Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky (Jensen/Jared RPS) -- 38/? (WIP)
Title: Early Mornings and Late Nights Under Overcast Sky
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / Luanne (OFC); Jared Padalecki/Pete (OMC); Jared/Eric Kripke/JDM; 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?
Come on! Hop in the handbasket! There be room here for everyone!
Spoilers: Overall there’s really nothing to see here… there are a few very vague spoilers for “Bugs” and some minor spoilers for “Faith”, “Bloody Mary” and "Shadow".
-------------------------
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Just Another Day
Rating: PG-13, for generalized adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, but not here, not now
Word Count: 2,804
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Just Another Day
“Have you even been to bed?” Jared asks in the morning, when he finishes in the shower and walks out to the living room to find me still on the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
I look over at him toweling dry his shaggy hair. “Maybe.”
He pulls on a shirt, continues rubbing at his head with the white cloth. “Jen? You’re a terrible liar.”
I sit up and rub at my eyes groggily. “Wasn’t lying. I said ‘maybe’.” I counter petulantly.
“Right.” He pads down the hall, back towards the bathroom and yells over his shoulder at me. “Get in the shower. Ten minutes we’re out the door. I’m driving.”
“I can drive.”
“You can’t walk a straight line.” He leans against the wall while brushing his teeth, watches me stumble down the hall, nearly bumping into the wall twice on my trek to my bedroom. He turns and disappears into the bathroom before I can snap back a reply.
I shower, brush my teeth and rinse my mouth with Listerine, dress in black trousers and my favorite button-down dress shirt-gray with shimmering silver-purple pinstripes by Armani. An old girlfriend had bought it for me years ago. It’s soft and worn-in, fits like it was tailor-made.
He wants to stop for coffee for himself, offers to get me orange juice. I follow him in and get my own coffee-extra large, milk, no sugar. I drink it in silence as he drives stony-eyed with a set jaw to the set.
Once there, they have Jared meet with an acting coach, have me talk with Jeff to work out how we want to get through the rougher scenes they have planned today. Jared meets up with us after an hour, and the three of us review lines as Eric runs around, directing extras, talking with a few of our co-stars, arguing with some people in costuming.
Today, it’s me who flubs their lines thanks to exhaustion, and even Cindy comments about how tired I look while working some paste into Jared’s uncooperative locks of hair, styling it just-so. Funny how it looks different from when he wakes up in the morning, but still has the unkempt just-woke-up look.
We run through the same scene seven times before Eric decides we’re never going to get it right, so he picks the best of seven that we’ve already gotten on film and moves on to the next scene. People are crawling around the set, moving things, adjusting things, marking small spots on the ground with chalk where Jared and I are supposed to take positions, where Jeff is supposed to be standing outside the window when he sees us.
Jared slips five times trying to scale the elevator shaft before they call in his stunt double and hook him up to all sorts of cables and climbing hooks. “Hey! How come I didn’t get all that stuff?” Jared asks, when his double jumps off the top after scaling it first try. “You get all the fun stuff.” He says to his double, who just grins at him.
“Perks of the job, I guess.” I clap Jared’s shoulder, move to take my position by an old dresser I swear they either picked up at a garage sale or paid thousands of dollars for and had the set director take sandpaper to. They send Cindy over to put some gel in my hair, use some green paste and foundation to cover up the circles beneath my eyes.
I see Jared standing there, and he looks so sad-it’s all an act of course, he’s fully entrenched in his role as Sam Winchester-that it makes me think of him beating himself up about the scar (he’s idly rubbing at it, even now, on set) that was left behind after a hate crime left him hospitalized and in a coma for nearly a week. The tears they want in my eyes come fast and hot, burning and threatening to fall. I hold on to the knowledge of how broken he is, how that scar is just a symbol, but a symbol he holds on to for whatever reason even though he knows what it is, what it represents and from whence it came.
The scene goes smoothly, without a hitch. Eric’s beside himself at how well things go, and he calls a break at one forty-five to let anyone who wants to eat grab something. “If you’re all back on set by two we can close up shop at four!” He calls out loudly.
I turn to Jared, who’s slumped in his cast chair, fingers at his temples. “Come on man. You want anything at the grease truck? I’m gonna grab a sandwich or something.”
He looks miserable. “Jared?” I ask, going over to him.
“You gotta eat, Jenny.” He says quietly, looking at me hopefully. “Like really… eat something. And… not at two in the afternoon… you didn’t eat breakfast this morning.”
“Jared, I know it’s hard to eat regularly with this job.” I pull his arm and start walking. He follows reluctantly. “I’ll work around it, Jare. I’ll be okay.”
At that, he stops, yanks his arm from my grasp and uses his other arm to spin me around. “You are not okay!” He looks at me, glances around us to see if anyone’s within earshot and leans a little closer.
“I said I’d work around it.” I don’t want to hear this from him. I know I have to start taking better care of myself, but I don’t need to be lectured by my co-star and now roommate about it.
“Right.” He hisses at me. “Because you’re doing a great job working around it right now, aren’t you Jenny.”
”…aren’t you… Jenny.”
The words echo in my head, and I wince, shake my head like I’m trying to clear cobwebs, but what I’m really trying to do is remind myself that I’m awake, I’m on set… the voice was from my dream and it wasn’t Jared, or at least, I never saw a face, so I don’t know if it was Jared. I tell myself that Jared would never call me a fag… that Jared would never hurt me.
It doesn’t help. My heart is already pounding, and I shiver despite the weight of Dean’s leather jacket. The nausea rises fast and hard inside, twisting in my stomach, and despite the fact that I haven’t eaten yet today, I can feel the gag reflex coming on strong, can taste the first wash of bile, acrid and hot in the back of my throat.
I should call Eddie tonight. He’ll tell me to either start taking the Lunesta or to check myself into a hospital-not that they’re going to do much other than pump me full of drugs and put me on an IV, keep me under observation for a few days-something to get my body the rest it needs so the panic attacks stop being as seemingly constant as they are. I figure since I know what his advice will be, I won’t call.
I blink, and my breath catches, rough and grating in my throat. It doesn’t feel like I’m choking-yet. Jared’s got a hold of my shoulders and is physically moving me, pushing, guiding towards the trailers. “Jenny, stay with me.” He whispers close to my ear.
I’m barely aware of him pushing me along the dirt, hurrying me as fast as possible to the trailers, and I don’t know if it’s my trailer or his he ultimately shoves me into, but once inside, he climbs up in behind me, closes the door and then is hauling me to my feet again, working my nearly dead weight to the cot. Despite the hurried frenzy of it all, and the urgency of his movements, he’s nothing but gentle with me, settling me on the cot and getting a blanket for me when I can’t stop shaking.
I’m not lost yet. I’m still aware enough to know that if I can get control of my breathing, lower my heart rate, I might still be able to make it out of this without needing Xanax, which I did bring with me-it’s in the side pocket of my duffel-but was sincerely hoping not to have to use. I’ve learned that in times like these, it’s best to be prepared.
Jared’s sitting on the cot at my side, one hand over my racing heart, the other in my hair now. The hand in my hair slides to my eyes, closing them. “Shhh…” He whispers. “Close your eyes, Jenny…”
I’m alert and aware enough to know what he’s trying to do, and I’m willing to try it. He’s trying to bring me back without medication. The Xanax would make me loopy for an hour or so-I probably wouldn’t be able to be on set until the initial effects wore off.
Thing is, as far as I’m aware, nobody’s been able to bring me back. I can’t remember even my mother being able to. Then again, she’d ninety-nine times out of a hundred just get the drugs and be done with it. I was on something other than Xanax back then. Other than my mother once or twice, no one’s even tried. No one’s cared enough to.
I’m not completely gone. I’m willing to try. I have to try. Jared’s hand rests warm over my eyes. “…close your eyes…” His request echoes, becomes part of the pounding in my head.
I close my eyes under his hand, and for a second, the panic I’m feeling increases tenfold, a hundredfold. My palms sweat, my body sweats and shivers at the same time, my breath comes fast and hard, I’m aware of myself panting, it’s hard to breathe. Every sensation is heightened, it’s like my body is humming. Jared’s touch on my face is like pain. His hand over my heart is pressure, constricting.
I can hear his voice, everywhere. It envelops me in calm somehow. “Jenny, I need you to breathe, okay?”
When I open my mouth to answer him, he interrupts. “Shhh… don’t talk… just breathe.”
I nod shakily, lift one hand from the mattress to find his. I hold on to his hand when I find it, squeeze, won’t let go. I can’t let go. I hold on to him, concentrate on the strength in his grip, the warmth in the fingers of his other hand as they comb through my hair.
“Just breathe…” he repeats those words like a mantra, smoothing my hair, gripping my hand as tightly as I’m gripping his. “…just breathe, Jenny…”
I don’t know how much time passes, but it seems like an eternity to me. An eternity of maintaining tight control over my breathing, concentrating on the steady in-out… in-out of my breathing, the thump-thump… thump-thump… of my heart, but I’m finally able to breathe easy again, and I can feel my heart rate returning to normal. I’m warm, but not hot, and the trembling eases. Jared’s fingers flutter from my hair over my cheek to the pulse point in my neck.
“Jen?” He asks hopefully. “Jensen, can you hear me?”
I open my eyes, and sigh with a relieved and grateful smile. “I can hear you, Jare…”
“Oh, thank God, Jen…” He smiles and leans forward, resting his head on my chest. “Oh, God, Jen…”
“How long?” I ask, after a minute of resting. “How long… what time is it?”
Jared sits up and looks at his watch. “Ten minutes?” He says. “It’s not even two yet.”
“Seems like a lot longer.” I whisper, shrugging off the blanket, shifting so I can sit up.
His hands fly to my shoulders, he guides me up. “You okay?” He asks, not even trying to hide his concern.
I’m a little dizzy when I sit up, but nothing too bad. I blink a few times, let Jared support me until the dizziness passes, his hand resting on the nape of my neck. “Yeah… I am… thank you...” I owe him far more than a ‘thank you’ for what he’s just done.
His forehead comes to rest against mine as he sighs and closes his eyes. “Jen…” He whispers.
The fear of what he’s going to say-the fear that he might say he wants to kiss me, because it’s a want inside myself at the moment that I can’t and won’t give voice to and won’t give in to-makes me break away. “We should get back to the set. So Eric’ll call it quits at four.” I wipe a hand along the back of my mouth, reach over for a bottle of water and open it, downing half the bottle.
“We have to get you something to eat.” He says. “You can not have water for lunch.”
“Jared, we don’t have time to eat. We’ll get something on the way home. Or we’ll go out somewhere. Now let’s go.” I stand up, pushing past him. The spell’s been broken and the proximity is getting to be too much. I need to distance myself from him, from the desires inside of me that just make the fear come back because of my recent nightmares.
I trudge out of my trailer, and Jared follows a few minutes later.
Back in front of the cameras, we work on autopilot. The scenes go, but there’s not a lot behind them. Luckily, they’re easy scenes as far as we’re concerned. The real work falls on Jeff and our co-stars, and Jared and I are left to our own devices, playing practical jokes on Jeff and Eric, making a nuisance of ourselves until four o’clock, at which point Eric sighs and tells us to pack it up, call it a day.
“Get some sleep, Jensen.” He says.
“Yeah.” I’m already walking towards my trailer. I want to shower, and change, and get home. I’m not even hungry, despite the fact that I haven’t eaten yet today.
Jared follows, pulling the prop gun from the back of his pants and handing it off to a stage hand. “Meet you at your trailer in ten?” He asks.
“Make it twenty.” I call back while staring at the ground, not turning around. I jog up the wooden steps to my trailer, step inside, and fall against the door, slide to the floor. I reach up to the counter and fumble for my cell phone.
“Eddie?”
“Jensen?” There’s heavy static on the line. “Jensen, is that you?”
“Eddie?” I ask again, letting my eyes slip shut. I need to sleep, but I can’t. I need the panic attacks to subside. I can’t keep having one a day… or one every two days... every three days. At this point I’d be happy with one a week, though my preference would be for them to disappear again completely for some time.
The static is bad, I can barely hear his reply. I manage to make out something that sounds vaguely like “I… you… later ton… home… ven.”, and I take it to mean he’ll call me later on sometime, around eleven. I hope he means eleven Central, not eleven Pacific.
I hang up, let the phone sit in my lap for a while, legs stretched out in front of me, leaning back against the closed door of my trailer. A few deep breaths later, and I drag myself to my feet and into the small shower stall, turn the water on hot and stand there with a bar of soap and a washcloth, thinking I should lather up the cloth and wash down, but too tired to move. My body is tired. Every muscle is weak and sore.
When Jared knocks on the door to announce himself, I start moving, lathering up and washing down, scrubbing dirt from my hands and watching as dark water circles down the drain. It’s amazing how much mud will work its way through your clothes when you crawl around in it for half the day. I’m glad the water runs straight out through to the ground rather than through a pipe or septic system, because if it ran through pipes we’d have had to replace thousands by now with all the dirt buildup.
Jared sits on my cot and talks to me through the door over the rainfall of the shower, hands me a towel and turns his back when the water cuts off.
I towel dry quickly, dress in the same black trousers and Armani button-down I did this morning, pull on thin black dress socks and step into my trusty black Prada dress shoes that are still the most comfortable shoes this side of cowboy boots.
“So where are we going?” I ask Jared, tossing the towel into a corner.
“Home.”
-------------------------
Characters/Pairing: Jensen Ackles / Jared Padalecki; Jensen Ackles / Luanne (OFC); Jared Padalecki/Pete (OMC); Jared/Eric Kripke/JDM; 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?
Come on! Hop in the handbasket! There be room here for everyone!
Spoilers: Overall there’s really nothing to see here… there are a few very vague spoilers for “Bugs” and some minor spoilers for “Faith”, “Bloody Mary” and "Shadow".
-------------------------
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Just Another Day
Rating: PG-13, for generalized adult themes
Pairing: Jensen/Jared, but not here, not now
Word Count: 2,804
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Just Another Day
“Have you even been to bed?” Jared asks in the morning, when he finishes in the shower and walks out to the living room to find me still on the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
I look over at him toweling dry his shaggy hair. “Maybe.”
He pulls on a shirt, continues rubbing at his head with the white cloth. “Jen? You’re a terrible liar.”
I sit up and rub at my eyes groggily. “Wasn’t lying. I said ‘maybe’.” I counter petulantly.
“Right.” He pads down the hall, back towards the bathroom and yells over his shoulder at me. “Get in the shower. Ten minutes we’re out the door. I’m driving.”
“I can drive.”
“You can’t walk a straight line.” He leans against the wall while brushing his teeth, watches me stumble down the hall, nearly bumping into the wall twice on my trek to my bedroom. He turns and disappears into the bathroom before I can snap back a reply.
I shower, brush my teeth and rinse my mouth with Listerine, dress in black trousers and my favorite button-down dress shirt-gray with shimmering silver-purple pinstripes by Armani. An old girlfriend had bought it for me years ago. It’s soft and worn-in, fits like it was tailor-made.
He wants to stop for coffee for himself, offers to get me orange juice. I follow him in and get my own coffee-extra large, milk, no sugar. I drink it in silence as he drives stony-eyed with a set jaw to the set.
Once there, they have Jared meet with an acting coach, have me talk with Jeff to work out how we want to get through the rougher scenes they have planned today. Jared meets up with us after an hour, and the three of us review lines as Eric runs around, directing extras, talking with a few of our co-stars, arguing with some people in costuming.
Today, it’s me who flubs their lines thanks to exhaustion, and even Cindy comments about how tired I look while working some paste into Jared’s uncooperative locks of hair, styling it just-so. Funny how it looks different from when he wakes up in the morning, but still has the unkempt just-woke-up look.
We run through the same scene seven times before Eric decides we’re never going to get it right, so he picks the best of seven that we’ve already gotten on film and moves on to the next scene. People are crawling around the set, moving things, adjusting things, marking small spots on the ground with chalk where Jared and I are supposed to take positions, where Jeff is supposed to be standing outside the window when he sees us.
Jared slips five times trying to scale the elevator shaft before they call in his stunt double and hook him up to all sorts of cables and climbing hooks. “Hey! How come I didn’t get all that stuff?” Jared asks, when his double jumps off the top after scaling it first try. “You get all the fun stuff.” He says to his double, who just grins at him.
“Perks of the job, I guess.” I clap Jared’s shoulder, move to take my position by an old dresser I swear they either picked up at a garage sale or paid thousands of dollars for and had the set director take sandpaper to. They send Cindy over to put some gel in my hair, use some green paste and foundation to cover up the circles beneath my eyes.
I see Jared standing there, and he looks so sad-it’s all an act of course, he’s fully entrenched in his role as Sam Winchester-that it makes me think of him beating himself up about the scar (he’s idly rubbing at it, even now, on set) that was left behind after a hate crime left him hospitalized and in a coma for nearly a week. The tears they want in my eyes come fast and hot, burning and threatening to fall. I hold on to the knowledge of how broken he is, how that scar is just a symbol, but a symbol he holds on to for whatever reason even though he knows what it is, what it represents and from whence it came.
The scene goes smoothly, without a hitch. Eric’s beside himself at how well things go, and he calls a break at one forty-five to let anyone who wants to eat grab something. “If you’re all back on set by two we can close up shop at four!” He calls out loudly.
I turn to Jared, who’s slumped in his cast chair, fingers at his temples. “Come on man. You want anything at the grease truck? I’m gonna grab a sandwich or something.”
He looks miserable. “Jared?” I ask, going over to him.
“You gotta eat, Jenny.” He says quietly, looking at me hopefully. “Like really… eat something. And… not at two in the afternoon… you didn’t eat breakfast this morning.”
“Jared, I know it’s hard to eat regularly with this job.” I pull his arm and start walking. He follows reluctantly. “I’ll work around it, Jare. I’ll be okay.”
At that, he stops, yanks his arm from my grasp and uses his other arm to spin me around. “You are not okay!” He looks at me, glances around us to see if anyone’s within earshot and leans a little closer.
“I said I’d work around it.” I don’t want to hear this from him. I know I have to start taking better care of myself, but I don’t need to be lectured by my co-star and now roommate about it.
“Right.” He hisses at me. “Because you’re doing a great job working around it right now, aren’t you Jenny.”
”…aren’t you… Jenny.”
The words echo in my head, and I wince, shake my head like I’m trying to clear cobwebs, but what I’m really trying to do is remind myself that I’m awake, I’m on set… the voice was from my dream and it wasn’t Jared, or at least, I never saw a face, so I don’t know if it was Jared. I tell myself that Jared would never call me a fag… that Jared would never hurt me.
It doesn’t help. My heart is already pounding, and I shiver despite the weight of Dean’s leather jacket. The nausea rises fast and hard inside, twisting in my stomach, and despite the fact that I haven’t eaten yet today, I can feel the gag reflex coming on strong, can taste the first wash of bile, acrid and hot in the back of my throat.
I should call Eddie tonight. He’ll tell me to either start taking the Lunesta or to check myself into a hospital-not that they’re going to do much other than pump me full of drugs and put me on an IV, keep me under observation for a few days-something to get my body the rest it needs so the panic attacks stop being as seemingly constant as they are. I figure since I know what his advice will be, I won’t call.
I blink, and my breath catches, rough and grating in my throat. It doesn’t feel like I’m choking-yet. Jared’s got a hold of my shoulders and is physically moving me, pushing, guiding towards the trailers. “Jenny, stay with me.” He whispers close to my ear.
I’m barely aware of him pushing me along the dirt, hurrying me as fast as possible to the trailers, and I don’t know if it’s my trailer or his he ultimately shoves me into, but once inside, he climbs up in behind me, closes the door and then is hauling me to my feet again, working my nearly dead weight to the cot. Despite the hurried frenzy of it all, and the urgency of his movements, he’s nothing but gentle with me, settling me on the cot and getting a blanket for me when I can’t stop shaking.
I’m not lost yet. I’m still aware enough to know that if I can get control of my breathing, lower my heart rate, I might still be able to make it out of this without needing Xanax, which I did bring with me-it’s in the side pocket of my duffel-but was sincerely hoping not to have to use. I’ve learned that in times like these, it’s best to be prepared.
Jared’s sitting on the cot at my side, one hand over my racing heart, the other in my hair now. The hand in my hair slides to my eyes, closing them. “Shhh…” He whispers. “Close your eyes, Jenny…”
I’m alert and aware enough to know what he’s trying to do, and I’m willing to try it. He’s trying to bring me back without medication. The Xanax would make me loopy for an hour or so-I probably wouldn’t be able to be on set until the initial effects wore off.
Thing is, as far as I’m aware, nobody’s been able to bring me back. I can’t remember even my mother being able to. Then again, she’d ninety-nine times out of a hundred just get the drugs and be done with it. I was on something other than Xanax back then. Other than my mother once or twice, no one’s even tried. No one’s cared enough to.
I’m not completely gone. I’m willing to try. I have to try. Jared’s hand rests warm over my eyes. “…close your eyes…” His request echoes, becomes part of the pounding in my head.
I close my eyes under his hand, and for a second, the panic I’m feeling increases tenfold, a hundredfold. My palms sweat, my body sweats and shivers at the same time, my breath comes fast and hard, I’m aware of myself panting, it’s hard to breathe. Every sensation is heightened, it’s like my body is humming. Jared’s touch on my face is like pain. His hand over my heart is pressure, constricting.
I can hear his voice, everywhere. It envelops me in calm somehow. “Jenny, I need you to breathe, okay?”
When I open my mouth to answer him, he interrupts. “Shhh… don’t talk… just breathe.”
I nod shakily, lift one hand from the mattress to find his. I hold on to his hand when I find it, squeeze, won’t let go. I can’t let go. I hold on to him, concentrate on the strength in his grip, the warmth in the fingers of his other hand as they comb through my hair.
“Just breathe…” he repeats those words like a mantra, smoothing my hair, gripping my hand as tightly as I’m gripping his. “…just breathe, Jenny…”
I don’t know how much time passes, but it seems like an eternity to me. An eternity of maintaining tight control over my breathing, concentrating on the steady in-out… in-out of my breathing, the thump-thump… thump-thump… of my heart, but I’m finally able to breathe easy again, and I can feel my heart rate returning to normal. I’m warm, but not hot, and the trembling eases. Jared’s fingers flutter from my hair over my cheek to the pulse point in my neck.
“Jen?” He asks hopefully. “Jensen, can you hear me?”
I open my eyes, and sigh with a relieved and grateful smile. “I can hear you, Jare…”
“Oh, thank God, Jen…” He smiles and leans forward, resting his head on my chest. “Oh, God, Jen…”
“How long?” I ask, after a minute of resting. “How long… what time is it?”
Jared sits up and looks at his watch. “Ten minutes?” He says. “It’s not even two yet.”
“Seems like a lot longer.” I whisper, shrugging off the blanket, shifting so I can sit up.
His hands fly to my shoulders, he guides me up. “You okay?” He asks, not even trying to hide his concern.
I’m a little dizzy when I sit up, but nothing too bad. I blink a few times, let Jared support me until the dizziness passes, his hand resting on the nape of my neck. “Yeah… I am… thank you...” I owe him far more than a ‘thank you’ for what he’s just done.
His forehead comes to rest against mine as he sighs and closes his eyes. “Jen…” He whispers.
The fear of what he’s going to say-the fear that he might say he wants to kiss me, because it’s a want inside myself at the moment that I can’t and won’t give voice to and won’t give in to-makes me break away. “We should get back to the set. So Eric’ll call it quits at four.” I wipe a hand along the back of my mouth, reach over for a bottle of water and open it, downing half the bottle.
“We have to get you something to eat.” He says. “You can not have water for lunch.”
“Jared, we don’t have time to eat. We’ll get something on the way home. Or we’ll go out somewhere. Now let’s go.” I stand up, pushing past him. The spell’s been broken and the proximity is getting to be too much. I need to distance myself from him, from the desires inside of me that just make the fear come back because of my recent nightmares.
I trudge out of my trailer, and Jared follows a few minutes later.
Back in front of the cameras, we work on autopilot. The scenes go, but there’s not a lot behind them. Luckily, they’re easy scenes as far as we’re concerned. The real work falls on Jeff and our co-stars, and Jared and I are left to our own devices, playing practical jokes on Jeff and Eric, making a nuisance of ourselves until four o’clock, at which point Eric sighs and tells us to pack it up, call it a day.
“Get some sleep, Jensen.” He says.
“Yeah.” I’m already walking towards my trailer. I want to shower, and change, and get home. I’m not even hungry, despite the fact that I haven’t eaten yet today.
Jared follows, pulling the prop gun from the back of his pants and handing it off to a stage hand. “Meet you at your trailer in ten?” He asks.
“Make it twenty.” I call back while staring at the ground, not turning around. I jog up the wooden steps to my trailer, step inside, and fall against the door, slide to the floor. I reach up to the counter and fumble for my cell phone.
“Eddie?”
“Jensen?” There’s heavy static on the line. “Jensen, is that you?”
“Eddie?” I ask again, letting my eyes slip shut. I need to sleep, but I can’t. I need the panic attacks to subside. I can’t keep having one a day… or one every two days... every three days. At this point I’d be happy with one a week, though my preference would be for them to disappear again completely for some time.
The static is bad, I can barely hear his reply. I manage to make out something that sounds vaguely like “I… you… later ton… home… ven.”, and I take it to mean he’ll call me later on sometime, around eleven. I hope he means eleven Central, not eleven Pacific.
I hang up, let the phone sit in my lap for a while, legs stretched out in front of me, leaning back against the closed door of my trailer. A few deep breaths later, and I drag myself to my feet and into the small shower stall, turn the water on hot and stand there with a bar of soap and a washcloth, thinking I should lather up the cloth and wash down, but too tired to move. My body is tired. Every muscle is weak and sore.
When Jared knocks on the door to announce himself, I start moving, lathering up and washing down, scrubbing dirt from my hands and watching as dark water circles down the drain. It’s amazing how much mud will work its way through your clothes when you crawl around in it for half the day. I’m glad the water runs straight out through to the ground rather than through a pipe or septic system, because if it ran through pipes we’d have had to replace thousands by now with all the dirt buildup.
Jared sits on my cot and talks to me through the door over the rainfall of the shower, hands me a towel and turns his back when the water cuts off.
I towel dry quickly, dress in the same black trousers and Armani button-down I did this morning, pull on thin black dress socks and step into my trusty black Prada dress shoes that are still the most comfortable shoes this side of cowboy boots.
“So where are we going?” I ask Jared, tossing the towel into a corner.
“Home.”
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