Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 27/? (WIP
Title: Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / Luanne (OFC); stated Jared/Sandy; stated Jared/Rebecca (OFC) and stated Jared/Ryan (OMC)
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 just now (after twenty-five chapters and nearly 60,000 words) admitted to even writing this. Yes, I am responsible for this epic debacle!
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. Things go (rapidly) downhill from there…then fester… then get better?
*Holds out handbasket if you'd like to join us. It's getting cozy in here*
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
-------------------------
Chapter Twenty-Seven: ...One Step Back?
Rating: R, borderline NC-17 for vulgarity and het imagery
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, but not yet
Word Count: 2,589
…and some really minor mention of events from “Shadow”
…and there’s a line in here I appropriated from another fic, because I loved it… so my apologies to the writer (I honestly forget who wrote it and what fic it was… but if you’re reading this, I’m sorry… but I loved it. And it was perfect to get things moving along here, so… I used it.)
Chapter Twenty-Seven: ...One Step Back?
Jared lets me take his temperature when I get up to make him soup, and to heat up a Hungry Man microwave dinner for myself. It’s lower than it was, but not the purported norm of 98.6 yet, and I again have to remind myself that it’s better than it was, and that the doctor said it was okay if the fever didn’t break right away. Jared tells me he does feel a lot better, and not to worry. I worry anyway.
He has Halo in the game system by the time I return to the living room with our dinner and a bottled water for each of us. He ends up eating half his soup and when he looks at me asking with his eyes if he can have some of my dinner (beef and potatoes in gravy as only beef and potatoes in gravy can be from the microwave-oh, and there’s some wilted green beans on the side.), I let him pick at mine.
“You better not throw that up.” I tell him playfully. “That’s gourmet dining right there.”
“Filet Mignon to this mouth, baby.” Jared returns, popping another piece of gravied meat into his mouth and chewing. He closes his eyes and makes the appropriate noises, ‘mmmm’s and ‘so good’s and the like that are barely intelligible around a mouthful of processed cow, pretending it’s as delicious as steak from any five-star Hollywood restaurant.
“You have obviously never eaten at…”
He cuts me off. “No. I just haven’t had any real food lately thanks to a hovering co-star who thinks I need to eat soup to feel better. Remember, I’m from Texas too.”
“Hey. I was just trying to help.” I pout.
He knocks my arm with a smile, letting me know he was kidding just as his character kills mine on screen.
“And I wasn’t hovering.” I add.
He raises an eyebrow at me, and we both start laughing. His laughter ends in a fit of coughing, and I catch him wiping at his mouth. I don’t say anything, but offer him his cough medicine, which he turns down. He does take his antibiotics, though, when I hold them out to him-he’s down to only a handful left in the bottle, and I think he’ll be done with them by Sunday. I hope it’s the cough that goes though, at the very least by Monday, when we have to be back on set. Sam trying to fend off Meg and the daevas while coughing up blood? The thought almost makes me smile.
After a few more rounds, he gets up, says he’s going to shower and then go to bed. I turn the game off, the television, stand by the window after locking the front door, and stare out into the night and listen to the water start for Jared’s shower.
I fold my arms over my chest, stare until my cell phone rings. I answer it. The water’s still running-Jared’s still in the shower.
“Hello?” I yawn into the phone.
It’s Luanne. “Hey baby…” She croons. “Doing anything tonight?”
I yawn again, this time purposefully and loudly. “No… just going to bed.”
“Want to be?” She asks as I start to answer, talking over my ‘going to bed’. “Doing… someone, I mean…” Her voice lowers, and I can see in my minds eye her lifting a single ivory leg to kneel on the edge of her bed, sliding her fingers up the smooth skin of her thigh, lifting a lace ruffle at the edge of a silken teddy. A purple one. I bet she’s wearing heeled mules too. And red lipstick.
I think I must really be tired. So much so that her voice isn’t going straight to my groin. I’m as immune as I think I’ll ever be to her charms. As immune as any red-blooded male could be.
“No… Lu, I’m really tired. I was just on my way to bed when you called. Seriously.” I cover my mouth with one hand, yawning again, and as I wonder why I’m trying to convince her, something in the back of my head rings with ‘maybe you’re trying to convince yourself…’
“Oh… come on, baby…” She purrs, and this time my dick gives a little twitch of interest. “We can do it quick… I can be ready when you get here… hot and wet… ready for you…”
The thought of her, fingering herself, slipping her middle finger deep inside her hot heat… getting herself ready for me… sprawled out like a cheap whore on the bed, moaning and making guttural sounds from her throat, begging for it, wanting it…
It’s like a bad porno inside my head.
I stare down at my crotch. ‘Down boy.’ I think, just as my land line rings, loud from the opposite side of the room. “No… not tonight, Lu.” I say, starting to move across the room as the water cuts off in the bathroom and the phone gives another ‘brrrringgg’. “Lu… I hate to cut you short, but I got another call coming in.”
“Sure…” She sounds somewhat hurt, but not enough for me to really care. “…I’ll call you maybe tomorrow, Jen…”
“Yeah…” I’m already disconnecting from the cell, closing it and tossing it onto the couch as she says goodbye. I pick up my house phone mid-fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Jensen! Just who I was calling to talk to.”
It’s Jared’s mother. She sounds surprised to hear my voice, which makes no sense-it’s my house, my phone, of course I’d be answering it. “Hi, Mrs. Padalecki.”
“You can just call me mom.” She says, as though it’s nothing, but then quickly adds, “I mean… it’d probably be easier than calling me Mrs. Padalecki all the time… you know… you don’t have to… I was just… saying.”
I smile. It’s as though she realized what she said and was trying to backtrack. “It’s okay. I’ll think about it. Did you want to talk to Jared?” I’m hoping she doesn’t want to talk to me despite saying I was who she was calling to talk to-because I know it’ll be about Jared, and whether I’ve talked to him-about what I might feel for him. “Because he’s in the shower.”
“Oh, no that’s alright.” She says, and I groan. I can hear Jared coughing in the bathroom, can hear him moving around, presumably brushing his teeth and taking a piss and doing whatever else it is that he does before bed, including likely putting some gel or something in that mop of his. I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses lotion too. Or some facial cream. I swear sometimes I think Jared keeps more beauty supplies in his trailer than Cindy does, and she’s our make-up artist.
I switch to the portable phone and hang up the other line, move myself to the kitchen-closer to the bathroom-so I can hear him if he starts throwing up or if he needs me in any way. From the living room, things are muffled a little more.
She’s talking about the weather in Texas, mentions some late-season thunderstorms that they don’t think will spawn tornadoes. “…but they’re still giving us the severe weather warning.”
“Better to be safe than sorry.” I say.
She mutters something that sounds like agreement, and then, casually, as though it’s an ‘oh by the way’ thing rather than the entire purpose of her call (which I know it is), “So, have you talked with Jared yet? You know… about things? With you and all?”
So casual. Like she’s trying to sound casual. Put-on.
“Not yet.” And I think perhaps I’m calmer than I would be otherwise with her bringing it up thanks to the Xanax, even though I can already feel my heart rate increase just a tiny bit at the mere thought of talking about this… thinking about it.
“Oh you really should you know.”
And I know I should, but the question at this point, that’s eating at me is the how… how to bring it up without falling into another panic attack… how to bring it up without sounding needy or as emotional as Megan in all her teen!angst glory.
“What, just come out and tell him I care about him? That…”
“That you like him.” She says simply. Like it really is that simple.
“I don’t even know what I want!” I exclaim. “I mean… He’s here and… I like him…” I pause, and somewhere in my subconscious I’m aware of the bathroom door opening, but it doesn’t register right away. “…yes, like that… but… I mean… it doesn’t mean I want flowers and hearts and Christmases and forever with him!”
I’m surprisingly not panicking yet. That Xanax is good for something. I’m not clutching at the receiver, I’m not panting or breathing heavy… my voice is just louder than usual. I need her to understand.
I can’t do this anymore.
“There are things you can talk about before forever.” She says.
She is, of course, right. There’s what I feel, and there’s what I think… there’s what I want and what he needs. There’s what happened to him when he was younger… whether or not I can accept this for what it is or what it could be. Little things that I want to know and little things that I need to know… along with all the things he needs to know. “Like what I feel? I can’t even admit that to myself!”
There’s a pregnant pause, and suddenly, very suddenly, yet gently, the phone is taken from my hand, just as his mother starts to say something else.
“You should start.” That’s Jared.
His voice is quiet and serious, speaking words in a ‘you’ve got no way out’ tone, followed by a softer, “Mom? Jensen has to go.” And he hangs up on his mother with a press of a button, tosses the phone onto one of the kitchen chairs, and stares at it in silence.
Finally, he turns his attention back to me. “You do not get to have this conversation with my mother first.” He starts, then pushes at my chest, forcing me back, until I’m pressed against the wall. “You don’t get to have this conversation with anyone before me. And if you’re not ready to talk to me, that’s fine, but you don’t talk to anyone else either. Not. Before. Me.”
I turn my face away from him, and slump against the wall. He steps closer to me, his hands sliding up to grip my shoulders, his chest pressing against mine. “Jensen.”
I take a breath. My body’s still relaxed, I’m still breathing easy, and even though I can feel my mind start to work overtime-spinning and spinning and I feel like I’m going to fall out of control, none of the signs of panic show up-I’m not sweating or shaking, I’m not crying and I’m not panting or feeling nauseous. The Xanax Jared gave me five or six hours ago is still holding-that stuff packs quite a wallop when you haven’t taken it in a while.
I lean against the wall, shrug my shoulders in a half-hearted attempt to get him to release his hold on me. “What do you want me to say, Jared?” I ask helplessly.
“Nothing.” He sighs. “Nothing you don’t want to say...” He releases my shoulders, smoothes the fabric of my shirt and steps back. “I don’t want anything from you… nothing you’re not willing to give… I just…” He’s staring at the floor, won’t look at me. “I just want… would like… for you to be honest with me.” He raises his eyes to meet mine, and there’s beseeching in them, and when he speaks, it’s a whispered plea. “Just… talk to me, Jensen… Please.” He exhales heavily, shakily, again lowers his eyes to stare at the tiled floor, then, adds in a defeated whisper that I can barely hear, “…just… talk to me.”
He stands there, hands curling into fists at his side, staring at the floor as his hair drips, still damp and dark from the shower. I’m leaning against the wall, concentrating on keeping my breathing even, despite the fact that the Xanax is doing its job of calming me, even now, hours after taking it. Neither of us talk for a long while, neither of us move for a long while.
Eventually, Jared’s shoulders slump, and he turns on his heel, walks slowly from the kitchen, head hung. Before he makes it out of the room though, I’m calling his name in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own, echoing through the still-haze of drug-induced calm. “Jared… Jared, wait.”
Because I know we need to talk, and there’s no way around it. Not anymore.
He stops, but doesn’t turn around. “What, Jensen.”
“We…”
“If you say we have to talk, I’m going to kill you.” He cuts me off.
“Well…” I start to say. After a moment, I continue. “Jared… what happened?” I ask bluntly. “To you… when you were younger?”
He finally does turn around to look at me. The look in his eyes is pure fire. “Who…”
“Your mom…” I whisper, barely keeping from stuttering over the consonants, because the look in his eyes says I’m not supposed to know this-any of this. “…she said…”
“My mom always did talk too much.” He says, and for a minute I think I’ve overstepped my bounds, think he’s going to walk out the front door-or at least out of the kitchen-and not talk to me again, but then he swallows and nods.
The color of his eyes fades from the bright and shimmering green to the grayish-blue-green I’m accustomed to. “Yeah… some stuff… some shit… happened when I was younger… you know how kids are…” He waves a hand, as if waving it off to unimportance. “Name calling and stuff… calling me a queer and a fag... Stopped when I was in highschool, mostly… when I started seeing this girl Rebecca.” He trails off, his eyes take on a faraway look, but then he’s back. “Rebecca Ann Taylor. She was one of the twirlers… baton squad. You know the type… hung out with the cheerleaders and the football players and the basketball players. My brother introduced me to her.”
He smiles, then looks down. “That was a long time ago.” He says softly, and walks out of the kitchen, effectively ending the conversation.
I know there’s more. More he’s not telling me, and I know-just know-it has to do with Rebecca and that time of his life-so when he was sixteen? Seventeen? Not that long ago, not long enough to fade, and it fits with the hurt I can see in his eyes sometimes… Name calling as a child didn’t cut as deep… didn’t leave a hurt in the soul and the eyes like you could see in Jared when he let down his guard. It was more than that.
I sigh heavily, hear the guest room door open and close and know Jared’s gone to bed. He won’t be asleep for a little while at least, and I spend the next half hour debating about whether or not to knock on his door.
Ultimately, I don’t. I go to bed, where I toss and turn until morning, not getting up even when I hear Jared coughing violently. I can’t bring myself to go to him right now.
-------------------------
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / Luanne (OFC); stated Jared/Sandy; stated Jared/Rebecca (OFC) and stated Jared/Ryan (OMC)
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 just now (after twenty-five chapters and nearly 60,000 words) admitted to even writing this. Yes, I am responsible for this epic debacle!
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. Things go (rapidly) downhill from there…then fester… then get better?
*Holds out handbasket if you'd like to join us. It's getting cozy in here*
Spoilers: Nothing to see here, folks...
-------------------------
Chapter Twenty-Seven: ...One Step Back?
Rating: R, borderline NC-17 for vulgarity and het imagery
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, but not yet
Word Count: 2,589
…and some really minor mention of events from “Shadow”
…and there’s a line in here I appropriated from another fic, because I loved it… so my apologies to the writer (I honestly forget who wrote it and what fic it was… but if you’re reading this, I’m sorry… but I loved it. And it was perfect to get things moving along here, so… I used it.)
Chapter Twenty-Seven: ...One Step Back?
Jared lets me take his temperature when I get up to make him soup, and to heat up a Hungry Man microwave dinner for myself. It’s lower than it was, but not the purported norm of 98.6 yet, and I again have to remind myself that it’s better than it was, and that the doctor said it was okay if the fever didn’t break right away. Jared tells me he does feel a lot better, and not to worry. I worry anyway.
He has Halo in the game system by the time I return to the living room with our dinner and a bottled water for each of us. He ends up eating half his soup and when he looks at me asking with his eyes if he can have some of my dinner (beef and potatoes in gravy as only beef and potatoes in gravy can be from the microwave-oh, and there’s some wilted green beans on the side.), I let him pick at mine.
“You better not throw that up.” I tell him playfully. “That’s gourmet dining right there.”
“Filet Mignon to this mouth, baby.” Jared returns, popping another piece of gravied meat into his mouth and chewing. He closes his eyes and makes the appropriate noises, ‘mmmm’s and ‘so good’s and the like that are barely intelligible around a mouthful of processed cow, pretending it’s as delicious as steak from any five-star Hollywood restaurant.
“You have obviously never eaten at…”
He cuts me off. “No. I just haven’t had any real food lately thanks to a hovering co-star who thinks I need to eat soup to feel better. Remember, I’m from Texas too.”
“Hey. I was just trying to help.” I pout.
He knocks my arm with a smile, letting me know he was kidding just as his character kills mine on screen.
“And I wasn’t hovering.” I add.
He raises an eyebrow at me, and we both start laughing. His laughter ends in a fit of coughing, and I catch him wiping at his mouth. I don’t say anything, but offer him his cough medicine, which he turns down. He does take his antibiotics, though, when I hold them out to him-he’s down to only a handful left in the bottle, and I think he’ll be done with them by Sunday. I hope it’s the cough that goes though, at the very least by Monday, when we have to be back on set. Sam trying to fend off Meg and the daevas while coughing up blood? The thought almost makes me smile.
After a few more rounds, he gets up, says he’s going to shower and then go to bed. I turn the game off, the television, stand by the window after locking the front door, and stare out into the night and listen to the water start for Jared’s shower.
I fold my arms over my chest, stare until my cell phone rings. I answer it. The water’s still running-Jared’s still in the shower.
“Hello?” I yawn into the phone.
It’s Luanne. “Hey baby…” She croons. “Doing anything tonight?”
I yawn again, this time purposefully and loudly. “No… just going to bed.”
“Want to be?” She asks as I start to answer, talking over my ‘going to bed’. “Doing… someone, I mean…” Her voice lowers, and I can see in my minds eye her lifting a single ivory leg to kneel on the edge of her bed, sliding her fingers up the smooth skin of her thigh, lifting a lace ruffle at the edge of a silken teddy. A purple one. I bet she’s wearing heeled mules too. And red lipstick.
I think I must really be tired. So much so that her voice isn’t going straight to my groin. I’m as immune as I think I’ll ever be to her charms. As immune as any red-blooded male could be.
“No… Lu, I’m really tired. I was just on my way to bed when you called. Seriously.” I cover my mouth with one hand, yawning again, and as I wonder why I’m trying to convince her, something in the back of my head rings with ‘maybe you’re trying to convince yourself…’
“Oh… come on, baby…” She purrs, and this time my dick gives a little twitch of interest. “We can do it quick… I can be ready when you get here… hot and wet… ready for you…”
The thought of her, fingering herself, slipping her middle finger deep inside her hot heat… getting herself ready for me… sprawled out like a cheap whore on the bed, moaning and making guttural sounds from her throat, begging for it, wanting it…
It’s like a bad porno inside my head.
I stare down at my crotch. ‘Down boy.’ I think, just as my land line rings, loud from the opposite side of the room. “No… not tonight, Lu.” I say, starting to move across the room as the water cuts off in the bathroom and the phone gives another ‘brrrringgg’. “Lu… I hate to cut you short, but I got another call coming in.”
“Sure…” She sounds somewhat hurt, but not enough for me to really care. “…I’ll call you maybe tomorrow, Jen…”
“Yeah…” I’m already disconnecting from the cell, closing it and tossing it onto the couch as she says goodbye. I pick up my house phone mid-fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Jensen! Just who I was calling to talk to.”
It’s Jared’s mother. She sounds surprised to hear my voice, which makes no sense-it’s my house, my phone, of course I’d be answering it. “Hi, Mrs. Padalecki.”
“You can just call me mom.” She says, as though it’s nothing, but then quickly adds, “I mean… it’d probably be easier than calling me Mrs. Padalecki all the time… you know… you don’t have to… I was just… saying.”
I smile. It’s as though she realized what she said and was trying to backtrack. “It’s okay. I’ll think about it. Did you want to talk to Jared?” I’m hoping she doesn’t want to talk to me despite saying I was who she was calling to talk to-because I know it’ll be about Jared, and whether I’ve talked to him-about what I might feel for him. “Because he’s in the shower.”
“Oh, no that’s alright.” She says, and I groan. I can hear Jared coughing in the bathroom, can hear him moving around, presumably brushing his teeth and taking a piss and doing whatever else it is that he does before bed, including likely putting some gel or something in that mop of his. I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses lotion too. Or some facial cream. I swear sometimes I think Jared keeps more beauty supplies in his trailer than Cindy does, and she’s our make-up artist.
I switch to the portable phone and hang up the other line, move myself to the kitchen-closer to the bathroom-so I can hear him if he starts throwing up or if he needs me in any way. From the living room, things are muffled a little more.
She’s talking about the weather in Texas, mentions some late-season thunderstorms that they don’t think will spawn tornadoes. “…but they’re still giving us the severe weather warning.”
“Better to be safe than sorry.” I say.
She mutters something that sounds like agreement, and then, casually, as though it’s an ‘oh by the way’ thing rather than the entire purpose of her call (which I know it is), “So, have you talked with Jared yet? You know… about things? With you and all?”
So casual. Like she’s trying to sound casual. Put-on.
“Not yet.” And I think perhaps I’m calmer than I would be otherwise with her bringing it up thanks to the Xanax, even though I can already feel my heart rate increase just a tiny bit at the mere thought of talking about this… thinking about it.
“Oh you really should you know.”
And I know I should, but the question at this point, that’s eating at me is the how… how to bring it up without falling into another panic attack… how to bring it up without sounding needy or as emotional as Megan in all her teen!angst glory.
“What, just come out and tell him I care about him? That…”
“That you like him.” She says simply. Like it really is that simple.
“I don’t even know what I want!” I exclaim. “I mean… He’s here and… I like him…” I pause, and somewhere in my subconscious I’m aware of the bathroom door opening, but it doesn’t register right away. “…yes, like that… but… I mean… it doesn’t mean I want flowers and hearts and Christmases and forever with him!”
I’m surprisingly not panicking yet. That Xanax is good for something. I’m not clutching at the receiver, I’m not panting or breathing heavy… my voice is just louder than usual. I need her to understand.
I can’t do this anymore.
“There are things you can talk about before forever.” She says.
She is, of course, right. There’s what I feel, and there’s what I think… there’s what I want and what he needs. There’s what happened to him when he was younger… whether or not I can accept this for what it is or what it could be. Little things that I want to know and little things that I need to know… along with all the things he needs to know. “Like what I feel? I can’t even admit that to myself!”
There’s a pregnant pause, and suddenly, very suddenly, yet gently, the phone is taken from my hand, just as his mother starts to say something else.
“You should start.” That’s Jared.
His voice is quiet and serious, speaking words in a ‘you’ve got no way out’ tone, followed by a softer, “Mom? Jensen has to go.” And he hangs up on his mother with a press of a button, tosses the phone onto one of the kitchen chairs, and stares at it in silence.
Finally, he turns his attention back to me. “You do not get to have this conversation with my mother first.” He starts, then pushes at my chest, forcing me back, until I’m pressed against the wall. “You don’t get to have this conversation with anyone before me. And if you’re not ready to talk to me, that’s fine, but you don’t talk to anyone else either. Not. Before. Me.”
I turn my face away from him, and slump against the wall. He steps closer to me, his hands sliding up to grip my shoulders, his chest pressing against mine. “Jensen.”
I take a breath. My body’s still relaxed, I’m still breathing easy, and even though I can feel my mind start to work overtime-spinning and spinning and I feel like I’m going to fall out of control, none of the signs of panic show up-I’m not sweating or shaking, I’m not crying and I’m not panting or feeling nauseous. The Xanax Jared gave me five or six hours ago is still holding-that stuff packs quite a wallop when you haven’t taken it in a while.
I lean against the wall, shrug my shoulders in a half-hearted attempt to get him to release his hold on me. “What do you want me to say, Jared?” I ask helplessly.
“Nothing.” He sighs. “Nothing you don’t want to say...” He releases my shoulders, smoothes the fabric of my shirt and steps back. “I don’t want anything from you… nothing you’re not willing to give… I just…” He’s staring at the floor, won’t look at me. “I just want… would like… for you to be honest with me.” He raises his eyes to meet mine, and there’s beseeching in them, and when he speaks, it’s a whispered plea. “Just… talk to me, Jensen… Please.” He exhales heavily, shakily, again lowers his eyes to stare at the tiled floor, then, adds in a defeated whisper that I can barely hear, “…just… talk to me.”
He stands there, hands curling into fists at his side, staring at the floor as his hair drips, still damp and dark from the shower. I’m leaning against the wall, concentrating on keeping my breathing even, despite the fact that the Xanax is doing its job of calming me, even now, hours after taking it. Neither of us talk for a long while, neither of us move for a long while.
Eventually, Jared’s shoulders slump, and he turns on his heel, walks slowly from the kitchen, head hung. Before he makes it out of the room though, I’m calling his name in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own, echoing through the still-haze of drug-induced calm. “Jared… Jared, wait.”
Because I know we need to talk, and there’s no way around it. Not anymore.
He stops, but doesn’t turn around. “What, Jensen.”
“We…”
“If you say we have to talk, I’m going to kill you.” He cuts me off.
“Well…” I start to say. After a moment, I continue. “Jared… what happened?” I ask bluntly. “To you… when you were younger?”
He finally does turn around to look at me. The look in his eyes is pure fire. “Who…”
“Your mom…” I whisper, barely keeping from stuttering over the consonants, because the look in his eyes says I’m not supposed to know this-any of this. “…she said…”
“My mom always did talk too much.” He says, and for a minute I think I’ve overstepped my bounds, think he’s going to walk out the front door-or at least out of the kitchen-and not talk to me again, but then he swallows and nods.
The color of his eyes fades from the bright and shimmering green to the grayish-blue-green I’m accustomed to. “Yeah… some stuff… some shit… happened when I was younger… you know how kids are…” He waves a hand, as if waving it off to unimportance. “Name calling and stuff… calling me a queer and a fag... Stopped when I was in highschool, mostly… when I started seeing this girl Rebecca.” He trails off, his eyes take on a faraway look, but then he’s back. “Rebecca Ann Taylor. She was one of the twirlers… baton squad. You know the type… hung out with the cheerleaders and the football players and the basketball players. My brother introduced me to her.”
He smiles, then looks down. “That was a long time ago.” He says softly, and walks out of the kitchen, effectively ending the conversation.
I know there’s more. More he’s not telling me, and I know-just know-it has to do with Rebecca and that time of his life-so when he was sixteen? Seventeen? Not that long ago, not long enough to fade, and it fits with the hurt I can see in his eyes sometimes… Name calling as a child didn’t cut as deep… didn’t leave a hurt in the soul and the eyes like you could see in Jared when he let down his guard. It was more than that.
I sigh heavily, hear the guest room door open and close and know Jared’s gone to bed. He won’t be asleep for a little while at least, and I spend the next half hour debating about whether or not to knock on his door.
Ultimately, I don’t. I go to bed, where I toss and turn until morning, not getting up even when I hear Jared coughing violently. I can’t bring myself to go to him right now.
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