After three days of watching cartoons in his underwear, the only real conclusion Jared had reached was that Jerry the mouse was an evil little fucker, and that Acme products were to be avoided like the plague.

Fifty hours of watching kids TV, and Jared was ready to accept Ben and Jerry as his personal saviors, and he was no closer to bleaching out the image of Jensen and David than he was when he switched over to Cartoon Network in the first place.

It was probably Chris who called Sandy. He was sneaky that way. Or hell, maybe David had. Beyond a rather embarrassed apology via text, he'd not heard anything from either him or Jensen. It would totally be his way to send a girl in to do the hard work.

All he knew was that after three quarters of an hour listening to someone ring his doorbell, he'd hauled his ass to the door, answered it in his boxers, and found himself face to face with an irate Sandy.

"Oh baby." She sighed, stepping into the hall, heel neatly avoiding one of Jared's socks. "Shower, go."

"But-"

Small hands settled on her slander hips, thumbs hooking into the loops of her jeans. "Sweetie, I am not being your shoulder to cry on until you shower, shave, and brush your teeth."

"But-"

"Now, Jared." She said patiently, nose crinkling in disapproval as she looked around his kitchen.

Sandy was a doll. Really and truly. He'd marry her in a heartbeat if she could only accept his love for pink shirts and dump that skank of a girlfriend she insisted on dating. She and Sam would get on like a house on fire. Sandy was the ultimate sweet and sour candy treat. Cute as hell, adorable 98% of the time, but blessed with a tongue that could cut a man to pieces at hundred yards.

It didn't matter that Jared could pick her up with one hand. In that stance, with that glare, there really was only one reply he could give:

"Yes ma'am." He said meekly, and trudged off to the shower, tripping over the edges of his socks as he went.

*****

"Okay sugar, give me details." Jared had emerged from the bathroom twenty minutes later to find his sitting room clear of three days worth of trash, and a pot of coffee waiting for him on the table. Sandy curled herself in the corner of his couch, feet tucked under her legs. Her pale pink sweater was long in the arm, and she fiddled with the sleeves exactly the way Jensen did.

Jared had never noticed that before.

"I'm in love." He said flatly. Unlike Chris, or Steve, or, God forbid, Chad, he could usually trust Sandy to wait until he was finished explaining something before launching the Inquisition.

She simply nodded for him to continue, one small hand nestling against his own.

"You know Dave's boyfriend?" He wasn't even sure if Sandy knew about Jensen, let alone met him.

She frowned, but nodded slowly. "Jensen?"

It was Jared's turn to frown. Was he the last person to be let in the loop? "You ever met him?"

"No." She shook her head. "I saw a picture. He's a cutie."

Understatement of the fucking century. Jared shuffled. Maybe if he stayed quiet enough Sandy would put two and two together and land at four.

Sandy was the MENSA chick of the team after all, and she came through for him once again. "Oh Jay. Tell me you haven't…" Jared suddenly found his toenails fascinating. "Idiot." She smiled affectionately, her hand squeezing his to take the bite out of the words.

"Love sucks." Jared said vehemently.

A Sandy hug had medicinal properties. She crawled across the couch and wound her arms around his chest. Her hair smelled of strawberries, and it was totally acceptable to put his cheek on her head and let her work her magic.

Five minutes of therapy, and she gave him a brief squeeze before shuffling back a little. "So," she began hesitantly. "You're in love with Dave's boyfriend."

"I'm a terrible friend." Jared moaned. Really, when she put it like that…how awful did he sound? "I kissed him…he kissed me back." And what a kiss…

"But you're not gay, are you?" There was a hint of hurt laced in her voice. Only tiny, but Jared caught it just the same. He had been by her side right the way through her little lesbian epic, as they called it. By keep things to himself, however sensible, he'd hurt her feelings. If that didn't make him feel a hundred times worse…

"No." He whispered. He wasn't. Not really. Being in love with someone didn't make him gay, just because they were a guy, right? Not that he really cared about the whole 'gay' thing… but adding a label just confused matters. And he was confused enough, thank you very much. "It's just him, Sandy. I can't get him out of my head." The last time had felt this miserable, he had eaten his body weight in cookie-dough-fudge ice cream.

Cookies made him think of Jensen.

Bastard had even ruined his comfort food for him.

Sandy patted him on the arm. "Okay, so…does he know?" Jared thought of Jensen's sweet smile, of the way he spent hours on a train just to comfort him, of the taste of his lips and the feel of his skin. He hadn't freaked out on Jared after the disastrous Plan. He'd taken it all in his stride.

"I'd say yes." Jared said dryly. Jensen was deaf, not blind. No way had he missed the sparkly pink hearts that had been following Jared around for the last month.

Sandy nodded again, seeming to understand the gravity of the situation better than any of his male friends would have. "Does David know?" She broached the subject with a gentle hand, but Jared still winced.

"Maybe, I don't know."

God, he hoped not.

"You know there is a solution to this." Sandy said quietly, her hand once again squeezing his.

"There is?" God, could he sound any more desperate if he tried? No. Probably not. The only solution he could think of involved printing off Team Padalecki T-shirts and mounting an Aniston/Jolie/Pitt type war. That, or moving to Thailand and changing his name to Brother Li.

"Sure there is," she smiled. "You trust me?"

Now normally Jared would say yes before she could finish asking. This thing with Jensen had left him a little battered around the edges. Still her eyes were sweet and earnest, and there wasn't a chance in hell Jared might accidentally end up kissing her over dessert. "Sure." He said.

Famous last words.

*****

"You're insane!" Jared shouted across the crowd, mouth full of cotton candy and his fingers sticky with every sugary concoction known to man.

Apparently Sandy's cure for a broken heart was to take him to the carnival and make him win every stuffed toy going. They had a small menagerie by now, and Jared had been covertly handing them out to random kids when she wasn't looking.

With her candy pink lips and dark pigtails, Sandy fitted in perfectly with the dozens of giddy girls bouncing around from Big Top to Spinning Cups. "Come on Jay," she giggled, plucking at a lump of his cotton candy. "There is no better cure for a broken heart than the Whirly Gig.

Of that, Jared wasn't convinced. After the fifth time around, his stomach was so churned up with hotdogs and candy that any depressing lovesick notions were pushed behind a more pressing need to find a bathroom to throw up in.

"I hate you." He moaned, miserable, then obediently won a giant stuffed rabbit on the Test Your Strength Mallet Game.

"God boy." Sandy giggled, stuffing the rabbit under one arm and bending one of its ears to grin at him. It wasn't so difficult to grin back.

Like he said: Sandy had medicinal properties.

"Oh, hey, look." She pointed at a row of wooden boards with brightly colored scenes painted on them. Ovals had been cut away so people could look through them and get their pictures taken with the body of a mermaid or spaceman. Sandy pointed to one of a muscular man and a bikini-clad babe. Just as Jared resigned himself to have photos of himself in a pink polka dot bikini plastered all over the web, his cell phone rang.

"Saved by the bell." He grinned in response to Sandy's pout. "Hello?"

"Hey, is he okay?"

Jared blinked, his mind taking a few seconds to supply a name as it stumbled over the question. "Marc?"

"Yeah." His co-star sighed impatiently. "Is Jensen okay?"

…wait…what?

"What?" He stopped so suddenly that Sandy walked right into him.

"I was talking to Jeff. He got a call on his landline, said something about Jensen and hospital, and I've not heard from him since…I figured you'd be a good person to hit for answers. So is he okay?" Marc had a remarkable ability to spring things out of nowhere and leave him floundering in a mist of huh?

Jensen and hospital. Two words that should never ever, ever be in the same sentence. Entirely of its own accord his mind turned down the path of worst-case scenarios. What if he'd had a fall and hit his head? Or had an attack in the bath and drowned? Or passed out whilst pruning his damned roses and fallen on an upright pair of sheers. Or…

"Jared!" Sandy snapped her fingers in front of his face, his cell phone in her hand. She looked as confused as he might have felt, if he could summon the energy to feel anything but numbing fear.

Leaving the phone with Sandy, Jared spun on his heels and stormed back to the strength test game. He snatched the mallet from a father waiting with two kids, and completely ignored the carnie when he broke the whole game.

Like he said.

Love sucked.

Read Part Twelve All's Fair in the Louder Than Words 'Verse by SplashPink