Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 22/? (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.
Come on! Hop in the handbasket! You know you want to!
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
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Chapter Twenty-Two: Easier Said than Done
Rating: PG-13 for some revelations and relatively adult content/themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, but not yet… but hey, we get even closer in this chapter!
Word Count: 2,187
It’s always easier said than done. And, for that matter, to think about it-think about every possible angle, think about all the possibilities and what could happen or what could go wrong. Thing is, no matter how many possibilities and outcomes and little nuances you plan for, it’s always the one you didn’t consider as being a real possibility, or worse, didn’t even think of, that happens in reality, and you’re fucked.
Which is exactly what happened to me.
I’d never given the thought that I’d end up having feelings beyond those of simple friendship for Jared much consideration at all. That I might wind up in such a situation as I am now hadn’t even so much as crossed my mind.
But of course, as is the way of the world and Murphy’s Law, here I am.
Completely, and utterly fucked.
I sigh, and bang my head into the wall, tossing the phone on the kitchen table next to my empty coffee cup. My eyes drift closed as I mutter aloud, “So now what…”
I really don’t want to talk to him. Mostly because I have no idea what I’ll say. So I start running through the possibilities in my mind, which won’t do me a bit of good once I have to talk to Jared-a lesson in futility if there ever was one.
As I’m providing for variation of events No. 3,251,049,327 as predicated by the change of a single word in a single sentence spoken in a single tone of voice, I hear Jared’s voice, too close.
My eyes snap open, and I look around. Jared’s standing over me-towering, really, seeing as I’m slouched down in a kitchen chair, and he’s almost at his full height-just slightly hunched-I can see it in the way his shoulders curl forward and his back isn’t ramrod straight.
“Jensen!” He calls again, and this time he smiles and nudges one of my feet with his own. “You looked like you fell asleep there.”
I run a hand through my hair and straighten up, stretching the tension in my back and shoulders, yawning. “Close enough.” I stand, look him up and down. “You look better.” I comment lightly. “Y’hungry at all?”
“Anything but soup.” He mumbles, and when I frown at him, “…please, Jen…”
The easy way he says my nickname almost melts me, almost gets me to give in to him, but I know what the doctor said, and I know he should really follow doctor’s orders to get better. “Doctor says…”
Jared’s soft voice interrupts me, thickened and nasally thanks to the cough in his throat. “I’ll drink the pedialyte… just… no soup, Jen.” He wrinkles his nose, and I’m so glad he’s feeling better, he doesn’t have to give me the puppy-dog eyes to get me to give in to him-the offer to drink the pedialyte and the earlier ‘please, Jen’ is enough to do me in.
He’s obviously feeling a little better, and as I start moving around the kitchen, I reach out towards him, let my hand come to rest on his forehead for a split-second. He’s still warm, but the flush has left his face (he’s just pale now-deathly so) and he’s not as hot as he used to be.
He pours himself a small glass of orange juice, sips it as I busy myself at the stove, making enough scrambled eggs and toast to feed us both. After a few minutes, he calls my name, quietly, as if to get my attention before telling a secret. “Jen…”
“Yeah, Jare.” I push the eggs around the frying pan as they sizzle and pop, watch as they puff up like clouds.
“Look at me, Jen!” He pouts.
“I’m cooking, Jared. You’re hungry, aren’t you?” The eggs are about done, I don’t want them burning or overcooking-they get rubbery and if there’s anything we Texans don’t like-ask any good rancher or cowboy-it’s rubbery and overcooked eggs.
He sulks, arms crossed over his chest, but perks up the second I put a heaping plate of eggs with two slices of toast in front of him. “There’s salt on the table. Ketchup’s in the fridge.” I tell him, sitting across from him with my own plate of breakfast.
He’s already wolfing down eggs without the benefit of condiments, and I worry that with how fast he’s eating on an empty stomach he might throw up. “Jare… Jare, slow down.”
“Uhmhunghrh.” He mumbles around a mouthful of eggs and toast with minimal butter.
“Yeah, well, slow down. I don’t want you throwing up what…” I swallow the last bit of it with a lump of eggs and chase it with scalding coffee.
“What… don’t want me throwing up your cooking?” He says it with a sneer in his tone, rudely, looking up at me from his plate.
“No…” I just don’t want him throwing up. He seems to be doing better-seemed to be, anyway, with his smile and his being hungry and the way he said my name, called me ‘Jen’ so easily. “Just… You seem to be feeling better.” I say quietly.
“Just hungry.” He pushes the eggs around on his plate with the fork, chews thoughtfully and looks like he might say something else. He doesn’t though-just takes another bite of breakfast and finishes eating in silence.
He puts his own dishes in the sink, carries the container of pedialyte with him back down the hall, presumably to the guest bedroom. I don’t follow him, take it upon myself to clean up the kitchen, rinse the dishes and start them in the dishwasher, all the while my thoughts straying to my best-friend and co-star of a houseguest.
Twenty minutes later, I can hear the slightly muffled sounds of him throwing up in the bathroom, the toilet flushing away the evidence, and the slow shuffle of socks on carpet as he makes his way back to his room. This time I do follow, though I wait a few minutes for him to get settled, with a few more slices of toast, very lightly buttered, and a glass of water.
“I didn’t throw it all up.” He offers as I walk in, from where he’s perched at the edge of the bed.
I place the glass of water on a coaster on the bedside table. “That’s good… I brought some toast.” I jerk my chin down, towards the plate I still hold.
“Thanks.” He takes a slice and nibbles, tries to be careful about crumbs falling to the bedspread but has to swipe them to the floor with a hand anyway.
“Jare… I didn’t mean...” I try again. “What I said about throwing up… I didn’t mean it like that… I didn’t want you to be throwing up again…” I can’t look at him. “I… I was hoping you were getting better.” It feels like an admission, and I look down, can feel the small flush rising in my cheeks and hope Jared can’t see it.
“I thought…” he starts, then continues after a pause, “…that it’d be okay… I felt better...” He sighs heavily, looking down at his hands, folded in his lap. “I hate this, Jen.”
“I know.” I reach out to him, but let my hand drop back to my side before touching him. “You are getting better… just don’t push so hard… take it easy…”
He looks up and smiles. “Yeah…” He finishes the slice of toast, and silence falls between us-him, seated at the edge of the bed, feet flat on the floor and head turned to one side so he doesn’t have to look at me, staring, unseeingly at the wall; and me, standing there in front of him, staring down at the small patch of floor between our feet, through air that thickens with every breath I take.
Minutes pass and it feels like hours, and he’s the one who finally turns and looks up at me. “We could play video games.”
His voice cuts through the tension in the air like a knife, and I have to do something, because this can keep going and going and getting worse and worse until neither of us will be able to be in the same room as the other. And I think that maybe Mrs. Padalecki is right, and that thought makes my insides twist in ways they never have before-nerves and uncertainty and something else I can’t recognize.
But I don’t say anything-just smile and nod. “Yeah… yeah… we have that game of Baldurs Gate saved…”
He stands up, pushing off his knees, and walks past me, his shoulder slamming into mine, jostling me. I steady myself, reach without thinking to steady him as well, still staring at the floor, my entire body tense, muscles taut and I can feel myself rocking back on my heels so I step back with one foot.
“Jare…” His name is ripped from my mouth, sounds grating and harsh, feels like glass in my dry throat. I swallow and cough and try again. “Jared.”
My hand rests on his chest, and I can feel his lungs working, his throat working, swallowing, gulping in breaths of air, squelching the coughing that makes his body lurch. He straightens. “Yeah, Jen.”
My nickname has never sounded better, or more welcome coming from his mouth. After days of nothing but ‘Jensen’, I’d been starting to think that with how things were going, I’d never hear Jared speak my nickname again.
“We have to… need to talk.” I grate out, still not looking at him, but past him, over the bed and out the curtained window.
“You keep saying that.” He says, though I swear I’ve only said it-those words, that way-maybe once or twice, not nearly as often as he seems to insinuate. His voice is monotone, matter-of-fact, quiet and understated, holds an audible and distinct lack of fight, like he just doesn’t care anymore.
My fingers clench in cotton, unclench, then clench again, and I can feel his body beneath the shirt beneath my fingertips, hard and muscled. I force my fingers to open, rest my palm flat on his chest. “I’m sorry, Jare… I’m so sorry…”
I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. For everything. For nothing. There are things I want to say to him, like ‘please work with me’ and ‘please understand’ and ‘I really do care for you, but I’m just afraid of hurting you’-which is probably what it really comes down to-Jared has always been a soft spot for me, and I’ve never wanted to hurt him-never wanted anything to hurt him, which is why I’d called Sandy in the first place, because she’d hurt him, and that upset me.
I want to ask him about who and what hurt him when he was a boy growing up in Texas, and I want to ask about Sandy, and when he… when he realized he was in love with me-it still seems so weird just to think that… but it warms me inside, too, while it hurts, because will it ever be the way it was with Sandy? Where he looks at me and I can tell that’s it?
I want to apologize for Luanne… I want to know if that hurt him. I want to know if he was jealous. I want him to ask if I was ever jealous of Sandy-and I know now, looking back, that I was-because it was so easy with them, so calm and so gentle and it was peace and Sandy was Jared’s and Jared was Sandy’s and they were each others’ worlds.
I want to apologize for acting like it was me… for being so self-centered… for not even thinking of what he must have been-must still be-going through.
There are things I want to do to him, touch him and hold him, and let him sleep with his head on my shoulder or in my arms, and I want to let him throw his arm around me like it’s nothing and second-nature at events, and I want to be able to put my arm around him in return and not worry about what others might think. But that’s all easier said than done.
Jared’s hand comes up to rest on my chest. “C’mon man...” He whispers.
I’m still standing, rigid, shell-shocked, wavering on my feet. I don’t want to hurt him, but I know I will. “Jare…” I murmur.
“Shhh… Shhhh… Jen… C’mon…” Jared’s voice is soothing, and it’s like he knows, because this time it’s him who supports… him who’s arm slides beneath my shoulders, and he’s guiding me to my own living room, helping me to sit on my own couch, rubbing my back and telling me to breathe when I can’t.
When I’ve sufficiently calmed down, when it no longer sounds like I’m gasping for breath, when I’m aware of my surroundings and not so clammy and staring, deer-in-headlights, it’s his voice I hear first. “Jen…”
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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.
Come on! Hop in the handbasket! You know you want to!
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
-------------------------
Chapter Twenty-Two: Easier Said than Done
Rating: PG-13 for some revelations and relatively adult content/themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, but not yet… but hey, we get even closer in this chapter!
Word Count: 2,187
It’s always easier said than done. And, for that matter, to think about it-think about every possible angle, think about all the possibilities and what could happen or what could go wrong. Thing is, no matter how many possibilities and outcomes and little nuances you plan for, it’s always the one you didn’t consider as being a real possibility, or worse, didn’t even think of, that happens in reality, and you’re fucked.
Which is exactly what happened to me.
I’d never given the thought that I’d end up having feelings beyond those of simple friendship for Jared much consideration at all. That I might wind up in such a situation as I am now hadn’t even so much as crossed my mind.
But of course, as is the way of the world and Murphy’s Law, here I am.
Completely, and utterly fucked.
I sigh, and bang my head into the wall, tossing the phone on the kitchen table next to my empty coffee cup. My eyes drift closed as I mutter aloud, “So now what…”
I really don’t want to talk to him. Mostly because I have no idea what I’ll say. So I start running through the possibilities in my mind, which won’t do me a bit of good once I have to talk to Jared-a lesson in futility if there ever was one.
As I’m providing for variation of events No. 3,251,049,327 as predicated by the change of a single word in a single sentence spoken in a single tone of voice, I hear Jared’s voice, too close.
My eyes snap open, and I look around. Jared’s standing over me-towering, really, seeing as I’m slouched down in a kitchen chair, and he’s almost at his full height-just slightly hunched-I can see it in the way his shoulders curl forward and his back isn’t ramrod straight.
“Jensen!” He calls again, and this time he smiles and nudges one of my feet with his own. “You looked like you fell asleep there.”
I run a hand through my hair and straighten up, stretching the tension in my back and shoulders, yawning. “Close enough.” I stand, look him up and down. “You look better.” I comment lightly. “Y’hungry at all?”
“Anything but soup.” He mumbles, and when I frown at him, “…please, Jen…”
The easy way he says my nickname almost melts me, almost gets me to give in to him, but I know what the doctor said, and I know he should really follow doctor’s orders to get better. “Doctor says…”
Jared’s soft voice interrupts me, thickened and nasally thanks to the cough in his throat. “I’ll drink the pedialyte… just… no soup, Jen.” He wrinkles his nose, and I’m so glad he’s feeling better, he doesn’t have to give me the puppy-dog eyes to get me to give in to him-the offer to drink the pedialyte and the earlier ‘please, Jen’ is enough to do me in.
He’s obviously feeling a little better, and as I start moving around the kitchen, I reach out towards him, let my hand come to rest on his forehead for a split-second. He’s still warm, but the flush has left his face (he’s just pale now-deathly so) and he’s not as hot as he used to be.
He pours himself a small glass of orange juice, sips it as I busy myself at the stove, making enough scrambled eggs and toast to feed us both. After a few minutes, he calls my name, quietly, as if to get my attention before telling a secret. “Jen…”
“Yeah, Jare.” I push the eggs around the frying pan as they sizzle and pop, watch as they puff up like clouds.
“Look at me, Jen!” He pouts.
“I’m cooking, Jared. You’re hungry, aren’t you?” The eggs are about done, I don’t want them burning or overcooking-they get rubbery and if there’s anything we Texans don’t like-ask any good rancher or cowboy-it’s rubbery and overcooked eggs.
He sulks, arms crossed over his chest, but perks up the second I put a heaping plate of eggs with two slices of toast in front of him. “There’s salt on the table. Ketchup’s in the fridge.” I tell him, sitting across from him with my own plate of breakfast.
He’s already wolfing down eggs without the benefit of condiments, and I worry that with how fast he’s eating on an empty stomach he might throw up. “Jare… Jare, slow down.”
“Uhmhunghrh.” He mumbles around a mouthful of eggs and toast with minimal butter.
“Yeah, well, slow down. I don’t want you throwing up what…” I swallow the last bit of it with a lump of eggs and chase it with scalding coffee.
“What… don’t want me throwing up your cooking?” He says it with a sneer in his tone, rudely, looking up at me from his plate.
“No…” I just don’t want him throwing up. He seems to be doing better-seemed to be, anyway, with his smile and his being hungry and the way he said my name, called me ‘Jen’ so easily. “Just… You seem to be feeling better.” I say quietly.
“Just hungry.” He pushes the eggs around on his plate with the fork, chews thoughtfully and looks like he might say something else. He doesn’t though-just takes another bite of breakfast and finishes eating in silence.
He puts his own dishes in the sink, carries the container of pedialyte with him back down the hall, presumably to the guest bedroom. I don’t follow him, take it upon myself to clean up the kitchen, rinse the dishes and start them in the dishwasher, all the while my thoughts straying to my best-friend and co-star of a houseguest.
Twenty minutes later, I can hear the slightly muffled sounds of him throwing up in the bathroom, the toilet flushing away the evidence, and the slow shuffle of socks on carpet as he makes his way back to his room. This time I do follow, though I wait a few minutes for him to get settled, with a few more slices of toast, very lightly buttered, and a glass of water.
“I didn’t throw it all up.” He offers as I walk in, from where he’s perched at the edge of the bed.
I place the glass of water on a coaster on the bedside table. “That’s good… I brought some toast.” I jerk my chin down, towards the plate I still hold.
“Thanks.” He takes a slice and nibbles, tries to be careful about crumbs falling to the bedspread but has to swipe them to the floor with a hand anyway.
“Jare… I didn’t mean...” I try again. “What I said about throwing up… I didn’t mean it like that… I didn’t want you to be throwing up again…” I can’t look at him. “I… I was hoping you were getting better.” It feels like an admission, and I look down, can feel the small flush rising in my cheeks and hope Jared can’t see it.
“I thought…” he starts, then continues after a pause, “…that it’d be okay… I felt better...” He sighs heavily, looking down at his hands, folded in his lap. “I hate this, Jen.”
“I know.” I reach out to him, but let my hand drop back to my side before touching him. “You are getting better… just don’t push so hard… take it easy…”
He looks up and smiles. “Yeah…” He finishes the slice of toast, and silence falls between us-him, seated at the edge of the bed, feet flat on the floor and head turned to one side so he doesn’t have to look at me, staring, unseeingly at the wall; and me, standing there in front of him, staring down at the small patch of floor between our feet, through air that thickens with every breath I take.
Minutes pass and it feels like hours, and he’s the one who finally turns and looks up at me. “We could play video games.”
His voice cuts through the tension in the air like a knife, and I have to do something, because this can keep going and going and getting worse and worse until neither of us will be able to be in the same room as the other. And I think that maybe Mrs. Padalecki is right, and that thought makes my insides twist in ways they never have before-nerves and uncertainty and something else I can’t recognize.
But I don’t say anything-just smile and nod. “Yeah… yeah… we have that game of Baldurs Gate saved…”
He stands up, pushing off his knees, and walks past me, his shoulder slamming into mine, jostling me. I steady myself, reach without thinking to steady him as well, still staring at the floor, my entire body tense, muscles taut and I can feel myself rocking back on my heels so I step back with one foot.
“Jare…” His name is ripped from my mouth, sounds grating and harsh, feels like glass in my dry throat. I swallow and cough and try again. “Jared.”
My hand rests on his chest, and I can feel his lungs working, his throat working, swallowing, gulping in breaths of air, squelching the coughing that makes his body lurch. He straightens. “Yeah, Jen.”
My nickname has never sounded better, or more welcome coming from his mouth. After days of nothing but ‘Jensen’, I’d been starting to think that with how things were going, I’d never hear Jared speak my nickname again.
“We have to… need to talk.” I grate out, still not looking at him, but past him, over the bed and out the curtained window.
“You keep saying that.” He says, though I swear I’ve only said it-those words, that way-maybe once or twice, not nearly as often as he seems to insinuate. His voice is monotone, matter-of-fact, quiet and understated, holds an audible and distinct lack of fight, like he just doesn’t care anymore.
My fingers clench in cotton, unclench, then clench again, and I can feel his body beneath the shirt beneath my fingertips, hard and muscled. I force my fingers to open, rest my palm flat on his chest. “I’m sorry, Jare… I’m so sorry…”
I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. For everything. For nothing. There are things I want to say to him, like ‘please work with me’ and ‘please understand’ and ‘I really do care for you, but I’m just afraid of hurting you’-which is probably what it really comes down to-Jared has always been a soft spot for me, and I’ve never wanted to hurt him-never wanted anything to hurt him, which is why I’d called Sandy in the first place, because she’d hurt him, and that upset me.
I want to ask him about who and what hurt him when he was a boy growing up in Texas, and I want to ask about Sandy, and when he… when he realized he was in love with me-it still seems so weird just to think that… but it warms me inside, too, while it hurts, because will it ever be the way it was with Sandy? Where he looks at me and I can tell that’s it?
I want to apologize for Luanne… I want to know if that hurt him. I want to know if he was jealous. I want him to ask if I was ever jealous of Sandy-and I know now, looking back, that I was-because it was so easy with them, so calm and so gentle and it was peace and Sandy was Jared’s and Jared was Sandy’s and they were each others’ worlds.
I want to apologize for acting like it was me… for being so self-centered… for not even thinking of what he must have been-must still be-going through.
There are things I want to do to him, touch him and hold him, and let him sleep with his head on my shoulder or in my arms, and I want to let him throw his arm around me like it’s nothing and second-nature at events, and I want to be able to put my arm around him in return and not worry about what others might think. But that’s all easier said than done.
Jared’s hand comes up to rest on my chest. “C’mon man...” He whispers.
I’m still standing, rigid, shell-shocked, wavering on my feet. I don’t want to hurt him, but I know I will. “Jare…” I murmur.
“Shhh… Shhhh… Jen… C’mon…” Jared’s voice is soothing, and it’s like he knows, because this time it’s him who supports… him who’s arm slides beneath my shoulders, and he’s guiding me to my own living room, helping me to sit on my own couch, rubbing my back and telling me to breathe when I can’t.
When I’ve sufficiently calmed down, when it no longer sounds like I’m gasping for breath, when I’m aware of my surroundings and not so clammy and staring, deer-in-headlights, it’s his voice I hear first. “Jen…”
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