What you got under your shirt (A cog in the murder-machine) 1/5
Title: What you got under your shirt (A cog in the murder-machine)
Author: marlowe78
Rating: R for later-occurring violence
Characters: Jared, Jensen, OCs
Word count: This part ~1.700, ~21.000 the whole story.
Warnings: Violence in later chapters. Crude language. Mentions of *gosh* heterosexual relationships and underage kissing.
Summary: Highschool-AU.
Jared Padalecki is one of the Golden Boys of Hilldale. He has all you need to be sixteen and is a nice guy on top. If there wouldn't be the mystery of his former best-friend Jensen, who transformed into some kind of Grim Reaper, his life would be boring in its' perfection.
Title is taken from "Teenagers", by My Chemical Romance
beta: Once again, my friend and pal in crime soncnica went over this and checked for major errors. Neither she nor I are infallible, so if you spot an error, a mistake or something that is plain wrong, it's entirely my fault and I'd be glad to righten it - which means: POINT THEM OUT.
Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: This is completely AU. I don't have any rights to the names "Jared Padalecki" and "Jensen Ackles" nor do I know them. I didn't ask them to lend their names and looks to my story, and I hope they'd forgive me if they ever find out. The plot, though, is my own, but I didn't get paid or threatened or enticed to write this. I'm just playing, guys!
a/n:
This is my second J2-AU. I've rather started to like writing them, and this is gonna be a tad longer than the last. Once again, I changed their ages - both are sixteen - and I took some liberty with their hometown. "Hilldale" is not a real town, or if it is, I didn't pick it on purpose. I just liked the name.
Additional warnings will appear in later chapters. Read them, there might certainly be triggery material there!
And don't be mad at me that this is not a love-story. It just... didn't want to be one. Sorry.
********
Sometimes Jared thought about what might’ve changed so much. Sometimes, he looked at his once best friend strolling into the cafeteria and sitting down - alone - and wondered why he looked the way he looked now.
Not very often, though. Most days, he was too busy. Most days, there were Kevin and Steve, Mark, Molly and Haley and of course Mel. Sometimes his other teammates from the Hilldale Hummingbirds. Yes, the name sucked. But that was no reason to play bad basketball, right? So most days Jared sat surrounded by his friends and pals, his girlfriend and her friends, talking shit, laughing about stupid stuff, mocking teachers and each other and sometimes other kids.
Jared wasn’t a callous or shallow person. Not at all. He wasn’t unfair or mean to anyone, at least not on purpose. But he was a teenager, and being sixteen made you all kinds of self-centered, even when you really, truly aren’t. Hormones wreaking havoc in your head and body, strange and inappropriate body-reactions in very inappropriate surroundings, that sort of things. Voice breaking at times when you least want it to, leading to squeaky outrage more often than not. High school was an embarrassing experience, no matter what, and there was no reason to worsen it on purpose. Or that’s what Jared figured, anyway.
Seemed like Jensen didn’t agree with that wisdom.
Jared rolled his eyes. Right. Jensen didn’t even know about his wisdom, and maybe he’d been contrary for his whole life and Jared just hadn’t seen it. Who knows. Fact was Jensen’d changed. Dramatically.
It seemed such a short time ago, but it was actually two years since Jens had been on the baseball-team of the school, part of a large group of friends and mates and one of the golden boys of Hilldale. Sure, being in a team that was called Hilldale Hobnuggets was probably a curse, and the fact that, as far as Jared could tell, they weren’t that good on top of that made it worse. But it certainly hadn’t bothered Jensen before. He’d been pitcher from day one and had enjoyed it. Or so Jared had believed.
Maybe it was the whole puberty-thing? Maybe Jensen just couldn’t deal with it? Whatever. Who was Jared to judge. He‘d shot up in the last year and with close to six-foot-one he sometimes felt so awkward in his skin that he barely suppressed the urge to scratch it off his bones. Only on the field did he feel any kind of right. He sure knew about awkward.
“Hey, J-Man!” Kevin Farland slapped him on the back and tore him out of his funk.
Kev was loud, obnoxious, a mediocre but enthusiastic basketball-player. Small-ish, with reddish-brown curls on his head and lanky limbs, he was more cute than handsome, as the girls kept giggling. He also had pimples on his forehead and chin and that made him insecure and sheepish and he tried to cover it up with being loud, obnoxious and sleazy. Still, he was a cool guy, a good friend and loyal; had a PS3, tons of games and a furnished garage where ten kids could hang out all day without his mom caring. Jared probably liked him mostly for that. Ah, well. And because his twin-sister was Melanie Farland, honey- blond, tall, slim, athletic and a great kisser. She also was Jay’s girlfriend.
“What’s up, Loser?” Jared asked, reciprocating the slap with a kick to the shin.
Kevin winced and slid into his seat. “Nothing, Asshat. Did you know Powergas married last week?” Mr Pondergast was their English-teacher and had actually been married for two months now. Kev was a good guy, but he was so far behind the gossip that Jared sometimes wondered if it was on purpose. But only sometimes. Mostly, he was too busy laughing.
“Yes, I know. So should you, we brought him a cake - eight weeks ago.”
“Really? Oh, I thought it was for his birthday or whatever. Ah, who cares. Hey, Mark! Come over here, Sally’ll be here as well!”
In case Mark hadn’t heard him yelling over the noise of half the school, Kev jumped up and waved like a maniac. Really, you just had to love him. Farland was way too embarrassing to be around otherwise.
Mark cringed a bit - his crush on Sally Peterson was known to all, but the captain of the swim-team wasn’t keen on proclaiming it out quite so loud. Still, the tall, dark-haired boy trudged over to their table, just as Mel, Sally, Deana, Haley and Molly sat down, giggling like girls at sixteen tend to do.
“Hey, Jay” Mel leaned over and kissed him, and Jared moaned a little as he felt his dick stir in his pants. Damn, that mouth could do things to his best part, like a remote-control.
“Hey” he murmured into her lips, ignoring the snickering girls that surrounded him. Only Lucas Miller breaking his spine with a hard clap on his back brought him up for air.
“Ow, you dick! Go and fuck Shana, if you have so much energy!” He winced when his own girl pinched his side for the crude remark. But it was well-known that Steve and his girl were doing it, so why not say it as it is?
“She’s with her Dad in New York this week. You know that, I told ya!”
“So? No reason to assault others in your misery” Jared grouched. But his friend grinned, baring his big, white teeth like he tended to do. The guy was very conscious of the fact that his smile was the one thing that made him highly attractive instead of moderately handsome, so he smiled a lot. Only Jared’s dimples outshone his own, but Steve had the contrast between his dark skin and white teeth on his side.
Mark, Jared, Lucas and even Kevin were the cool kids. The handsome boys. The golden dream-team of the school; smart, funny, friendly. Team players in every aspect and leading character in nearly every girl’s dream. They had attractive, well-liked girlfriends (apart from Kevin) and the teachers liked them. They had it made.
Once upon a time, Jensen could’ve easily been their king. But instead…
“Whatcher looking at? Oh, Freako? What’s he done now? New dog-collar?”
“Leave it, Kev. He’s not bad.” Jared might not understand him anymore, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t defend Jensen. And really, apart from being… weird, Jensen really wasn’t bad. He was silent and looked scary, with his spiky, black-dyed hair, Iron Maiden-shirts and calf-high, heavily buckled boots. But he didn’t hurt anyone, even though he looked tough enough to kick Coach Cocker’s ass. And Cocker was huge.
Jensen always smiled when they passed in the halls, always returned Jay’s raised hand, the nods and grins. They didn’t really talk, but they didn’t also not talk. He always got a black card for his birthday, pinned at the locker when he returned after summer. And Jensen always got a basketball-shaped card for his. They never wrote anything on it, except sign it with a ‘J’, but that didn’t bother Jay, and he was pretty sure Jensen didn’t mind, either.
“Yeah, well. What’s with him anyway? Like, why does he dress like that?” Molly asked. She had a very interesting fascination with Jensen, always peaking at him when she thought nobody was looking. Jared looked, though, but never would’ve told anyone.
“Dunno. Just… Maybe he likes it. Whatever, right? Hey, did you get what Crimshaw was getting at, with the assignment? I have no clue about the Berlin Wall. Any ofya know what she wants from us?”
“Aw, no idea. I mean, does she mean Berlin in Texas or Connecticut? Or which one? And how would those have anything to do with Communism?”
Jared groaned. He wasn’t that much of a geography-buff, but Kevin really took the cake, sometimes. “Don’t hurt your brain, Farland. I’ll google it tonight.”
-*-
Highroller23: hey *waves* u online?
Padfoot4: hey back
Highroller23: whassup?
Padfoot4: homework. Fuck. Need my google-fu.
Highroller23: oh? Math?
Padfoot4: Geo. U know abt berlin (germany)?
Highroller23: huh? Isn’t that captl of G?
Padfoot4: yeah. S as far as I got 2
Highroller23: sux to be u
Padfoot4: ass
Highroller23: u luv me, babe
-*-
Highroller23: guess what?
Padfoot4: what?
Highroller23: spoke with my dreamgirl
Padfoot4: what? Jessy?
Highroller23: yupp. Going out tmrw
Padfoot4: \o/ \o/ \o/
Highroller23: yeah :D
Padfoot4: good luck, man. what else new?
Highroller23: thought u need homework ;-)
Padfoot4: Cummon…. *puppy-eyes*
Highroller23: fine…
And that’s how Jared spent two hours skyping with Miguel, who’d moved to San Antonio last year. They‘d been good friends, but since Mig left, they talked more than they’d ever done before. Mig’s dad was military, they moved a lot, but the guy had a network of thousands of buddies everywhere, and Jared was pretty up-to-date with most of the Texas and pretty informed about the rest of the US. Just before he decided to quit for the night, Miguel sent him a link to another chatroom where he sometimes hung out.
Highroller23: hey, lookatthis! http://www.chat-for-kids-online.com//thread=33309
Padfoot4: what?
Highroller23: that guy, ‘ace-blue’!
Padfoot4: yeah?
Highroller23: read, moron. He’s from Hillbilly-dale!
Padfoot4: how u know?
Highroller23: my chat. Know stuff. READ!
And Jared did. In fact, he stayed up till two to find as much comments from ‘ace-blue’ as he could. When he finally crawled into bed, he wasn’t able to shut his brain up.
The boy - and it had been a boy, he was certain of it - had talked dangerous shit. Talked about teachers hating him, about how nobody got him. How he didn’t feel comfortable in his skin. How it was all getting so hard, to pretend, to play his role.
That was all pretty regular stuff. Really, mostly it was issues half his class would have. But the part about ‘getting back at them’, about ‘making them listen’. About knowing where to find the ‘tools to make them hear’ - that’s what made him squirm until his alarm rang at seven.
That, and the image of Jensen Ackles’ kohl-shaded eyes looking over at lunch, boring a hole into his soul.
Chapter 2
Author: marlowe78
Rating: R for later-occurring violence
Characters: Jared, Jensen, OCs
Word count: This part ~1.700, ~21.000 the whole story.
Warnings: Violence in later chapters. Crude language. Mentions of *gosh* heterosexual relationships and underage kissing.
Summary: Highschool-AU.
Jared Padalecki is one of the Golden Boys of Hilldale. He has all you need to be sixteen and is a nice guy on top. If there wouldn't be the mystery of his former best-friend Jensen, who transformed into some kind of Grim Reaper, his life would be boring in its' perfection.
Title is taken from "Teenagers", by My Chemical Romance
beta: Once again, my friend and pal in crime soncnica went over this and checked for major errors. Neither she nor I are infallible, so if you spot an error, a mistake or something that is plain wrong, it's entirely my fault and I'd be glad to righten it - which means: POINT THEM OUT.
Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: This is completely AU. I don't have any rights to the names "Jared Padalecki" and "Jensen Ackles" nor do I know them. I didn't ask them to lend their names and looks to my story, and I hope they'd forgive me if they ever find out. The plot, though, is my own, but I didn't get paid or threatened or enticed to write this. I'm just playing, guys!
a/n:
This is my second J2-AU. I've rather started to like writing them, and this is gonna be a tad longer than the last. Once again, I changed their ages - both are sixteen - and I took some liberty with their hometown. "Hilldale" is not a real town, or if it is, I didn't pick it on purpose. I just liked the name.
Additional warnings will appear in later chapters. Read them, there might certainly be triggery material there!
And don't be mad at me that this is not a love-story. It just... didn't want to be one. Sorry.
********
Sometimes Jared thought about what might’ve changed so much. Sometimes, he looked at his once best friend strolling into the cafeteria and sitting down - alone - and wondered why he looked the way he looked now.
Not very often, though. Most days, he was too busy. Most days, there were Kevin and Steve, Mark, Molly and Haley and of course Mel. Sometimes his other teammates from the Hilldale Hummingbirds. Yes, the name sucked. But that was no reason to play bad basketball, right? So most days Jared sat surrounded by his friends and pals, his girlfriend and her friends, talking shit, laughing about stupid stuff, mocking teachers and each other and sometimes other kids.
Jared wasn’t a callous or shallow person. Not at all. He wasn’t unfair or mean to anyone, at least not on purpose. But he was a teenager, and being sixteen made you all kinds of self-centered, even when you really, truly aren’t. Hormones wreaking havoc in your head and body, strange and inappropriate body-reactions in very inappropriate surroundings, that sort of things. Voice breaking at times when you least want it to, leading to squeaky outrage more often than not. High school was an embarrassing experience, no matter what, and there was no reason to worsen it on purpose. Or that’s what Jared figured, anyway.
Seemed like Jensen didn’t agree with that wisdom.
Jared rolled his eyes. Right. Jensen didn’t even know about his wisdom, and maybe he’d been contrary for his whole life and Jared just hadn’t seen it. Who knows. Fact was Jensen’d changed. Dramatically.
It seemed such a short time ago, but it was actually two years since Jens had been on the baseball-team of the school, part of a large group of friends and mates and one of the golden boys of Hilldale. Sure, being in a team that was called Hilldale Hobnuggets was probably a curse, and the fact that, as far as Jared could tell, they weren’t that good on top of that made it worse. But it certainly hadn’t bothered Jensen before. He’d been pitcher from day one and had enjoyed it. Or so Jared had believed.
Maybe it was the whole puberty-thing? Maybe Jensen just couldn’t deal with it? Whatever. Who was Jared to judge. He‘d shot up in the last year and with close to six-foot-one he sometimes felt so awkward in his skin that he barely suppressed the urge to scratch it off his bones. Only on the field did he feel any kind of right. He sure knew about awkward.
“Hey, J-Man!” Kevin Farland slapped him on the back and tore him out of his funk.
Kev was loud, obnoxious, a mediocre but enthusiastic basketball-player. Small-ish, with reddish-brown curls on his head and lanky limbs, he was more cute than handsome, as the girls kept giggling. He also had pimples on his forehead and chin and that made him insecure and sheepish and he tried to cover it up with being loud, obnoxious and sleazy. Still, he was a cool guy, a good friend and loyal; had a PS3, tons of games and a furnished garage where ten kids could hang out all day without his mom caring. Jared probably liked him mostly for that. Ah, well. And because his twin-sister was Melanie Farland, honey- blond, tall, slim, athletic and a great kisser. She also was Jay’s girlfriend.
“What’s up, Loser?” Jared asked, reciprocating the slap with a kick to the shin.
Kevin winced and slid into his seat. “Nothing, Asshat. Did you know Powergas married last week?” Mr Pondergast was their English-teacher and had actually been married for two months now. Kev was a good guy, but he was so far behind the gossip that Jared sometimes wondered if it was on purpose. But only sometimes. Mostly, he was too busy laughing.
“Yes, I know. So should you, we brought him a cake - eight weeks ago.”
“Really? Oh, I thought it was for his birthday or whatever. Ah, who cares. Hey, Mark! Come over here, Sally’ll be here as well!”
In case Mark hadn’t heard him yelling over the noise of half the school, Kev jumped up and waved like a maniac. Really, you just had to love him. Farland was way too embarrassing to be around otherwise.
Mark cringed a bit - his crush on Sally Peterson was known to all, but the captain of the swim-team wasn’t keen on proclaiming it out quite so loud. Still, the tall, dark-haired boy trudged over to their table, just as Mel, Sally, Deana, Haley and Molly sat down, giggling like girls at sixteen tend to do.
“Hey, Jay” Mel leaned over and kissed him, and Jared moaned a little as he felt his dick stir in his pants. Damn, that mouth could do things to his best part, like a remote-control.
“Hey” he murmured into her lips, ignoring the snickering girls that surrounded him. Only Lucas Miller breaking his spine with a hard clap on his back brought him up for air.
“Ow, you dick! Go and fuck Shana, if you have so much energy!” He winced when his own girl pinched his side for the crude remark. But it was well-known that Steve and his girl were doing it, so why not say it as it is?
“She’s with her Dad in New York this week. You know that, I told ya!”
“So? No reason to assault others in your misery” Jared grouched. But his friend grinned, baring his big, white teeth like he tended to do. The guy was very conscious of the fact that his smile was the one thing that made him highly attractive instead of moderately handsome, so he smiled a lot. Only Jared’s dimples outshone his own, but Steve had the contrast between his dark skin and white teeth on his side.
Mark, Jared, Lucas and even Kevin were the cool kids. The handsome boys. The golden dream-team of the school; smart, funny, friendly. Team players in every aspect and leading character in nearly every girl’s dream. They had attractive, well-liked girlfriends (apart from Kevin) and the teachers liked them. They had it made.
Once upon a time, Jensen could’ve easily been their king. But instead…
“Whatcher looking at? Oh, Freako? What’s he done now? New dog-collar?”
“Leave it, Kev. He’s not bad.” Jared might not understand him anymore, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t defend Jensen. And really, apart from being… weird, Jensen really wasn’t bad. He was silent and looked scary, with his spiky, black-dyed hair, Iron Maiden-shirts and calf-high, heavily buckled boots. But he didn’t hurt anyone, even though he looked tough enough to kick Coach Cocker’s ass. And Cocker was huge.
Jensen always smiled when they passed in the halls, always returned Jay’s raised hand, the nods and grins. They didn’t really talk, but they didn’t also not talk. He always got a black card for his birthday, pinned at the locker when he returned after summer. And Jensen always got a basketball-shaped card for his. They never wrote anything on it, except sign it with a ‘J’, but that didn’t bother Jay, and he was pretty sure Jensen didn’t mind, either.
“Yeah, well. What’s with him anyway? Like, why does he dress like that?” Molly asked. She had a very interesting fascination with Jensen, always peaking at him when she thought nobody was looking. Jared looked, though, but never would’ve told anyone.
“Dunno. Just… Maybe he likes it. Whatever, right? Hey, did you get what Crimshaw was getting at, with the assignment? I have no clue about the Berlin Wall. Any ofya know what she wants from us?”
“Aw, no idea. I mean, does she mean Berlin in Texas or Connecticut? Or which one? And how would those have anything to do with Communism?”
Jared groaned. He wasn’t that much of a geography-buff, but Kevin really took the cake, sometimes. “Don’t hurt your brain, Farland. I’ll google it tonight.”
-*-
Highroller23: hey *waves* u online?
Padfoot4: hey back
Highroller23: whassup?
Padfoot4: homework. Fuck. Need my google-fu.
Highroller23: oh? Math?
Padfoot4: Geo. U know abt berlin (germany)?
Highroller23: huh? Isn’t that captl of G?
Padfoot4: yeah. S as far as I got 2
Highroller23: sux to be u
Padfoot4: ass
Highroller23: u luv me, babe
-*-
Highroller23: guess what?
Padfoot4: what?
Highroller23: spoke with my dreamgirl
Padfoot4: what? Jessy?
Highroller23: yupp. Going out tmrw
Padfoot4: \o/ \o/ \o/
Highroller23: yeah :D
Padfoot4: good luck, man. what else new?
Highroller23: thought u need homework ;-)
Padfoot4: Cummon…. *puppy-eyes*
Highroller23: fine…
And that’s how Jared spent two hours skyping with Miguel, who’d moved to San Antonio last year. They‘d been good friends, but since Mig left, they talked more than they’d ever done before. Mig’s dad was military, they moved a lot, but the guy had a network of thousands of buddies everywhere, and Jared was pretty up-to-date with most of the Texas and pretty informed about the rest of the US. Just before he decided to quit for the night, Miguel sent him a link to another chatroom where he sometimes hung out.
Highroller23: hey, lookatthis! http://www.chat-for-kids-online.com//thread=33309
Padfoot4: what?
Highroller23: that guy, ‘ace-blue’!
Padfoot4: yeah?
Highroller23: read, moron. He’s from Hillbilly-dale!
Padfoot4: how u know?
Highroller23: my chat. Know stuff. READ!
And Jared did. In fact, he stayed up till two to find as much comments from ‘ace-blue’ as he could. When he finally crawled into bed, he wasn’t able to shut his brain up.
The boy - and it had been a boy, he was certain of it - had talked dangerous shit. Talked about teachers hating him, about how nobody got him. How he didn’t feel comfortable in his skin. How it was all getting so hard, to pretend, to play his role.
That was all pretty regular stuff. Really, mostly it was issues half his class would have. But the part about ‘getting back at them’, about ‘making them listen’. About knowing where to find the ‘tools to make them hear’ - that’s what made him squirm until his alarm rang at seven.
That, and the image of Jensen Ackles’ kohl-shaded eyes looking over at lunch, boring a hole into his soul.
Chapter 2