicine. There's something there between the two of you now that will never go away and you know that. Every time she speaks her words are loaded and you've been walking on eggshells for so long now that your feet must be nothing more than bloody messes of flesh. But you know that you brought that on yourself so you're gritting your teeth and continuing to walk. He never teases you about the short leash you're on now because he knows why.

You're overly aware of the fact that you're only pushing through it all to be with her because you're no longer anything but a friend to him. You've never been stupid you're just really good at looking pretty. Of course you know that if you allowed yourself to choose that he'd win, hands down. You're settling and really, that's fine. Any extra help you can get to keep the barrier of friendship between the two of you is welcome, even if that help is torturing yourself and using your girlfriend by pushing a relationship that really ended the minute you sank so deep into him you couldn't tell the difference between your bodies anymore. It's all fine and good because, again, before you'd even considered either woman you'd decided that things between the two of you couldn't continue.

Not that it wasn't hard to end. Fuck it nearly killed you, both of you. You're a strong believer in 'A Place For Everything And Everything In Its Place'. You go with your gut and every instinct you have screams that he's right in every way. You two just fit. It was like that from the very beginning and it never stopped. You met once and you were friends, instantly and without question. Then one day as the two of you were sitting on his couch watching some random grade B movie you realized out of nowhere that he was the best friend you'd ever had. You told him and he didn't even blink, just reciprocated the comment and went back to making fun of the movie.

That's just how things were. Really how they still are, though you're both pushing against it for the sake of something you're not even sure you really believe anymore. The past almost three years are threaded with that natural ebb and flow the two of you created with no effort at all and it's chaffing more than a little to cut that off. Everywhere you look he's there, every random thought you have he's either a part of it or the inspiration for it. Hell every time you turn your key in the lock to your apartment you're thrown into the some memory or another. He picked your apartment the day you picked his car and you both have keys to each. After that if he was sitting on your couch when you got home from running an errand or something that just meant you didn't have to call him and tell him to come over. And if you happened to walk around to the driver's side of his car and whip out your own key-ring when you guys were going somewhere, well he was tired of driving anyway. Your laundry started showing up in each other's hampers and neither blinked.

He'd practically moved in before either of you noticed it. It hit you in the middle of the grocery store when you were considering which meats to buy because you guys were on the last pack of pork chops. The fact that you were thinking about the food in your kitchen in terms of you-and-his, the fact that half the stuff in your cart was food you didn't even like, the fact that you weren't bothered by that had you a little surprised for a second. Then you shook it off with a soft smile and grabbed a few steaks for him to throw on the grill he bought you for your birthday.

His car slowly became the only vehicle either of you used and that happened just as smooth as the rest of it did. You were almost always going to the same place at the same time and if you weren't then there were quick little discussions about times and trade offs and finding other ways home. Neither questioned your vehicle sitting under your carport collecting dirt. Your jacket was almost always sitting in his backseat and he started keeping a pack of your favorite gum in one of the front cup holders. When you were driving he'd reach over and change the station to your favorite even though he didn't really prefer it and he never complained about constantly having to adjust the seat in either the passenger or the driver's side just like you didn't. You just accommodated each other, moved around each other with ease and comfort that most people worked at for years and never achieved.

When sex finally came it may have been surprising only in that it hadn't happened sooner. But then again that's the way it is with you two, you discover one level and that's where you are until you discover another level out of the blue and then you're there. In true fashion both of you had jumped into bed impulsively, without second thought to the next week, the next morning, hell not even the next minute. One day you'd woken up and you were Jared Padalecki and he was Jensen Ackles. You were costars, Texas boys, basically roommates and above all else you were the bestfriends. It was an ordinary day until it wasn't anymore. It was an ordinary day until you walked into your kitchen and found him waiting for the coffee to finish brewing in his boxers with sleep rumpled hair and wearing those damn glasses.

You felt desire run through you then, white hot and deep enough to actually shake you, and you accepted it without hesitation. The question of whether or not he wanted you too had honestly never crossed your mind. This was the two of you, when had he ever not felt something you had? So you'd crossed the kitchen and you'd turned him to face you without as much as a word. He'd blinked at you owlishly for a moment before smirking a little and tilting his head back while you leaned down to meet him.

It had been hot. It had been the best sex you'd ever had and above all else it had been him and that made it perfect. You weren't thinking about consequences, you weren't thinking about girlfriends or families or the press or even the show. You were thinking about yourself and you were thinking about him and you were thinking about the way that even though there had had been a little fumbling and an awkward moment or two that it had never felt awkward or uncomfortable. You were thinking about your place and his and how everything about you seemed to match up with each other in every crevice, nook and cranny.

And then people started to talk. They'd whispered before but they were all out talking now. No one knew anything for sure, not even Chris and Chad but that was only a matter of time. Eric caught the rumors because Eric made every rumor about the cast and the show his business. He didn't have an all-out freakout but he sat the two of you down and asked you if you knew what could happen to the show if its leading stars were on the cover of every magazine in the world because there were fucking each other. He pressed it and asked if you knew what it could do to your careers. He told you to that if there was anything going on that he didn't have a problem with it, but keep it quiet.

Your mother started calling you a little more telling you what she'd read on the internet and things like that. Every time you talked she would wait about fifteen minutes before she'd start to drop a few unsubtle hints about you needing to spend more time with Sandy. Then she'd drop a few blatant lines about marriage and grandchildren and things like that. She even went as far as to ask you about Jensen's relationship with Danneel at every opportunity saying how great they were together and how he should marry her. After about a week of that you were seriously debating dodging her calls.

And then Sandy started coming up to Vancouver with startling frequency. She was always there, always spraying perfume so your place smelled like her, always wearing your shirts so they smelled like her too. She was doing your laundry, no doubt looking for clues, and then she was cooking the food. Yours and his. You both knew she was re-staking her claim, marking her territory. You both thought it was a little funny and fucked on set during lunch instead of at home in bed. He didn't leave while she was there because at that point the apartment was just as much his as it was yours and it would've looked even more suspicious if he disappeared every time she came around. You think he slept with his headphones on when you fucked her but he didn't leave then either.

Danneel didn't come around any more than she usually did and that was fine with both of you. You didn't particularly care for her the first time you met her and it wasn't really jealousy so much as you didn't think she was good for him. She was pretty, but vacant in a way that came from being too smart instead of being stupid. She'd witnessed a lot, she was shrew and she was nothing if not interested in what was best for her in the long run. You always got the feeling that she was the kind of woman who would check out of a relationship before it officially ended and you didn't want that pain for him.

You were being a hypocrite and you know that because you and him were emotionally done with both women but you were still letting them hang on to an idea of something. But hypocrite or not it was you and it was him and everyone else could go fuck themselves. You never chose the situation, it was just dealt to you and you'd hurt the whole world to save him from the smallest ounce of pain.

Inevitably that was what drove you to your conclusion. Not Eric, not the show, not the press, not your paranoid girlfriend or your well-meaning mama. It was him and the fact that you had to fuck in a trailer with sheets between your teeth to muffle the sounds, the fact that your parents introduced each of you as their son's bestfriend. The fact that in the middle of a crowded room you still had to watch and measure all of your interactions so that nothing crossed the bestfriend line into something else that someone might see.

You both took time and care to cultivate your public relationship into something that flirted with lovers but was viewed as friends and even that wasn't enough. Sure you could throw your arm around his shoulders and pull him close, you could wrap your legs around him, you could even kiss the side of his face but it had to be done with elaborate smiles and only for a few moments. You couldn't just put your arm around him and let it rest there, you couldn't stand too close to him for any real length of time. You couldn't hold his hand or tell the girls to back the fuck off. You couldn't drag him out of the party and fuck his brains out in the bathroom without someone commenting on the amount of time you were gone together. You couldn't be with him.

And you cared too much and he was worth too much for you to hide him.

The only thing that kept the show afloat was excellent directing, a supply of never-ending patience, and the fact that you'd both chosen this craft because you were good at it and you planned on doing it for the rest of your lives. You were professional enough to shed the end of your sexual relationship and put on the mask of two brothers who'd do anything for each other. The irony of that is not lost on either of you.

The personal angst did do wonders for the show, so that was a plus. Ratings soared because you were good at acting tortured and lost before, but shit you two were dead on after that. Kim was singing your praises, Eric was nearly doing cartwheels after watching the dailies and they were letting Sera write more of her hard-hitting angst since you two seemed to be able to play it as easy as breathing.

He slowly moved back to his place piece by piece until he slept over maybe one day every third weekend or so. He took his car with him. You still don't really feel comfortable in your own even though you never have to adjust your seat and the radio stays on your station. It's just not right.

Nothing's right about any of the distance between you except maybe the part where it seems like the right thing to do. Calling it off was a good thing, you know that. He knows that. It's a good thing yeah, it seems like the right thing, but it's not the right thing and you both know that too. It took too much thought, too much planning, you have to force yourselves to keep it in place and nothing with you has ever been planned and forced. 'A Place For Everything And Everything In Its Place'

And so you failed.

Right now at this very moment you're failing. You were succeeding just moments ago, had been succeeding for a little over three months now and it all went up in smoke. You came over to his place to watch a few movies and drink a few beers, simple. You were going to go home when the movies were over or pass out drunk in his spare bedroom right after you called Sandy to tell her goodnight just as you've been doing every night since your little slip-up. You were just hanging out together nothing more nothing less. If you got the sudden urge to tell him you were wrong about everything, well you would just swallow the apology with a mouthful of beer. If you wanted to reach out and touch him you'd bury your hands in the couch cushions. You were getting through it.

But then he smiled. You're not even sure what it was he was smiling at. Maybe it was a scene in the movie, maybe he'd told a joke and was laughing at his own punch-line. He was a big enough dork to do that. Anyway, whatever he was smiling at you know it wasn't at you because he was looking mostly straight ahead. You looked over and caught the expression in half profile and you couldn't breathe. When he turned to you full on you felt a rush of emotion so strong your eyes misted with tears.

It was that smile he had, the one where his whole face lights up and he's suddenly five years old. You know you seriously have to come up with a better analogy for that smile because five year olds are not hot, but when he smiled like that all you wanted to do was eat him alive. It was the uninhibited joy that shone through him that he seemed to save for you and maybe Chris on occasion. It was knowing that you were the one who made him feel that way that got you hard in half a second.

You lunged at him and you half expected him to be startled. He wasn't, not in the least. He fell back with you and you landed against the cushions easily enough. You should've known better, this was how things were supposed to happen between you, how your decisions were supposed to be made. Unplanned and unquestioned with a blink-of-an-eye kind of quickness.

And so you're failing, spectacularly at that, and you've never been so happy to mess something up. Sandy's I love yous were just starting to sound real again and she'd stopped ignoring Jensen when she came around. The smiles she sent his way were even bordering on actual smiles. That's all gone now along with four and a half years together, you'll see to that this time around.

There had been no real change in Danneel one way or the other that you could mark so that must mean she never knew in the first place. You're not giving him up again so you assumed she'll eventually find out. You can't bring yourself to care at the moment. The girl is smart, you're sure she has some sort of contingency plan and if she doesn't she'll land on her feet anyway.

She has to, they all do because you two are going to turn everything upside down for everyone but the two of you. You tried to do it their way, you both did. You tried to keep it under wraps and all that did was mess up the natural rhythm you have with each other. It ended with separation and angst and you love the show, but extra ratings due to kick ass emotional pain isn't worth messing with natural progression.

He's pulling at your shirt now and you're fighting with his belt and it all seems very savage and rushed and rough and it is, but it is in the way that its never really been rough at all.

It's smooth

You work your hand into his pants and he bites into your shoulder hard enough to bruise. He breaths harshly through his mouth and sighs your name and it's all smooth as silk because it's you and it's him and this is all there was ever supposed to be.

And as you ebb and flow in and around each other you and he both know that there will be some dramatic changes in the near future. People will get hurt and people will be shocked and you may even lose a few people in your lives in the process. There may come a time when your careers are in question and you may not get the lead roles in big blockbuster movies, but that's a ways away anyway and it's not important now.

All that matters is this

This is your place and he's in his and everyone else can go to hell.