The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I ever had
Title Hush (I'm on Your Side)
By:
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Rating: R for slightly dark themes
Summary Your name is Jensen; there is nothing wrong with you. The pretty boy with the sloppy dark hair and hazel eyes might thwart you; look away when you feel like staring, and never, ever let yourself imagine.
Notes:Title taken from Hush, by Angie Aparo. Extremely unbeta'd.
Saturday night, you start knocking into furniture and tripping over your own two feet.
You've broken out in a cold sweat and you look around, trying to make the multiple pictures you're seeing in your head align and form one. The effort makes you dizzy.
You're not drunk, not yet, not even close. Just the one beer before you left the apartment and that was just 'cause, for good luck, maybe. Jared put down two and he headed straight for the bar when he got here, so.
You stumble again, drag of your shoes on tile, desperate clutch at a table. Someone asks whether you're okay and you smile, strait-laced practiced smile of a lifetime, and say yeah, that you should probably go home.
~*~
You wake up and it's four am, the sheets tangled around your legs. Your face is wet and the red sparks still cling to the backs of your eyelids.
Your Momma always worried so much when you got like this, soft press of her palm against your clammy forehead and the familiar shape of her lips on your cheek, saying, you got to tell me what hurts, Jensen, so I can make it better.
You never could. You try to explain the lump that sits all wrong in your stomach, motion sickness and fever dreams and this bone-deep sadness that couldn’t be put into words. And the guilt. Oh God, the guilt.
One week of summer more than a decade ago. Hot flesh and the sweet sharp tang of oranges on your tongue, a bruising grip on your hips. Nate Sadler, blue eyes, dark hair, waiting behind the theatre with a twist to his mouth. Father, I have sinned.
You were your Momma's boy even after all that. They fixed you right up but your Momma knew about the fever dreams. Pills from the drugstore and the Bible on the nightstand, watching sadly as you tossed and turned and wanted to crawl away and be so small no one would notice.
You want that now, shivering and staring at the ceiling. Your Momma's soft touch and softer words, tell me what's wrong, but then the thought makes the dread grow until it's nothing but waves dragging you down down down. If your Momma were here she'd see Jared. She's see Jared and instantly know what it is, exactly, that's trying to claw its way out of your skin.
You stagger out of bed violently, dragging half the bedding with you. Your flying limbs catch on the nightstand and everything topples over, slap of plastic against hardwood and you flinch like you've been shot.
Your phone's lying in two separate pieces, catching the moonlight and shining fiercely. None of it's enough to stop it from telling you that you have three messages and five missed calls all from Jared, and that's when you lose it completely. You run for the bathroom, barely make it in time before your knees give out and you throw up into the toilet.
You wash out your mouth, you brush your teeth. You try to stare at yourself very hard in the mirror but your eyes keep sliding away. You feel like you're getting away with something, something terrible.
Your hands are still shaking as you rinse and rinse and rinse, splash of water against ice-cold skin. You're very careful not to look at the shattered pieces of your phone as you climb back into bed.
Tomorrow, you think, desperately, and hold onto the thought like a talisman.
~*~
Only you don't fall asleep again, watching the sun rise with eyes wide open and thinking about all those things you shouldn't think about.
You've been so careful. So fucking careful, dragging your eyes away when you wanted to stare, when your breath started to hitch and your throat to ache. Going to that place in your head whenever Jared got too drunk or too friendly, leaning into you with your shoulders brushing and you thinking desperately, last ditch attempt to retrieve control like a prayer, my name is Jensen and there is nothing wrong with me. nbsp;
Only that's a lie. It's a lie you began telling everyone, the preachers and their wives with golden chain and crucifixes around their necks, when you realized that whatever was wrong with you wouldn't go away. They wanted to you to listen to stories about how what you had done with Nate was wrong, made you read the scriptures and tell them that you’d seen the light. It was what they wanted to hear, and it became easier to tell them that instead of screaming like you wanted to.
There were boys after that, boys who appeared in the corner of your periphery and stuck there, boys with sad eyes that looked at you like they knew all about what you were. You learned to shutter your gaze, you learned to say no at the right time.
Jared was different. Too much energy and taking up too much space, wicked sharp glint of his eyes and scent of candy and sunshine. Leaning in when you leaned away, including you in conversations like you've known each other your whole lives. This too-tall, too-friendly kid who smiles like a nuclear explosion and gives you half his candy without you asking. Jared motherfucking Padalecki, Jesus Christ.
~*~
It's fucking cold out, December catching up fast. The sky in Vancouver is as big as the sky in Texas, but the snow that falls like ash makes you long for heat like a gut punch, summer like seven shades of hell.
Jared's already there, looking at you with big worried eyes and you look away. Thankfully, the director calls for them to get their asses in gear, and then it's all lost in a haze of lights, makeup and cameras.
He corners you during a break and you shift and fidget and make excuses, hoping he doesn’t see how badly your hands are shaking. He grabs you by the shoulders and makes you look at him; you flinch so hard he lets go with an expression of utter shock, like he thinks something’s wrong with you.
You want to laugh. It’s like that time with the Former Homosexual from Nantucket, the one who told you about virtue of living and curing himself and looked like you had socked him when you crossed your legs and licked your lips. Momma never took you to see that man ever again. Laughing with the pain under you ribs that makes every breath a struggle.
Jared sees the expression on your face and his own falls open with dismay, his features relaxing and you know what he thinks you’re thinking. You don’t bother to correct him; you use the distraction to walk away.
~*~
Jared drunk-dials you a week later.
“…and it’s like that time with that spirit on the show, remember that one, Jen?” Jared’s saying, mid-sentence as always, and your entire body shakes from the vibration of his voice in your ear, the familiar slur of his vowels and drag of his syllables. “The one with the swing set and the dolls? Fuck that was creepy. And there was that thing with the pool as well, or was that something else? Anyway this was almost exactly like that, only not really.”
You switch the TV off and let your head fall back onto the back of your couch. “Jay, it’s late,” you tell him once he’s done.
Jared makes a ‘Pfft’ noise. “I’m a- a bigshot TV star. I’ll stay out as long as I wanna.”
You stay quiet, and he makes a sighing noise, pure static in your ear.
“I hate this,” he says eventually.
You don’t push; he doesn’t elaborate. “Where are you?” you ask softly.
He chuckles a little, but it sounds sad, so so sad, like it’s not Jared at all. “Outside your door,” he admits, sounding sheepish.
You blink at your phone rapidly, and there’s a knock on the door. Your socked feet make no noise as you stumble towards it, confused and tired.
Jared’s standing outside, looking as out his depth as you’re feeling. He looks taller than you remember, his hair disheveled and rings under his eyes.
He takes his phone away from his ear, and you do the same, not quite knowing what to do, how to react. You settle for moving away from the doorway. He comes in, as familiar and fitting seamlessly in.
“You, uh,” Jared says, and clears his throat.
It’s never been this cut-throat awkward between the two of you before, your skin never itched this much with the need to get away.
“You don’t really-“ Jared tries again. “Any particular reason you’re never around anymore?” He cringes. “Christ, that sounds lame, but.”
You look at him helplessly, and then look away when your skin begins to prickle. “Man, I don’t-“
Jared walks up then, straight into your personal space and there it is, the sharp scent of candy and beer, sweet and familiar. “Don’t deny it,” Jared says, his voice low and uneven. “Don’t even try, man.”
You look up at him because this is too much like being sixteen years old in a long hot summer in Texas. Jared’s looking down at you with a wrecked expression and you want to reach up, wipe it away, and you want to run away as fast as you can. Keep to the road and keep the memory of him close to your heart and maybe you’ll come out of this unscathed.
And then he makes an exasperated noise and turns away, ripping his eyes away from your mouth and you nod to yourself numbly.
“I need to sleep this off.” Jared says, sounding a million years old.
You nod again. “You should crash on my couch,” you offer, and your voice even sounds normal. “Your place is too far, you shouldn’t be driving like this.”
He laughs, a harsh, broken sound, and you flinch. He doesn’t turn you down though, so you go to the closet to get more blankets.
*
You wake up to the smell of pancakes.
Jared’s standing in the kitchen, spatula in hand and humming along to whatever’s on the Cartoon Network, with a little bit of a wacky melody of his own added in. You smile despite yourself.
“Hey.”
Jared whips around, grin in place. “Morning, sunshine.” He points at the coffee-maker. “Made some of the good stuff.”
You smile some more and pour yourself a mug. For the first time in weeks, you’re not shaking anymore and you want to take that as a good sign and move on, so badly.
But then Jared says, “You think these pancakes are gonna burn?”
You raise an eyebrow. “Not if you don’t let them, Martha Stewart.”
Jared makes a face, and he looks about five years old. “I’ll take that as a no then.”
“Jared, what-“
And then, Jared kisses you.
*
It’s a slow, hopeful kiss, a light suction until you begin to kiss him back. He seems as nervous as you are, and you can hear the cartoons on the TV and the noise of traffic, but it feels like remnants of noise from a planet that's already broken down, the dust floating in the wind. Time hasn’t stopped, as much as left completely; this is the only sensation you are aware of, Jared’s lips against your own tasting of candy and coffee and all the good things that you want to believe in and your eyes flutter shut.
You feel the question in his lips and the joy radiating off him when you kiss him back, and then you just want to see him. You want to make sure this is real, so you open your eyes.
Jared’s looking confused but happy, lips slightly swollen, and his eyes scan your face. “Okay?” he asks, looking scared.
You raise a hand to your lips, and search your mind for that dark place, the one where the creature lives. Now it feels more like a bird; set free, it opens its wings and flies.
“Yeah,” you tell him, a smile breaking in his face mirroring yours. “Okay.”
THE END