my beating heart the answer to a ship so warm (R, Jared/Alona)
Title: my beating heart the answer to a ship so warm
Author: Brinny
Character/Pairing: Jared Padalecki/Alona Tal
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1,395
Notes: So, pretty much months without writing and, um, I RPF'd? (I know, I was all, 'WTF?', too.) And that's enough acronyms for now. The title is from the song "Living Proof" by Cat Power.
So it happens like this.
She trips and falls on his lips and oops. And he has this girlfriend that he loves like crazy and she has this husband who pretty much worships her. But, it was just a totally harmless accident. And shit, accidents happen, right? It’s not like she means to kiss him.
Or it happens like this.
He’s really drunk and she’s so close to getting there.
And all fucking night she’s been staring at his lips and all fucking night he’s been looking at her ass. And they were filming all day and Jo kissed Sam and maybe after you drink a few beers with some tequila chasers, the truth and normal life and practiced scripts and rehearsed lines just all start feeling the same. And it’s a lie that she completely believes when he puts one hand on her hip and kisses her all tongue-sloppy and panting, because it’s the only thing that even sort of makes sense.
Does drunk cheating count? She really thinks that it does.
It doesn’t happen like this. (Or maybe it does. Twice.)
She’s sitting on the arm of his sofa in his trailer reading next week’s script and she has her feet resting on this thigh. He paints her toes, maybe. Or he tickles her heels with the tips of his fingers and she giggles, but in that way that doesn’t seem too high school.
And if his thumb starts rubbing slow circles over her ankle, it’s just because he’s getting into character. (Sam and Jo seem to be regularly climbing out of each other’s beds on the show now. The network says that sex sells. Even if the ratings are down from last year.) And if she slides onto his lap and smiles, it’s because they’re rehearsing. And if he kisses her and she kisses back, it’s only because it says so in black and white, 12 point font-maybe even in caps lock.
And, yeah, the names are wrong, but everything else is the same. Kind of.
(If they fuck, jeans pulled down to their knees and their mouths slotting together with too much spit, well there’s really no excuse for that.)
She hates doing press. It’s hours of sitting in a pretty dress and smiling until her cheeks ache. Don’t get her wrong, she’s grateful to have a job to be doing press for, especially a job where they asked her to leave before they asked her to come back and it’s not like the movie offers have been rolling in, but anyway, it gets pretty tiring answering the same questions over and over.
“What’s it like kissing Jared?”
She smiles brightly and sits up straighter and the blush that heats up the apples of her cheeks is so far from fake, it’s embarrassing. She tries to be coy. (She’s never been coy.)
“All part of the job,” she says, still smiling and taking a sip of water from a plastic bottle with the label peeled off. Was that coy enough? She’s not sure. (She’s never ever been coy.)
He thinks it’s funny to call her up in between takes and ask her what she’s wearing. He’s standing beside her most of the time, elbow just barely poking into her shoulder. And every time, she just rolls her eyes and says, “Nothing. I’m on set totally and completely naked.”
And they both hang up and they both laugh, him more than her. The crew gets a kick out of it and they laugh right along with them. And one of the calls gets added to a blooper reel (right after a clip of him blowing his nose on the sleeve of his shirt) for the special features on the next DVD set.
And he thinks it’s funny, but she thinks that someone is going to figure them out. And honestly? She really hates crying. And she hates it even more when other people cry, too. Worse when it’s mostly her fault.
She feels guilty. Guilty in that sort of way that makes her want to donate lots of money to charity and volunteer at homeless shelters and adopt abandoned puppies. And guilty in that sort of way that she ends up stress-cleaning her house-waxing the floors and polishing the silver that she and her husband never use, even when they have company.
And late at night, she feels guilty in that sort of way that makes her ask him really stupid questions.
“How wrong is this? One to ten, a little bit wrong to very, very, very wrong: how wrong is this?”
“I dunno,” he says in a kind of lazy drawl, his mouth moving over her shoulder. He’s half-asleep, with his hair covering his eyes and one arm carelessly flung across her stomach. He’s heavy. “One very? Two? Probably not three.” He wipes at the corner of his mouth and then rolls over and she instantly misses the weight of him. “Go back to sleep.”
She starts calling him ‘babe’ and it feels right/wrong/bad/good in a totally unsettling way in the pit of her belly. He just grins and asks if they’re trading nicknames now and can he start calling her ‘hon’.
He loves giving interviews.
He makes up all the answers, half-truths and full-lies that just fall out of his smiling mouth as fast as his brain can think them up. And he laughs after every question.
He tells one reporter that he sleeps naked and another that he doesn’t think he’ll ever get married and then turns around and tells the next one that he owns about twenty different pairs of boxer-shorts that he uses exclusively for sleeping in, which he thinks his future wife will find kind of quirky but cute. Or he hopes so anyway.
“Your character went through a lot of changes this past season, made some pretty dark choices. How does that affect you as a person?”
He scratches his chin, moves his hand through his hair, and laughs. “I, uh, I leave Sam at work, you know? I’m not him and he’s not me.”
The same question (really, almost verbatim, doesn’t anybody do research?) two days later and he laughs and responds with, “It’s really hard not to get wrapped up in the character. After awhile, you just, you feel so close and protective of this person, you know? So, yeah it’s hard when Sam goes to those dark places, because I have to go there, too. Emotionally, it’s, uh, it’s pretty draining.”
She wonders why nobody ever calls him on his bullshit.
They almost get caught once.
Her fingers are undoing his belt and his hands are pulling at her panties and this is not the first time that they’ve been this stupid, it’s maybe the seventh or eighth. (The first time involved an overcrowded network party, a few martinis, and a locked bathroom door.)
Just as cotton starts to slide off her thighs and down her knees, the door opens.
“Where’d you learn to move that fast?” he asks her later.
She smiles. “Babe, I’m army trained. I’m like a cat. A really, really dangerous cat.” She kisses him and he lifts her up around his hips. “That can shoot a bazooka.”
They laugh and make some silent (but completely breakable) promise to be more careful about where they take their pants off next time.
His girlfriend moves onto another guy and she separates from her husband around the same week.
He takes her out for drinks one night, a month later maybe, and the backs of his knuckles accidentally touch the side of her arm. And he apologizes and so does she and neither of them are sure why they’re both so damn sorry. And he walks her to the street where she stands on tiptoes and loops her arms around his neck and kisses him.
It’s unexpected and sweet and they both hope that the early morning shoot they have tomorrow won’t be too awkward. And then they both wonder if it’d be more awkward if he stayed over at her place. Or if she stayed over at his. And she kisses him again and it’s entirely possible that they’re both too drunk and broken-hearted to worry about awkwardness.
The whole situation is terribly innocent and not at all indecent.
(It doesn’t happen like this. Not even close.)
Author: Brinny
Character/Pairing: Jared Padalecki/Alona Tal
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1,395
Notes: So, pretty much months without writing and, um, I RPF'd? (I know, I was all, 'WTF?', too.) And that's enough acronyms for now. The title is from the song "Living Proof" by Cat Power.
So it happens like this.
She trips and falls on his lips and oops. And he has this girlfriend that he loves like crazy and she has this husband who pretty much worships her. But, it was just a totally harmless accident. And shit, accidents happen, right? It’s not like she means to kiss him.
Or it happens like this.
He’s really drunk and she’s so close to getting there.
And all fucking night she’s been staring at his lips and all fucking night he’s been looking at her ass. And they were filming all day and Jo kissed Sam and maybe after you drink a few beers with some tequila chasers, the truth and normal life and practiced scripts and rehearsed lines just all start feeling the same. And it’s a lie that she completely believes when he puts one hand on her hip and kisses her all tongue-sloppy and panting, because it’s the only thing that even sort of makes sense.
Does drunk cheating count? She really thinks that it does.
It doesn’t happen like this. (Or maybe it does. Twice.)
She’s sitting on the arm of his sofa in his trailer reading next week’s script and she has her feet resting on this thigh. He paints her toes, maybe. Or he tickles her heels with the tips of his fingers and she giggles, but in that way that doesn’t seem too high school.
And if his thumb starts rubbing slow circles over her ankle, it’s just because he’s getting into character. (Sam and Jo seem to be regularly climbing out of each other’s beds on the show now. The network says that sex sells. Even if the ratings are down from last year.) And if she slides onto his lap and smiles, it’s because they’re rehearsing. And if he kisses her and she kisses back, it’s only because it says so in black and white, 12 point font-maybe even in caps lock.
And, yeah, the names are wrong, but everything else is the same. Kind of.
(If they fuck, jeans pulled down to their knees and their mouths slotting together with too much spit, well there’s really no excuse for that.)
She hates doing press. It’s hours of sitting in a pretty dress and smiling until her cheeks ache. Don’t get her wrong, she’s grateful to have a job to be doing press for, especially a job where they asked her to leave before they asked her to come back and it’s not like the movie offers have been rolling in, but anyway, it gets pretty tiring answering the same questions over and over.
“What’s it like kissing Jared?”
She smiles brightly and sits up straighter and the blush that heats up the apples of her cheeks is so far from fake, it’s embarrassing. She tries to be coy. (She’s never been coy.)
“All part of the job,” she says, still smiling and taking a sip of water from a plastic bottle with the label peeled off. Was that coy enough? She’s not sure. (She’s never ever been coy.)
He thinks it’s funny to call her up in between takes and ask her what she’s wearing. He’s standing beside her most of the time, elbow just barely poking into her shoulder. And every time, she just rolls her eyes and says, “Nothing. I’m on set totally and completely naked.”
And they both hang up and they both laugh, him more than her. The crew gets a kick out of it and they laugh right along with them. And one of the calls gets added to a blooper reel (right after a clip of him blowing his nose on the sleeve of his shirt) for the special features on the next DVD set.
And he thinks it’s funny, but she thinks that someone is going to figure them out. And honestly? She really hates crying. And she hates it even more when other people cry, too. Worse when it’s mostly her fault.
She feels guilty. Guilty in that sort of way that makes her want to donate lots of money to charity and volunteer at homeless shelters and adopt abandoned puppies. And guilty in that sort of way that she ends up stress-cleaning her house-waxing the floors and polishing the silver that she and her husband never use, even when they have company.
And late at night, she feels guilty in that sort of way that makes her ask him really stupid questions.
“How wrong is this? One to ten, a little bit wrong to very, very, very wrong: how wrong is this?”
“I dunno,” he says in a kind of lazy drawl, his mouth moving over her shoulder. He’s half-asleep, with his hair covering his eyes and one arm carelessly flung across her stomach. He’s heavy. “One very? Two? Probably not three.” He wipes at the corner of his mouth and then rolls over and she instantly misses the weight of him. “Go back to sleep.”
She starts calling him ‘babe’ and it feels right/wrong/bad/good in a totally unsettling way in the pit of her belly. He just grins and asks if they’re trading nicknames now and can he start calling her ‘hon’.
He loves giving interviews.
He makes up all the answers, half-truths and full-lies that just fall out of his smiling mouth as fast as his brain can think them up. And he laughs after every question.
He tells one reporter that he sleeps naked and another that he doesn’t think he’ll ever get married and then turns around and tells the next one that he owns about twenty different pairs of boxer-shorts that he uses exclusively for sleeping in, which he thinks his future wife will find kind of quirky but cute. Or he hopes so anyway.
“Your character went through a lot of changes this past season, made some pretty dark choices. How does that affect you as a person?”
He scratches his chin, moves his hand through his hair, and laughs. “I, uh, I leave Sam at work, you know? I’m not him and he’s not me.”
The same question (really, almost verbatim, doesn’t anybody do research?) two days later and he laughs and responds with, “It’s really hard not to get wrapped up in the character. After awhile, you just, you feel so close and protective of this person, you know? So, yeah it’s hard when Sam goes to those dark places, because I have to go there, too. Emotionally, it’s, uh, it’s pretty draining.”
She wonders why nobody ever calls him on his bullshit.
They almost get caught once.
Her fingers are undoing his belt and his hands are pulling at her panties and this is not the first time that they’ve been this stupid, it’s maybe the seventh or eighth. (The first time involved an overcrowded network party, a few martinis, and a locked bathroom door.)
Just as cotton starts to slide off her thighs and down her knees, the door opens.
“Where’d you learn to move that fast?” he asks her later.
She smiles. “Babe, I’m army trained. I’m like a cat. A really, really dangerous cat.” She kisses him and he lifts her up around his hips. “That can shoot a bazooka.”
They laugh and make some silent (but completely breakable) promise to be more careful about where they take their pants off next time.
His girlfriend moves onto another guy and she separates from her husband around the same week.
He takes her out for drinks one night, a month later maybe, and the backs of his knuckles accidentally touch the side of her arm. And he apologizes and so does she and neither of them are sure why they’re both so damn sorry. And he walks her to the street where she stands on tiptoes and loops her arms around his neck and kisses him.
It’s unexpected and sweet and they both hope that the early morning shoot they have tomorrow won’t be too awkward. And then they both wonder if it’d be more awkward if he stayed over at her place. Or if she stayed over at his. And she kisses him again and it’s entirely possible that they’re both too drunk and broken-hearted to worry about awkwardness.
The whole situation is terribly innocent and not at all indecent.
(It doesn’t happen like this. Not even close.)