The Third Third 2/10+
Title: The Third Third 2/10+
Author: insane_songbird
Pairing: J2
Rating: R
Words: ~4500
Warnings: Violence (Hello, it’s Ice Hockey!), Language, NC17 later-on (that means sex, people!)
Disclaimer: Slavery is bad... It’s a lie, all of it.
Summary: Being a Texas boy Jared Padalecki couldn’t care less about ice hockey. So Jared is slightly lost, when his new roommate Chad is the biggest fan on campus. But when he gets to tutor the most infamous player of the college team, things start to get downright scary. Jensen Ackles has a reputation for aggression control problems and Jared has no idea how to get through the semester without either falling for the handsome man or ending up in a fistfight he’d be sure to lose.
Master Post
Big thanks to mangacat201 for bearing my madness (and the typos!) and candygramme for betaing. Also a HUGE thanks to magikalrhiannon who offered amazing help with the actual hockey part of the story (all mistakes are mine!). And last but totally not least I wanna dedicate this to envious_ema , who is the guilty party here. Without her I never would have felt the need to write this. How do I deserve ya all?? *hugs and kisses you all*
Thanks also to all those who read and commented chapter one. I would never have thought to get such a great response to this fic. It's amazing. Keep it up please! I'm addicted now!
previous part
Part Two
Jared entered the library. The first thing he saw was Jensen, sitting at a table across from another man with brown hair and blue eyes. The other guy looked anything but happy, shaking his head and saying something Jared couldn’t hear. He took a deep breath and looked around for people who liked him better than his tutoring student and discovered Sandy, sitting with Sophia just a few tables down the aisle. He meandered around the scattered backpacks of the students seated at different angles to the tables and finally flopped down next to the two women. “Hi there, girls.”
He got two bright smiles in greeting, but Sophia’s soon turned into a frown. “Didn’t you bring Chad?”
“Don’t worry, Soph. He’s coming. He just really had to take a shower before coming down here, because he managed to open the fridge door and have an open canister of orange juice tip out and empty its sticky contents all over him.” Jared grinned at the memory of Chad, cursing in the most undignified manner imaginable, soaked in sticky juice from his chest to his socks.
The girls bit their lips so they wouldn’t disrupt the silence of the library - Sophia was covering her mouth with her hand, tears streaming out of her eyes at the mental image. Jared couldn’t help but grin. Chad would hate him when he managed to get down here, because his girlfriend would laugh at him whole-heartedly. It was a constant in their relationship and one of the strongest pillars that supported it. If Sophia couldn’t laugh at the stupid, clumsy or just crazy things Chad tended to do, there were no future for the two.
When the hysteria about Chad’s juice baptism had settled, Sandy leaned forward in her chair, looking at Jared with a grin that could have been anything from promising to dreadful. “So, Jared. Did you see who’s sitting down the row?” Her voice was even lower than their usual hushed library tones, and Jared sighed inwardly.
“Yes, and?”
“AND? How’s your tutoring going?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him, and Jared decided that he should catalogue the previous smile as dreadful after all.
“He hates me… and I think I might really resent him. So, great. Thanks for asking.” He gave her a bitter smile and started pulling out his books.
“What? Why?” Sandy seemed genuinely shocked. “Don’t you think he’s hot?” It was only a whisper, yet Jared couldn’t have heard it more clearly.
“I didn’t say that, Sandy. But what good is pining over a guy who might be totally hot but actually thinks that you are a complete idiot, and that every second he spends in your company is a waste of his time? He doesn’t even try to make an effort. I really don’t need that.” Besides even if he had liked Jensen, the dude was as straight as they came, so why bother?
Sandy frowned, pouting as her awesome plan to set them up was shattered to pieces. “Really? What a dick!” This time she forgot to hush her voice, and someone noisily cleared his throat down the aisle.
Jared shrugged it off and started looking through his books to find the right paragraph for his essay; he wanted to finish it ahead of time, so he could get a little air in his schedule for any short notice work. Chad always laughed at him when he did that, but the guy had to pull all-nighters frequently, and Jared couldn’t feel any sympathy for him.
To be honest, Jared was positively surprised that Jensen actually spent time in the library, but he did not dare to hope that the book he was reading had anything to do with the subject Jared was struggling to teach him.
Jared didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard someone clearing his throat behind him. He saw the two girls trying to look like they were not absolutely excited and failing horribly. Jared turned around and found Jensen standing there. “Hey, Jared. Can I talk to you for a sec?”
Jared hesitated for a second wondering what the other man wanted to talk about but nodded before excusing himself from the table. The girls let him go only too willingly.
They stepped outside the library, and Jared waited for Jensen to talk. To his surprise the man actually started talking immediately, which was unusual where Jared was concerned - he normally only got monosyllabic answers. “Listen, Jared. I’m sorry, but I have to cancel our lessons for the next two weeks. We got hockey practice every day until the first game, and that means my afternoons are completely full.”
Jared nodded, thinking quickly. He liked to have his evenings off but he thought he could make an exception, because Jensen didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. “Alright, we can reschedule to the evening then. Just tell me when practice will be over…”
Jensen cut him off, and Jared found himself standing with his mouth still half open. “No. Jared, my schedule is completely cramped as it is. I’m overbooked. There is no rescheduling. I can NOT meet you for the next two weeks.”
Jared took a deep breath. Well if that wasn’t convenient. He should have known that the extra practice would be the perfect excuse for Jensen to get out of their lessons. But Jared wasn’t going to let him off the hook quite that easy. “Jensen, we need the time. I mean that’s like four chapters we're talking about. We need those lessons.”
“I don’t.” Jensen looked disgruntled, and Jared swallowed, deciding not to back down, although his heart started to beat a step faster as he remembered Chad’s stories about aggression control issues.
“Sure you do.”
“No, I don’t.” Jensen shook his head. “I was at every fucking lecture last year. I KNOW the subject. I don’t need tutoring. I know everything of importance.”
Jared couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped him. “Yeah, sure. That’s why you never say a word in our lessons. I mean I feel like I’m talking to a goddamn brick wall.”
“I’m tired, Jared. You know, some people actually move their ass between lectures and seminars. Don’t you think that people can actually be tired on a Friday afternoon?”
Jared rolled his eyes. He really didn’t need any more excuses. “You know what? Fine. You wanna skip tutoring, then skip it. But I won’t take your word for gold. You say you know the subject? Alright. Hand me in a five page paper about each of the four chapters I was gonna chew up for you, with all the ‘important’ stuff, and I’m gonna let you off the hook. But if I find them insufficient we'll sit down and pull double lessons until we're caught up again. Alright?”
Jensen looked ready to strangle him, but Jared was too far gone to care.
“Dude, it’s five pages each. That’s nothing. I could have easily gone for fifteen, and you know it. So you better take the offer.”
Jensen gritted his teeth but nodded exhaling slowly. “Alright, fair enough. Five fucking pages.” He turned around to leave, but Jared had one more thing to say.
“And it had better be in your own handwriting!” That way he'd know that Jensen had at least read it over once while copying it, Jared thought. He bit his tongue, knowing that this might be what would get Jensen to snap, and though he might be daring, right now he didn’t have a death wish.
Jensen huffed and turned to him once more. “You know what, Jared? I never thought a geek like you could be such a fucking dick.” With that he turned around and stormed off.
Jared exhaled a breath he didn’t know he’d held. He was treading a thin line and had nearly slipped. Had Jensen been in a worse mood then Jared knew he'd probably have a black eye now, or worse. Hurriedly he went back inside, not taking the chance of Jensen coming back to hand him one, just for good measure.
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Jared didn’t know why he was there. Well he knew, but he couldn’t believe he'd been unable to avoid it. The only thing that made it a little less awful were the earplugs he had wisely brought along. He would already be writhing on the floor from seizures by now, thanks to the proximity to Chad's drum, if not for his earplugs.
Right now Jared found himself standing between Chad and Sandy, hugged by a mass of students and other college hockey fans, looking down at the pitch as one player after the other was called up, while the home team skated in to the loud cheering of their fans. The moderator would call out the player’s first name, and the masses would answer with his last name in a deafening chorus.
Right now the ranks of spectators were shouting an animated “Kane” in answer to the “Christian” the moderator had drawn out in a painfully long way. Jared remembered the girls pointing him out to Jared when he came back from his not so nice conversation with Jensen two weeks back. He was the man who had sat in the library with Jensen, and the gossip girls had told him that obviously Kane was Jensen’s roommate and best friend. Right now, Jared struggled to recognize him with all the padding and the massive jersey, all topped by a helmet. His face was visible, but the players skated along fast enough to make looking at their faces a real challenge. The only help Jared had was the big number 32 and Kane’s name on the back of the green Jersey.
The next name called was some guy called Steve, and by the vibrant boom of Chad’s voice his last name was Carrson or Carlson or something like that. Jared wondered how Chad could know the last names of all the players. How many were on a team anyway? Fifteen, twenty? Jared didn’t know, and he didn’t care to ask. If he got bored he could always count the helmets on the sideline and add them to the six on the pitch. He was proud enough of knowing that there were supposed to be six players on the pitch.
After a guy called Tom Spelling… or was it Nelling?… Jared heard Jensen’s name called, and the masses cried out an enthusiastic “Ackles”. Jared wondered what it felt like to have your name shouted by hundreds of people in unison. It seemed a rather frightening thought to him, but then he had never been one to seek attention.
He watched Jensen - his jersey printed with the number 13 - skate over the ice with fast languid moves. When he had crossed the length of the pitch, he turned and skated backwards for a bit, slowing down and coming to a halt next to Spelling, no wait, the jersey actually read Welling, oops. Jensen was considerably smaller than the man he stood next to, Welling being more Jared’s size if he estimated correctly.
Jared watched Jensen intently. They hadn’t spoken since the argument they'd had in front of the library, and Jared secretly dreaded next week's lesson. He didn’t know if he had the guts to call Jensen on their agreement if the other man didn’t hand in sufficient papers. The hockey player intimidated Jared more than he cared to admit, and without really having to try.
Lost in his thoughts, Jared only emerged in time to see the game start as the puck - that’s what the black thing they played with was called, yes Jared was getting better by the minute - was dropped between Welling and a player of the other team, whose identity Jared couldn’t really care about.
Jared’s eyes followed the puck for a while, not motivated to join Chad and the other devoted fans in their strangely rhyming choruses and cheers. After a few minutes Jensen took charge of the puck and Jared started to care more about his moves than the game in general. Jensen was fast - he snagged the puck from a pass between two players of the opposing team and meandered around them as he drew in towards the goal, his stick keeping the puck smoothly in line. He passed to some other player, and Jared was just about to pull his eyes away again to follow the game, when a player in the red jersey of the opposing team smashed into Jensen and pressed the man into the glass with the force of his speed, just after the puck had left Jensen’s space.
Jared stood shocked for a moment, his inside cringing in sympathy, while Chad started to shout obscenities towards the referee for not calling the foul. To Jared’s surprise Jensen didn’t land on the ground and lie there as Jared might expect but just struggled for a moment to keep his balance as the other player skated off. Then he skated on, charging at the puck as though nothing had happened, and Jared just looked at Chad with big eyes. “Didn’t that hurt?”
Chad actually answered, shouting over the cheering masses. “Jay, they're playing hockey. That’s the sport. He has to take what he dishes out as well, you know? But keep your eyes open. The guy will get his own back soon enough.”
Jared frowned but focused his attentions back on the game or rather on Jensen. The man was checked into the boards a couple more times in the first period, always brushing it off, and Jared admired the padding beneath their jerseys for doing such an awesome job. Every time someone smashed into Jensen, Jared found himself flinching, and, even though he knew to expect it, he couldn’t stop his body from reacting that way. Once Jensen had the puck and was crossing the ice right in the middle as a player collided with him and threw him to the ice in a head on collision - arms, legs, stick and all. Jensen slithered along the ice for a few yards before getting back up, the puck lost. The other player got two minutes penalty and had to sit in a box on the side line. Chad tried to explain ’Cross-checking from behind’ but Jared decided to just take his word that the move had been against the rules.
After the first period, Jared wasn’t sure if he imagined Jensen being fouled more often than the other players, but that was probably due to the fact that Jared only watched him and therefore didn’t see any other fouls. Although he had noticed when Kane got a two minute penalty for hooking his stick into another player in the pursuit of the goal.
The second period started out less violently, and Jared had a chance to watch Jensen skate across the ice. Jared wondered how he managed not to get sick at the speed he was going when he would turn and skate backwards, and honestly did he have eyeballs in the back of his helmet? When there was no slamming of bodies Jared found the sport to be rather graceful, all languid moves and flowing bodies. Jensen swirled around the field, snagging and passing off the puck and set up a goal shot by Carlson about five minutes into the game, making the score an even 2:2.
After that the game got rougher again, and Jared began to understand exactly what Chad had talked about as Jensen slammed into the player who had checked him at the beginning of the match, with what Jared thought to be more momentum than was really necessary. Somehow it seemed unlikely he could ram a person like that without getting a pretty hard bump himself, but Jensen pushed himself off the guy and sped away in pursuit of the puck without looking back. Jared jumped a few times as Jensen smashed one player after the other into the glass with an enthusiasm that made Jared cringe. He did notice, however, that said players were exactly the ones who had moved on Jensen before. When he voiced his thoughts Chad only grinned, telling him that it was a known fact that whoever checked Jensen got their investment back with interest.
By the end of the second period, Jared could only agree with that. It seemed that Jensen only waited for the right player - one on his to-do list - to get the puck, so he had a legitimate reason to bash the guy really good. It was pretty frightening, but then the guy obviously only got what was coming to him, although the notion of, “But he started it!” seemed to be pretty immature for adults such as those players. Then again, it was supposed to be a physical sport, and if Jensen needed to vent his aggression, Jared was whole-heartedly for the on-ice option, rather than the in-his-face version.
Jared thought that by the beginning of the third period he had seen everything there was to see in this sport. There had been violence enough, goals, (right now they were ahead, 3:2.) and some pretty neat skating moves, and the one thing Jared regretted was that he couldn’t see Jensen’s ass in those padded pants when he moved. But one other thing he'd noticed - the players seemed to be really well stretched and flexible, because whenever they needed to stand still for one of the many breaks between fouls or other wrong moves, they would stand with their legs spread in more than a half-split, and Jared couldn’t help but imagine what a man that flexible could achieve off the ice.
Jensen might be a pretty huge prick, but right now Jared couldn’t help the need to drool forced into his mind by the caveman instincts he still found, huddled deep in the back of his brain. For the love of his own dignity, he kept from drooling and watched as Chad’s theory about the third third started to unravel its logic before Jared’s eyes.
The third period started out bad and went right on to ugly. After only five minutes, Jared wondered how they would ever get through it for the actual playing time of twenty minutes, since not even two minutes were accounted on the clock. The clock would stop whenever the referee blew his whistle on a foul or whatever else was against some kind of rule - rules which Jared didn’t know anyway.
Right now Jensen and another player were in their penalty box, each team running a player short. The two had shoved each other after a run in over the puck, and the referee had sent them to the bank for unsportsmanlike behavior or whatever it was called.
As the clock actually showed seven minutes into the third period, the masses were cheering for a goal shot by Welling, setting the score to a healthy 4:2. Jensen had jumped the boards and was resting on the sideline for a while as the teams rotated their field players throughout the game. Jensen - as well as his teammates - were constantly switching between the active game and waiting for a new merry-go-round of switching players. Whenever Jensen was seated with his team-mates, Jared would watch him talk to Kane or one of the others. Sometimes there was an angry pinch to his face, but after a goal or - frighteningly - after kicking someone’s ass on the field he would be grinning with a glow that made Jared’s stomach flip.
Right now Jared considered the option that Jensen might be manically depressed and jumped from a happy and bright persona to the grumpy and aggressive version Jared had learned to be intimidated by.
Right then Jensen joined the game once more but only got thirty seconds to actually join in the team effort to score once more, before a huge player in a red jersey slammed into him viciously squeezing the smaller man into the boards with more force than could ever be necessary before pushing himself off with a shove against Jensen’s shoulder. The fans roared with outrage but Jensen held onto the boards for a moment before straightening his spine and skating the few yards to the other player, who didn’t even try to look as though it had been a coincidence. Jared could see Jensen mouth form what looked pretty much like “What’s your fucking problem?” or something on the same lines. Jensen stood only a foot from the taller and definitely bulkier man but didn’t touch him, although his green eyes singed through the other player. The bull of a man seemed to have said something that enraged Jensen, because his face screwed up in anger and disgust. He stepped even closer and seemed to say something just as ugly, considering the chaos that broke out after he'd spoken.
The huge guy threw himself at Jensen and shoved the man back. There was a cloud of ice-dust as Jensen hooked his skates sideways into the ground to stop from sliding off any further. There was a push followed by a swing, and Jared could see Jensen’s head snap around where the meaty fist hit him below the helmet. Jared expected him to shrink away, but instead Jensen pounced on the man who outweighed him by approximately fifty pounds.
To Jared’s complete surprise Jensen didn’t try a swing but hit the man square in the middle with his shoulder in a perfect football-star tackle and threw him on the ice, Jensen landing on top of him. By then the referee had whistled half a dozen times and tried to stop the fistfight that had started with shouted orders that landed on deaf ears. To Jared’s relief Kane and Carlson were quick thinking and pulled Jensen off only seconds after the two players had hit the ice while Welling and another player tried to keep the enraged red-clad bull at bay. The man was spitting insults and tried to push past them, but by then he'd been caught by his teammates and had two men hanging off each arm. Jensen just stood stone faced, between Kane and Carlson, who didn’t even have to touch him once he was back on his feet.
The way Jensen was staring at the enraged man was scary, and Jared felt a shiver running down his spine. The referee sent both players off the field for the rest of the game, and in Chad’s opinion they were lucky the game wasn’t cancelled completely. When Jared asked if there would be any consequences Chad shrugged, explaining that the other player would be in pretty deep trouble, because he was the one doing the foul, starting the insults and throwing the first punch, but that Jensen was probably off the hook with a slap on the wrist and a pretty good tongue lashing from Coach Morgan for letting himself be provoked like that.
They won 4:2. Jared couldn’t really join in with the others’ cheering. He had to admit that he was majorly freaked by the way Jensen had thrown himself at a man who was physically so much bigger than him. Now it was official… if Jared had even had a sliver of hope that Jensen might hold back because of Jared’s size, he had been terribly wrong. Size was nothing in Jensen’s book and pain didn't seem to have much effect either, because that punch must have hurt like a sonofabith. It scared Jared out of his wits, and he dreaded the tutoring lesson they had scheduled this week.
It didn’t help his feeling of utter helplessness when Chad started to discuss his theory about what the two players could have said to each other with Sophia, settling for the version where the red-clad man had insulted Jensen’s mother.
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Jensen lay on his back holding a cool pack to his jaw and counting the holes that were stamped into the white ceiling tiles. He knew there were exactly one thousand three hundred and sixty-eight, not because he had actually counted them all, but he had been lying in exactly the same spot enough times to know that there were twenty-four holes in the width of the room and fifty-seven along its length. His brain was still awake enough to do the math. He had once decided for himself that if ever he couldn’t get the number of holes in this ceiling together in his head, he'd know he'd been checked one too many times. Today was not that day.
Still, his jaw stung like the crazy redneck had filled his gloves with lead. But Jensen wouldn’t complain. He'd practically asked for it with his last comment. That didn’t make him feel sorry for it though. Jensen knew what he was in for when he told homophobic fuckers to suck his cock, but he did it time and again, taking the punches that came his way, if only to see the utter rage or disbelief on their faces beforehand.
His jersey and the padding lay on a chair in the corner, and Jensen was spread on his back on top of the small gurney that was provided in the medical room of their changing area, wearing only a pair of shorts. A second coldpack was resting against a bruise on his ribs. To his relief they were all just bruises, because he really didn’t fancy breaking something in the first game of the season and having to sit on the bank until the play-offs if his luck was against him.
“Let me guess… You told him to suck your cock again, right Jen?”
Jensen turned to see Chris leaning to the door frame and cracked a smile that faltered a little when the bruised skin on his jaw stretched.
“You’re one stupid fuck, you know that?” Chris did not look like he wanted to return the smile. “That asshole could have ripped you to shreds if we hadn’t been there…”
Jensen’s smile faded and he gave his friend a stern look.
Chris sighed and stepped into the room. “You gonna tell me what he said, Jen?”
Jensen took a deep breath and averted his eyes to look at the tinge of purple that had started to spread over his abdomen. “He asked if I let the team fuck me up the ass so you would even consider playing with a fag like me.”
Chris stayed silent for a minute before he let out a long breath. “What a fucked up prick.”
“Do you still think I shouldn’t have kept silent?” Jensen’s eyes were hard, and his jaw clenched unheeding of the bruise that colored its side. He stared directly at his best friend who merely returned a calm look.
“One day we might not be fast enough, Jensen.”
“Maybe, but that day wasn’t today, dude.”
Chris nodded and left, knowing that he didn’t want to be there when Morgan began to scream at Jensen, until the other man was nothing but a mess.
... next part...
FEEDBACK... please. I'm cheap and easy like that!
Author: insane_songbird
Pairing: J2
Rating: R
Words: ~4500
Warnings: Violence (Hello, it’s Ice Hockey!), Language, NC17 later-on (that means sex, people!)
Disclaimer: Slavery is bad... It’s a lie, all of it.
Summary: Being a Texas boy Jared Padalecki couldn’t care less about ice hockey. So Jared is slightly lost, when his new roommate Chad is the biggest fan on campus. But when he gets to tutor the most infamous player of the college team, things start to get downright scary. Jensen Ackles has a reputation for aggression control problems and Jared has no idea how to get through the semester without either falling for the handsome man or ending up in a fistfight he’d be sure to lose.
Master Post
Big thanks to mangacat201 for bearing my madness (and the typos!) and candygramme for betaing. Also a HUGE thanks to magikalrhiannon who offered amazing help with the actual hockey part of the story (all mistakes are mine!). And last but totally not least I wanna dedicate this to envious_ema , who is the guilty party here. Without her I never would have felt the need to write this. How do I deserve ya all?? *hugs and kisses you all*
Thanks also to all those who read and commented chapter one. I would never have thought to get such a great response to this fic. It's amazing. Keep it up please! I'm addicted now!
previous part
Part Two
Jared entered the library. The first thing he saw was Jensen, sitting at a table across from another man with brown hair and blue eyes. The other guy looked anything but happy, shaking his head and saying something Jared couldn’t hear. He took a deep breath and looked around for people who liked him better than his tutoring student and discovered Sandy, sitting with Sophia just a few tables down the aisle. He meandered around the scattered backpacks of the students seated at different angles to the tables and finally flopped down next to the two women. “Hi there, girls.”
He got two bright smiles in greeting, but Sophia’s soon turned into a frown. “Didn’t you bring Chad?”
“Don’t worry, Soph. He’s coming. He just really had to take a shower before coming down here, because he managed to open the fridge door and have an open canister of orange juice tip out and empty its sticky contents all over him.” Jared grinned at the memory of Chad, cursing in the most undignified manner imaginable, soaked in sticky juice from his chest to his socks.
The girls bit their lips so they wouldn’t disrupt the silence of the library - Sophia was covering her mouth with her hand, tears streaming out of her eyes at the mental image. Jared couldn’t help but grin. Chad would hate him when he managed to get down here, because his girlfriend would laugh at him whole-heartedly. It was a constant in their relationship and one of the strongest pillars that supported it. If Sophia couldn’t laugh at the stupid, clumsy or just crazy things Chad tended to do, there were no future for the two.
When the hysteria about Chad’s juice baptism had settled, Sandy leaned forward in her chair, looking at Jared with a grin that could have been anything from promising to dreadful. “So, Jared. Did you see who’s sitting down the row?” Her voice was even lower than their usual hushed library tones, and Jared sighed inwardly.
“Yes, and?”
“AND? How’s your tutoring going?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him, and Jared decided that he should catalogue the previous smile as dreadful after all.
“He hates me… and I think I might really resent him. So, great. Thanks for asking.” He gave her a bitter smile and started pulling out his books.
“What? Why?” Sandy seemed genuinely shocked. “Don’t you think he’s hot?” It was only a whisper, yet Jared couldn’t have heard it more clearly.
“I didn’t say that, Sandy. But what good is pining over a guy who might be totally hot but actually thinks that you are a complete idiot, and that every second he spends in your company is a waste of his time? He doesn’t even try to make an effort. I really don’t need that.” Besides even if he had liked Jensen, the dude was as straight as they came, so why bother?
Sandy frowned, pouting as her awesome plan to set them up was shattered to pieces. “Really? What a dick!” This time she forgot to hush her voice, and someone noisily cleared his throat down the aisle.
Jared shrugged it off and started looking through his books to find the right paragraph for his essay; he wanted to finish it ahead of time, so he could get a little air in his schedule for any short notice work. Chad always laughed at him when he did that, but the guy had to pull all-nighters frequently, and Jared couldn’t feel any sympathy for him.
To be honest, Jared was positively surprised that Jensen actually spent time in the library, but he did not dare to hope that the book he was reading had anything to do with the subject Jared was struggling to teach him.
Jared didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard someone clearing his throat behind him. He saw the two girls trying to look like they were not absolutely excited and failing horribly. Jared turned around and found Jensen standing there. “Hey, Jared. Can I talk to you for a sec?”
Jared hesitated for a second wondering what the other man wanted to talk about but nodded before excusing himself from the table. The girls let him go only too willingly.
They stepped outside the library, and Jared waited for Jensen to talk. To his surprise the man actually started talking immediately, which was unusual where Jared was concerned - he normally only got monosyllabic answers. “Listen, Jared. I’m sorry, but I have to cancel our lessons for the next two weeks. We got hockey practice every day until the first game, and that means my afternoons are completely full.”
Jared nodded, thinking quickly. He liked to have his evenings off but he thought he could make an exception, because Jensen didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. “Alright, we can reschedule to the evening then. Just tell me when practice will be over…”
Jensen cut him off, and Jared found himself standing with his mouth still half open. “No. Jared, my schedule is completely cramped as it is. I’m overbooked. There is no rescheduling. I can NOT meet you for the next two weeks.”
Jared took a deep breath. Well if that wasn’t convenient. He should have known that the extra practice would be the perfect excuse for Jensen to get out of their lessons. But Jared wasn’t going to let him off the hook quite that easy. “Jensen, we need the time. I mean that’s like four chapters we're talking about. We need those lessons.”
“I don’t.” Jensen looked disgruntled, and Jared swallowed, deciding not to back down, although his heart started to beat a step faster as he remembered Chad’s stories about aggression control issues.
“Sure you do.”
“No, I don’t.” Jensen shook his head. “I was at every fucking lecture last year. I KNOW the subject. I don’t need tutoring. I know everything of importance.”
Jared couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped him. “Yeah, sure. That’s why you never say a word in our lessons. I mean I feel like I’m talking to a goddamn brick wall.”
“I’m tired, Jared. You know, some people actually move their ass between lectures and seminars. Don’t you think that people can actually be tired on a Friday afternoon?”
Jared rolled his eyes. He really didn’t need any more excuses. “You know what? Fine. You wanna skip tutoring, then skip it. But I won’t take your word for gold. You say you know the subject? Alright. Hand me in a five page paper about each of the four chapters I was gonna chew up for you, with all the ‘important’ stuff, and I’m gonna let you off the hook. But if I find them insufficient we'll sit down and pull double lessons until we're caught up again. Alright?”
Jensen looked ready to strangle him, but Jared was too far gone to care.
“Dude, it’s five pages each. That’s nothing. I could have easily gone for fifteen, and you know it. So you better take the offer.”
Jensen gritted his teeth but nodded exhaling slowly. “Alright, fair enough. Five fucking pages.” He turned around to leave, but Jared had one more thing to say.
“And it had better be in your own handwriting!” That way he'd know that Jensen had at least read it over once while copying it, Jared thought. He bit his tongue, knowing that this might be what would get Jensen to snap, and though he might be daring, right now he didn’t have a death wish.
Jensen huffed and turned to him once more. “You know what, Jared? I never thought a geek like you could be such a fucking dick.” With that he turned around and stormed off.
Jared exhaled a breath he didn’t know he’d held. He was treading a thin line and had nearly slipped. Had Jensen been in a worse mood then Jared knew he'd probably have a black eye now, or worse. Hurriedly he went back inside, not taking the chance of Jensen coming back to hand him one, just for good measure.
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Jared didn’t know why he was there. Well he knew, but he couldn’t believe he'd been unable to avoid it. The only thing that made it a little less awful were the earplugs he had wisely brought along. He would already be writhing on the floor from seizures by now, thanks to the proximity to Chad's drum, if not for his earplugs.
Right now Jared found himself standing between Chad and Sandy, hugged by a mass of students and other college hockey fans, looking down at the pitch as one player after the other was called up, while the home team skated in to the loud cheering of their fans. The moderator would call out the player’s first name, and the masses would answer with his last name in a deafening chorus.
Right now the ranks of spectators were shouting an animated “Kane” in answer to the “Christian” the moderator had drawn out in a painfully long way. Jared remembered the girls pointing him out to Jared when he came back from his not so nice conversation with Jensen two weeks back. He was the man who had sat in the library with Jensen, and the gossip girls had told him that obviously Kane was Jensen’s roommate and best friend. Right now, Jared struggled to recognize him with all the padding and the massive jersey, all topped by a helmet. His face was visible, but the players skated along fast enough to make looking at their faces a real challenge. The only help Jared had was the big number 32 and Kane’s name on the back of the green Jersey.
The next name called was some guy called Steve, and by the vibrant boom of Chad’s voice his last name was Carrson or Carlson or something like that. Jared wondered how Chad could know the last names of all the players. How many were on a team anyway? Fifteen, twenty? Jared didn’t know, and he didn’t care to ask. If he got bored he could always count the helmets on the sideline and add them to the six on the pitch. He was proud enough of knowing that there were supposed to be six players on the pitch.
After a guy called Tom Spelling… or was it Nelling?… Jared heard Jensen’s name called, and the masses cried out an enthusiastic “Ackles”. Jared wondered what it felt like to have your name shouted by hundreds of people in unison. It seemed a rather frightening thought to him, but then he had never been one to seek attention.
He watched Jensen - his jersey printed with the number 13 - skate over the ice with fast languid moves. When he had crossed the length of the pitch, he turned and skated backwards for a bit, slowing down and coming to a halt next to Spelling, no wait, the jersey actually read Welling, oops. Jensen was considerably smaller than the man he stood next to, Welling being more Jared’s size if he estimated correctly.
Jared watched Jensen intently. They hadn’t spoken since the argument they'd had in front of the library, and Jared secretly dreaded next week's lesson. He didn’t know if he had the guts to call Jensen on their agreement if the other man didn’t hand in sufficient papers. The hockey player intimidated Jared more than he cared to admit, and without really having to try.
Lost in his thoughts, Jared only emerged in time to see the game start as the puck - that’s what the black thing they played with was called, yes Jared was getting better by the minute - was dropped between Welling and a player of the other team, whose identity Jared couldn’t really care about.
Jared’s eyes followed the puck for a while, not motivated to join Chad and the other devoted fans in their strangely rhyming choruses and cheers. After a few minutes Jensen took charge of the puck and Jared started to care more about his moves than the game in general. Jensen was fast - he snagged the puck from a pass between two players of the opposing team and meandered around them as he drew in towards the goal, his stick keeping the puck smoothly in line. He passed to some other player, and Jared was just about to pull his eyes away again to follow the game, when a player in the red jersey of the opposing team smashed into Jensen and pressed the man into the glass with the force of his speed, just after the puck had left Jensen’s space.
Jared stood shocked for a moment, his inside cringing in sympathy, while Chad started to shout obscenities towards the referee for not calling the foul. To Jared’s surprise Jensen didn’t land on the ground and lie there as Jared might expect but just struggled for a moment to keep his balance as the other player skated off. Then he skated on, charging at the puck as though nothing had happened, and Jared just looked at Chad with big eyes. “Didn’t that hurt?”
Chad actually answered, shouting over the cheering masses. “Jay, they're playing hockey. That’s the sport. He has to take what he dishes out as well, you know? But keep your eyes open. The guy will get his own back soon enough.”
Jared frowned but focused his attentions back on the game or rather on Jensen. The man was checked into the boards a couple more times in the first period, always brushing it off, and Jared admired the padding beneath their jerseys for doing such an awesome job. Every time someone smashed into Jensen, Jared found himself flinching, and, even though he knew to expect it, he couldn’t stop his body from reacting that way. Once Jensen had the puck and was crossing the ice right in the middle as a player collided with him and threw him to the ice in a head on collision - arms, legs, stick and all. Jensen slithered along the ice for a few yards before getting back up, the puck lost. The other player got two minutes penalty and had to sit in a box on the side line. Chad tried to explain ’Cross-checking from behind’ but Jared decided to just take his word that the move had been against the rules.
After the first period, Jared wasn’t sure if he imagined Jensen being fouled more often than the other players, but that was probably due to the fact that Jared only watched him and therefore didn’t see any other fouls. Although he had noticed when Kane got a two minute penalty for hooking his stick into another player in the pursuit of the goal.
The second period started out less violently, and Jared had a chance to watch Jensen skate across the ice. Jared wondered how he managed not to get sick at the speed he was going when he would turn and skate backwards, and honestly did he have eyeballs in the back of his helmet? When there was no slamming of bodies Jared found the sport to be rather graceful, all languid moves and flowing bodies. Jensen swirled around the field, snagging and passing off the puck and set up a goal shot by Carlson about five minutes into the game, making the score an even 2:2.
After that the game got rougher again, and Jared began to understand exactly what Chad had talked about as Jensen slammed into the player who had checked him at the beginning of the match, with what Jared thought to be more momentum than was really necessary. Somehow it seemed unlikely he could ram a person like that without getting a pretty hard bump himself, but Jensen pushed himself off the guy and sped away in pursuit of the puck without looking back. Jared jumped a few times as Jensen smashed one player after the other into the glass with an enthusiasm that made Jared cringe. He did notice, however, that said players were exactly the ones who had moved on Jensen before. When he voiced his thoughts Chad only grinned, telling him that it was a known fact that whoever checked Jensen got their investment back with interest.
By the end of the second period, Jared could only agree with that. It seemed that Jensen only waited for the right player - one on his to-do list - to get the puck, so he had a legitimate reason to bash the guy really good. It was pretty frightening, but then the guy obviously only got what was coming to him, although the notion of, “But he started it!” seemed to be pretty immature for adults such as those players. Then again, it was supposed to be a physical sport, and if Jensen needed to vent his aggression, Jared was whole-heartedly for the on-ice option, rather than the in-his-face version.
Jared thought that by the beginning of the third period he had seen everything there was to see in this sport. There had been violence enough, goals, (right now they were ahead, 3:2.) and some pretty neat skating moves, and the one thing Jared regretted was that he couldn’t see Jensen’s ass in those padded pants when he moved. But one other thing he'd noticed - the players seemed to be really well stretched and flexible, because whenever they needed to stand still for one of the many breaks between fouls or other wrong moves, they would stand with their legs spread in more than a half-split, and Jared couldn’t help but imagine what a man that flexible could achieve off the ice.
Jensen might be a pretty huge prick, but right now Jared couldn’t help the need to drool forced into his mind by the caveman instincts he still found, huddled deep in the back of his brain. For the love of his own dignity, he kept from drooling and watched as Chad’s theory about the third third started to unravel its logic before Jared’s eyes.
The third period started out bad and went right on to ugly. After only five minutes, Jared wondered how they would ever get through it for the actual playing time of twenty minutes, since not even two minutes were accounted on the clock. The clock would stop whenever the referee blew his whistle on a foul or whatever else was against some kind of rule - rules which Jared didn’t know anyway.
Right now Jensen and another player were in their penalty box, each team running a player short. The two had shoved each other after a run in over the puck, and the referee had sent them to the bank for unsportsmanlike behavior or whatever it was called.
As the clock actually showed seven minutes into the third period, the masses were cheering for a goal shot by Welling, setting the score to a healthy 4:2. Jensen had jumped the boards and was resting on the sideline for a while as the teams rotated their field players throughout the game. Jensen - as well as his teammates - were constantly switching between the active game and waiting for a new merry-go-round of switching players. Whenever Jensen was seated with his team-mates, Jared would watch him talk to Kane or one of the others. Sometimes there was an angry pinch to his face, but after a goal or - frighteningly - after kicking someone’s ass on the field he would be grinning with a glow that made Jared’s stomach flip.
Right now Jared considered the option that Jensen might be manically depressed and jumped from a happy and bright persona to the grumpy and aggressive version Jared had learned to be intimidated by.
Right then Jensen joined the game once more but only got thirty seconds to actually join in the team effort to score once more, before a huge player in a red jersey slammed into him viciously squeezing the smaller man into the boards with more force than could ever be necessary before pushing himself off with a shove against Jensen’s shoulder. The fans roared with outrage but Jensen held onto the boards for a moment before straightening his spine and skating the few yards to the other player, who didn’t even try to look as though it had been a coincidence. Jared could see Jensen mouth form what looked pretty much like “What’s your fucking problem?” or something on the same lines. Jensen stood only a foot from the taller and definitely bulkier man but didn’t touch him, although his green eyes singed through the other player. The bull of a man seemed to have said something that enraged Jensen, because his face screwed up in anger and disgust. He stepped even closer and seemed to say something just as ugly, considering the chaos that broke out after he'd spoken.
The huge guy threw himself at Jensen and shoved the man back. There was a cloud of ice-dust as Jensen hooked his skates sideways into the ground to stop from sliding off any further. There was a push followed by a swing, and Jared could see Jensen’s head snap around where the meaty fist hit him below the helmet. Jared expected him to shrink away, but instead Jensen pounced on the man who outweighed him by approximately fifty pounds.
To Jared’s complete surprise Jensen didn’t try a swing but hit the man square in the middle with his shoulder in a perfect football-star tackle and threw him on the ice, Jensen landing on top of him. By then the referee had whistled half a dozen times and tried to stop the fistfight that had started with shouted orders that landed on deaf ears. To Jared’s relief Kane and Carlson were quick thinking and pulled Jensen off only seconds after the two players had hit the ice while Welling and another player tried to keep the enraged red-clad bull at bay. The man was spitting insults and tried to push past them, but by then he'd been caught by his teammates and had two men hanging off each arm. Jensen just stood stone faced, between Kane and Carlson, who didn’t even have to touch him once he was back on his feet.
The way Jensen was staring at the enraged man was scary, and Jared felt a shiver running down his spine. The referee sent both players off the field for the rest of the game, and in Chad’s opinion they were lucky the game wasn’t cancelled completely. When Jared asked if there would be any consequences Chad shrugged, explaining that the other player would be in pretty deep trouble, because he was the one doing the foul, starting the insults and throwing the first punch, but that Jensen was probably off the hook with a slap on the wrist and a pretty good tongue lashing from Coach Morgan for letting himself be provoked like that.
They won 4:2. Jared couldn’t really join in with the others’ cheering. He had to admit that he was majorly freaked by the way Jensen had thrown himself at a man who was physically so much bigger than him. Now it was official… if Jared had even had a sliver of hope that Jensen might hold back because of Jared’s size, he had been terribly wrong. Size was nothing in Jensen’s book and pain didn't seem to have much effect either, because that punch must have hurt like a sonofabith. It scared Jared out of his wits, and he dreaded the tutoring lesson they had scheduled this week.
It didn’t help his feeling of utter helplessness when Chad started to discuss his theory about what the two players could have said to each other with Sophia, settling for the version where the red-clad man had insulted Jensen’s mother.
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Jensen lay on his back holding a cool pack to his jaw and counting the holes that were stamped into the white ceiling tiles. He knew there were exactly one thousand three hundred and sixty-eight, not because he had actually counted them all, but he had been lying in exactly the same spot enough times to know that there were twenty-four holes in the width of the room and fifty-seven along its length. His brain was still awake enough to do the math. He had once decided for himself that if ever he couldn’t get the number of holes in this ceiling together in his head, he'd know he'd been checked one too many times. Today was not that day.
Still, his jaw stung like the crazy redneck had filled his gloves with lead. But Jensen wouldn’t complain. He'd practically asked for it with his last comment. That didn’t make him feel sorry for it though. Jensen knew what he was in for when he told homophobic fuckers to suck his cock, but he did it time and again, taking the punches that came his way, if only to see the utter rage or disbelief on their faces beforehand.
His jersey and the padding lay on a chair in the corner, and Jensen was spread on his back on top of the small gurney that was provided in the medical room of their changing area, wearing only a pair of shorts. A second coldpack was resting against a bruise on his ribs. To his relief they were all just bruises, because he really didn’t fancy breaking something in the first game of the season and having to sit on the bank until the play-offs if his luck was against him.
“Let me guess… You told him to suck your cock again, right Jen?”
Jensen turned to see Chris leaning to the door frame and cracked a smile that faltered a little when the bruised skin on his jaw stretched.
“You’re one stupid fuck, you know that?” Chris did not look like he wanted to return the smile. “That asshole could have ripped you to shreds if we hadn’t been there…”
Jensen’s smile faded and he gave his friend a stern look.
Chris sighed and stepped into the room. “You gonna tell me what he said, Jen?”
Jensen took a deep breath and averted his eyes to look at the tinge of purple that had started to spread over his abdomen. “He asked if I let the team fuck me up the ass so you would even consider playing with a fag like me.”
Chris stayed silent for a minute before he let out a long breath. “What a fucked up prick.”
“Do you still think I shouldn’t have kept silent?” Jensen’s eyes were hard, and his jaw clenched unheeding of the bruise that colored its side. He stared directly at his best friend who merely returned a calm look.
“One day we might not be fast enough, Jensen.”
“Maybe, but that day wasn’t today, dude.”
Chris nodded and left, knowing that he didn’t want to be there when Morgan began to scream at Jensen, until the other man was nothing but a mess.
... next part...
FEEDBACK... please. I'm cheap and easy like that!