Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 19/? (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... 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 (yes... even after chapter 19 that's still true...) I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help. Things go downhill from there.
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
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Chapter Nineteen: Gets Better Every Day
Rating: R for the language and the boy!closeness!
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, with some touching and some smiling… but nothing more. Not yet. Because I am a big tease. And I have written 45,000 words without a slash kiss.
Word Count: 2,440
I spend the night lying awake in bed, listening to Jared cough through paper-thin walls, hands fisting in the sheets to keep from getting up and going to him every time the coughing sounds particularly bad. He doesn’t want me there, doesn’t want my help-he’s made that clear-and if I keep telling myself that, maybe I’ll believe it one day.
Jared’s mother calls me at ten in the morning-eight in the morning her time-to ask how her son is doing. I can hear his sister in the background.
I’m tired, and his family is the last thing I want to deal with at the moment. Jared’s still coughing, and I swear I heard him retching earlier. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take him back to the hospital, because he won’t let me take care of him, and he damn sure won’t take care of himself, whether that be out of spite or simply because it’s just how he is, I don’t know.
“He’s got pneumonia.” I tell his mother, reasonably unsure after a night of sleep that was restless at best if I’ve told her that already.
She tells me to make sure he drinks water to keep hydrated, and to try to get him to eat some soup. She tells me that his asthma medication will help him to breathe, says it’s hard to tell sometimes if it’s asthma or illness causing the wheezing when he’s sick like this, but the inhaler helps regardless. (Why didn’t I think of that before?) She also tells me when he was younger she would boil water and have Jared breathe the steam-it used to help.
I file bits and pieces of the conversation away for later use, in the event Jared lets me anywhere near him, lets me take care of him. She keeps talking, and twenty minutes and some useful information later, she asks to talk to her youngest son, who by now, has finally, thankfully, stopped coughing. I can still hear him breathing, heavy and rasping, but he’s no longer hacking violently like he was.
I rap on the guest bedroom door, walk in without waiting for an answer, and hand my phone to Jared. “It’s your mother.” I tell him, then turn and walk out.
While he talks to his mother, I shower, dress in jeans and a hoodie-it’s chilly, even inside-and turn the thermostat up, listening for the heat as it kicks in, rumbling gently and squeaking as the heaters get their first use of the season.
I bring Jared tea, find him sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at my cell phone. “My mother called you.” He says quietly when he notices my presence.
I put the tea on the bedside table, sip my coffee and nod. “Yeah… she’s worried about you, Jare.” My voice is softer than I thought it’d be, scratchy still from lack of sleep, and I bite back a yawn.
He looks up at me questioningly, somewhat nervously as he hands me my phone. “She said…” He quiets, stares at the floor.
I sit next to him on the bed, my head turned to look at him. “Yes?” And when he doesn’t answer right away, “…she said what, Jare?”
“That she talked to you...”
That much is obvious-it’s not what he meant/wants to say, and I know it. I don’t push, let him get to it in his own time, which is nearly a full ten minutes later. I’ve long since finished my coffee and left the empty cup near his cup of fast-cooling tea.
His voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper, and I have to lean closer to hear the words. “…she said you’d take good care of me…” There’s a pause, followed by “…that I should… let you.”
“She’s right.”
“About which part?” He snorts.
“Both.” I say simply, and stand up.
“You don’t even want me here.” He mutters, but his voice doesn’t hold as much conviction as it once did. He shakes his head. “You don’t want to take care of me.”
“How can you say that?”
“I’m a burden to you, Jensen. I cramp your style.” And when I look at him questioningly, somewhat in disbelief, he continues. “You think I don’t know about Luanne? You think I don’t know she called the first night I was here? Don’t think I know you went running off to meet her at a hotel?”
Shit. I really was hoping he didn’t know about her. “Jared… she’s not importa-“
“Not important? You run off without a second thought when she calls! I know you have a tendency to think with your dick most times, but Jensen, please. I’m not fucking stupid.”
“Could have fooled me.” I sneer, and I really don’t mean anything by that, don’t mean it the way it sounds. I’m just angry-he’s angry and I’m angry and we’re yelling at each other and it’s almost good, because maybe we’re finally going to have this out and settle things between us. But I doubt it.
“Oh, now I’m stupid?” Jared stares at me.
“You run out in the cold and the rain, without even a coat… you leave here, not once, not twice, but three fucking times. You don’t even go to the shelter, or to the hotel that’s a five minute walk. You walk to the fucking trailers!” My voice has risen to the point I’m pretty much screaming at him, and he backs away from me just a little, eyes me cautiously from a cringe. “Hardly what passes for intelligence, Jared!”
“I wasn’t about to stay where I wasn’t wanted!” He shoots back.
He really thinks I don’t want him here. More than that… he thinks I don’t want him, and not just in the sexual way-thinks I don’t even want him as a friend anymore. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
“Jare… I’d never kick you out.”
“You’d just make it impossible for me to stay.” He counters, but at least he’s not yelling any more. He just sounds tired.
“I’d never ask you to leave… I never wanted you to… Jare, you’re always welcome here.”
He’s quiet for a long time, and it’s finally me who breaks the silence that’s fallen between us after the outburst of loud… the yelling and the words that still hang in the air between us.
“Jare… you’re welcome to stay here… as long as you want to.” I swallow, bite at my lower lip. It may not seem like much, but it’s more emotion than I’ve shown or alluded to in years. It’s hard, hard not covering with jokes, hard to find the words. It comes easier with Jared, especially recently, but it’s still hard. I swallow again, exhale heavily.
“Just say it, Jensen…” Jared whispers.
I half-smile. “Easy for you to say…”
“It is.” He replies. “I’m not you… …Jensen…” Still using my full name. “I know it’s not easy for you… I know… you yell and scream...” and it seems like Jared’s at a loss for words and doesn’t know what to say for once. “Jensen… …it’s okay to… say what you feel… how else am I going to know?”
“Maybe I don’t want you to know.” And it’s a weak ploy on my part, to try to end the conversation even though I know it’s one that should be finished. Has to be finished.
“You do.”
And he’s right. I do want him to know, and I’ve been trying to show him and it hasn’t been working. Maybe telling him is all I have left.
“…I do want you here…” And the next words are a whisper, as if I’m trying them out, to see how they sound, how they feel on my lips. “…I want to take care of you… I will if you’ll let me…”
“What was that?” Jared says with a smile, leaning closer to me with a finger to his ear.
“Fuck you, Jare.” But it’s dry, without animosity.
“Maybe later.” He says, and when I turn to look at him, he smiles-a real, genuine, Jared smile, one that doesn’t quite reach his sick and still-glazed eyes, but is a real Jared smile nonetheless. “Kidding, Jen.” And my nickname, for the first time in a long time… and I think that maybe things will be okay.
He takes a rasping breath that exhales in a cough, and he doesn’t push me away when I rub his back, hold the tissue to his lips as he spits out phlegm tinged with crimson.
When he stops coughing, I wipe his mouth, throw the tissue in the bedside garbage can, and help him to stand. “C’mon, Jare…” And I have a handful of his shirt in my left hand, pressing over his heart, and my right arm holds him up as we move slowly to the living room, where Jared near-collapses into the couch when I step away from him.
I make soup, bring it in to Jared, who’s reclining against the cushions, looking more relaxed than I’ve seen him in nearly a week. He’s still obviously sick, but at least he looks comfortable, at ease where he is, and willing to rest, let his body heal.
“Jare… try to eat?”
I set up the Playstation, and we go back to our saved game of Baldur’s Gate, playing for hours, during which time Jared eats half the soup, takes his antibiotics, a dose of the cough suppressant, and lets me take his temperature.
After eating, he sets the bowl on the table, and looks at me, silently questioning, moving to tentatively, carefully settle himself on the couch, against the pillows, his body pressing just slightly against mine, leaning back so his head comes to rest against my shoulder. When I say nothing and don’t shift away from him, he turns his face to my neck with a quiet noise that I think might have been words if I’d been listening more closely.
I save the game when he shifts a little, murmurs again and drops the controller in his lap. “Tired, Jen…” He whispers, and I lean up, reaching down to the opposite end of the sofa to pull the blanket that rests there over him, making no effort to move his head from my shoulder.
“Sleep, Jare…” I whisper into his hair, and get comfortable as he drifts off to sleep, let the hand that dragged the blanket up and over Jared’s body rest over his heart, use the other to maneuver a book, and read while he sleeps-or at least until the phone rings, loud and shrill in my ear.
I jump on the phone, grunt a terse “…’ello?” into the receiver, looking down at Jared, relieved to see he’s still asleep.
It’s Jared’s mother, calling to see how he’s doing. “He’s asleep.” I tell her, and in the event she wants to talk to him, “I’m not waking him.”
“Did you make sure he took his antibiotics?”
“Yes. And he ate a little bit of soup… he’s managed to keep it down to now…” I look down the bridge of my nose at the sleeping Jared as I talk, lift the hand from the blanket covering him to thread my fingers through his hair. The heat I can feel coming from his skin concerns me-he doesn’t seem any warmer than before, but I’d hoped the fever would have broken by now.
His mother rambles in my ear, and I really wish I were listening, because I’m sure she’s telling me little things about her son that I didn’t know before, but I’m lost in my own thoughts staring at Jared, his long lashes, dark brown against pale skin, blood darkening pink lips.
She eventually says she’ll call tomorrow, but would I please have Jared call her if he wakes and it’s not too late? I tell her I will, hang up the phone and realize the fingers of my other hand are still woven into his silken hair, pressing gently into his scalp. He’s warm, unsettlingly so, I think, though the doctor said the fever would go in its own time-that Tylenol would help reduce it, but that it wasn’t anything to be overly concerned with-it was the body fighting infection in its way.
I go back to my book, but don’t read more than ten pages in the twenty more minutes that Jared sleeps, aware the instant he stirs, the second he wakes, murmuring and breathing hot against my neck. “Jare?”
“Jenny…” He whispers my name, tilts his head to look up at me, sleep still clouding his turquoise eyes.
I smile down at him, fish for the thermometer with one hand while letting the other slide from his hair to his throat. I touch the thermometer to his lips, gently urging him to open his mouth and sliding the device beneath his tongue when he does. “Shhh…” I whisper, silencing him when he tries to talk around it, his eyes still closed.
His fever is hovering steadily around 102, as it has for the last few days, and registers at 101.9 now. “I’m okay, Jen… don’t have to keep taking my temperature…”
“Humor me.” I reply, helping him to sit up, one arm around his shoulders, other hand resting on his chest as he coughs. I can feel his lungs tightening beneath my hand, can feel the cough come from deep inside, and his body trembles, his shoulders shake. He spits into a napkin, and I check for blood as I take it from him to throw it out, glad to see there’s no telltale red staining the white.
I hand him the phone as I move away from him, tell him to call home. He nods, starts dialing the number. “Jen?” He looks up, stops dialing for a minute.
“Yeah, Jare?”
And he doesn’t say anything, just smiles, a small, tight-lipped smile that still doesn’t reach his eyes, but there’s an expression of warmth in them anyway, silence and thanks, and he looks away, closes his eyes before looking back up at me, and by then his eyes have been shuttered.
“I’ll make you some soup.” I say. “You’ll try to eat some?”
He nods, shifts uncomfortably beneath the blanket as he brings the receiver to his ear and reaches for the remote with his other hand. “Hi mom…” His voice is a whisper, soft and gentle, and I wonder what it would be like to hear my name spoken in that tone, reverent and loving.
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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... 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 (yes... even after chapter 19 that's still true...) I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help. Things go downhill from there.
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
-------------------------
Chapter Nineteen: Gets Better Every Day
Rating: R for the language and the boy!closeness!
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, with some touching and some smiling… but nothing more. Not yet. Because I am a big tease. And I have written 45,000 words without a slash kiss.
Word Count: 2,440
I spend the night lying awake in bed, listening to Jared cough through paper-thin walls, hands fisting in the sheets to keep from getting up and going to him every time the coughing sounds particularly bad. He doesn’t want me there, doesn’t want my help-he’s made that clear-and if I keep telling myself that, maybe I’ll believe it one day.
Jared’s mother calls me at ten in the morning-eight in the morning her time-to ask how her son is doing. I can hear his sister in the background.
I’m tired, and his family is the last thing I want to deal with at the moment. Jared’s still coughing, and I swear I heard him retching earlier. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take him back to the hospital, because he won’t let me take care of him, and he damn sure won’t take care of himself, whether that be out of spite or simply because it’s just how he is, I don’t know.
“He’s got pneumonia.” I tell his mother, reasonably unsure after a night of sleep that was restless at best if I’ve told her that already.
She tells me to make sure he drinks water to keep hydrated, and to try to get him to eat some soup. She tells me that his asthma medication will help him to breathe, says it’s hard to tell sometimes if it’s asthma or illness causing the wheezing when he’s sick like this, but the inhaler helps regardless. (Why didn’t I think of that before?) She also tells me when he was younger she would boil water and have Jared breathe the steam-it used to help.
I file bits and pieces of the conversation away for later use, in the event Jared lets me anywhere near him, lets me take care of him. She keeps talking, and twenty minutes and some useful information later, she asks to talk to her youngest son, who by now, has finally, thankfully, stopped coughing. I can still hear him breathing, heavy and rasping, but he’s no longer hacking violently like he was.
I rap on the guest bedroom door, walk in without waiting for an answer, and hand my phone to Jared. “It’s your mother.” I tell him, then turn and walk out.
While he talks to his mother, I shower, dress in jeans and a hoodie-it’s chilly, even inside-and turn the thermostat up, listening for the heat as it kicks in, rumbling gently and squeaking as the heaters get their first use of the season.
I bring Jared tea, find him sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at my cell phone. “My mother called you.” He says quietly when he notices my presence.
I put the tea on the bedside table, sip my coffee and nod. “Yeah… she’s worried about you, Jare.” My voice is softer than I thought it’d be, scratchy still from lack of sleep, and I bite back a yawn.
He looks up at me questioningly, somewhat nervously as he hands me my phone. “She said…” He quiets, stares at the floor.
I sit next to him on the bed, my head turned to look at him. “Yes?” And when he doesn’t answer right away, “…she said what, Jare?”
“That she talked to you...”
That much is obvious-it’s not what he meant/wants to say, and I know it. I don’t push, let him get to it in his own time, which is nearly a full ten minutes later. I’ve long since finished my coffee and left the empty cup near his cup of fast-cooling tea.
His voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper, and I have to lean closer to hear the words. “…she said you’d take good care of me…” There’s a pause, followed by “…that I should… let you.”
“She’s right.”
“About which part?” He snorts.
“Both.” I say simply, and stand up.
“You don’t even want me here.” He mutters, but his voice doesn’t hold as much conviction as it once did. He shakes his head. “You don’t want to take care of me.”
“How can you say that?”
“I’m a burden to you, Jensen. I cramp your style.” And when I look at him questioningly, somewhat in disbelief, he continues. “You think I don’t know about Luanne? You think I don’t know she called the first night I was here? Don’t think I know you went running off to meet her at a hotel?”
Shit. I really was hoping he didn’t know about her. “Jared… she’s not importa-“
“Not important? You run off without a second thought when she calls! I know you have a tendency to think with your dick most times, but Jensen, please. I’m not fucking stupid.”
“Could have fooled me.” I sneer, and I really don’t mean anything by that, don’t mean it the way it sounds. I’m just angry-he’s angry and I’m angry and we’re yelling at each other and it’s almost good, because maybe we’re finally going to have this out and settle things between us. But I doubt it.
“Oh, now I’m stupid?” Jared stares at me.
“You run out in the cold and the rain, without even a coat… you leave here, not once, not twice, but three fucking times. You don’t even go to the shelter, or to the hotel that’s a five minute walk. You walk to the fucking trailers!” My voice has risen to the point I’m pretty much screaming at him, and he backs away from me just a little, eyes me cautiously from a cringe. “Hardly what passes for intelligence, Jared!”
“I wasn’t about to stay where I wasn’t wanted!” He shoots back.
He really thinks I don’t want him here. More than that… he thinks I don’t want him, and not just in the sexual way-thinks I don’t even want him as a friend anymore. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
“Jare… I’d never kick you out.”
“You’d just make it impossible for me to stay.” He counters, but at least he’s not yelling any more. He just sounds tired.
“I’d never ask you to leave… I never wanted you to… Jare, you’re always welcome here.”
He’s quiet for a long time, and it’s finally me who breaks the silence that’s fallen between us after the outburst of loud… the yelling and the words that still hang in the air between us.
“Jare… you’re welcome to stay here… as long as you want to.” I swallow, bite at my lower lip. It may not seem like much, but it’s more emotion than I’ve shown or alluded to in years. It’s hard, hard not covering with jokes, hard to find the words. It comes easier with Jared, especially recently, but it’s still hard. I swallow again, exhale heavily.
“Just say it, Jensen…” Jared whispers.
I half-smile. “Easy for you to say…”
“It is.” He replies. “I’m not you… …Jensen…” Still using my full name. “I know it’s not easy for you… I know… you yell and scream...” and it seems like Jared’s at a loss for words and doesn’t know what to say for once. “Jensen… …it’s okay to… say what you feel… how else am I going to know?”
“Maybe I don’t want you to know.” And it’s a weak ploy on my part, to try to end the conversation even though I know it’s one that should be finished. Has to be finished.
“You do.”
And he’s right. I do want him to know, and I’ve been trying to show him and it hasn’t been working. Maybe telling him is all I have left.
“…I do want you here…” And the next words are a whisper, as if I’m trying them out, to see how they sound, how they feel on my lips. “…I want to take care of you… I will if you’ll let me…”
“What was that?” Jared says with a smile, leaning closer to me with a finger to his ear.
“Fuck you, Jare.” But it’s dry, without animosity.
“Maybe later.” He says, and when I turn to look at him, he smiles-a real, genuine, Jared smile, one that doesn’t quite reach his sick and still-glazed eyes, but is a real Jared smile nonetheless. “Kidding, Jen.” And my nickname, for the first time in a long time… and I think that maybe things will be okay.
He takes a rasping breath that exhales in a cough, and he doesn’t push me away when I rub his back, hold the tissue to his lips as he spits out phlegm tinged with crimson.
When he stops coughing, I wipe his mouth, throw the tissue in the bedside garbage can, and help him to stand. “C’mon, Jare…” And I have a handful of his shirt in my left hand, pressing over his heart, and my right arm holds him up as we move slowly to the living room, where Jared near-collapses into the couch when I step away from him.
I make soup, bring it in to Jared, who’s reclining against the cushions, looking more relaxed than I’ve seen him in nearly a week. He’s still obviously sick, but at least he looks comfortable, at ease where he is, and willing to rest, let his body heal.
“Jare… try to eat?”
I set up the Playstation, and we go back to our saved game of Baldur’s Gate, playing for hours, during which time Jared eats half the soup, takes his antibiotics, a dose of the cough suppressant, and lets me take his temperature.
After eating, he sets the bowl on the table, and looks at me, silently questioning, moving to tentatively, carefully settle himself on the couch, against the pillows, his body pressing just slightly against mine, leaning back so his head comes to rest against my shoulder. When I say nothing and don’t shift away from him, he turns his face to my neck with a quiet noise that I think might have been words if I’d been listening more closely.
I save the game when he shifts a little, murmurs again and drops the controller in his lap. “Tired, Jen…” He whispers, and I lean up, reaching down to the opposite end of the sofa to pull the blanket that rests there over him, making no effort to move his head from my shoulder.
“Sleep, Jare…” I whisper into his hair, and get comfortable as he drifts off to sleep, let the hand that dragged the blanket up and over Jared’s body rest over his heart, use the other to maneuver a book, and read while he sleeps-or at least until the phone rings, loud and shrill in my ear.
I jump on the phone, grunt a terse “…’ello?” into the receiver, looking down at Jared, relieved to see he’s still asleep.
It’s Jared’s mother, calling to see how he’s doing. “He’s asleep.” I tell her, and in the event she wants to talk to him, “I’m not waking him.”
“Did you make sure he took his antibiotics?”
“Yes. And he ate a little bit of soup… he’s managed to keep it down to now…” I look down the bridge of my nose at the sleeping Jared as I talk, lift the hand from the blanket covering him to thread my fingers through his hair. The heat I can feel coming from his skin concerns me-he doesn’t seem any warmer than before, but I’d hoped the fever would have broken by now.
His mother rambles in my ear, and I really wish I were listening, because I’m sure she’s telling me little things about her son that I didn’t know before, but I’m lost in my own thoughts staring at Jared, his long lashes, dark brown against pale skin, blood darkening pink lips.
She eventually says she’ll call tomorrow, but would I please have Jared call her if he wakes and it’s not too late? I tell her I will, hang up the phone and realize the fingers of my other hand are still woven into his silken hair, pressing gently into his scalp. He’s warm, unsettlingly so, I think, though the doctor said the fever would go in its own time-that Tylenol would help reduce it, but that it wasn’t anything to be overly concerned with-it was the body fighting infection in its way.
I go back to my book, but don’t read more than ten pages in the twenty more minutes that Jared sleeps, aware the instant he stirs, the second he wakes, murmuring and breathing hot against my neck. “Jare?”
“Jenny…” He whispers my name, tilts his head to look up at me, sleep still clouding his turquoise eyes.
I smile down at him, fish for the thermometer with one hand while letting the other slide from his hair to his throat. I touch the thermometer to his lips, gently urging him to open his mouth and sliding the device beneath his tongue when he does. “Shhh…” I whisper, silencing him when he tries to talk around it, his eyes still closed.
His fever is hovering steadily around 102, as it has for the last few days, and registers at 101.9 now. “I’m okay, Jen… don’t have to keep taking my temperature…”
“Humor me.” I reply, helping him to sit up, one arm around his shoulders, other hand resting on his chest as he coughs. I can feel his lungs tightening beneath my hand, can feel the cough come from deep inside, and his body trembles, his shoulders shake. He spits into a napkin, and I check for blood as I take it from him to throw it out, glad to see there’s no telltale red staining the white.
I hand him the phone as I move away from him, tell him to call home. He nods, starts dialing the number. “Jen?” He looks up, stops dialing for a minute.
“Yeah, Jare?”
And he doesn’t say anything, just smiles, a small, tight-lipped smile that still doesn’t reach his eyes, but there’s an expression of warmth in them anyway, silence and thanks, and he looks away, closes his eyes before looking back up at me, and by then his eyes have been shuttered.
“I’ll make you some soup.” I say. “You’ll try to eat some?”
He nods, shifts uncomfortably beneath the blanket as he brings the receiver to his ear and reaches for the remote with his other hand. “Hi mom…” His voice is a whisper, soft and gentle, and I wonder what it would be like to hear my name spoken in that tone, reverent and loving.
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