Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 21/? (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 ... I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help. Where are we going now? Why are we in this handbasket?
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
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Chapter Twenty-One: Always Darkest Before the Dawn
Rating: PG-13 for emotional stuff; adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared is in the works, but it’s not here yet… I’m still being evil… But you all love it.
Word Count: 2,359
The living room is eerily silent in the morning, unnervingly bright thanks to nine-thirty am sunshine streaming through large picture windows. I walk down the hallway from my bedroom towards the sun, rubbing at my eyes roughly, stumbling slightly in the process and yawning widely. “Jare?”
No answer.
“Jare?” I question, and I can feel the butterflies in the pit of my stomach. He could still be sleeping, and I find myself hoping that’s the case as I hurry into the living room, calling his name a third time, this time with my concern and rising panic evidenced in my voice. “J…Jared?”
The blanket is still on the couch, where I’d left it, but Jared isn’t there, and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. I have to calm down. He said he wasn’t going to leave. He said he’d stay here. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.
But he’s not, and though I’m hoping he’s still here, I’m not holding out much hope-he’s left three times already, and even though he said he’d stay, that could have been just to get me to leave him alone.
I can feel sweat beading on my forehead as my stomach turns over and over on itself, twisting inside of me as my heart races in my chest, my body reacting with panic to this new development. “Jared…” I breathe.
And I think that I’m going to kill him when I find him, first, followed by the thought that I’m not going to kill him, but that I’m definitely not going to let him out of my sight. Then I think that when I find him I’m going to hug him. And then hit him for scaring me.
Scaring me.
That thought slams into me like a freight train, and forces me to take a deep breath, calm the uncertainty and fear that make it hard to think and harder to breathe.
I’m scared. For Jared.
I open the door to the guest bedroom, though I don’t expect to find him there, and as the door slowly opens, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding when I see him curled on his side in bed. I slump against the doorjamb, and smile a tense smile, glad to find he’s still here, gladder still to see him sleeping, seemingly peacefully.
“Jenny…” His voice is barely a whisper, and when he doesn’t respond to my soft reply, I realize he’s still sleeping. “…Jen…” His fingers crawl across the sheet, fist around the cotton.
I sit at the edge of the bed and gently lay my hand against his forehead, let my fingers play in his hair. “Jare…” I whisper. His skin is warm, but not as warm as it’s been, and his breathing seems to be coming easier.
He stills at my touch, and I move my fingers against his scalp, bite my lower lip. “Oh Jare…” I whisper. “I wish… I wish I knew what was happening… I just… I don’t know…”
I don’t. I’m not myself anymore, don’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I don’t know what I’m feeling, I don’t know what I’m thinking. Nothing makes sense, and I’m not sure about anything except the fact that Jared’s sick, and he needs me to take care of him… and I’m pretty sure about the fact that I want to take care of him… and pretty sure I care about him in a way I didn’t realize or acknowledge-or maybe just didn’t want to acknowledge-before.
He murmurs something as my phone rings, and I whisper to him to sleep, that I’ll be back, and then I stand up, hurry out to my kitchen to make coffee and answer the phone.
“…Jensen?” It’s Jared’s mom.
“Hi, Mrs. Padalecki.” I can barely keep the sigh from my voice. I haven’t had my morning cup of coffee yet, and I don’t know which way is up anymore… I’m so confused. And out of nowhere, in the back of my mind, I can hear Jared’s mom… ”Jared’s always just… loved who he’s loved…”
“Long night?” She asks.
Was it ever. I couldn’t sleep, spent more than ten minutes watching… just watching… Jared sleep on my couch, because I found it relaxing… and in the morning I had one of the biggest scares of my twenty-eight years when I thought Jared had disappeared again. Then the complete turnaround to find him asleep in the guest bedroom. All I wanted to do was to sit with him until he woke up-and then my phone rang.
“And the morning picked up where last night ended.” I say, then, hoping to cut the conversation short, because I know she’s just calling to check up on Jared, “Jared’s fine.”
“I’m sure he is. You’re taking good care of him, aren’t you?”
I’m trying. But I don’t tell her that.
“Jensen?”
“He’s okay.” I pour coffee, and swallow nearly half at once, barely biting back a stream of cursing as the hot liquid burns its way down my throat. I hope he’s okay… I sink into one of my chairs, top off the coffee, and this time put sugar and milk in it, wait for it to cool before sipping at it. “He’s…” I stutter. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever not known so much. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to come…”
“No!” I cut her off. I don’t. I can take care of him. “I can...” I sigh heavily. “I’ll…”
“You want to.” She says quietly. “You sound like he used to… well, not quite like he used to. He never stuttered quite so much.” And I can hear the gentle laugh in her voice.
I shouldn’t yell at her, she hasn’t done anything to me, hasn’t done anything wrong. I just don’t know what else to do. I feel like my entire life is coming apart. Everything I’ve known and accepted… and everything I thought I knew about myself is changing. Nothing is the same. I force myself to breathe-in and out, in and out, in and out-slow and steady.
“Huh?” I finally manage, after getting my wits about me.
“Be honest with me, Jensen.” And that prelude never led to anything good. “You care about him. In that more-than-friendly-way, don’t you?”
I laugh, a nervous chuckle that sounds fake even to me. “What? No! I mean… I care about him-he’s my friend… but… no… not… no… nothing like…” I’m stuttering again, and I’m not even convincing myself at this point. I’m so glad she’s in Texas, not sitting here across from me, because I’m fidgeting in my chair as it is, probably turning red-I can feel the heat in my face, but it’s more anger than anything else.
“Yes you do.” She says, and I can hear the smile that must be on her face.
My heart finds its way to my throat, and my stomach drops, because I can feel it coming a mile away. I can feel it. I just know she’s going to keep talking, saying things I don’t want to hear, or things I’m not ready to hear. Things that will make me think about and question everything I feel and everything I know. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to question my beliefs. I’ve had enough introspection for one day already. Enough for a week. A month. I want to go bury myself in Luanne so I don’t have to think.
But I don’t really want Luanne. And even through my denial I can acknowledge that.
“So what if I do…” I whisper, slowly forming words around the lump in my throat. I clutch to my coffee, sip at it slowly. If I were standing, I’d want to sit down… as it is, I’m already sitting down, and I want to sink further down, hide, from everything.
Jared’s asleep, and I can only hope he stays that way.
“You should tell him.” She says it so matter-of-factly. Like it’s going to be easy for me. And maybe to her, it should be. She’s only ever known Jared in this situation, and in her own words, Jared has always just ‘loved who he’s loved’, so why shouldn’t it be that simple?
I sigh, slump against the back of the chair, my head coming to rest against the wall and my legs stretching out in front of me, heels pressing into the floor. I tell myself there’s no use in yelling, though it’s all I want to do right now, and I speak rather than scream my words, though in my head they’re yelled loud enough to wake the dead.
“Wh…what? Ho…How? I mean… how?” It’s easy, I know it is. I say those three words-‘I love you’-and that would be that, and I’ll have told him, and he’ll know, and maybe there will be a flash of light and understanding and everything will be okay, and I won’t have worries about him touching me in public and about what other people will think, and I’ll accept that I’m bisexual (oh God am I? Is that what this means?). “No… No. I mean…” I shake my head vigorously. “No. Just. No.”
“Jensen…” And I have to remind myself that mothers know best, because she is giving me advice I’ve no intention of taking. “Jensen, you have to tell him how you feel.”
It comes out of me without thought. “How am I supposed to tell him how I feel, when I don’t know, myself!?!” I must sound more panicked than I am, because she whispers soft nothings through the phone, little ‘shhh’s and ‘it’s okay’s’.
“You care about him, don’t you?” She asks.
“Well… yes.”
“And you want to take care of him… want him to stay with you, right?”
At least she’s not putting words in my mouth yet, but I have the feeling she’s about to start. “…yes…” I say tentatively.
“And you want…” She trails off, and in a way I’m glad, she’s waiting for me, wants to hear it from my mouth, in my words, even though I might not be sure what those words are or what they should be. At least she’s not trying to think for me, or tell me what I am or should be feeling.
“I… I don’t know…” I whisper, and swallow the rest of my coffee. “I…” I want things to be the way they were-where I feel like I can tell him anything… where he feels like he can tell me anything… where we‘re comfortable with each other-from wrestling on the floors of our respective homes to on set… to Jared throwing his arm around me at WB Cast Parties (something I’d become comfortable with at long last just recently)… to either of us sleeping over at the other’s house without asking-because we already know the answer is ‘no problem’.
More than that now, though… Because things are changed, forever changed, and will never be the way they were. Whether the change is for better or worse remains to be seen, and whether it will be for better or worse will be ultimately decided by not only me, but Jared as well.
Now, I want to hear about his childhood-from him. I want to wake up with him still in my arms, to know he’s safe. I want to see him smile, to know he’s happy. I want so many things for him, but I have no right to want them for him, because I can’t give them to him, or at least don’t know how to give them to him, and who’s to say he’d want the same?
I remind myself that at least at one point, he did.
I also remind myself that this isn’t going to be easy… not for Jared, and most definitely not for me. I can feel it now, and I know it’ll only be stronger later… the need to get away from all the emotions, the thinking and the feeling… and the knowing that even though while in private, I might be okay with being closer to Jared than just-friends (I can’t believe I’m even considering this.), I’ll shy away from even the slightest public contact-the hugs on set, the arm slung over my shoulders at network parties.
“I… I want things to be the way they were…” I finally mutter. “I… I can’t change.” It would be too hard. Too much. Too much hurt for Jared, with my back-and-forth and never knowing and difficulties with emotion.
“You mean you won’t.” Mrs. Padalecki sighs.
“I can’t.” I whisper. “…I’ve… I’ve hurt Jared enough… …I can’t… ask him to…”
“It’s his choice, Jensen.”
By now there are barely held back tears in my eyes, and I rub at them angrily with one hand. I know they’re red, know they shine in the morning sun that emblazons bright patterns of glitter and gold on my tiled kitchen floor.
“I know that.” But I can’t ask him to make that choice, knowing how much it’ll end up hurting him.
“You don’t want to hurt him.” She doesn’t wait for my reply, just continues talking. “It’s still his choice to make, Jensen. You should talk to him. You might be surprised.”
Somehow, I don’t think I would be, not knowing his mother like I’ve come to recently.
“Sure…”
“Just think about it, Jensen. And no matter what, you do have to tell him. If you don’t, things are only going to get worse.”
Things are going to get worse anyway.
I nod-a useless gesture in phone conversation-and slowly take the receiver from my ear, severing the connection with my thumb. I sit there in silence for a long while, thinking about what Jared’s mom said, thinking about too many things I don’t want to think about but realize I have to think about… and spend a longer time hoping Jared’s still sleeping, hoping he doesn’t come wandering into the kitchen to see my eyes as red and as shining as they are.
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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 ... I really have no idea what's coming next here.
Summary: Jared’s girl (Sandra) breaks up with him. Jensen tries to help. Where are we going now? Why are we in this handbasket?
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
-------------------------
Chapter Twenty-One: Always Darkest Before the Dawn
Rating: PG-13 for emotional stuff; adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared is in the works, but it’s not here yet… I’m still being evil… But you all love it.
Word Count: 2,359
The living room is eerily silent in the morning, unnervingly bright thanks to nine-thirty am sunshine streaming through large picture windows. I walk down the hallway from my bedroom towards the sun, rubbing at my eyes roughly, stumbling slightly in the process and yawning widely. “Jare?”
No answer.
“Jare?” I question, and I can feel the butterflies in the pit of my stomach. He could still be sleeping, and I find myself hoping that’s the case as I hurry into the living room, calling his name a third time, this time with my concern and rising panic evidenced in my voice. “J…Jared?”
The blanket is still on the couch, where I’d left it, but Jared isn’t there, and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. I have to calm down. He said he wasn’t going to leave. He said he’d stay here. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.
But he’s not, and though I’m hoping he’s still here, I’m not holding out much hope-he’s left three times already, and even though he said he’d stay, that could have been just to get me to leave him alone.
I can feel sweat beading on my forehead as my stomach turns over and over on itself, twisting inside of me as my heart races in my chest, my body reacting with panic to this new development. “Jared…” I breathe.
And I think that I’m going to kill him when I find him, first, followed by the thought that I’m not going to kill him, but that I’m definitely not going to let him out of my sight. Then I think that when I find him I’m going to hug him. And then hit him for scaring me.
Scaring me.
That thought slams into me like a freight train, and forces me to take a deep breath, calm the uncertainty and fear that make it hard to think and harder to breathe.
I’m scared. For Jared.
I open the door to the guest bedroom, though I don’t expect to find him there, and as the door slowly opens, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding when I see him curled on his side in bed. I slump against the doorjamb, and smile a tense smile, glad to find he’s still here, gladder still to see him sleeping, seemingly peacefully.
“Jenny…” His voice is barely a whisper, and when he doesn’t respond to my soft reply, I realize he’s still sleeping. “…Jen…” His fingers crawl across the sheet, fist around the cotton.
I sit at the edge of the bed and gently lay my hand against his forehead, let my fingers play in his hair. “Jare…” I whisper. His skin is warm, but not as warm as it’s been, and his breathing seems to be coming easier.
He stills at my touch, and I move my fingers against his scalp, bite my lower lip. “Oh Jare…” I whisper. “I wish… I wish I knew what was happening… I just… I don’t know…”
I don’t. I’m not myself anymore, don’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I don’t know what I’m feeling, I don’t know what I’m thinking. Nothing makes sense, and I’m not sure about anything except the fact that Jared’s sick, and he needs me to take care of him… and I’m pretty sure about the fact that I want to take care of him… and pretty sure I care about him in a way I didn’t realize or acknowledge-or maybe just didn’t want to acknowledge-before.
He murmurs something as my phone rings, and I whisper to him to sleep, that I’ll be back, and then I stand up, hurry out to my kitchen to make coffee and answer the phone.
“…Jensen?” It’s Jared’s mom.
“Hi, Mrs. Padalecki.” I can barely keep the sigh from my voice. I haven’t had my morning cup of coffee yet, and I don’t know which way is up anymore… I’m so confused. And out of nowhere, in the back of my mind, I can hear Jared’s mom… ”Jared’s always just… loved who he’s loved…”
“Long night?” She asks.
Was it ever. I couldn’t sleep, spent more than ten minutes watching… just watching… Jared sleep on my couch, because I found it relaxing… and in the morning I had one of the biggest scares of my twenty-eight years when I thought Jared had disappeared again. Then the complete turnaround to find him asleep in the guest bedroom. All I wanted to do was to sit with him until he woke up-and then my phone rang.
“And the morning picked up where last night ended.” I say, then, hoping to cut the conversation short, because I know she’s just calling to check up on Jared, “Jared’s fine.”
“I’m sure he is. You’re taking good care of him, aren’t you?”
I’m trying. But I don’t tell her that.
“Jensen?”
“He’s okay.” I pour coffee, and swallow nearly half at once, barely biting back a stream of cursing as the hot liquid burns its way down my throat. I hope he’s okay… I sink into one of my chairs, top off the coffee, and this time put sugar and milk in it, wait for it to cool before sipping at it. “He’s…” I stutter. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever not known so much. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to come…”
“No!” I cut her off. I don’t. I can take care of him. “I can...” I sigh heavily. “I’ll…”
“You want to.” She says quietly. “You sound like he used to… well, not quite like he used to. He never stuttered quite so much.” And I can hear the gentle laugh in her voice.
I shouldn’t yell at her, she hasn’t done anything to me, hasn’t done anything wrong. I just don’t know what else to do. I feel like my entire life is coming apart. Everything I’ve known and accepted… and everything I thought I knew about myself is changing. Nothing is the same. I force myself to breathe-in and out, in and out, in and out-slow and steady.
“Huh?” I finally manage, after getting my wits about me.
“Be honest with me, Jensen.” And that prelude never led to anything good. “You care about him. In that more-than-friendly-way, don’t you?”
I laugh, a nervous chuckle that sounds fake even to me. “What? No! I mean… I care about him-he’s my friend… but… no… not… no… nothing like…” I’m stuttering again, and I’m not even convincing myself at this point. I’m so glad she’s in Texas, not sitting here across from me, because I’m fidgeting in my chair as it is, probably turning red-I can feel the heat in my face, but it’s more anger than anything else.
“Yes you do.” She says, and I can hear the smile that must be on her face.
My heart finds its way to my throat, and my stomach drops, because I can feel it coming a mile away. I can feel it. I just know she’s going to keep talking, saying things I don’t want to hear, or things I’m not ready to hear. Things that will make me think about and question everything I feel and everything I know. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to question my beliefs. I’ve had enough introspection for one day already. Enough for a week. A month. I want to go bury myself in Luanne so I don’t have to think.
But I don’t really want Luanne. And even through my denial I can acknowledge that.
“So what if I do…” I whisper, slowly forming words around the lump in my throat. I clutch to my coffee, sip at it slowly. If I were standing, I’d want to sit down… as it is, I’m already sitting down, and I want to sink further down, hide, from everything.
Jared’s asleep, and I can only hope he stays that way.
“You should tell him.” She says it so matter-of-factly. Like it’s going to be easy for me. And maybe to her, it should be. She’s only ever known Jared in this situation, and in her own words, Jared has always just ‘loved who he’s loved’, so why shouldn’t it be that simple?
I sigh, slump against the back of the chair, my head coming to rest against the wall and my legs stretching out in front of me, heels pressing into the floor. I tell myself there’s no use in yelling, though it’s all I want to do right now, and I speak rather than scream my words, though in my head they’re yelled loud enough to wake the dead.
“Wh…what? Ho…How? I mean… how?” It’s easy, I know it is. I say those three words-‘I love you’-and that would be that, and I’ll have told him, and he’ll know, and maybe there will be a flash of light and understanding and everything will be okay, and I won’t have worries about him touching me in public and about what other people will think, and I’ll accept that I’m bisexual (oh God am I? Is that what this means?). “No… No. I mean…” I shake my head vigorously. “No. Just. No.”
“Jensen…” And I have to remind myself that mothers know best, because she is giving me advice I’ve no intention of taking. “Jensen, you have to tell him how you feel.”
It comes out of me without thought. “How am I supposed to tell him how I feel, when I don’t know, myself!?!” I must sound more panicked than I am, because she whispers soft nothings through the phone, little ‘shhh’s and ‘it’s okay’s’.
“You care about him, don’t you?” She asks.
“Well… yes.”
“And you want to take care of him… want him to stay with you, right?”
At least she’s not putting words in my mouth yet, but I have the feeling she’s about to start. “…yes…” I say tentatively.
“And you want…” She trails off, and in a way I’m glad, she’s waiting for me, wants to hear it from my mouth, in my words, even though I might not be sure what those words are or what they should be. At least she’s not trying to think for me, or tell me what I am or should be feeling.
“I… I don’t know…” I whisper, and swallow the rest of my coffee. “I…” I want things to be the way they were-where I feel like I can tell him anything… where he feels like he can tell me anything… where we‘re comfortable with each other-from wrestling on the floors of our respective homes to on set… to Jared throwing his arm around me at WB Cast Parties (something I’d become comfortable with at long last just recently)… to either of us sleeping over at the other’s house without asking-because we already know the answer is ‘no problem’.
More than that now, though… Because things are changed, forever changed, and will never be the way they were. Whether the change is for better or worse remains to be seen, and whether it will be for better or worse will be ultimately decided by not only me, but Jared as well.
Now, I want to hear about his childhood-from him. I want to wake up with him still in my arms, to know he’s safe. I want to see him smile, to know he’s happy. I want so many things for him, but I have no right to want them for him, because I can’t give them to him, or at least don’t know how to give them to him, and who’s to say he’d want the same?
I remind myself that at least at one point, he did.
I also remind myself that this isn’t going to be easy… not for Jared, and most definitely not for me. I can feel it now, and I know it’ll only be stronger later… the need to get away from all the emotions, the thinking and the feeling… and the knowing that even though while in private, I might be okay with being closer to Jared than just-friends (I can’t believe I’m even considering this.), I’ll shy away from even the slightest public contact-the hugs on set, the arm slung over my shoulders at network parties.
“I… I want things to be the way they were…” I finally mutter. “I… I can’t change.” It would be too hard. Too much. Too much hurt for Jared, with my back-and-forth and never knowing and difficulties with emotion.
“You mean you won’t.” Mrs. Padalecki sighs.
“I can’t.” I whisper. “…I’ve… I’ve hurt Jared enough… …I can’t… ask him to…”
“It’s his choice, Jensen.”
By now there are barely held back tears in my eyes, and I rub at them angrily with one hand. I know they’re red, know they shine in the morning sun that emblazons bright patterns of glitter and gold on my tiled kitchen floor.
“I know that.” But I can’t ask him to make that choice, knowing how much it’ll end up hurting him.
“You don’t want to hurt him.” She doesn’t wait for my reply, just continues talking. “It’s still his choice to make, Jensen. You should talk to him. You might be surprised.”
Somehow, I don’t think I would be, not knowing his mother like I’ve come to recently.
“Sure…”
“Just think about it, Jensen. And no matter what, you do have to tell him. If you don’t, things are only going to get worse.”
Things are going to get worse anyway.
I nod-a useless gesture in phone conversation-and slowly take the receiver from my ear, severing the connection with my thumb. I sit there in silence for a long while, thinking about what Jared’s mom said, thinking about too many things I don’t want to think about but realize I have to think about… and spend a longer time hoping Jared’s still sleeping, hoping he doesn’t come wandering into the kitchen to see my eyes as red and as shining as they are.
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