Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 13/? (WIP)

Apr 30, 2006 23:24

Title: Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / OFC
POV: Jensen Ackles
Author's Notes: It’s fiction. That means it’s not real, folks. Jensen and Jared are real people. So is Eric Kripke. The show “Supernatural” is a real TV show on the WB11. If anything else in this is real, I wasn’t aware of it.
I'm not going to say when or if the next chapter will be posted... I am writing on this, but really, it took on a mind/life of it's own, and it's sorta festering at upset!Jared and a Jensen who's entirely unsure what to do... So... read at your own risk. I would enjoy feedback, but I'll understand if you don't want to start reading a WIP with no end in sight or in the works. I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help.
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...

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Chapter Thirteen: Tabula Rasa or A Reasonable Copy of
Rating: PG-13 / very light R for adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared (I know, I keep saying that… and nada… zilch… nothing… I’m getting there, I promise!!!)
Word Count: 2,246


Tabula Rasa or A Reasonable Copy of

I stand there, shocked into stillness, and barely manage to keep from spilling the tea all over the floor. My mind goes a million miles a minute, thinking of all the places Jared might have gone, whether I should try to find him or not, because-let’s face it, this is the third time now he’s disappeared from my apartment-it’s obvious he doesn’t want to be here.

Just as I raise my hand to my head, rubbing my temples, considering my options, my phone rings, sharp and loud from the living room. There’s a second phone in my bedroom, and seeing as my bedroom is closer, I stumble to that phone, and without thinking, answer it, hoping against hope that it’s Jared.

“Jared?” I answer, unable to keep the tinge of concern and panic out of my voice. “Jared, please tell me…”

“He’s not with you?” Megan’s voice, soft and shrill comes over the phone. “Jensen I thought he was with you! He’s sick! Right?”

Megan. Jared’s baby sister. She couldn’t have called at a more inopportune time. “Yes.” I sigh. “He’s sick. And no, he’s not here. He left last night.” I’m not in the mood to deal with her, or her teen-angst. If she doesn’t have something to over-react about, she’ll over-react to having nothing to over-react about. It’s like people who thrive off stress-if they’ve got nothing to worry about/stress about, they’ll find something or just stress about the fact that things are going well. It’s ridiculous.

Megan’s voice drones in my ear, and just as I’m getting ready to tell her to shut up and get off the phone-that Jared’s not going to be able to get through if she’s still on the phone-I hear her (their) mother’s voice coming through the phone. “Megan, Megan honey, give me the phone.”

“Mom! Jared’s not there!”

“I’m sure he’s fine honey.” I hear paper rustling, something else as the phone is transferred to Mom Padalecki. “Jensen?”

I put a false smile on my face even though she can’t see it. “Hi, Mrs. Padalecki.” This morning could not get any worse.

“Jared’s not at your place anymore?” She asks, sounding far more level-headed than her teenaged daughter

“No.” I glance at my watch. Even if he left immediately after I went to bed-which was at two, maybe three in the morning, after he finished throwing up-he’d only have been gone eight or nine hours at most.

“Well…” She takes a breath. “He can’t take care of himself, Jensen. You know that.”

It’s almost amusing, to hear a mother say that about her twenty-three year old son. It’s also terribly disturbing to hear, knowing a mother is aware of and has acknowledged that fact. It worries me because I know she’s right-Jared can’t take care of himself, especially not now, the shape he’s in, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Jared’s a wreck.

The realization hits me like a freight train and leaves an uncomfortable lump in my throat. It’s hard to breathe, harder to swallow as I walk with the portable phone to the kitchen, pour myself another cup of coffee and drink it black. His mother’s been talking the whole time about places he might have gone, but really there are only a couple he could have made it to last night by foot, and I know them all-the dumpy hotel, the shelter at Our Lady of Grace Church, possibly the trailers, though I hate to think of him walking that distance in his condition. Only thing is, it’s now nearing noontime, he could have been to any of those places last night and moved on since.

“I’ll find him and have him call you.”

“I think you should talk to him first.” She says, and it sounds like she knows something I don’t when she says it. Then she adds, “We know Sandy broke up with him.” There’s something behind her voice I can’t put my finger on. Something that says maybe she knows why, maybe she knows her son is gay, maybe she knows about his little… crush? Infatuation?

“Do you… I mean…” I don’t want to come right out and ask if she knows, because I know she’ll hear the undertones in my voice that say I do know, that maybe it’s more than she thinks if she thinks it was just ‘we fell apart’ or ‘it wasn’t working anymore’.

“We know he fell in love with you.”

Her words hang in silence like a gunshot, echo in my ears the same. Her voice isn’t accusing, demeaning… she doesn’t sound displeased or put off about that. She sounds… if anything, sympathetic and understanding, accepting of what it means, to her, to me, to Jared. She’s calm.

Unlike me.

“S…so… So you know?” I whisper stupidly. Of course she knows. He lived with her for nineteen years. She’s his mother. “That he’s…” I think of how best to put it-gay? Homosexual? Is there a nice/right way to put it?

“Oh he’s not… gay, Jensen.” She says, as if reading my mind. “Jared has always just… loved who he’s loved. He never worried about whether it was a boy or a girl… to him, it was just… a person.” She pauses. “He loved Sandy, you know.”

He did. He was going to marry her. That has to mean something. “I know…” I say, nearly inaudibly, and louder, “So what happened?” I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around all of this, though it makes sense, and it’s somewhat a relief to me to know he’s not… gay.

“He met you.” She says simply, as though that explains everything, and as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.

Neither of us say anything for a moment, dead air hangs between us and is neither comfortable or uncomfortable, and she breaks the silence after a moment. “It wasn’t easy for him growing up... Children… can be cruel about things like that… even in grade school. And high school it was only worse.” I’m not sure why she’s telling me these things. “His father and I… we tried to shelter him… maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but we can’t change it…”

It starts to make sense… About why he’s not very good at taking care of himself (that sheltered upbringing)… and partially why he never outgrew being emotional… and how the shelter turned into need… She continues talking, I continue listening, and even more pieces to the Jared puzzle fall into place. I’d sometimes wondered about his acting being so spot-on… Good actors can do it, but there’s always a level of personal emotion that an actor brings to a character, and if an actor hasn’t ever felt a certain way in life, they don’t have that emotion to draw on, and it’s harder to get that emotion right in their character… Jared’s sometimes so spot-on I wonder where it’s coming from… where in his past he’s ever felt some of that pain that reflects so clearly in his eyes as Sam…

I wondered… wanted to know, and now almost wish I didn’t.

She talks about when I’d come down for the weekend once, just me and Jared, two Texas boys all grown up and living in Hollywood, going back to their roots and their cowboy and rodeo dreams. She talks about some more small things that happened to Jared when he was just a boy. She cuts herself off when she realizes it’s nearly eleven. Which means it’s nearly one in the afternoon here in Vancouver. Jared could be anywhere by now.

“You’ll have him call?” She asks.

“Yes.” I assure her, though I’m hard-pressed to promise it’ll be today. She understands.

“After you two talk.” She adds firmly. She hangs up before I can say anything else.

I hang up after staring at the receiver for a moment, fall back against the chair back and rub my temples between thumb and forefinger, closing my eyes. After another moment, I shake my head, and pick up the phone again, dialing the number of the shit motel not far from my apartment.

The same gum-snapping lady I talked to a day or two ago answers. This time, she sees a Dean Forrester, checking in “late last night…” She breaks off, retracts by correcting herself unnecessarily. “…well, early this morning. Around three in the morning it says here.”

“Can you transfer me to his room, please?”

She snaps her gum loudly. “Sorry sir, but he checked out at ten-thirty this morning.”

That puts me back at square one. “Thanks.”

I grab a jacket and head out, drive down to the set. It’s abandoned. Not even crew or clean-up is there-Eric’s rules that no one works Sundays. Ever. I check Jared’s trailer anyway, hoping that maybe he’s holed up in there doing what he’s supposed to be-resting-but he’s not. His trailer is dark and empty, still as we left it.

I take the long way around back to where I parked, passing through the dirt and gravel lot around the back of my trailer, which is also dark. Jared hasn’t been here, or if he has, he’s wiped all trace of his presence. It’s then I notice he has been here-his truck is missing from where it’s been parked the last few days. Which means he could be anywhere by now. Any number of hotels in Vancouver or the surrounding metro area, motels and trucker’s stops… There are at least a hundred in the city and outskirts alone, that number would increase exponentially every five miles in any given direction…

I figure he wouldn’t have gone too far, given his condition and the fact that we are both expected on set tomorrow. As far as I know, Eric doesn’t know Jared’s sick.

I pull his cell number off of speed-dial on my phone, hit the green ‘call’ button and wait to be connected. I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’m getting his voicemail-I just hope it’s not full for starters, and that he’ll call me back when he gets my message, though I doubt that, and with good reason.

“Jared. It’s Jensen. Look. I talked to your mom this morning. She and your sister are worried about you.” I take a deep breath. “Frankly…” Another deep breath, let out slow. “…So… So am I, Jare… I mean… you’re running a hell of a fever… and uh… I know you haven’t been resting all that well… or… hell… yeah. So… when you get this, could you please call just to let me know you’re alright?”

I hang up, stare at the cell phone for a while, then get back in my car, drive back to my apartment to find a message on my voicemail from Cindy, who does makeup for the show, asking me to give her a call when I get back home. There’s another message from Eric confirming that he’ll see me in the morning-seeing as we’ve not been filming the last few days.

I sink onto the couch, wish that Jared would call, at least to let me know he’s okay. I could call hotels in the area, but it’d be like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Especially with four names to check under at every hotel. He’d used Dean Forrester this morning, but if he’s checked into another hotel since then, there’s nothing to say he didn’t use another name. It’s looking like I’m going to have to settle for seeing him on set tomorrow.

I call him again, leave another message.

I watch bits and pieces from the news on three local stations, get the news from one, the story about a rapist on the loose from another, and bits and pieces about local sports-mostly on the Vancouver Canucks (hockey)-from the other. I don’t pay attention to any of them-the broadcasts go in one ear and out the other.

At seven, I make a salad even though I’m not hungry, eat it while trying to do a crossword puzzle. I drink a bottle of water, take three vitamin pills and do a set of crunches. Anything to pass the time. I’d go to sleep so the morning would get here faster, but I’m not tired, and I’m afraid if I lie down and stare at the ceiling, close my eyes or count sheep to try and fall asleep, I never will.

So I do another set of crunches-my personal trainer would be proud-idly stare at the sudoku from the Sunday paper and fill in two numbers in the course of two hours. I think of trying Jared again, but don’t. I’ve already left him two messages. The ball is in his court.

That I’m somehow at fault for all of this still eats at the back of my mind, and I remind myself I’m not completely to blame.

At ten, I’m ready to pack it in. My eyes are starting to drift shut, though I think it’s partially out of boredom and worry than anything else, like actual sleepiness. I plug my phone into the charger, set my alarm.

As I’m brushing my teeth, my phone plays the opening riff from “Somewhere Out There”, and stops-not a phone call, but a text message.

All it reads is, “I’m fine.”

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel much better.

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