things and stuff
New(ish) and improved(ish) for public(er) consumption! (I still have no excuse, really.)
Who You Gonna Call (or, that one time Jared and Jensen battled the undead)
PG-13, SPN RPS, J2(ish)
Malignant forces are at work. What the fuck?
+
who you gonna call (or, that one time Jared and Jensen battled the undead)
So basically it all begins on a Tuesday night, the kind of time when Jensen’s paying less attention to the infomercial than he is to scratching his balls, and he’s just maybe thinking about hauling ass into bed when his phone rings. It’s Jared, obviously, because who else calls at this time of night, and anyway the freak spent two hours last week setting Jensen’s ringtone to ‘Dancing Queen’ .
(“So you’ll know it’s me and not stalkers or axe-murderers,” Jared had said with a great big grin, like it was the most awesome thing in the world, and like he wasn’t totally planning to call whenever Jensen’s talking to his mom, or giving an interview, or surrounded by big, hairy bikers.)
“Look, look, I know what you’re gonna say, okay? But look,” Jared says, when Jensen picks up.
So Jensen says “What am I meanta be looking at, Jay?”
“I think,” Jared hisses, “my place is haunted.”
What the fuck, Jared.
“What the fuck, Jared?”
“I knew you were gonna say that, dude. I totally knew it. You gotta help me out, Jen. There’re noises.” Jared’s words are garbled together in one hasty breath of ‘please believe me’, and the phone whistles with static. Jensen winces, holding it away from his ear, and listens to the tinny little rattle of Jared on a mission. “-And Harley and Sadie have been all, like, scratching at the door, and you know that’s not like them unless they’re hungry, and I’ve fed them. I’ve totally fed them. I checked their bowls. Twice, man, and-”
“Jared,” Jensen cuts through heavily, settling the phone back against his ear for the good of humanity. Or his sanity, at least. “It’s past your bedtime. Can’t you just sleep with the lights on?”
There’s a pause. It’s the not the good kind of pause- no ‘gee, Jensen, maybe you’re right’ or ‘dang, I hadn’t thought of that’. It’s the kind of pause that Jensen can frickin’ visualise, Jared’s eyes going all shifty and squinty as he rubs at the back of his neck and says ‘About that’.
“About that...” Jared says, and Jensen hears the doorbell ringing on his side of the door a split second before it echoes metallically down the phone line.
+
So that’s how Jared ends up spending the night sprawled out on Jensen’s couch, with one dog at his feet and the other dribbling in his hair because I couldn’t just leave them there, Jensen! Not with malignant forces at play!
That’s how it all begins.
+
Jensen wakes up to the smell of fresh coffee in the morning, which makes it maybe kind of okay that his best friend is apparently clinically insane.
“Awesome,” he says, breathing deep as he shuffles bare-foot into the kitchen, and he claps Jared on the back in a ‘thank you now stop being crazy’ kind of way. And coffee is awesome, it really is, but Jared’s hunched over at the table looking nervous and twitchy and like he’s expecting that chick from the Ring to jump out of the fridge at him. It’s a bit of a damper on the whole ‘good morning’ vibe.
It continues right the way through the drive to set, Jared staring tensely out the window. They drop the dogs off back at his place on the way, and Jensen has to practically wrestle them away, Jared’s clinging on that tight. Fuck it, Jensen figures after that. “Look, man, don’t worry about it. We have all that ghost shit shovelled down our throats sixteen hours a day; some of it’s bound to stick around, right?”
“Right,” Jared murmurs, but he relaxes back into his seat a little and does that whole dimples thing, and Jensen allows himself a little self-satisfaction at a good pep-talk well done. Hell, by the time they reach the parking lot, Jared’s practically beaming.
“I dunno why I didn’t think of that,” Jared says, as Jensen grapples with the door handle. “You’re right, Jen. We know all about this stuff. We could probably...” He takes a deep breath, and turns to Jensen with an accomplished grin, like he’s figured out the last digit of pi and just has to share it with the world. “We could probably get rid of it ourselves!”
Jensen’s fingers slip, and he whacks his hand against the door.
+
“I’m telling you, man,” Jared says on the way to make-up. “We’re totally qualified to bust some ghosts.”
“No,” Jensen says, as his Dean is painted on.
And “Shut up, Jared,” as they read through their lines.
And “I guess you musta missed the memo, Jay, but it turns out you’re actually an actor- as in, this is all fiction. I know, I know, it surprised me too,” as Jared pulls ghost-faces at him between takes.
And “I swear to God I will kill you if you don’t stop speaking,” as Jared demonstrates with his lunch just how much ectoplasmic ass they could kick (-and this bread roll, this is me, okay? The one with the smiley face drawn on? And this is me kicking the ghost’s butt, that’s the lettuce, remember-).
And then, eventually- once Eric’s called it a day and Jensen’s back in his trailer scrubbing the day’s grime off of his face whilst Jared tapes a salt-shaker to his hand for easier access or something, Jensen doesn’t even know anymore- eventually, he turns around and pulls a face and asks: “If I say ‘yes’, will you shut up?”
Jared’s triumphant air-punch empties the salt-shaker all over Jensen’s head. Fucking typical.
+
Somehow, despite three years of being dragged shopping with the guy, Jensen still manages to be surprised when Jared crawls back out from under his bed with a shout of triumph and holds out a pair of night-vision goggles. The head-strap they’re attached to looks like it wouldn’t be out of place on the hardcore bondage scene, and the most horrifying part is that Jensen knows he’s never had to argue Jared out of buying anything like this- which mean’s the guy’s owned the goggles for at least three years.
“C’mon, dude,” Jared is saying, with his stupid, dimply, magnet-for-weird-things grin, “help me adjust the straps,” but all Jensen can think is night-vision goggles.
“Night-vision goggles,” he says, voice flat because he can’t even form a question right now.
“Aren’t they awesome? Buddy of m’dad’s had this big yard sale when he retired, got rid of all his army stuff. $20, man! Can you believe it?” Jared shakes the goggles enthusiastically, and it rattles like death.
“No,” Jensen agrees weakly. “I can’t.”
+
So they order pizza.
Jared sprinkles it liberally with salt ‘for extra protection’, then dozes off ten minutes into Dancing With the Stars, by which point Jensen has a crotchful of dog face and is beginning to seriously wonder if he’s on candid camera.
He’s flipped over to a documentary about meerkats when Jared slides sideways to plaster himself against Jensen’s shoulder, goggles et al digging in uncomfortably. Here’s the thing: Jared is a big guy- and everyone’s heard all the jokes by now, so don’t even- so he’s pretty damn heavy at the best of times, but if there’s one thing Jensen has learned over the years, it’s that he actually increases in density when unconscious. It’s the only way to explain it.
“Aw, crap,” Jensen murmurs, and he begins the painful process of extracting his arm from under the deadweight of Jared’s torso. His fingers get tangled up in both of their shirts, and somehow he ends up wedged between the couch and the freakish superheat of Jared’s back.
It’s a pretty weird place to be. And that’s when the room gets suddenly, unexpectedly really fucking cold. Really fucking cold, like someone’s dipped them all in ice without them getting wet, or every last inch of warm air has been sucked away. His skin breaks out in goosebumps, and his teeth begin to chatter, and Jared is surfacing out of his doze with a low murmur of confusion.
“Jens’n? Wha-?”
The lights go out. Harley and Sadie, already whining in the background, begin to bark.
“Holy shit,” Jensen chokes, sitting up so fast he dislodges Jared and has to grab a couple of fistfuls of his shirt to keep him from falling off the couch. “Holy shit. Jared, if this is candid camera I will end you.”
Jared catches hold of Jensen’s upper arms, and his hands are shaking a little as he whispers “This isn’t candid camera. I swear on my momma’s life, this is so not candid camera.”
“Listen to your dogs, man,” Jensen hisses, finding Jared’s hands with his own in the dark and grabbing hold of them tightly. Okay, not very manly of him, no, but there’s a time and a fucking place. “They’re freaking out. This is- what was that?”
“What was what?”
“That. That. There it is again. Harley, Sadie, shut the fuck up!” And they do, cold noses pressing against Jensen’s knees as they whine, and normally the fact that they’ve obeyed him would be the mother of weird, but. In the sudden silence, he can hear it clearly. They both can, if the way Jared’s hands clench tightly around his biceps means anything.
There’s something in there with them.
Just thinking it sends a jolt running down Jensen’s spine, and he can hear his momma saying someone walking over your grave so clearly it turns his mouth dry. They are not alone, something breathing slow and heavy in the darkness, a fucking death-rattle.
“Jared,” Jensen whispers, lips barely moving. “Jared. Night-vision goggles.”
“Oh my god,” Jared whimpers. His fingers peel away from their tight grip on Jensen’s arms, letting the cold rush in, and Jared is breathing like he’s about to cry when Jensen hears the soft rustle-and-click of the night-vision device being pulled down over his eyes.
“It. Jen, it’s- dude, it’s headless. Headless. Oh fuck, oh man, this is so fucked up. This is so gross. What the fuck do we do, Jensen?” Jared gabbles, shifting backwards down the couch and dragging Jensen with him, away from where he can only assume the- the whatever is. “What the fuck do we do?”
“Focus, Jay. Chill.” He snorts with laughter at his own words, because what the fuck. This is so stupid. Stupid and dark and the breathing is like ice water dripping down his spine. It’s a fight to keep his voice even. “You said it yourself, man. We’re totally qualified, and-”
Jared cuts in with a soft shriek of rising panic. “It’s getting closer, oh god oh god oh god, it’s got no head.”
All Jensen knows right now is that he is so not qualified for this. He just grabs whatever the hell he can from the coffee table, fingers closing around the hard and cold of what feels like a mug, and pulls his arm back ready to throw. It’s the last defence of the freaked the fuck out.
“Wait!” Jared exclaims, catching his elbow. “To the left! To the left, dude. No, no, not that way, the other left. Yeah, that’s it. Up a bit, up a bit... Fire!”
Jensen lets the mug go into the darkness, and a few seconds later he hears it smash against the wall as Jared cheers and slaps him on the back. “Nice shot, man. Right through the neck-stump.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You’re disgusting. Come on, Jenny, a little less conversation.”
“Fifty points if you get it in the junk,” he retorts, and reaches across to the table again. He’s aiming for the other mug that he knows should be right there, but what he gets instead is a handful of congealing pizza. Gross. He grabs it anyway, box and all- figuring desperate times call for desperate measures- and he takes aim.
“Steady,” Jared breathes from behind him. “Steady...”
“Hey, who’s got the high scores here?” Jensen mutters, focussing on the shadow in the shadows that maybe, just maybe, looks like it’s moving, strangely fluid. The pizza smacks against the far wall obscenely, the box clatters onto the floor, and the room fills back up with warmth and light.
They’re huddled together on one end of the couch, Jensen more or less sat in Jared’s lap, with Jared’s arms wrapped around his chest as far as they’ll go. Jensen’s got one arm still raised in the air, poised mid-throw, and there’s cold tomato sauce dripping off his fingers; Jared’s wearing fucking night-vision goggles; and somehow, despite just being attacked by ghosts, he’s mostly just thinking about how stupid they look.
“Oh my god,” Jared whispers. “The pizza.”
“What?” says Jensen.
There’s that creepy-ass rattle right by his earhole as Jared tugs the goggles off of his head, and then the guy begins to giggle. “The pizza, dude. I told you! Extra fucking protection, man! Oh my god, this is the best damn night of my life!” He lets out a loud whoop of laughter, and Jensen stares down at his tomato-y hands.
“The salt,” he breathes, in something like awe. “I just busted a ghost with pizza. Pizza just busted a ghost, Jay.”
At that, Jared shrieks, falling back against the couch like he just can’t sit up straight under the weight of the sheer hilarity. His arms are still wrapped around Jensen, squeezing so tight it hurts a little, and his face is buried in the back of Jensen’s neck, tears of laughter dripping down his spine.
Jensen sags back into the embrace. Harley, or maybe it’s Sadie, is licking tomato off his fingers, and Jared’s laughing so hard now the couch is actually shaking, and there’s extra-salty pizza still sliding down the opposite wall.
Best damn night of his life.
+
“Hey, dude,” Jared says the next day, slipping an arm around Jensen’s shoulder with a wide, wide grin. “You know the old library downtown? Rumour is, it’s got a ghost.”
Who You Gonna Call (or, that one time Jared and Jensen battled the undead)
PG-13, SPN RPS, J2(ish)
Malignant forces are at work. What the fuck?
+
who you gonna call (or, that one time Jared and Jensen battled the undead)
So basically it all begins on a Tuesday night, the kind of time when Jensen’s paying less attention to the infomercial than he is to scratching his balls, and he’s just maybe thinking about hauling ass into bed when his phone rings. It’s Jared, obviously, because who else calls at this time of night, and anyway the freak spent two hours last week setting Jensen’s ringtone to ‘Dancing Queen’ .
(“So you’ll know it’s me and not stalkers or axe-murderers,” Jared had said with a great big grin, like it was the most awesome thing in the world, and like he wasn’t totally planning to call whenever Jensen’s talking to his mom, or giving an interview, or surrounded by big, hairy bikers.)
“Look, look, I know what you’re gonna say, okay? But look,” Jared says, when Jensen picks up.
So Jensen says “What am I meanta be looking at, Jay?”
“I think,” Jared hisses, “my place is haunted.”
What the fuck, Jared.
“What the fuck, Jared?”
“I knew you were gonna say that, dude. I totally knew it. You gotta help me out, Jen. There’re noises.” Jared’s words are garbled together in one hasty breath of ‘please believe me’, and the phone whistles with static. Jensen winces, holding it away from his ear, and listens to the tinny little rattle of Jared on a mission. “-And Harley and Sadie have been all, like, scratching at the door, and you know that’s not like them unless they’re hungry, and I’ve fed them. I’ve totally fed them. I checked their bowls. Twice, man, and-”
“Jared,” Jensen cuts through heavily, settling the phone back against his ear for the good of humanity. Or his sanity, at least. “It’s past your bedtime. Can’t you just sleep with the lights on?”
There’s a pause. It’s the not the good kind of pause- no ‘gee, Jensen, maybe you’re right’ or ‘dang, I hadn’t thought of that’. It’s the kind of pause that Jensen can frickin’ visualise, Jared’s eyes going all shifty and squinty as he rubs at the back of his neck and says ‘About that’.
“About that...” Jared says, and Jensen hears the doorbell ringing on his side of the door a split second before it echoes metallically down the phone line.
+
So that’s how Jared ends up spending the night sprawled out on Jensen’s couch, with one dog at his feet and the other dribbling in his hair because I couldn’t just leave them there, Jensen! Not with malignant forces at play!
That’s how it all begins.
+
Jensen wakes up to the smell of fresh coffee in the morning, which makes it maybe kind of okay that his best friend is apparently clinically insane.
“Awesome,” he says, breathing deep as he shuffles bare-foot into the kitchen, and he claps Jared on the back in a ‘thank you now stop being crazy’ kind of way. And coffee is awesome, it really is, but Jared’s hunched over at the table looking nervous and twitchy and like he’s expecting that chick from the Ring to jump out of the fridge at him. It’s a bit of a damper on the whole ‘good morning’ vibe.
It continues right the way through the drive to set, Jared staring tensely out the window. They drop the dogs off back at his place on the way, and Jensen has to practically wrestle them away, Jared’s clinging on that tight. Fuck it, Jensen figures after that. “Look, man, don’t worry about it. We have all that ghost shit shovelled down our throats sixteen hours a day; some of it’s bound to stick around, right?”
“Right,” Jared murmurs, but he relaxes back into his seat a little and does that whole dimples thing, and Jensen allows himself a little self-satisfaction at a good pep-talk well done. Hell, by the time they reach the parking lot, Jared’s practically beaming.
“I dunno why I didn’t think of that,” Jared says, as Jensen grapples with the door handle. “You’re right, Jen. We know all about this stuff. We could probably...” He takes a deep breath, and turns to Jensen with an accomplished grin, like he’s figured out the last digit of pi and just has to share it with the world. “We could probably get rid of it ourselves!”
Jensen’s fingers slip, and he whacks his hand against the door.
+
“I’m telling you, man,” Jared says on the way to make-up. “We’re totally qualified to bust some ghosts.”
“No,” Jensen says, as his Dean is painted on.
And “Shut up, Jared,” as they read through their lines.
And “I guess you musta missed the memo, Jay, but it turns out you’re actually an actor- as in, this is all fiction. I know, I know, it surprised me too,” as Jared pulls ghost-faces at him between takes.
And “I swear to God I will kill you if you don’t stop speaking,” as Jared demonstrates with his lunch just how much ectoplasmic ass they could kick (-and this bread roll, this is me, okay? The one with the smiley face drawn on? And this is me kicking the ghost’s butt, that’s the lettuce, remember-).
And then, eventually- once Eric’s called it a day and Jensen’s back in his trailer scrubbing the day’s grime off of his face whilst Jared tapes a salt-shaker to his hand for easier access or something, Jensen doesn’t even know anymore- eventually, he turns around and pulls a face and asks: “If I say ‘yes’, will you shut up?”
Jared’s triumphant air-punch empties the salt-shaker all over Jensen’s head. Fucking typical.
+
Somehow, despite three years of being dragged shopping with the guy, Jensen still manages to be surprised when Jared crawls back out from under his bed with a shout of triumph and holds out a pair of night-vision goggles. The head-strap they’re attached to looks like it wouldn’t be out of place on the hardcore bondage scene, and the most horrifying part is that Jensen knows he’s never had to argue Jared out of buying anything like this- which mean’s the guy’s owned the goggles for at least three years.
“C’mon, dude,” Jared is saying, with his stupid, dimply, magnet-for-weird-things grin, “help me adjust the straps,” but all Jensen can think is night-vision goggles.
“Night-vision goggles,” he says, voice flat because he can’t even form a question right now.
“Aren’t they awesome? Buddy of m’dad’s had this big yard sale when he retired, got rid of all his army stuff. $20, man! Can you believe it?” Jared shakes the goggles enthusiastically, and it rattles like death.
“No,” Jensen agrees weakly. “I can’t.”
+
So they order pizza.
Jared sprinkles it liberally with salt ‘for extra protection’, then dozes off ten minutes into Dancing With the Stars, by which point Jensen has a crotchful of dog face and is beginning to seriously wonder if he’s on candid camera.
He’s flipped over to a documentary about meerkats when Jared slides sideways to plaster himself against Jensen’s shoulder, goggles et al digging in uncomfortably. Here’s the thing: Jared is a big guy- and everyone’s heard all the jokes by now, so don’t even- so he’s pretty damn heavy at the best of times, but if there’s one thing Jensen has learned over the years, it’s that he actually increases in density when unconscious. It’s the only way to explain it.
“Aw, crap,” Jensen murmurs, and he begins the painful process of extracting his arm from under the deadweight of Jared’s torso. His fingers get tangled up in both of their shirts, and somehow he ends up wedged between the couch and the freakish superheat of Jared’s back.
It’s a pretty weird place to be. And that’s when the room gets suddenly, unexpectedly really fucking cold. Really fucking cold, like someone’s dipped them all in ice without them getting wet, or every last inch of warm air has been sucked away. His skin breaks out in goosebumps, and his teeth begin to chatter, and Jared is surfacing out of his doze with a low murmur of confusion.
“Jens’n? Wha-?”
The lights go out. Harley and Sadie, already whining in the background, begin to bark.
“Holy shit,” Jensen chokes, sitting up so fast he dislodges Jared and has to grab a couple of fistfuls of his shirt to keep him from falling off the couch. “Holy shit. Jared, if this is candid camera I will end you.”
Jared catches hold of Jensen’s upper arms, and his hands are shaking a little as he whispers “This isn’t candid camera. I swear on my momma’s life, this is so not candid camera.”
“Listen to your dogs, man,” Jensen hisses, finding Jared’s hands with his own in the dark and grabbing hold of them tightly. Okay, not very manly of him, no, but there’s a time and a fucking place. “They’re freaking out. This is- what was that?”
“What was what?”
“That. That. There it is again. Harley, Sadie, shut the fuck up!” And they do, cold noses pressing against Jensen’s knees as they whine, and normally the fact that they’ve obeyed him would be the mother of weird, but. In the sudden silence, he can hear it clearly. They both can, if the way Jared’s hands clench tightly around his biceps means anything.
There’s something in there with them.
Just thinking it sends a jolt running down Jensen’s spine, and he can hear his momma saying someone walking over your grave so clearly it turns his mouth dry. They are not alone, something breathing slow and heavy in the darkness, a fucking death-rattle.
“Jared,” Jensen whispers, lips barely moving. “Jared. Night-vision goggles.”
“Oh my god,” Jared whimpers. His fingers peel away from their tight grip on Jensen’s arms, letting the cold rush in, and Jared is breathing like he’s about to cry when Jensen hears the soft rustle-and-click of the night-vision device being pulled down over his eyes.
“It. Jen, it’s- dude, it’s headless. Headless. Oh fuck, oh man, this is so fucked up. This is so gross. What the fuck do we do, Jensen?” Jared gabbles, shifting backwards down the couch and dragging Jensen with him, away from where he can only assume the- the whatever is. “What the fuck do we do?”
“Focus, Jay. Chill.” He snorts with laughter at his own words, because what the fuck. This is so stupid. Stupid and dark and the breathing is like ice water dripping down his spine. It’s a fight to keep his voice even. “You said it yourself, man. We’re totally qualified, and-”
Jared cuts in with a soft shriek of rising panic. “It’s getting closer, oh god oh god oh god, it’s got no head.”
All Jensen knows right now is that he is so not qualified for this. He just grabs whatever the hell he can from the coffee table, fingers closing around the hard and cold of what feels like a mug, and pulls his arm back ready to throw. It’s the last defence of the freaked the fuck out.
“Wait!” Jared exclaims, catching his elbow. “To the left! To the left, dude. No, no, not that way, the other left. Yeah, that’s it. Up a bit, up a bit... Fire!”
Jensen lets the mug go into the darkness, and a few seconds later he hears it smash against the wall as Jared cheers and slaps him on the back. “Nice shot, man. Right through the neck-stump.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You’re disgusting. Come on, Jenny, a little less conversation.”
“Fifty points if you get it in the junk,” he retorts, and reaches across to the table again. He’s aiming for the other mug that he knows should be right there, but what he gets instead is a handful of congealing pizza. Gross. He grabs it anyway, box and all- figuring desperate times call for desperate measures- and he takes aim.
“Steady,” Jared breathes from behind him. “Steady...”
“Hey, who’s got the high scores here?” Jensen mutters, focussing on the shadow in the shadows that maybe, just maybe, looks like it’s moving, strangely fluid. The pizza smacks against the far wall obscenely, the box clatters onto the floor, and the room fills back up with warmth and light.
They’re huddled together on one end of the couch, Jensen more or less sat in Jared’s lap, with Jared’s arms wrapped around his chest as far as they’ll go. Jensen’s got one arm still raised in the air, poised mid-throw, and there’s cold tomato sauce dripping off his fingers; Jared’s wearing fucking night-vision goggles; and somehow, despite just being attacked by ghosts, he’s mostly just thinking about how stupid they look.
“Oh my god,” Jared whispers. “The pizza.”
“What?” says Jensen.
There’s that creepy-ass rattle right by his earhole as Jared tugs the goggles off of his head, and then the guy begins to giggle. “The pizza, dude. I told you! Extra fucking protection, man! Oh my god, this is the best damn night of my life!” He lets out a loud whoop of laughter, and Jensen stares down at his tomato-y hands.
“The salt,” he breathes, in something like awe. “I just busted a ghost with pizza. Pizza just busted a ghost, Jay.”
At that, Jared shrieks, falling back against the couch like he just can’t sit up straight under the weight of the sheer hilarity. His arms are still wrapped around Jensen, squeezing so tight it hurts a little, and his face is buried in the back of Jensen’s neck, tears of laughter dripping down his spine.
Jensen sags back into the embrace. Harley, or maybe it’s Sadie, is licking tomato off his fingers, and Jared’s laughing so hard now the couch is actually shaking, and there’s extra-salty pizza still sliding down the opposite wall.
Best damn night of his life.
+
“Hey, dude,” Jared says the next day, slipping an arm around Jensen’s shoulder with a wide, wide grin. “You know the old library downtown? Rumour is, it’s got a ghost.”