The Empty Room - II/1

[germanjj]

~*~*~ I sing of things that are ~*~*~

It's late after a long exhausting day of shooting and running around screaming. We're in the wardrobe trailer, alone, since the girls have yet another talk with Eric about some little changes, and he and I are peeling out of our clothes.

I don't know why we're not taking our costumes back home, 'borrowing' them like we do so many times, but today doesn't seem that kind of day so we're changing into our regular clothes, doing the girls a favor and putting them on the wardrobe racks ourselves.

We're not necessarily modest about it; we do this all the time anyway, but I have my back turned toward him as I change from Sam's pants to my jeans. Until I hear the clink of something hitting the floor and I swirl around and see him.

Wearing just his jeans, he bends down to pick up his watch. When he straightens back up, he gives me a small smile and suddenly, I can't take my eyes off him.

I've seen him shirtless - or with fewer clothes - a thousand times; I must have, because the sight is nothing new to me. I know the soft tan of his skin, the freckles that go from his shoulder all the way down his back and I know the muscles beneath the skin and how they tense and release with every move. I've seen that before.

But now I want to touch.

I swallow audibly and his eyes dart up to me. They must catch whatever is written on my face because his face changes and he stills.

I know that my next move will change everything. I can see the look on his face, can decipher it like I know everything about him, know him like I don't even know myself. He's not going to do anything before I do, before I give him a reason to. But he wants it. God, he wants it as much as I do and the realization hits me like a freight train with its force.

I could turn away and nothing between us would change.

But maybe I want things to change.

Not maybe. Definitely.

I take a breath and then a step and I can see how a shiver runs through him, his lips part and his eyes widen. And darken.

How could I ever think I wouldn't want this?

I close the distance between us with three more steps until I'm almost touching him, can already feel his body heat bleeding into my skin.

And what really makes a difference, what really changes everything, is that he doesn't take a step back. He just stays where he is, his eyes meeting mine.

"I have a confession to make," I whisper and lower my head.

"Yeah?" His breath is stirring against my mouth and my eyes zone out on his lips. His beautiful lips.

"I think I'm ... maybe not that ... straight."

He chuckles and his chest touches mine and for a second I regret that I'm not shirtless too. That I can't feel his skin on my skin now. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah." I nod.

"Because my best friend shouldn’t get me that nervous, right?” I ramble on, already breathless. "He shouldn’t make me think about all these ... things. Shouldn’t make me wonder what it would feel like ... ."

"Jay?" he asks and his eyes are half-closed, focused on my mouth.

"Yeah?"

His lips are touching mine, it's one movement, when he whispers, "Just ... ," and kisses me at the same time.

He starts gently but his hands are clutching my shirt and drawing me closer and his lips are opening my mouth so he can dive in with his tongue and he makes me moan with the first taste of him.

He feels amazing.

So soft with his lips gently moving against mine and so rough with his hands buried in my shirt.

He makes our tounges dance together, starting out slow and getting more and more frantic with every delicious second.

Then he tugs in my lower lip and lets his teeth graze over them and everything is a blur after that.




“Because I’m falling in love with a person that doesn’t even exist!“

Jared looked up at Dr. Moira, finally answering the question that had lingered in the air for so long.

‘Why are you so scared?’

Jared had refused to answer, had refused to face his fear and instead looked around the room. He had seen Dr. Moira’s diploma on the wall, had wondered briefly how cruel people could be to call their daughter ‘Decima’ and then had tried do avoid the doctor's eyes that waited patiently for an answer.

"This is what I'm missing, right?" he asked, his voice strong with emotion, "This one perfect person in my life."

He drew in a shaky breath and nodded to himself. "And I will never get this, right? Because he's just a dream. An ideal person my mind made up."

Jared stopped talking, covering his face with his hands. He didn't want to cry. He didn't want to lose it again, didn’t want to feel like this ticking bomb anymore; just waiting to go off, to break down.

"Why do you think you can never have that?" Dr. Moira's voice cut gently through Jared's thoughts, pulling him out, making him focus.

"I ... How can I hope to ever meet a person like him?" Jared's eyes met Dr. Moira's, daring her to answer.

"Don't you think that there's a person like him out there? In the real world?" The doctor answered with another question. Calm, always so damn calm.

Like it was nothing. Like Jared's sanity, like his whole life wasn't at stake here.

Jared knew the answer to that question. The truth that kept screaming in his head.

"Please tell me." Dr. Moira looked at him expectantly. As if she was reading his mind.

"Even if ...," Jared started, his tongue heavy in his mouth as if he didn't want to say it, to put it out in the open. "Even if there was someone like him, I wouldn't want anyone other than him."

There. He'd said it.

And now he was lost, broken, forever. Because the man in his dreams was just that, a dream. No one he could ever have.

"I want you to try something," Dr. Moira said, her face serious, changing the subject so fast that Jared had difficulty following her. She didn't comment on what Jared had said. Just scribbled down her notes, giving him an indifferent glance.

"Okay." Jared nodded.

"I want you to learn how to be conscious of your dreams."

Jared frowned.

"There's a method that will help you learn to be aware that you're dreaming. If you learn that, you can do whatever you want in your dreams. You can make decisions and act out of your own free will. You wouldn’t have to do and feel what the dream-Jared does."

Jared's frown got deeper. "Are you serious?"

She smiled briefly and nodded. "Trust me, Jared. It's not magic. It's something everyone can learn. And once you're capable of forming your dreams the way you like them, I want you to take action. I want you to explore who the man in your dreams is. I want you to ask the right questions."

Jared hesitated a long time, thinking about the freedom he felt in his dreams, the simple love that would surround him. He wasn't sure if he wanted to change anything about that, if he was ready to give that up. But then he thought about the opportunities he might have, about really participating in those dreams, and he slowly nodded. "Okay, what do I have to do?"




The air is warm and smells a little sweet when we step out of the car on set.

Waving to Clif before he drives off, we share a look while we’re moving off the parking lot. We grin when our eyes meet, uncertain and shy and stupid, and it’s a little like we’re fourteen again, feeling something for someone else and not knowing what it is yet.

But of course we know.

In every movement, in every look, in every stolen glance, we know what it is between us. But it’s something so new for both of us that we’re not ready to admit it yet.

The drive was weird. Not awkward, but weird, with us so close together and not able to avoid each other, but not able to talk ... or even touch ... either. It was weird and exciting and as much as I feared the change in our relationship at first, the stupid, girly butterflies in my stomach make me grin with joy all the time.

I feel stupid and I love it.

"Hey guys."

"Misha!" He shouts, happy, and meets him halfway, hugging him and clapping him on his back. "How you doin', man?"

"Great," Misha laughs when I hug him too, maybe a little too forcefully but I'm happy to see him again.

"So what’ve you guys been up to, huh?" he asks and his eyes blink like he knows something.

I know that I turn beet red and I can see the same blush on his face and we turn awkwardly away from each other.

Misha throws us a weird glance and then he just starts to laugh. "Okay, let's go get to wardrobe. Can't wait to wear my coat again," he says cheerfully and turns to the trailers first.




Learning the technique was hard, not because it was seriously complicated or anything, but because Jared kept forgetting.

The key was to keep asking himself, every now and again, if he was awake or dreaming right at that moment. To take in his surroundings and try to realize what it was that made him certain that what he was seeing was reality and not just a dream. If Jared did that often enough, his brain would become trained to keep repeating the question and it would eventually make him become conscious of when he was indeed smack bang in the middle of a dream.

As far as the theory went, it sounded pretty easy. But doing it wasn't easy at all.

With everything that was on Jared's mind and all the things he had to deal with in his life, with shooting day after day, he simply forgot most of the time.

And then there was this tiny doubt that kept nibbling at his mind. Asking him if he really should do this. If he really wanted to. If it wouldn't make him lose what he had with the man in his dreams forever.

"Hey Jared!"

Clif had just driven off, taking Jared’s dogs to the vet for him, and Jared was making his way to set, when he heard the familiar voice calling out to him.

He turned around and found Misha and the P.A. girl - Nona, he reminded himself - walking towards him.

Jared felt a weird twinge inside him, looking at Misha when he had just dreamt about him. It wasn’t surprising. He had just gotten the news the day before that Misha was finally going to arrive on set, but it was weird seeing him now when the last time Jared had seen Misha was ... with him.

"Hey man." Jared smiled at the fellow actor and felt his smile pulling up his own mood. It was good to have a familiar face back here with him. He sure felt lonely sometimes.

"Hey, how are you?”

The shorter man grinned with honest joy to see him and Jared pulled him into a friendly hug. They had started working together during the last season and now he was becoming a series regular. Jared couldn’t be happier about that fact.

“I've spoken to Eric,” Misha told him. “He's really going through with the brother-thing, right?"

Jared nodded. "Yeah, but so far, he hasn’t had any luck finding the right one." Jared tried to bury the thought that he just knew the right one. If he only wasn't just a man in a dream.

"I’m sorry to interrupt you guys, but can we go? Wardrobe needs you in like two minutes," Nona chimed in, sounding a little shy around the two actors.

Both men nodded. "Yeah, sure."

Entering wardrobe, Misha was the first to be grabbed by Becky  with an apologetic smile and an, ‘I need to steal him for some changes’, and then the two were gone and Nona and Jared were left looking at each other, making amused faces.

“Hey Lucy.” Jared went over to the other wardrobe-specialist and smiled at the petit woman, sitting on a chair, holding her huge belly in a loving gesture.

“Hey Jared.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling.

“So when is the big day?”

Lucy huffed and made a grimace. “Another month, can you believe that? I think my belly is big enough now.”

They shared a grin before she continued.

“The doctor said it might be a difficult birth, with the baby being so big and all.” Her voice was wary now, a little shaken, but before Jared could answer, Nona was beside them, laying her hand on Becky’s belly.

“It’s not gonna be difficult. It’ll take some time, but the birth is not gonna be difficult,” she told the other woman with a soft voice and a smile and Lucy blinked at her, her eyes filling with tears.

“You think?” she breathed.

“Oh, I’m sure. She’s gonna be a handful when she’s little. But she’ll be worth every grey hair you’ll get,” Nona promised and Lucy was still staring at her, mouth open in surprise.

“How do you ... ? You know my husband always makes fun of me when I tell him I can feel that the baby is gonna be a girl! I’m right, am I?” Happy tears were falling down her face as Nona nodded.

“God, I’m ... sorry. It must be the hormones or something,” Lucy laughed and wiped away the tears from her face.

“It’s okay,” Jared and Nona replied, in unison, although Jared started to feel a little bit uncomfortable.

“Your name’s Nona, right? New P.A.?”

Nona nodded. “Yeah, I just started. Doing a little bit of everything until the baby comes and then I’ll do my best to replace you as long as you’re gone,” she explained to Lucy.

Jared left the two women alone as their conversation got into deeper issues like fabric and right needles and Nona shared the story of how she was shown how to spun when she was very little.

He walked over to the wardrobe racks, looking at endless sets of Sam’s shirts and pants until the very last rack got his attention.

He gasped as a familiar feeling cut right through him. Like a knife, cutting out a part of him, leaving him half and lost and ... alone.

His eyes were glued to the piece of clothing in front of him, his fingers itching to touch.

“Oh god,” Jared bit back a whimper as the feeling of loss burned deeper, crushing his lungs and bringing tears to his eyes.

“Becky started playing with that idea,” a soft voice said suddenly next to him.

Trying to get a hold of himself, he turned to see Lucy and Nona standing beside him.

“It’s gonna be for Sam’s brother,” Lucy said, pointing at the leather jacket Jared had been staring at. “She thought he might be wearing this jacket, like ... a hand-me-down from his father and the only thing that connected him to the man who has never been there for him in his life. You know, something like that.”

Jared nodded, showing her that he was listening, because he couldn’t trust his voice, was still struggling with the pain inside his chest.

“You okay?” Lucy whispered and then smiled. “I swear my husband always tells me my mood is contagious. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Jared whispered back. He felt stupid and embarrassed, but above all that, he kept asking himself how he had ended up starting to cry over a stupid leather jacket.

He knew that it was because of him, because of the man in his dreams. Eric must have been talking about the option of a brother for Sam way longer than Jared could consciously remember. But fact was that Jared’s mind had taken this information and made it a part of his dream. Had given the role of Sam’s big brother to the man in the dreams, fitting him seamlessly in Jared’s world.

Jared closed his eyes briefly, wishing not for the first time that his dreams would just stop. In moments like this, they came too close to reality, messed too much with Jared’s real world than he could handle.

Sometimes it was just too much.




“I can't believe I'm really doing this,” I hear him groan and I have to bite my lips not to burst out laughing.

“Aww, you're too chicken to fight like a real man?” I tease him.

"Real man? Are you kidding me?" his voice trails over to me from around the corner. "We're standing here with fucking pillows and waiting for the other one to make the first move. Jared! I'm too old for pillow fights!"

"Oh, stop whining old man and take this!" With that I start running, right up to him and punch the pillow right into his surprised face.

"Oh, it's so on!" he growls, and a second later, we find ourselves in a serious pillow-fight.

We're chasing each other through the whole house, through the kitchen, up the stairs and along the hallway. I don't even realize that we're downstairs again and in his bedroom, until I land backwards on his bed after I trip over whatever was lying on his floor. Probably one of Harley's or Sadie's toys.

I'm laughing and giggling and kicking with my feet, but somehow he manages to overcome my barrier and he's landing right on top of me, out of breath and grinning like crazy.

I don't even notice the shift, don't feel the moment when everything changes.

But suddenly, his lips are on mine and I don't even have time to think anything before I pull him down, pull him closer with a deep groan and return the kiss.

There's nothing gentle about it. Not now, not when we're both starving for it. I pull him flush against me, can feel his weight on top of me, while he's devouring my mouth like it's the only thing he needs to live.

I push my hips up on instinct, eliciting a groan from both of us, and my hands are buried in his hair, moving his head just the way I want.

He’s fighting me. Not to make me back off but to take control. He growls into my mouth, starts pushing up my shirt until I can feel his hands roaming over my body.

I switch us around to get me on top and I tear myself away from him just long enough to get rid of my shirt before I dive in again, capturing his mouth, biting down on his lips and he moans, loud and desperate and I think I'm gonna die right now.

My hips continue their rhythm, rubbing our hard dicks together, only the soft fabric of our jeans between them.

He’s tearing his mouth away from me. Panting, struggling for air, he gasps every time our groins meet and I can feel that he’s already close, can feel him tremble underneath me and it makes me dizzy with need.

Just two thrusts later and he’s coming, throwing his head back with a deep growl, shooting his load right into his pants like a teenager and it’s more of a turn on than I ever would have thought.

“Fuck, fuck, ohgod,” he curses, rolling his eyes and pressing me closer; his hands clawing into my back.

I bury my face in his neck, keep the rhythm, feeling myself running closer to orgasm as well.

“Jared,” he pants. “Jared, stop for a second.”

It takes a huge effort for me to raise my head and to look at him, stilling my hips as I do so.

“God, please,” I can hear myself beg.

“Let me touch you,” he whispers, his dark, green eyes searching mine for an answer.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” I moan and my eyes fall shut, totally out of control.

He doesn’t hesitate. Simply reaches for my jeans and opens them.

I groan when his hand pulls out my cock, encircles it and the feeling is almost too good.

He doesn’t tease me. Just starts stroking, strong and fast, almost rough, collecting precum on every upstroke and just the sound alone would make me go crazy. With his other hand he’s pulling me down, kissing me messily and I’m too far gone to return the kiss but I groan at the taste of him, already addicted to his lips on mine.

It doesn’t take any time at all until my own orgasm hits me.

"Fuck, you're heavy," is the first thing he says, breathless and chuckling and sounding so goddamn happy I feel proud that I made him sound like this.

"I'm gonna move soon, I promise," I say weakly, too spent, too full of that wonderful perfect afterglow and the last thing I want to do is move and leave the warmth of his body beneath me.

And then he does the best thing ever, because he just nuzzles my neck and whispers: "Stay. I don't mind."




Jared woke up with a longing and loneliness so deep, he was sure for the first time, that this was what made his breathing be so hard. What made his heart break and his ears deaf. Because there wasn't anything that could fill his body, no tastes, no sounds, when everything inside him was screaming for him. For this one person. For the perfect one.

Jared was sticky with dried cum when he got up and he wasn't even embarrassed about it anymore. Pushing the memories of him aside, of how he felt against him, what he tasted like, Jared tapped over to his bathroom and cleaned himself up. He didn't want to remember. Didn't want those images to hurt him even more now that he was awake. Now that he knew he couldn't have it for real.

Back in his bedroom, Sadie padded over to him, her head hanging low like she was sensing her daddy's sadness.

"Hey girl." Jared bowed down and swallowed past the lump in his throat. He patted her gently and laughed when Harley came over to get his share of love.

Glancing to the clock on his nightstand, he realized that it was only five o'clock in the morning. On a Saturday morning.

He was still tired and wrenched from the long week that lay behind him. But there was no way he would get back into that empty bed. Cold without his presence beside him.

Ten minutes later, the room downstairs was no longer empty. A mattress laid out in its center, Jared was curled up in his sheets, his dogs on either side of him, and he was sleeping again. Dreaming again.

And this time, the technique he had tried to learn started working.

~*~next~*~