Chapter I, part ii
he was a tight-rope walker
yes, he was the talk of the town
They were lying side by side on Jared’s bed-which was actually quite a feat, because Jared’s bed was made for one and Jared had put on a bit of a growth spurt in the past week- staring up at the ceiling and tracing patterns in the plastering. Jared pointed out what looked like a mouse, as well as a face and a woman with an umbrella-if you really squinted and ignored the fact that she didn’t have any arms or legs, just long, long hair and a wobbly umbrella-out on the plastering. At first, Castiel was quiet and hesitant, eyes trained on Jared; he was silent as he watched, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Eventually, he pointed out a man with wings upon the ceiling. Jared didn’t see it at first, but suddenly it was as clear as day.
“Or it could just be a bird,” he pointed out, trying to reassure the angel when he spotted Castiel looking a bit sad again. “I mean, it does look like he’s got a bit of a beak, right Cas?”
“Right,” was all he said, but it didn’t sound like he believed that.
The pair fell into a vaguely uncomfortable silence. Jared placed his hands beneath his head, using them as a sort of pillow as he lay on his back; he glanced across at the angel, and saw that the other was inspecting the ceiling intently, eyes focused on that winged man he’d seen earlier. He felt as though he had to distract the other-because he didn’t like the lonely look in those bright blue eyes-and so he cleared his throat. Castiel looked expectantly at him. Absently, Jared realised he didn’t actually have anything meaningful to say, so he just asked the first question that sprang to mind.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Cas?”
Castiel didn’t reply, and instead looked at Jared with a bemused expression, before pointing out, “I am grown up, Jared. I may appear to you in this body and I might look like a child, but I have been ‘grown up’ for millions of years now-”
“That’s not really what I meant,” Jared cut across easily, flapping a hand. “I get that. You’re an old man, and that’s cool, but you’ve still got to have-or had-a dream, right?”
“I suppose.”
“So what was that dream?”
“I-”
Jared watched as the angel paused, brow furrowing as he thought. Then he let out a little sigh, closing his eyes and looking resigned. Jared couldn’t help but feel that maybe pushing the angel for an answer hadn’t been the best of all ideas, because all of a sudden he just looked so weary.
“I just wanted to make my father proud.”
He blinked, unsure of what to say. Judging from the look on Castiel’s face, words wouldn’t be enough to make everything better; and that was something Jared was beginning to learn anyway-no, the angel needed something more. What he’d said and what he’d wanted to say were two completely different things, and Jared could read the underlying theme to the sentence-he viewed being on Earth as a punishment. The past tense-he’d wanted-meant that he’d tried, but he felt as though he’d failed, and-
“Your, uh-father? I didn’t realize angels had parents; or, d’you mean… God?”
Castiel’s eyes were sad.
And suddenly it was all a bit much for Jared.
He’d figured he probably had a few more years of childhood before he had to start dealing with all these complications, but Castiel had ruined that for him by falling from Heaven and being an angel with father issues and so he’d been shoved headfirst into all these issues that he didn’t really understand. But he tried, he really did. He couldn’t say any of that, though, because he just didn’t know how to say it.
Instead, he settled for placing a hand on Castiel’s arm in an awkward gesture of comfort. His Pa did it to Jeff sometimes, when he got upset-he’d slap his forearm or shoulder, and then say something comforting, and that’d be that. Jared wasn’t sure if he was doing it properly.
“I want to be an actor.”
Castiel blinked at him for a moment; he figured he probably hadn’t been expecting Jared to say anything like that, and Jared just smiled sheepishly.
“I, uh-my Ma and I used to read loads together, and I’ve always been a big fan of words. I know it sounds stupid to say it like that, but that’s how it is; I like the words almost as much as I like the story, and, when I was little, I always used to try and read to my Ma, because I liked doing the different voices and stuff,” he explained sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding Castiel’s gaze. “Jeff thinks it’s silly. I told him once, but he gave me an Indian burn and told me to shut up. Ma thinks I can do it, if I really try, and she’s been looking around for a drama group I can join, or something, and-and I guess it’s just what I want to do.”
There was an embarrassing silence, as the angel just stared at Jared. He could feel his cheeks beginning to heat up, turning scarlet, an embarrassed flush rising from his chest to the tips of his ears. Absently, still unable to look at Castiel, he fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt.
“I don’t really know why I told you all that,” he mumbled. “I just thought it might help.”
Thank you.
Jared blinked.
It was the first time in a while that Castiel had spoken like that.
When he looked across at the angel, a smile was playing across his features.
“No problem, Cas,” he replied, and lay on his back gazing at the ceiling. Apparently that smile was contagious because, within moments, Jared was grinning broadly himself.
The closest anyone got to discovering Castiel and uncovering the fact that Jared was hiding a fallen angel in his bedroom every day, was when Megan almost caught him.
He didn’t know how she found out, but one day, when Jared was sat at the kitchen table, eating his cereal, she came downstairs and sat opposite him. He raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t say anything, so he rolled his eyes and promptly ignored her. When he’d finished his food, he glanced back up at her-she was leaning forwards, eyes narrow, her chin pressed stubbornly against her fist. On her lap was a large, thickly-bound book. She was drumming her fingers on the cover, mirroring their Ma-it was sort of unnerving how much Meg acted like her, nowadays. She was doing that thing when she wanted to say something, but she didn’t want to speak first, biting her lip and looking vaguely pained.
He heaved a sigh. “What do you want, Meg?”
“I want to know about the angels.”
Jared froze.
He stared at his sister then, scanning her expression for anything-trying to see if she knew or was just asking an innocent question-but he found nothing. She was six years old, and already he didn’t understand her. He figured that just came with the entire ‘being a girl’ situation. He rolled his eyes again, picking up his bowl and crossing over to the sink.
Turning on the tap, he asked, “Why?”
“Just cuz,” she said, shrugging. “Just cuz I wanna.”
“Fine. They wear dresses and have halos and they float around in the sky all day, because that’s what God tells them to do. What’ve you got there?”
“Ma’s fairytales.”
Jared narrowed his eyes. “That was in my room.”
“I took it out,” Meg mimicked him, narrowing her own eyes. “It’s not yours, it’s Ma’s.”
“Don’t go in my room, Meg.”
“But you’re lying, Jay-you’re lying about the angels,” she snapped in return, before leaning forwards, eyes wide, “Can you tell me about them?”
Sometimes, Jared forgot that Meg was six.
Sometimes, he thought she acted a lot older than him or Jeff-sometimes, he thought she was a hell of a lot smarter than them, too.
He didn’t look at her. Instead, he switched off the tap, making sure to add washing-up liquid; he swilled the water about until it was frothy and bubbly, before dunking his bowl into the water. He took the sponge and cleaned it slowly, chewing the inside of his lip as he thought. Then he thought some more. He put the bowl on the drying up rack, cleaned the spoon, and turned and looked at his sister, pursing his lips as he stared at her. She stared stubbornly back. He figured that if he didn’t appease her with some sort of story, she’d probably keep bugging him non-stop-so he let out a resigned sigh, crossing his arms over his chest.
“If I tell you about the angels, will you promise to quit going into my room without asking?” He asked, feeling tired-little sisters were far more trouble than they were worth.
Meg beamed at him.
“I promise, Jay!”
So he told her.
He didn’t tell her the complete truth, of course, because that would mean admitting that he was hiding a real-life angel in his bedroom, but he told her most of it. He told her about how the angels actually looked like stars, burning fierce and bright in the night-sky, and he told her about how when they fell, they cut a fiery, crimson path through the night. He told her all about how their wings were beautiful, large and powerful; he told her that they probably felt soft like feathers, but they looked slippery like water. He told her about how angels could speak with their minds, because they never had to use their voices when they were stars-but he also told her that they tended to sound like old men, because they never usually got to hang around with kids.
Megan didn’t ask questions. She just sat where she was and gaped at him, listening in awe as Jared explained that angels were actually older than anyone on the Earth-that they were millions and billions and trillions of years old.
He might have told her that they had the brightest eyes, too.
Each morning, she’d come back and ask him to tell her about the angels again. She’d look so happy, so excited, so fascinated, that he’d just roll his eyes over his cereal. He’d scoff a little bit and tease her, but she’d just keep asking for him to tell her about the angels again. So he would. Megan grew up drinking in stories about angels in the night-sky and, as a result, was probably the only person to ever come close to uncovering the secret that Jared hid in his bedroom for a month when he was nine.
tell me all that you’ve thrown away
find out games you don’t want to play
you are
the only one who needs to know
“Do you ever wonder why you… you know… fell?”
Jared couldn’t remember why he asked, but, for some reason, he felt as though he should. It was the one thing neither of them talked about-it was the elephant in the room. It was the reason for the heavy, tense atmosphere that hung over them whenever they came close to talking about his brethren or what it was like in Heaven-which was, rather than being a place in the clouds, actually a completely different dimension, and all that humans could see of it appeared as the night-sky, Castiel explained-or whenever they spoke of God.
He felt as though the point had to be addressed sooner rather than later, purely so that Castiel could begin to deal with the idea, and then maybe come up with a solution. He figured the angel probably wouldn’t want to spend the rest of his angelic life stuck on Earth, and Jared did see the wistful looks Castiel sometimes threw the sky, when he thought Jared wasn’t watching.
So he asked.
Castiel didn’t answer at first.
When he did, his voice was uncertain and shaky.
“I-I often wonder, Jared,” he said, not looking at the other. “But I cannot even begin to comprehend why I might have… or what purpose I can serve down… down here.”
“Don’t you want to know?”
“Of course.”
“Then why don’t you, I don’t know,” Jared gestured wildly, “Try and find out? There’ve got to be other angels down here, right? You can’t be the only one, Cas. Or maybe there’s some way of trying to find them. You could-you could have a look, I guess.”
“I could.”
They never spoke of the matter again.
the way he feels inside
those thoughts i can’t deny
these sleeping dogs won’t lie
One day, Castiel disappeared.
At first, Jared wasn’t worried.
The window was left wide open, after all, and he figured that for someone with wings, it probably wasn’t all that hard to get out of a window on the second floor. The angel had probably just gone to stretch his legs or his wings or whatever-it was nothing to worry about. There had been a few times before when Castiel had done just that; but a small part of Jared’s mind told him that Castiel had always left a note informing him of what he was doing. Still, he didn’t think it was all that unusual. He’d be back before supper.
He wasn’t back.
He didn’t come back after supper, either, or during the evening.
For the first time in weeks, Jared slept on his own that night. He still slept on the floor, though, because Castiel would sleep in the bed when he came back-and he’d feel rude if he made an angel sleep on the floor, because, hello, he was an angel.
He didn’t close the window.
Castiel would need to climb through it, after all, when he came back.
A week passed and Castiel still wasn’t back.
It was beginning to worry Jared then; after all, he had no idea where the angel was, or what he was doing, or what might have happened to him, and his mind couldn’t help but unhelpfully supply him with various scenarios in which a blue-eyed, dark-haired angel ended up sprawled in a ditch somewhere. Jared should have told him that nine year old boys don’t wander around on their own, even if they are actually nine billion and something year old angels.
“Don’t worry,” he told himself that night, as he pushed the window open. “He’ll be back.”
For every day of that month, he stayed up by the window, peering out into the darkness and trying to see if he could spot anyone-or a specific someone-moving down in the shadows. He never gave up, not once; without fail, he’d just sit by the window, sometimes curled up on a chair, other times kneeling on the floor-he’d stay there until about midnight, give or take a few hours, before he’d heave a sigh and tell himself that maybe next night the angel would come back.
It was at the end of the month, when he woke up perched on the windowsill, his legs cramped and pins-and-needles all up and down his feet, he realised the truth.
Castiel was gone.
He’d left.
At first, he was irritated-and rightfully so, he thought. There had been no warning, no reason to believe that the angel was suddenly going to take off into the night and vanish completely; he didn’t want to admit it, either, but he’d been getting used to the angel’s presence. He’d begun to enjoy disappearing from the table after dinners, excusing himself so that he could go and talk with the other-he’d liked teasing him fondly, elbowing him playfully and he’d begun to consider the angel his friend. He wasn’t just a secret Jared had to keep-he was someone Jared had begun to know and relate to and like, and, well…
It stung that Castiel could just take off so easily.
After a while, though, he realised that he shouldn’t have expected more. The guy was an angel, after all-he’d lived for millions and maybe billions or trillions of years, and Jared was just… tiny in comparison. He couldn’t keep an angel cooped up in his bedroom for forever; he did need to stretch his wings, after all, and Jared would have to grow up eventually, and it just wouldn’t have worked. And he did need to figure out why he was down on Earth in the first place, so he’d probably gone to try and find out; and while that was a shame, because when Jared had said ‘you could have a look’, he’d actually meant ‘we could have a look’. He shouldn’t have expected more.
Still-
He was disappointed.
He’d wanted the magic to work.
He’d wanted an angel for a best friend.
He’d wanted forever.
A year later and Jared began to focus on his acting, practising in front of the mirror and immersing himself in different books, so as to study different voices for characters. He found it easier to pretend to be someone else, now, considering how he’d managed to keep an angel a secret for around a month, with only his little sister coming close to figuring it all out. He played games with Meg again, pretending to be a pirate at a fairy tea party, because Meg had always been an imaginative girl-he didn’t tell Meg stories about the angels anymore, though, no matter how much she asked. He put hair dye in Jeff’s shampoo again, just so he could laugh loudly when his brother stepped into his room, dripping wet, with a furious scowl and bright pink hair. He started reading to his Ma again. He watched the football with his Pa.
Just before he hit twelve, he told his Ma all about his dream. He told her all about how he wanted to be an actor and how he’d been practising really hard, and that he figured if he really tried, he’d probably be able to do it. She told his Pa, and on his birthday, his Pa gave him his birthday present with a broad, brilliant smile. He said he’d booked acting classes for Jared. He figured if his son really wanted to do it, then he’d be there with him every step of the way.
Jeff told him that he was getting girly to match his girly hair and girly face.
Jared pointed out, rather loudly, that Jeff was the one with the girly pink hair.
His brother shut up after that.
The acting classes paid off, though. Jared got better and better at acting, and he joined the drama club in high school-but he ended up quitting within a month, because he always missed lessons. His friends were pretty supportive. He got the lead in the school play, Peter Pan, and his family sat right in the front row, clapping and cheering and whooping enthusiastically at the end when he did his bow. His first girlfriend was the girl who played the part of Wendy; she was pretty, with dark eyes and sandy hair, but she was quiet and shy, and they didn’t really see each other outside of school all that much. It was just a crush, really. They stayed friends.
After that, he went through a string of girlfriends, as well as a drunken time at a party when he was sixteen with a drunken guy-except that hadn’t amounted to much and Jared stuck it in his file of things he never wanted to think about again-and he kept on acting. By the time he was sixteen, his Ma was already sure he was going to be the next Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp or whatever, and while it was excruciatingly embarrassing to hear her dote on him to all her female friends, a pleasant warm feeling would still fill his chest. It could have been pride, he figured, but it was mostly just happiness; but it sort of felt empty, too, like he was missing something. He tried not to dwell on that too much. Instead, he just focused on making his Ma proud.
When he was seventeen, he won FOX’s “Claim to Fame” contest.
He then appeared at the Teen’s Choice Awards, where he met his manager, and he figured his dreams were all coming true.
At eighteen, he graduated from high school. Instead of going to the University of Texas, as he’d planned, he left for Los Angeles, to pursue an acting career. He had his Ma’s blessing, and she full out bawled when he left. Jeff-who’d already moved out some time prior to that, but still popped around every now and again for Sunday dinner-clapped his shoulder, and told him he was getting super girly now. Meg squealed and fussed over him, saying that she’d always wanted a famous brother and that he’d better introduce her to loads of celebrities. His Pa just smiled, teary-eyed, and told him he was proud of him.
When Jared landed the part of Dean Forester on Gilmore Girls, he was overjoyed.
During the filming, he met Chad Michael Murray, who was pretty damn awesome; they hit it off straight away. Despite the fact that both were about as experienced as each other, Chad took Jared underneath his wing, showing him the ropes and whatever-when the first episode was aired, they celebrated with the cast for an hour or so, before heading down to a nearby bar and drinking themselves silly. That was, in retrospect, a ridiculous thing to do, because Jared was still pissed the morning after, and ended up with a hangover that lasted throughout the entire day.
His family called him, too, saying they’d watched it and seen it. He spoke to each of his family members at length. His Ma burst into tears over the phone, and even his Pa’s voice sounded a bit wobbly. Jeff teased him good-naturedly, and he didn’t get to speak to Meg for too long, because Chad practically tore the phone off him-“Dude, I call dibs on speaking to your hot sister,” he informed Jared loudly, despite the fact that Meg was off limits-and spent the entire evening flirting with her. He did get to speak to her for a moment, though, and she informed him that she was proud of her big bro, even if he had suddenly turned into a handsome giant.
“When the hell did my big bro get hot?” She asked, “My friends are trying to get me to give them your number-one of them broke into your old room, just so she could lie on your bed.”
Jared just chuckled nervously.
He spent five years doing Gilmore Girls. It was five terrifying years of teenage fans jumping him in the streets, asking for autographs and cooing over how cute he was. It was five terrifying years with Chad Michael Murray as a best friend. It was five terrifying years as a main character, as a recurring role, as something big. It was the best five terrifying years of his life, he thought, until he got the role of Sam Winchester in Supernatural, and then he realised everything could only get better.
It all happened in 2005 and, looking back, he would say that that was probably the year in which everything began to go uphill for him. At the beginning of the year, he’d been filming Cry Wolf-it wasn’t a brilliant film, to be honest, but Chad was with him and they messed around; they had fun filming it. That was where he met Sandra McCoy; she had one of the leading roles, and she was pretty nice. Attractive, relatively funny, with a sweet smile and a sweeter laugh, they sort of hit it off. Chad mocked him constantly, of course, because he was Chad, but it was nice. He didn’t mind. It was-Sandy was special, y’know? He liked how she’d dress in those tiny, delicate dresses at public functions with the rest of the cast, but she’d still let him wrap his arms around her waist and scoop her up, hoisting her over his shoulder. He liked the way she laughed at that.
(And he couldn’t help comparing her eyes to that vibrant blue of an angel who fell from Heaven.)
When filming ended, she gave him her number.
He’d send her a few texts every now and again, and they’d maybe meet up, but it was nothing really serious. He only began to consider the possibility that it could become something serious just before he landed one of the lead roles of Supernatural-and, well, after that, he didn’t really think about it all that much. They still texted, they still met up, but he was too excitable to really consider anything long-term; he decided he’d spend some time filming, and then he’d wait for his head to clear, and then he’d make a decision. She said that was okay. She said, with the sweetest of smiles, that she could wait.
He met Jensen Ackles not long after.
He greeted him with a bearhug, and Jensen looked vaguely terrified, patting Jared’s back slowly and uncertainly. After that, though, they pretty much hit it off straight away-they had brilliant chemistry when playing their characters, and it sort of just seeped over into their everyday relationship. They ended up being the equivalent of brothers, really. The first few episodes of Supernatural were brilliant and wonderful and beautiful to film, too, and just such fun. It was such a breath of fresh air, switching from being a Dean to playing a Sam-although apparently he couldn’t escape Dean at all, because all of a sudden he had a Dean as a brother-and the episodes were a good balance of intelligence, creativity and out-and-out horror, as well as just being fun.
All the time, he tried to forget the fallen angel with the bright blue eyes and the shatterglass voice.
He still left his window open each night.
and now
i try to lie
it’s eating me apart
trace this life back
Fourteen years later, Jared had forgotten everything.
Or, at least, that’s what he told himself.
who has to know?
who has to know?
Jared didn’t like oversleeping.
He figured most people didn’t like oversleeping, too, but that was up until he met Jensen, who apparently loved oversleeping more than anything else in the world. It was murder trying to wake him up in the morning; he tended to get grouchy and practically hiss at you, because Jensen was hardly what you’d call a morning person. Jared, on the other hand, had always been a morning person, for as long as he could remember. Unlike Jensen, he just didn’t ever feel the need to cling to those last few dregs of sleep; he was lucky enough to be blessed with the ability to quickly adapt to that early morning drowsy feeling. He’d embrace it for a few minutes, letting himself clutch hopelessly at those last few snippets of dreams and sleep, before stretching and waking up. After a shower, he’d be back to his usual self.
So when his alarm sounded and morning came, Jared was usually up and about in no time at all.
This morning, however, was totally different.
He’d had his alarm-clock for as long as he could remember; it was one of those large, clunky plastic ones, with flashing red numbers on a black background. It wasn’t anything special; it could have been by anyone’s bed, really, and it was cheap and the buttons were faded. It was kind of crappy, actually, but it had been a part of Jared’s life ever since his Ma had given it to him as a kid, and he couldn’t really bring himself to throw it away, despite the fact that he desperately needed a new one. He’d managed to keep it safe ever since leaving Texas, along with a variety of other objects from home, and he pretty much treasured it, without outright treasuring it.
That was why it was pretty surprising when he launched it at the wall, groaning because he just wanted the fucking beeping to stop.
The crash that accompanied its breakage and the surprised little yips his babies made at the noise, was enough to force him out of bed, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit,” beneath his breath. He ended up showering for longer than normal, resting his head against the tiles and almost drifting back off to sleep; it was only when he found himself slipping in the shower that his eyes widened, and he forced himself to get out and dressed before he could injure himself.
It took him three consecutive cups of coffee-black, without sugar-before he even managed to get his ass into gear, unlocking the back door so that Sadie and Harley could tear out in the garden. He set about placing dog food into their bowls, humming beneath his breath as he began to slowly, steadily wake up; he popped a piece of bread into the toaster for himself, plucking his mobile phone up off the counter and scrolling through the messages.
He had one new voicemail.
At first, he expected it to be Jensen, or maybe Sandy-hell, at a push, it could probably be a family member or maybe Chad, but he highly doubted that. Peering at it, he didn’t recognise the number, but he pressed his phone against his ear, letting out a little grunt as his toast jumped from the toaster. His fingers itched towards it, but he had to sort out his babies first; he placed the dog bowls down on the floor, and Harley licked his fingers gratefully, planting sloppy kisses up and down his arms, before practically diving at his food; Sadie, on the other hand, was more reserved, and just settled for looking at him with her big, round eyes. He scratched behind her ears gently, before straightening, heading back over to the toaster.
He picked his phone back up. Squashing it between his ear and shoulder, he settled for trying to balance another cup of coffee and toast in his hands, juggling them impressively as he listened to the message.
“We need to talk.”
Both the coffee and the toast fell to the ground.
Buttered side facing down-just his luck.
Those four words were followed by a time, a date and a place, but that didn’t matter, because Jared had sort of gone into a state of blank shock. He just stood where he was, listening to the beeping which followed the message; then his thumb sort of automatically pressed it again, and he listened to the entire thing all over again. He must have listened to it three or four times in total. Sadie nudged her nose against his free hand, the one dangling uselessly by his side, but he found himself ignoring her.
That voice…
He remembered it crying for help, once upon a time.
Absently, he wondered why it was Castiel decided to come back just as Jared was trying his hardest to move on.
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