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Fun and sunshine - there’s enough for everyone.
Jared is dead. Dead tired and not really feeling his feet or his arms anymore. A month of nothing but work from dawn till dusk. A whole month of falling into bed and falling out of bed without getting much spare time, or even time for his daily jogging routine. He should have known that a first class resort would be more demanding than any other job he’d ever done.
Maybe he was too blinded by the beauty of the place and the infectious cheerfulness of the employees when he had arrived. But now, Jared knows that it’s mostly just a shiny surface and nothing more. Really, rich people sucked and definitely not in a good way. He never thought it would be so hard to satisfy people, but this job is teaching him otherwise.
The thing is that despite having next to no free time, he still manages to make friends and feel better about working than he has in years. Jared thinks he might even consider staying here for more than one season, which is unusual for him. He tries to leave a place as soon as the main season is over. Most of the places he’s been to lately are obvious cases of ‘been there, done that,’ but this island is different.
Another good thing about having to work so much is that he's finally getting to know Jensen, because Jensen is actually spending time with him now. He helps Jared out wherever he can -- whenever he isn’t locked up in the office or on island hopping tours with guests.
Jensen even joins the Saturday night parties at Club Tropicana, which he appreciates a lot. He can sit, drink and watch Jensen. He can watch Jensen easily and almost never gets caught, mostly because they are all drunk as fuck and don’t really care anymore.
Jared has long since realised that his crush stopped being a crush and turned into some kind of infatuation. And, considering the occasional looks he gets from Jensen, he’s pretty sure there might be more if they just had time to just do something about it.
Jared learns even more about Jensen during these weeks. He'd already discovered that the resort belongs to Jensen’s family, but now he knows that it has since the beginning. He learns that Jensen is from Texas, which he'd guessed already anyway; and he learns that Jensen doesn’t plan on going back for a long time.
Jared learns that Jensen’s family lives mainly in Texas, but move all over the world to tend to their resorts and hotels; he learns that there isn’t anybody in Jensen’s life and there hasn’t been for some time. Jared also learns that Jensen seems to have developed an obsession with Jared’s shell chain. Every time the chain slips out of the shirt, or when Jared has lost the shirt while working, Jensen has a moment where he focuses on just the shell. At first Jared had prided himself with the fact that Jensen was so obviously staring at his chest, until he had realised it wasn’t him but the shell.
He was a little miffed and when he tells Sandy, she just laughs and calls him a dork, all while giving him an odd look. The same night at the Club Tropicana party, Chris and Steve do the same – point, mock, laugh and look weirdly at him. Jared still isn’t sure if it was about the whole ‘Jensen has an obsession with his shell chain’ thing or if he had something in his hair. He isn’t even sure if he should be angry at Sandy telling Chris and Steve in the first place.
Sometimes it seems like Jensen wants to ask him about the shell. There are moments, usually when they’re alone, when Jensen looks like he’s about to say something, but then he shuts down and never does.
After he tells Sandy about the shell chain thing, the weird looks he’s been getting from Sandy’s friends, and now his as well he guesses, kind of intensify. Jared’s confused because he thinks he hasn’t done anything to justify such scrutiny and every time he asks, he’s treated to blank stares, evading answers and, often, one of Mike’s dirty jokes.
Jared would be worried if it weren’t for the fact that Jensen gets the same weird looks and glances. Jared is actually worried when he thinks about it, because it means their friends are watching them for some reason and he doesn’t know why. Jensen, though, seems to be oblivious.
In the middle of all the work, crushing hard on Jensen and the weirdness that are his new friends, Jared realises that not once he has thought about JR. It makes him a little sad because he’s secretly still kind of hoping to find out where the other boy vanished to.
It was one of the reasons why he’d let Sandy talk him into accepting the job, the chance to get some information about the boy who'd been his best friend and maybe his first love for three summers ten years ago. But there hasn’t been anything so far and Jared has no time to actually go and look for himself. In the first two or three weeks he'd tried to go through papers from back then, tried to actually work his way through the digital archive but he doesn’t have the authorization to pry any further than the surface files.
He got stuck and he hasn’t found any reliable hints or sources. Jared thinks he might have to ask Jensen for help because Jensen has the ability to dig stuff up. Jensen has the authorization to at least look into the old archives and tell him the whole goddamn name of the boy Jared hasn’t been able to stop thinking about.
There are days he curses himself for being so naïve back then, for not asking for the whole name, for not being able to remember every little detail, for being caught up in his own misery for so long. Jared has even tried to ask his parents for help, but all they knew were the names but no family name. They hadn’t been as close to the other family, not as close as Jared and JR had been to one another.
When Jared actually has time for himself he wanders through the resort, looks for places he remembers and sometimes even gets lost in memories. For a long time, those three summers and JR had been one of the things that kept him alive. Jared knows it sounds dramatic, but being here and being able to see it all again makes it even more evident that this island, and the memories connected to it, helped him through the bad times.
Jared sometimes stands in certain places, trying to hold back a snort or real laughter when pictures of him and JR playing pranks on Jeff or Josh or even their little sisters, flash through his mind. There are a lot of pranks to be remembered. But there are other things as well, things he usually only ever talked to Sandy or had never talked about.
Not even his parents know and he likes it that way. Because telling them that he'd had his first kiss from a boy during the vacation he was on with them might not go over so well. But then again, they always want to know about his boyfriends and flings so maybe it wouldn’t be much of a scandal in their eyes.
Some of the places where he and JR spent most of their days at are still there, like the hammock hidden in the trees behind the smaller of the two office buildings. When Jared sees it, he immediately blushes a nice shade of red and hopes no one is around to witness it, and his goofy smile.
There had been days when JR had dragged him away from everything else so that they could spent a lazy afternoon or evening lying in the hammock and doing nothing but talking, and later, holding each other. Nothing but slow kisses and cuddling, just quietly exploring what things mean, what they could develop into. Jared knew he was still too young to get it all, to understand it fully but after that last summer Jared knew what being with someone should feel like and that he wanted JR. He knew JR would eventually be the one.
Now Jared wishes he'd have more time, more ways to go on looking. He is not going to lose hope, not while still on the island.
What makes him sad though is that Sandy's no help either. Suddenly she thinks it’s better to forget the past and live in the present. Jared doesn’t get it, because she’s always been the one telling him not to give up. He doesn’t understand her turnaround, though he’s not sure if he actually wants or even has to.
It’s in the middle of high season, the weather hasn’t changed in the past few weeks and Jared is starting to miss clouds and rain. Jensen promised there would be some, but Jared’s still waiting. In the mean time, he gets to see Jensen surf or sail, gets to see him shirtless when they are working on loose planks or repairing roofs. Jared isn’t complaining about that. Not at all. He just wishes that the guests weren’t always around.
Ever since that morning on the beach, Jensen tries to join Jared during his morning jogs, more often than not failing because Jensen is clearly not a morning person. He’s one of those people that only function when they've had at least three cups of coffee and a bagel.
That morning on the beach was an exception, mostly because Jensen was still slightly drunk and unable to sleep the previous night. Jared makes it a point to use every opportunity to tease Jensen about it.
Jensen, in an act of retaliation, has taken up the habit of ruffling Jared’s hair, much to Jared’s annoyance. Everyone else though thinks it’s cute and started teasing both of them about the fact that the two have become almost inseparable in such a short period of time.
There are moments when Jared marvels at the fact that he and Jensen have grown so close. Sometimes he'll catches himself staring at Jensen, trying to figure out why he knows Jensen, why it seems that he's known him all his life.
Jared is pretty sure that Jensen feels at least something close to the same kind of recognition. But for some reason, they both seem to dismiss it as soon as it crosses their mind. Jared feels weird about it often, but can’t place it, can’t seem to catch the bait that is dangle mere inches in front of him, that's beckoning him close so that it can tell what exactly is going on. Mostly, Jared just likes that it seems to keep Jensen close to him.
Mike mutters about chemistry and it being unfair that Jensen always gets the pretty ones. He does it so often that Tom developed a habit of his own -- slapping Mike over the head at every chance he gets.
They are on lunch break and Jared isn’t in a good mood. And it’s mostly due them -- as in Sandy, Mike and Tom. They had kind of merged into a group, or gang as Chris has started to call them, and usually ended up eating together and planning things to do outside of work.
Right now, though, Jared wishes he hadn’t agreed to Mike’s idea of some type of island competition. If he hadn’t agreed, he wouldn’t have ended up climbing palm trees and trying to get his belongings back, which were strewn out all over the damn trees. He wouldn’t have ended up almost braining himself on the planks while trying to chase Tom, who’d stolen one of his notebooks, because, really, no one needed to read that.
And, most importantly, he wouldn’t have scraped his hands and legs raw and, in the process, broken his shell chain if Mike hadn’t had the stupid idea in the first place. Mike’d decided that on each free weekend, when there were only a few guests around, one of the staff members would be subjected to a wild goose chase for his or her things.
He hates Mike right now and it adds to his bitchy mood. The chain is the only thing connecting him to JR and he hates how his neck feels without the weight around it. He hadn’t taken it off in the last ten years. It had been there with him in the hospital, with him when he came out to his parents and when he broke up with his last boyfriend.
It had just always been there for him, like a reassuring presence around his neck. Sometimes, Jared thought, it was like JR was there as well -- with his good advice and blunt jokes. Jared only needed to touch the chain to feel reassured and confident. Instead, he just feels close to tears, but would rather go to hell than to actually show it. He doesn’t need more mocking, definitely not after the weekend he’s had.
“Would you please stop sulking?”
“Fuck off, Rosenbaum.”
Sandy knows how he feels about it and chooses to stay quiet. She'd usually be the first one to join in on good natured bantering, but not this time. Instead, she sits close to Jared, watching him fiddle with the broken links of the chain. She scratches his back slowly, like she always does when he isn’t feeling so well.
Steve is there too, and takes the chain, smiling slighty at Jared and shrugs. “I can fix it. It’s important, isn’t it?”
“Yeah ... I’ve had it for ten years now. It is important to me.”
“Okay then. Might take a while though.”
Jared can finally smile again. Sandy hugs him close and they all laugh when Mike starts the Club night with the obligatory Wham song. It’s Mike’s way of saying sorry and Jared accepts it with a smile and a nod.
Tom hands him some kind of sickly pink cocktail and Jared actually feels okay again. He can’t explain why this bothers him so much. He doesn’t know why this chain is such a part of him. Sandy just says it’s him and he needs it so he shouldn’t worry about is so much. Jared decides not to think too much about it for the rest of the night. Everything will be fine once Steve has it fixed, Jared promises himself. He won’t feel so empty and disconnected anymore.
Then kiss in tropicanas heat,
Jensen doesn’t join Club nights for several days; he has to get up early and drive to Malé to pick up supplies and guests for two weeks in a row. When he finally does have the time, Jared’s scrapes are gone and he’s talking to Mike again.
Jared knows Chris told Jensen about what happened. They’ve spent a lot of time together and Jared has kind of figured out that it’s Jensen’s way of making sure he’s okay. Jensen asked about the chain only once and Jared never got to tell him about it, because at that moment Tom slipped and crashed two full trays of cocktails – all during one of the fruit banquets the resort is well known for.
So Jared isn’t all that surprised when, on one of the following Club Tropicana nights, Jensen sidles up to him, ruffles his hair and plops down next to him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I'm fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Jensen shrugs, doesn’t mention the shell chain or Mike’s idiotic ideas and just hands over one of Tom’s fruity, richly coloured cocktails. Jared laughs and likes it when Jensen shyly grins back at him.
They’ve spent so much time together lately that Jared doesn’t even know what life without Jensen looks like anymore. He isn’t thinking about it either, because there are still a few weeks left and he doesn’t want to ruin them with thoughts about a future that is so uncertain. He wants to spend the time he has left here the best way he can.
The only thing that isn’t cool is that Chad’s now even more pissed at him than before. And it’s because that the only thing Jared seems to be able to talk about these days is Jensen and how he's taken over his life. Well, not exactly like that since the taking over his life bit were all Chad’s words.
To be honest, Jared hadn’t even realised it was all he talked about until Chad had screamed down the phone how fucking tired he was of hearing the word Jensen and that Jared should already go ahead and fuck the guy so that Chad could move on and tell Jared all about his own sexual escapades over the summer. Sandy had just snorted and patted Jared on the head. She's always told him to get new friends, has been ever since the day she met Chad.
Steve, who had been listening in to the conversation, only said that Chad sounded jealous. Jared thinks he probably could agree with that.
Jared is on his third fruity cocktail and about to strangle Mike for playing the damn Wham song again, when Jensen’s hand drops down on his knee. Jared tries hard not to jerk in surprise. They have both given up on the concept of personal space during the last couple of weeks, especially after Jensen had tried to teach Jared’s uncoordinated body how to surf.
But actually being close and touching each other on purpose was new. Not that Jared minds that much; after all it’s him lusting after his boss, who happens to be rubbing his hand up and down Jared’s thigh right now.
“You really feeling good?”
“Huh? Yes… why not? Jensen?”
“I just… Sandy told me about you ... a little. You know, about the hospital and all.”
“Oh ... She shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe not, but ... I just want you to be okay and I had to ask.”
“Jensen?”
“Yes?”
“Your seducing technique kind of sucks.”
It startles a laugh out of Jensen, but the hand doesn’t move, which makes Jared happy.
“Who says I am seducing you? I might just be worried about one of employees.”
“Oh, so you treat all your employees like this?”
“Actually…” There is a little pause and Jared knows that smirk by now. “No. Not really.”
“Good.” He pauses. “Jen, I know you’re worried. But there’s no reason to be. I am fine, I’m healthy and there’s nothing left. Other then the huge debt my parents have to carry.”
“So that’s why you never spent any money on the outings, huh? Sending it all home.”
“Yeah. Even though I know they keep putting it into a savings account. I just want to help a little… I mean it was my fault after all.”
“Jared. No. How was it your fault? Getting sick isn’t anybody’s fault.”
Jared shrugs, because he knows that technically it isn’t his fault, but he still feels guilty. Jensen seems to sense what he’s thinking and moves just a little closer. They’re sitting on the sand, just outside the roof that makes up Club Tropicana. Their backs are to the bar and Jensen slings an arm around Jared’s shoulders, pulling him in, keeping him close.
Jared loves it.
He also loves the way Jensen always manages to distract him from gloomy thoughts or his brooding. He really does love it, and he suspects that his crush has moved to that territory as well.
“So, how about I’ll work on my seducing technique and you work on setting Mrs. Billing’s towels right at least once during the time she is here? Huh? How does that sound?”
Jared groans into Jensen’s neck, because that deal is possibly one of the meanest that there can be.
Mrs. Billings is one of the most demanding guests Jared has ever known. There is absolutely nothing he can do right for her and Jensen knows it. Has known it since the beginning. Mrs. Billings is actually one of the reasons why Jared and Jensen grew so close. They both started bitching about her at the same time and just clicked with their common sense of humour. But Jared is far from thanking her for it. Really far from it.
“That’s a no then I guess?”
“Definitely. But I’d like it if you worked on your technique. I might be convinced that you can actually do it.”
“Do what?”
“Seduce me. I mean, that’s what you have been trying to do, right?”
Jared doesn’t want to sound so insecure, especially not in front of Jensen. For a second he wishes he had his shell chain there for him to touch and draw strength from. For a second he wishes JR would be there, that he knew where he was. But then Jensen draws him close again and that bout of insecurity vanishes as fast has it came. It stuns Jared a little, because that’s never happened before.
Maybe, Jared thinks, he’s finally found the person that’s able to live up to all the requirements and standards he’s set for anyone who wants to be close to him. Maybe Jensen is the one to finally chase the ghost of JR away, to make it possible for Jared to start something new. Jared hopes, he really hopes it’s true.
The kiss is accompanied by cat calls and shouts of ‘Fucking Finally’ and Jensen chuckling against his lips. It’s not the most romantic kiss ever, nor is it a perfect one, but it is perfect enough for Jared to finally feel at home. He thinks Jensen actually managed to drag JR away from the foreground of his mind.
And he loves it.
Part 4 and Epilogue
