20/20 [Jared/Jensen, PG]
For j2_remix I turned wanttobeatree's lovely The Incredibly Ordinary Adventure of Jared and Jensen into something for which I must apologize: opticians and optometrists of the world, I'm sorry. I do not hate you.
None of this ever happened. Not to Jared, not to Jensen, not to Chad, and hopefully not to Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus, and it certainly didn't happen in the waiting area of the independent doctor of optometry inside Target Optical.
(ETA: Interesting fact-it's helpful to post the actual, final version of the story. It's got less typos, plus the actual ending. Both good things. Syncing two computers? Not a skill I possess, apparently.)
20/20 (Snellen Ain't Got Nothing on Jared Padalecki) [Jared/Jensen, PG]
In which Jared hates everything about going to the eye doctor... almost.
20/20 (Snellen Ain't Got Nothing on Jared Padalecki)
Jared officially hates receptionists. Especially receptionists who look like they belong in fifth period American History spreading the latest gossip about Hannah Montana instead of behind a desk, refusing to understand Jared’s name until he spells it out, letter by letter.
“Padalecki,” he says again. When nothing happens, he continues. “P-a-d-a-l-e-c-k-i.”
Her scrunched nose relaxes with each passing letter, until her expression borders on the detached sort of friendly that generally passes for excellence in the world of customer service.
“Just like it sounds,” she says.
No shit, Jared thinks. But he’s been told that his ability to smile and make polite conversation under any circumstances is one of his better qualities, so he does his best to come up with half a grin and says, “Yes, ma’am,” even though she’s got to be at least eight years younger than him.
He doesn’t flick her stupid red glasses off her stupid, Hannah Montana-loving face, but he really kind of wants to.
“If you want to have a seat in the waiting area, we’ll call your name.” Her nose scrunches again. “Well, we’ll try our best, anyway, right?”
Really really wants to.
But instead, he turns toward the alcove of miniature chairs and sighs. There is absolutely nothing Jared doesn’t hate about going to the eye doctor.
Choosing the right seat is an exercise in futility. If he ventures too far into the recessed depths of the alcove, he's got a creepy feeling he might never make it back out, but if he takes one of the seats on the ends, his overflowing limbs are likely to be a safety hazard to visually impaired passersby.
Otherwise known as everyone.
He looks into the depths of the alcove. The far wall's cluttered with a stroller, two walkers, and a randomly uninhabited wheelchair, and Jared can just tell: bad things happen there. He considers the terrifying prospect of being boxed in by some combination of children and the elderly for about half a second before he stuffs himself into the aisle seat, potential liability be damned. He'll just have to make sure all of his limbs are under control.
Which, as it turns out, is easier said than done, because the chair's a good size or two smaller than he is. At least the seats are padded, though. Of course, he's pretty sure it's actually that extra layer of padding that's causing his knees to literally fuse to his chest, so it's more of a mixed blessing. Just, without the actual blessing part.
The chair across from him is empty, though, and that really is a blessing. He's grateful, and therefore perfectly willing to avoid looking too carefully at the suspicious stain on the seat's cushion. Instead, he focuses his attention on the poster of frame choosing tips tacked up on the wall behind it. He never ends up needing glasses, but at least he has something to look at while he tries to balance not getting sucked further into the Bermuda Triangle of waiting areas with not allowing his cramped limbs to spread beyond the confines of his chair.
It doesn’t take him long to memorize which types of frames go best with which types of faces, and once he’s done with that, he has plenty of time to think about how much he really hates the eye doctor.
Which, for the record, is a lot.
He thinks about it in the general direction of the eyewear poster at first, and then he makes the mistake of thinking in the direction of the receptionist, and he finds her staring at him at about the same time he finds himself accidentally staring back at her. He nearly dislocates his entire body trying to grab his phone out of his back pocket, but once he's got it out, he pretends to scroll through the news and resumes his train of thought.
Which mostly revolves around the fact that he is fundamentally opposed to anything that involves interaction with eyeballs. This includes, but is not limited to, all forms of touching, poking and prodding, manual or mechanical. He firmly believes that eyelids are the only objects that should ever come into contact with eyes. Somehow, though, despite his varied and persuasive arguments, no one ever seems to agree with him. Which is fine. He knows he’s right, and that’s good enough for him.
From behind the reception desk, someone calls out a name that's definitely not his, and a middle aged guy wades out from the murky depths of the alcove. He looks vaguely zombified, and Jared hugs his legs in a little tighter and feels a tiny spark of vindication that lifts his spirits.
It doesn’t last, though.
It's barely a minute later when a woman arrives to take the guy's place. Except, as she comes closer, it becomes clear that it's not actually that particular place she's planning on taking. Of all the empty chairs-and okay, there aren't many, but of all the ones there are, she's aiming for the one next to Jared, and that's just not okay. Not when he's one deep breath away from busting his seat open at the seams and there are still other chairs available.
He waits until she's close and then smiles in her direction.
“I'm pretty sure Hannah Montana's sleeping with her dad,” he says pleasantly, holding up his phone and gesturing to it like he's making conversation about a news story. He times it perfectly, and the woman changes course, aims for the little table of magazines instead of the chair next to Jared and takes a beat up copy of Better Homes and Gardens over to the seat under the eyewear poster.
Jared sighs and lets his arm wander into the empty space next to him, just to stretch it out a little. He'd like to thank the academy, the receptionist, for putting Hannah Montana in his head, and while he's at it, he'd also like to thank his best friend Chad for teaching him that yes, it really is possible to naturally and unintentionally be just that much of a douche.
And then he’d like to thank his mama and his daddy, and his brother and sister, too-but he can’t, because apparently, what he'd like doesn’t actually matter all that much right now, and he ends up being too busy reprising his Chad impression and defending the chair next door against a steady stream of suitors to adequately prepare his speech.
He gets another few uses out of Hannah Montana, but people just keep coming, so he starts branching out.
“Afternoon, ma'am. Is your soul rapture ready?” he says, somewhere around the time he starts regretting being so early for his appointment.
It's not his fault, though. He blames eye doctors in general, just for being the horrible human beings they are. Horrible human beings with a bizarre dedication to bringing eyeballs into contact with things they should never, ever touch.
Because clearly, if they weren't horrible human beings with a bizarre dedication to bringing eyeballs into contact with things they should never, ever touch, then Jared wouldn't have to book his biennial eye exams at the independent doctor of optometry located inside the local Target-which conveniently allows him to postpone his freakout by pretending he’s just going to the mall instead of volunteering to sit in a chair and let some dude assault his perfectly twenty-twenty eyes with fingers and drops and machines, but often has the drawback of causing him to be extremely early, because he can’t pretend he’s just hanging out at the mall if all he’s got time to do when he gets there is head straight for his appointment.
It’s perfectly logical, no matter what Chad says. And it’s clearly the doctors who deserve the blame, anyway, for indulging their horrible, eye-touching fantasies.
He shudders, just a little, and that's when he feels it: warmth, and the brush of something solid against the fabric of his sleeve. He turns his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the person who somehow managed to steal his empty seat while he was busy being distracted by his hatred of eye doctors.
“Did you know that the foreskin is a mucous membrane?” he says conversationally.
The guy lets out a little huff that's not the offended objection Jared's hoping for, and it's followed up by a distinct lack of chair vacating. He doesn’t even look in Jared’s direction, and Jared plays the sound back in his head. It's soft and low, more amused than anything else, and Jared turns to get a better look at the guy.
“Only the inside,” the guy says. He's flipping through an eyewear magazine. “The outside’s just skin.”
He looks completely bored, and also just a little bit freckled. Not bad freckled, though. His nose and cheeks are this kind of secret, up-close freckled, and Jared feels suddenly, inexplicably intimate just sitting there in a too-close chair, examining this blanket of perfectly imperfect dots on an absolute stranger's face.
When the corner of the guy's mouth twitches up just the tiniest bit, Jared realizes that he's staring. It takes him another second, in which his attention is focused on the guy's lips, to realize that staring is both rude and kind of awkward. Especially from this distance-which is technically more of a lack of distance than any meaningful separation.
Jared turns his attention back to the eyewear poster on the wall and searches for something to say. Apparently, people with square faces should choose round frames. Jared doesn't say that, though. He doesn't say anything at all, and the silence feels prickly and uncomfortable, like they were in the middle of a conversation that never got finished.
Which, to be fair, they kind of were. But it was a random, Chad-inspired conversation about penises, and Jared just doesn't feel comfortable picking up where they left off.
The woman sitting under the poster gets called in for her appointment, and Jared feels an elbow nudging his.
“What do you think happened there?” the guy asks, gesturing in the direction of the stained chair with his chin.
Jared considers it for a minute. “Apple juice?” he says, as another woman takes the vacated seat and pulls out some kind of electronic book reader thing.
The guy never looks up from his magazine, but the tiny up-twitch of his lips turns into a quirk and he says, “My money's on diaper incident.”
The quirk is just slightly deeper than the twitch; it pulls the guy's mouth into an almost-smile that is entirely to blame for the length of time it takes Jared to turn his attention back to the stained seat under the poster, and the even longer length of time it takes his conscience to creep up, but when it does, he starts the lengthy process of unfolding his limbs from his chair.
Before he's anywhere near ready to get up, the guy lays a warm hand on his arm.
“Don't,” he says.
Jared pauses and lets the heat sink through his sleeve for a minute before he responds. “Someone should probably tell her.”
The guy shakes his head. “You don’t want to disturb her,” he says. He closes his magazine and looks up at Jared, and his eyes are so green that Jared nearly chokes on his own breath.
And then he exhales.
And then he clenches his jaw and doesn't say anything irredeemably awkward. Such as, wow or please don't let the doctor anywhere near your eyes or green.
Because they are. Really, really green. “Um,” Jared says.
And that’s when he notices the tiny outlines around the guy’s irises. Contact lenses. He nearly chokes again.
The guy ignores the evidence of Jared's partial mental breakdown, though, and flashes a surprisingly bright grin that does nothing to stop Jared's head from spinning. He raises an eyebrow and whispers, “She's reading porn, dude.”
That gets Jared's attention, enough to turn his head back toward the woman in question. She looks pretty normal. Not like the kind of person who would openly read porn in an optometrist's waiting area.
Not that Jared really has any clue what that kind of person is supposed to look like.
“Check it out,” the guy whispers, suddenly so close that Jared feels the words as much as he hears them, soft puffs of tingling heat against his ear and neck. “No book cover, no suspicion. Just load it up and go. It's perfect.”
Before Jared can respond with more than a shaky exhale of breath, the guy reaches up and tips Jared's chin in toward the belly of the alcove. Jared shivers at the rasp of the guy's thumb over the very beginnings of stubble.
“The kid in the death metal getup? With the headphones?” the guy whispers, lips right up against Jared's ear. “He's listening to the best of the 80's. And the woman with the kids is texting her boyfriend, not her husband.” He reaches up and tips Jared's chin gently back in the other direction. “The receptionist? Total closet Hannah Montana fan.”
That startles a laugh out of Jared, and the movement pulls them apart, but the guy's laughing, too, a soft little cut-off sound. The smile stays on his face even after the laughter fades out, and the silence that settles this time is comfortable, like they've just exhausted the natural lifespan of small talk about the weather.
Jared uses the quiet time to take a real look at the guy, and that's when he notices the business suit. It's a nice suit. Well cut without being fancy, dark brown with a light blue tie that looks really good for some reason, and Jared blames the easy silence for tricking him into letting his guard down when he says, “You're not a raging asshole.”
And then he cringes and looks away, but not before he sees the guy blink at him, twice. The guy’s eyes go a little wide, then, and his tie looks really, really good.
“What?” the guy says, after a pause that Jared’s hoping is actually much shorter than it feels.
Jared plays the word back in his head a few times until he's sure it's made of confusion and surprise, but not anger, and then he says, “I just. That's a really nice suit.” He pauses for a second, looks across at the different frames on the eyewear poster and tries to decide which pair he'd pick if he had to choose one. “It’s just that most guys I deal with in really nice suits are. Well. You know.”
“Raging assholes?” the guy says.
Jared nods. “Just uptight, rude, cheap little-um.” Jared forcibly closes his mouth. “Sorry. I promise, in context, I'm not as much of a jerk as you probably think I am right now. Anyway. I just mean that you're cool. And you probably don't kill animals.”
Jared bites the inside of his mouth. He’s half convinced that the guy is going to get up and walk away-and Jared wouldn’t blame him-but it doesn't happen. Instead, he just says, “Uptight, huh? Think it’d help if I undid some buttons?” with another little huff of a laugh that immediately chokes off into a strangled cough.
Jared kind of wants to laugh, too, mostly at how adorable it is that even though the guy practically had his lips on Jared’s ear just a few minutes ago, he’s somehow completely embarrassed by a few accidentally suggestive words-but instead he just watches.
The guy grabs his magazine again and opens to a page that he scans with a level of urgency somewhere in between desperation and fascination. It’s all very believable, except for the fact that Jared's pretty sure he's not actually interested in reading random, upside down advertising.
The guy’s ears darken to pink and then to red. They have freckles on them.
Lots of freckles, which Jared admires for what he suspects could possibly be classified as an excessive amount of time, given the circumstances, and then he blames them for how long it takes him to realize that the prickly silence has settled again.
He clears his throat. “Your tie looks awesome, man,” he says. “I mean, your eyes. They make your tie look. Y'know, pretty good. Great. It's a great color. On you.”
It's ridiculous, and he feels his own face heating up a little, but the guy snorts and the corner of his mouth twitches up, and Jared decides immediately that the return of that little almost-smile is absolutely worth the momentary embarrassment of letting his mouth run unrestrained.
He's about to steer the conversation in a less embarrassing direction when he hears, “Mr. Ayckles?” from behind the reception desk.
The guy sighs and says, “Ackles, how hard is that?” under his breath, and Jared wants to hug him or bump fists or just-something.
“Ayckles?” floats across the room again, and when the guy sighs, Jared sighs with him, because he gets it.
“That's me,” the guy says. He turns toward Jared and his smile grows a little, but it's got a disappointed twist to it. He gets up slowly and walks toward the hallway behind the reception desk.
He turns back once, looks like he might be considering abandoning his appointment in favor of just hanging out in the waiting area instead. He doesn't, but Jared smiles anyway.
It's possible that he doesn't actually hate everything about going to the eye doctor.
He turns his attention back to the eyewear poster. He's got about an hour and a half before his appointment. He figures he can spend half the time studying eyewear options and the other half helping the guy-Ackles-pick out a new pair of frames.
He’s thinking oval, maybe in black or bronze. He’s really not picky, though. Anything with two arms and lenses that go in front of the eyes instead of on them will do-because green eyes or not, there is just absolutely no way in hell Jared’s going to date a contact lens wearing, eye-touching freak.
###
None of this ever happened. Not to Jared, not to Jensen, not to Chad, and hopefully not to Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus, and it certainly didn't happen in the waiting area of the independent doctor of optometry inside Target Optical.
(ETA: Interesting fact-it's helpful to post the actual, final version of the story. It's got less typos, plus the actual ending. Both good things. Syncing two computers? Not a skill I possess, apparently.)
20/20 (Snellen Ain't Got Nothing on Jared Padalecki) [Jared/Jensen, PG]
In which Jared hates everything about going to the eye doctor... almost.
20/20 (Snellen Ain't Got Nothing on Jared Padalecki)
Jared officially hates receptionists. Especially receptionists who look like they belong in fifth period American History spreading the latest gossip about Hannah Montana instead of behind a desk, refusing to understand Jared’s name until he spells it out, letter by letter.
“Padalecki,” he says again. When nothing happens, he continues. “P-a-d-a-l-e-c-k-i.”
Her scrunched nose relaxes with each passing letter, until her expression borders on the detached sort of friendly that generally passes for excellence in the world of customer service.
“Just like it sounds,” she says.
No shit, Jared thinks. But he’s been told that his ability to smile and make polite conversation under any circumstances is one of his better qualities, so he does his best to come up with half a grin and says, “Yes, ma’am,” even though she’s got to be at least eight years younger than him.
He doesn’t flick her stupid red glasses off her stupid, Hannah Montana-loving face, but he really kind of wants to.
“If you want to have a seat in the waiting area, we’ll call your name.” Her nose scrunches again. “Well, we’ll try our best, anyway, right?”
Really really wants to.
But instead, he turns toward the alcove of miniature chairs and sighs. There is absolutely nothing Jared doesn’t hate about going to the eye doctor.
Choosing the right seat is an exercise in futility. If he ventures too far into the recessed depths of the alcove, he's got a creepy feeling he might never make it back out, but if he takes one of the seats on the ends, his overflowing limbs are likely to be a safety hazard to visually impaired passersby.
Otherwise known as everyone.
He looks into the depths of the alcove. The far wall's cluttered with a stroller, two walkers, and a randomly uninhabited wheelchair, and Jared can just tell: bad things happen there. He considers the terrifying prospect of being boxed in by some combination of children and the elderly for about half a second before he stuffs himself into the aisle seat, potential liability be damned. He'll just have to make sure all of his limbs are under control.
Which, as it turns out, is easier said than done, because the chair's a good size or two smaller than he is. At least the seats are padded, though. Of course, he's pretty sure it's actually that extra layer of padding that's causing his knees to literally fuse to his chest, so it's more of a mixed blessing. Just, without the actual blessing part.
The chair across from him is empty, though, and that really is a blessing. He's grateful, and therefore perfectly willing to avoid looking too carefully at the suspicious stain on the seat's cushion. Instead, he focuses his attention on the poster of frame choosing tips tacked up on the wall behind it. He never ends up needing glasses, but at least he has something to look at while he tries to balance not getting sucked further into the Bermuda Triangle of waiting areas with not allowing his cramped limbs to spread beyond the confines of his chair.
It doesn’t take him long to memorize which types of frames go best with which types of faces, and once he’s done with that, he has plenty of time to think about how much he really hates the eye doctor.
Which, for the record, is a lot.
He thinks about it in the general direction of the eyewear poster at first, and then he makes the mistake of thinking in the direction of the receptionist, and he finds her staring at him at about the same time he finds himself accidentally staring back at her. He nearly dislocates his entire body trying to grab his phone out of his back pocket, but once he's got it out, he pretends to scroll through the news and resumes his train of thought.
Which mostly revolves around the fact that he is fundamentally opposed to anything that involves interaction with eyeballs. This includes, but is not limited to, all forms of touching, poking and prodding, manual or mechanical. He firmly believes that eyelids are the only objects that should ever come into contact with eyes. Somehow, though, despite his varied and persuasive arguments, no one ever seems to agree with him. Which is fine. He knows he’s right, and that’s good enough for him.
From behind the reception desk, someone calls out a name that's definitely not his, and a middle aged guy wades out from the murky depths of the alcove. He looks vaguely zombified, and Jared hugs his legs in a little tighter and feels a tiny spark of vindication that lifts his spirits.
It doesn’t last, though.
It's barely a minute later when a woman arrives to take the guy's place. Except, as she comes closer, it becomes clear that it's not actually that particular place she's planning on taking. Of all the empty chairs-and okay, there aren't many, but of all the ones there are, she's aiming for the one next to Jared, and that's just not okay. Not when he's one deep breath away from busting his seat open at the seams and there are still other chairs available.
He waits until she's close and then smiles in her direction.
“I'm pretty sure Hannah Montana's sleeping with her dad,” he says pleasantly, holding up his phone and gesturing to it like he's making conversation about a news story. He times it perfectly, and the woman changes course, aims for the little table of magazines instead of the chair next to Jared and takes a beat up copy of Better Homes and Gardens over to the seat under the eyewear poster.
Jared sighs and lets his arm wander into the empty space next to him, just to stretch it out a little. He'd like to thank the academy, the receptionist, for putting Hannah Montana in his head, and while he's at it, he'd also like to thank his best friend Chad for teaching him that yes, it really is possible to naturally and unintentionally be just that much of a douche.
And then he’d like to thank his mama and his daddy, and his brother and sister, too-but he can’t, because apparently, what he'd like doesn’t actually matter all that much right now, and he ends up being too busy reprising his Chad impression and defending the chair next door against a steady stream of suitors to adequately prepare his speech.
He gets another few uses out of Hannah Montana, but people just keep coming, so he starts branching out.
“Afternoon, ma'am. Is your soul rapture ready?” he says, somewhere around the time he starts regretting being so early for his appointment.
It's not his fault, though. He blames eye doctors in general, just for being the horrible human beings they are. Horrible human beings with a bizarre dedication to bringing eyeballs into contact with things they should never, ever touch.
Because clearly, if they weren't horrible human beings with a bizarre dedication to bringing eyeballs into contact with things they should never, ever touch, then Jared wouldn't have to book his biennial eye exams at the independent doctor of optometry located inside the local Target-which conveniently allows him to postpone his freakout by pretending he’s just going to the mall instead of volunteering to sit in a chair and let some dude assault his perfectly twenty-twenty eyes with fingers and drops and machines, but often has the drawback of causing him to be extremely early, because he can’t pretend he’s just hanging out at the mall if all he’s got time to do when he gets there is head straight for his appointment.
It’s perfectly logical, no matter what Chad says. And it’s clearly the doctors who deserve the blame, anyway, for indulging their horrible, eye-touching fantasies.
He shudders, just a little, and that's when he feels it: warmth, and the brush of something solid against the fabric of his sleeve. He turns his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the person who somehow managed to steal his empty seat while he was busy being distracted by his hatred of eye doctors.
“Did you know that the foreskin is a mucous membrane?” he says conversationally.
The guy lets out a little huff that's not the offended objection Jared's hoping for, and it's followed up by a distinct lack of chair vacating. He doesn’t even look in Jared’s direction, and Jared plays the sound back in his head. It's soft and low, more amused than anything else, and Jared turns to get a better look at the guy.
“Only the inside,” the guy says. He's flipping through an eyewear magazine. “The outside’s just skin.”
He looks completely bored, and also just a little bit freckled. Not bad freckled, though. His nose and cheeks are this kind of secret, up-close freckled, and Jared feels suddenly, inexplicably intimate just sitting there in a too-close chair, examining this blanket of perfectly imperfect dots on an absolute stranger's face.
When the corner of the guy's mouth twitches up just the tiniest bit, Jared realizes that he's staring. It takes him another second, in which his attention is focused on the guy's lips, to realize that staring is both rude and kind of awkward. Especially from this distance-which is technically more of a lack of distance than any meaningful separation.
Jared turns his attention back to the eyewear poster on the wall and searches for something to say. Apparently, people with square faces should choose round frames. Jared doesn't say that, though. He doesn't say anything at all, and the silence feels prickly and uncomfortable, like they were in the middle of a conversation that never got finished.
Which, to be fair, they kind of were. But it was a random, Chad-inspired conversation about penises, and Jared just doesn't feel comfortable picking up where they left off.
The woman sitting under the poster gets called in for her appointment, and Jared feels an elbow nudging his.
“What do you think happened there?” the guy asks, gesturing in the direction of the stained chair with his chin.
Jared considers it for a minute. “Apple juice?” he says, as another woman takes the vacated seat and pulls out some kind of electronic book reader thing.
The guy never looks up from his magazine, but the tiny up-twitch of his lips turns into a quirk and he says, “My money's on diaper incident.”
The quirk is just slightly deeper than the twitch; it pulls the guy's mouth into an almost-smile that is entirely to blame for the length of time it takes Jared to turn his attention back to the stained seat under the poster, and the even longer length of time it takes his conscience to creep up, but when it does, he starts the lengthy process of unfolding his limbs from his chair.
Before he's anywhere near ready to get up, the guy lays a warm hand on his arm.
“Don't,” he says.
Jared pauses and lets the heat sink through his sleeve for a minute before he responds. “Someone should probably tell her.”
The guy shakes his head. “You don’t want to disturb her,” he says. He closes his magazine and looks up at Jared, and his eyes are so green that Jared nearly chokes on his own breath.
And then he exhales.
And then he clenches his jaw and doesn't say anything irredeemably awkward. Such as, wow or please don't let the doctor anywhere near your eyes or green.
Because they are. Really, really green. “Um,” Jared says.
And that’s when he notices the tiny outlines around the guy’s irises. Contact lenses. He nearly chokes again.
The guy ignores the evidence of Jared's partial mental breakdown, though, and flashes a surprisingly bright grin that does nothing to stop Jared's head from spinning. He raises an eyebrow and whispers, “She's reading porn, dude.”
That gets Jared's attention, enough to turn his head back toward the woman in question. She looks pretty normal. Not like the kind of person who would openly read porn in an optometrist's waiting area.
Not that Jared really has any clue what that kind of person is supposed to look like.
“Check it out,” the guy whispers, suddenly so close that Jared feels the words as much as he hears them, soft puffs of tingling heat against his ear and neck. “No book cover, no suspicion. Just load it up and go. It's perfect.”
Before Jared can respond with more than a shaky exhale of breath, the guy reaches up and tips Jared's chin in toward the belly of the alcove. Jared shivers at the rasp of the guy's thumb over the very beginnings of stubble.
“The kid in the death metal getup? With the headphones?” the guy whispers, lips right up against Jared's ear. “He's listening to the best of the 80's. And the woman with the kids is texting her boyfriend, not her husband.” He reaches up and tips Jared's chin gently back in the other direction. “The receptionist? Total closet Hannah Montana fan.”
That startles a laugh out of Jared, and the movement pulls them apart, but the guy's laughing, too, a soft little cut-off sound. The smile stays on his face even after the laughter fades out, and the silence that settles this time is comfortable, like they've just exhausted the natural lifespan of small talk about the weather.
Jared uses the quiet time to take a real look at the guy, and that's when he notices the business suit. It's a nice suit. Well cut without being fancy, dark brown with a light blue tie that looks really good for some reason, and Jared blames the easy silence for tricking him into letting his guard down when he says, “You're not a raging asshole.”
And then he cringes and looks away, but not before he sees the guy blink at him, twice. The guy’s eyes go a little wide, then, and his tie looks really, really good.
“What?” the guy says, after a pause that Jared’s hoping is actually much shorter than it feels.
Jared plays the word back in his head a few times until he's sure it's made of confusion and surprise, but not anger, and then he says, “I just. That's a really nice suit.” He pauses for a second, looks across at the different frames on the eyewear poster and tries to decide which pair he'd pick if he had to choose one. “It’s just that most guys I deal with in really nice suits are. Well. You know.”
“Raging assholes?” the guy says.
Jared nods. “Just uptight, rude, cheap little-um.” Jared forcibly closes his mouth. “Sorry. I promise, in context, I'm not as much of a jerk as you probably think I am right now. Anyway. I just mean that you're cool. And you probably don't kill animals.”
Jared bites the inside of his mouth. He’s half convinced that the guy is going to get up and walk away-and Jared wouldn’t blame him-but it doesn't happen. Instead, he just says, “Uptight, huh? Think it’d help if I undid some buttons?” with another little huff of a laugh that immediately chokes off into a strangled cough.
Jared kind of wants to laugh, too, mostly at how adorable it is that even though the guy practically had his lips on Jared’s ear just a few minutes ago, he’s somehow completely embarrassed by a few accidentally suggestive words-but instead he just watches.
The guy grabs his magazine again and opens to a page that he scans with a level of urgency somewhere in between desperation and fascination. It’s all very believable, except for the fact that Jared's pretty sure he's not actually interested in reading random, upside down advertising.
The guy’s ears darken to pink and then to red. They have freckles on them.
Lots of freckles, which Jared admires for what he suspects could possibly be classified as an excessive amount of time, given the circumstances, and then he blames them for how long it takes him to realize that the prickly silence has settled again.
He clears his throat. “Your tie looks awesome, man,” he says. “I mean, your eyes. They make your tie look. Y'know, pretty good. Great. It's a great color. On you.”
It's ridiculous, and he feels his own face heating up a little, but the guy snorts and the corner of his mouth twitches up, and Jared decides immediately that the return of that little almost-smile is absolutely worth the momentary embarrassment of letting his mouth run unrestrained.
He's about to steer the conversation in a less embarrassing direction when he hears, “Mr. Ayckles?” from behind the reception desk.
The guy sighs and says, “Ackles, how hard is that?” under his breath, and Jared wants to hug him or bump fists or just-something.
“Ayckles?” floats across the room again, and when the guy sighs, Jared sighs with him, because he gets it.
“That's me,” the guy says. He turns toward Jared and his smile grows a little, but it's got a disappointed twist to it. He gets up slowly and walks toward the hallway behind the reception desk.
He turns back once, looks like he might be considering abandoning his appointment in favor of just hanging out in the waiting area instead. He doesn't, but Jared smiles anyway.
It's possible that he doesn't actually hate everything about going to the eye doctor.
He turns his attention back to the eyewear poster. He's got about an hour and a half before his appointment. He figures he can spend half the time studying eyewear options and the other half helping the guy-Ackles-pick out a new pair of frames.
He’s thinking oval, maybe in black or bronze. He’s really not picky, though. Anything with two arms and lenses that go in front of the eyes instead of on them will do-because green eyes or not, there is just absolutely no way in hell Jared’s going to date a contact lens wearing, eye-touching freak.
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