Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 18/? (WIP)
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 Eighteen: What You Want
Rating: R for some language and adult themes and some implications and the presence of religion and teh!angst oh God teh!angst!
Pairing: Jensen/Jared-haha do you hate me yet?!?
Word Count: 2,116
My grandmother would tell me that I should pray at times like these, tell the Lord my troubles and my worries… ask Him for guidance, and that He would show me the way.
I reach up to idly finger the 14 karat gold cross that has hung around my neck since I was a child growing up in the bible belt, trying to find my own way and still stay ‘on the path’, as my grandmother liked to say… I’m reminded that I haven’t been to Mass in two weeks, then think that I have listened to Father Simmons on the morning television, and can hear my grandmother again-“watching Mass on television is not the same as getting yourself to Church, boy… You should do your praying in the House of God…”
She’d gone on and on about that something fierce-this was back when I was first finding my way in Hollywood-telling me that as long as I was able-bodied I should get to Church for Mass on Sundays... that He didn’t ask for more than an hour or two a week of my time...
“So God…” I whisper with a smile. “What do I do?” Because… I really don’t know. I want to touch him… and I want to let him fall asleep on the sofa next to me with his head on my shoulder-because he likes that when he’s sick, and he likes that contact… Jared’s a more tactile person than I am, and he’s also far less concerned with what others might think of him-he’ll throw his arm around me at photo shoots, jump on me… he’s even kissed me (on the cheek) at a Supernatural cast party and at a premiere. I would always worry about what people thought when he did that…Jared never cared. He’d smack my arm when I tensed up or stiffened at his touch and tell me to lighten up…
After a while, I didn’t mind so much… I’m far better with him touching me than I was, and more comfortable if it’s him touching and not anyone else. But after finding out what I did… that concern about what people might think is back, and I’m having a rough time with touching him or letting him touch me-even in the privacy of our trailers or my apartment, now. I know it has to stop-the uncomfortableness… I have to let go of that fear (and I know it’s not just touching, but the emotions too… maybe if I work on the touching, the emotions will follow)… but now, it feels like he doesn’t want me touching him, either.
I stare down the steps at the door leading outside, hands folded still, elbows resting on my knees… I idly let my lips play at the skin of my knuckles as I think.
I don’t know how long I sit out there, thinking, staring into the darkness… don’t know how often I whisper ‘please, God…’ or some form of it. Grandma would be proud. I just know that after a long while, I’ve thought about so many depressing things that I need a beer and some Halo, because otherwise I might cry, and other than in a scene, that’s something I haven’t done since I was three or four years old-I’d almost forgotten how. It took a long time to remember how when I needed to for acting purposes.
I zone out again, brought back to the present and the here-and-now by the sound of a door-the door to my apartment-opening and closing quietly behind me. Jared lowers himself carefully and slowly to the floor, sitting next to me on the landing. He rests his forearms over his knees, long legs bent sharply to mimic my position, stares down at the door at the foot of the stairs as he whispers, “Hey…”
“Hi…”
“Been out here a while…” He says. “Thinking about anything good?”
I shake my head and swallow around a forming lump in my throat. “No… shouldn’t you be in bed?”
He laughs. “Probably.” And he smiles that old Jared smile, soft and gentle, wide, and his teeth shine in the pale light that illuminates the hall from the small window above us. It’s dark outside now, night has settled on Vancouver. “You didn’t come in for a while.” He says matter-of-factly, then adds tentatively, “Thought… maybe I’d say hi…”
“See if I needed to talk?” I ask, glancing up at him.
He shrugs, looks at his hands as he picks at his fingernails. “I guess.”
And when neither of us say anything for a few minutes, he puts his hands on the carpet, pushes up shakily, hunched-backed and into a standing position.
A million things I could say run through my mind… things preceded with wait or I’d like to talk and thanks and a smile. I settle for staring straight ahead still, then slowly turning to look over my shoulder, raising an eyebrow and staring up… up… “Hey… you try eating anything?”
He shakes his head ‘no’ with a snort that starts him coughing, and just like that I’m standing up and hovering over him, reaching for him, ducking under the arm he holds out as if to say he’s okay. It falls around my shoulders and I press my left hand to his chest as he coughs, wheezes, sucks in breaths of air that don’t fill his lungs and coughs some more. My right arm snakes around his waist, and I support his weight, taking my hand from his chest for a minute to open the door to my apartment. “Okay, Jare… okay, c’mon…”
I get him to the couch, settle him with a blanket and the television remote, aware he’s still swallowing coughs by the way his shoulders occasionally shake, and go close the door before heading to the kitchen.
I make him some soup, grab some of the pedialyte I bought, and bring it in the living room.
Jared’s channel-surfing like a pro, and only stops when I tell him to, on wrestling. It’s better than anything else on at the moment. He drops the remote in his lap and shakes his head, wrinkling his nose at the soup and the pedialyte.
“Jare… you gotta eat something… and the doc says you have to drink this.”
He shakes his head ‘no’ again, squelches a cough. I stare at the television, watch as Triple H pedigrees John Cena-replays from last week’s events, a prelude to what’s to come, setting up the main event for tonight. He falls into silence beside me, and neither of us talk for a time. The soup gets cold on the coffee table.
“Jare…” I sigh, finally. “I don’t want to have to take you back to the hospital…” I hold out the pedialyte to him. “Drink this.” And I bite my lip, look down. “…please.”
Jared takes the pedialyte and sips at it as I reach over to take his prescriptions from the bag, read over the directions on them. The cough suppressant is a liquid, to be taken two teaspoons at a time, as needed every four to six hours and not to exceed eight teaspoons in twenty-four hours. The antibiotic is in the form of pills that rattle in a yellow-brown prescription container with the typical child-resistant cap. Two every six hours, to be used in their entirety.
I tap two capsules into my palm and hand them to Jared. I feel his fingers press into my palm as he takes the medication from me, stare at the television and glance out of the corner of my eye at him as he coughs slightly, swallowing the drugs with a gulp of pedialyte. He puts the pedilyte down on the coffee table as his body shakes with another round of coughing.
The instructions from the pharmacy say the medications shouldn’t be taken within a half hour of each other, so I have to wait at least that long before giving Jared the cough suppressant. Jared continues to cough, reaching for the tissues and using three before settling back against the couch, inclining towards me just slightly, enough so I know that in his own way, he’s silently asking if it’s okay if he falls asleep on my shoulder.
“Tired?” I ask.
He looks at me, an expression I can’t quite place in his eyes, as though maybe he’s afraid I’ll tell him to go to bed or offer to help him to bed if he says yes or even barely nods. He doesn’t say anything, but slowly moves to stand up.
“Jare?” I lean forward and catch his wrist in my hand as he stands up, releasing it just as quickly, as though it were a hot potato.
Still standing, he brings his hands together, rubs the skin of his wrist where I’d grabbed him just a moment ago.
“Jared, sit down.” My voice is less gentle than I intend it to be, sounds more like an order than a request.
He sinks onto the couch slowly, still holding his right wrist in the loose circle of his left hand, stares blankly at the television, and doesn’t say a word. His entire body remains tense as he leans forward a little, uncomfortably perched on the edge of the sofa.
“Jared.” I know it’s my play. It’s me who has to say something, my turn to reach out to him. I know it’s been him all this time, reaching out to me, trying to bridge that ever-widening gap between us, and I know that he can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep expecting him to reach out to me when I keep pushing him away. “You tired?”
He doesn’t answer me.
I lean forward, let my fingers glance over his cotton-clad shoulder, across his back, acutely aware of how his body stiffens at my touch, how he twitches at the contact, draws away from me. “Stop it, Jensen.” He whispers harshly. “Don’t… touch me.”
I move to sit at the edge of the couch as well, stare at the floor between my feet. “Don’t like that anymore?”
He shifts away from me. “Stop.” He says again, as I let my hand drop back to my thigh.
And I suddenly wish He would give me an answer, some divine insight, because I have no idea what I can say or do that will make any of this any better. But He either can’t, or won’t… hasn’t at any rate, and it’s up to me to figure this out.
“I’m trying, Jared…” I mutter finally. “I’m trying.”
“Try fucking harder.” He says coldly.
I swallow and turn my hands, face up, stare at them between my knees, take a few breaths in silence and swallow again, my pride this time. I shrug my shoulders, a small rise and fall of bone. “Tell me what to do, Jared…” I whisper. “Just tell me…”
“Just leave me be. Leave me be… and when I’m better, I’ll leave… I’ll find myself an apartment and I’ll be out of your hair, okay?”
I nod slowly. “Is that what you want?”
“I can’t have what I want.” His voice is scathing despite its softness, pointed emphasis on the words ‘have’ and ‘want’.
“So you’ll settle for less?” I’ve never believed in settling for less than what I want, and I’ve never been able to understand people who do, can’t understand why so many people do. It’s always seemed like giving up to me. I may not always know what I want, but once I figure it out I won’t settle for anything less.
My disbelief must come through in my tone, because he just looks at me, this sad, resigned look on his face. “Sometimes you have to.” He whispers. And I know he’s right-I’ve just never wanted something that wasn’t in my power to get-I’ve never wanted a person or an ideal that wasn’t something I had or could have control over. Everything I’ve ever wanted has always been something I could buy, or make happen.
“And you have to.” As if I don’t know the answer-I know what he wants (me), and I haven’t given him an iota of hope.
“I don’t have a choice, Jensen.”
“What if you did?” I don’t know why I ask, and the minute I do, I want to take the words back. I don’t mean what they imply-or do I?
This time, it’s Jared who sighs, long and heavy, shaky breath that belies a threatening cough. “You don’t mean that.” He whispers as he stands up, and this time I don’t stop him.
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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...
-------------------------
Chapter Eighteen: What You Want
Rating: R for some language and adult themes and some implications and the presence of religion and teh!angst oh God teh!angst!
Pairing: Jensen/Jared-haha do you hate me yet?!?
Word Count: 2,116
My grandmother would tell me that I should pray at times like these, tell the Lord my troubles and my worries… ask Him for guidance, and that He would show me the way.
I reach up to idly finger the 14 karat gold cross that has hung around my neck since I was a child growing up in the bible belt, trying to find my own way and still stay ‘on the path’, as my grandmother liked to say… I’m reminded that I haven’t been to Mass in two weeks, then think that I have listened to Father Simmons on the morning television, and can hear my grandmother again-“watching Mass on television is not the same as getting yourself to Church, boy… You should do your praying in the House of God…”
She’d gone on and on about that something fierce-this was back when I was first finding my way in Hollywood-telling me that as long as I was able-bodied I should get to Church for Mass on Sundays... that He didn’t ask for more than an hour or two a week of my time...
“So God…” I whisper with a smile. “What do I do?” Because… I really don’t know. I want to touch him… and I want to let him fall asleep on the sofa next to me with his head on my shoulder-because he likes that when he’s sick, and he likes that contact… Jared’s a more tactile person than I am, and he’s also far less concerned with what others might think of him-he’ll throw his arm around me at photo shoots, jump on me… he’s even kissed me (on the cheek) at a Supernatural cast party and at a premiere. I would always worry about what people thought when he did that…Jared never cared. He’d smack my arm when I tensed up or stiffened at his touch and tell me to lighten up…
After a while, I didn’t mind so much… I’m far better with him touching me than I was, and more comfortable if it’s him touching and not anyone else. But after finding out what I did… that concern about what people might think is back, and I’m having a rough time with touching him or letting him touch me-even in the privacy of our trailers or my apartment, now. I know it has to stop-the uncomfortableness… I have to let go of that fear (and I know it’s not just touching, but the emotions too… maybe if I work on the touching, the emotions will follow)… but now, it feels like he doesn’t want me touching him, either.
I stare down the steps at the door leading outside, hands folded still, elbows resting on my knees… I idly let my lips play at the skin of my knuckles as I think.
I don’t know how long I sit out there, thinking, staring into the darkness… don’t know how often I whisper ‘please, God…’ or some form of it. Grandma would be proud. I just know that after a long while, I’ve thought about so many depressing things that I need a beer and some Halo, because otherwise I might cry, and other than in a scene, that’s something I haven’t done since I was three or four years old-I’d almost forgotten how. It took a long time to remember how when I needed to for acting purposes.
I zone out again, brought back to the present and the here-and-now by the sound of a door-the door to my apartment-opening and closing quietly behind me. Jared lowers himself carefully and slowly to the floor, sitting next to me on the landing. He rests his forearms over his knees, long legs bent sharply to mimic my position, stares down at the door at the foot of the stairs as he whispers, “Hey…”
“Hi…”
“Been out here a while…” He says. “Thinking about anything good?”
I shake my head and swallow around a forming lump in my throat. “No… shouldn’t you be in bed?”
He laughs. “Probably.” And he smiles that old Jared smile, soft and gentle, wide, and his teeth shine in the pale light that illuminates the hall from the small window above us. It’s dark outside now, night has settled on Vancouver. “You didn’t come in for a while.” He says matter-of-factly, then adds tentatively, “Thought… maybe I’d say hi…”
“See if I needed to talk?” I ask, glancing up at him.
He shrugs, looks at his hands as he picks at his fingernails. “I guess.”
And when neither of us say anything for a few minutes, he puts his hands on the carpet, pushes up shakily, hunched-backed and into a standing position.
A million things I could say run through my mind… things preceded with wait or I’d like to talk and thanks and a smile. I settle for staring straight ahead still, then slowly turning to look over my shoulder, raising an eyebrow and staring up… up… “Hey… you try eating anything?”
He shakes his head ‘no’ with a snort that starts him coughing, and just like that I’m standing up and hovering over him, reaching for him, ducking under the arm he holds out as if to say he’s okay. It falls around my shoulders and I press my left hand to his chest as he coughs, wheezes, sucks in breaths of air that don’t fill his lungs and coughs some more. My right arm snakes around his waist, and I support his weight, taking my hand from his chest for a minute to open the door to my apartment. “Okay, Jare… okay, c’mon…”
I get him to the couch, settle him with a blanket and the television remote, aware he’s still swallowing coughs by the way his shoulders occasionally shake, and go close the door before heading to the kitchen.
I make him some soup, grab some of the pedialyte I bought, and bring it in the living room.
Jared’s channel-surfing like a pro, and only stops when I tell him to, on wrestling. It’s better than anything else on at the moment. He drops the remote in his lap and shakes his head, wrinkling his nose at the soup and the pedialyte.
“Jare… you gotta eat something… and the doc says you have to drink this.”
He shakes his head ‘no’ again, squelches a cough. I stare at the television, watch as Triple H pedigrees John Cena-replays from last week’s events, a prelude to what’s to come, setting up the main event for tonight. He falls into silence beside me, and neither of us talk for a time. The soup gets cold on the coffee table.
“Jare…” I sigh, finally. “I don’t want to have to take you back to the hospital…” I hold out the pedialyte to him. “Drink this.” And I bite my lip, look down. “…please.”
Jared takes the pedialyte and sips at it as I reach over to take his prescriptions from the bag, read over the directions on them. The cough suppressant is a liquid, to be taken two teaspoons at a time, as needed every four to six hours and not to exceed eight teaspoons in twenty-four hours. The antibiotic is in the form of pills that rattle in a yellow-brown prescription container with the typical child-resistant cap. Two every six hours, to be used in their entirety.
I tap two capsules into my palm and hand them to Jared. I feel his fingers press into my palm as he takes the medication from me, stare at the television and glance out of the corner of my eye at him as he coughs slightly, swallowing the drugs with a gulp of pedialyte. He puts the pedilyte down on the coffee table as his body shakes with another round of coughing.
The instructions from the pharmacy say the medications shouldn’t be taken within a half hour of each other, so I have to wait at least that long before giving Jared the cough suppressant. Jared continues to cough, reaching for the tissues and using three before settling back against the couch, inclining towards me just slightly, enough so I know that in his own way, he’s silently asking if it’s okay if he falls asleep on my shoulder.
“Tired?” I ask.
He looks at me, an expression I can’t quite place in his eyes, as though maybe he’s afraid I’ll tell him to go to bed or offer to help him to bed if he says yes or even barely nods. He doesn’t say anything, but slowly moves to stand up.
“Jare?” I lean forward and catch his wrist in my hand as he stands up, releasing it just as quickly, as though it were a hot potato.
Still standing, he brings his hands together, rubs the skin of his wrist where I’d grabbed him just a moment ago.
“Jared, sit down.” My voice is less gentle than I intend it to be, sounds more like an order than a request.
He sinks onto the couch slowly, still holding his right wrist in the loose circle of his left hand, stares blankly at the television, and doesn’t say a word. His entire body remains tense as he leans forward a little, uncomfortably perched on the edge of the sofa.
“Jared.” I know it’s my play. It’s me who has to say something, my turn to reach out to him. I know it’s been him all this time, reaching out to me, trying to bridge that ever-widening gap between us, and I know that he can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep expecting him to reach out to me when I keep pushing him away. “You tired?”
He doesn’t answer me.
I lean forward, let my fingers glance over his cotton-clad shoulder, across his back, acutely aware of how his body stiffens at my touch, how he twitches at the contact, draws away from me. “Stop it, Jensen.” He whispers harshly. “Don’t… touch me.”
I move to sit at the edge of the couch as well, stare at the floor between my feet. “Don’t like that anymore?”
He shifts away from me. “Stop.” He says again, as I let my hand drop back to my thigh.
And I suddenly wish He would give me an answer, some divine insight, because I have no idea what I can say or do that will make any of this any better. But He either can’t, or won’t… hasn’t at any rate, and it’s up to me to figure this out.
“I’m trying, Jared…” I mutter finally. “I’m trying.”
“Try fucking harder.” He says coldly.
I swallow and turn my hands, face up, stare at them between my knees, take a few breaths in silence and swallow again, my pride this time. I shrug my shoulders, a small rise and fall of bone. “Tell me what to do, Jared…” I whisper. “Just tell me…”
“Just leave me be. Leave me be… and when I’m better, I’ll leave… I’ll find myself an apartment and I’ll be out of your hair, okay?”
I nod slowly. “Is that what you want?”
“I can’t have what I want.” His voice is scathing despite its softness, pointed emphasis on the words ‘have’ and ‘want’.
“So you’ll settle for less?” I’ve never believed in settling for less than what I want, and I’ve never been able to understand people who do, can’t understand why so many people do. It’s always seemed like giving up to me. I may not always know what I want, but once I figure it out I won’t settle for anything less.
My disbelief must come through in my tone, because he just looks at me, this sad, resigned look on his face. “Sometimes you have to.” He whispers. And I know he’s right-I’ve just never wanted something that wasn’t in my power to get-I’ve never wanted a person or an ideal that wasn’t something I had or could have control over. Everything I’ve ever wanted has always been something I could buy, or make happen.
“And you have to.” As if I don’t know the answer-I know what he wants (me), and I haven’t given him an iota of hope.
“I don’t have a choice, Jensen.”
“What if you did?” I don’t know why I ask, and the minute I do, I want to take the words back. I don’t mean what they imply-or do I?
This time, it’s Jared who sighs, long and heavy, shaky breath that belies a threatening cough. “You don’t mean that.” He whispers as he stands up, and this time I don’t stop him.
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