Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (and other things Jensen never needs to know)
Jared liked to read things.
Jensen couldn’t decide if it stemmed from having an English teacher as a mother or an irrefutable curiosity over absolutely everything, but Jared was probably the most well read person Jensen had ever met.
And not just novels. Articles; medical journals; the ‘Big Books of 1000 Facts You Never Knew About the Rainforest’. He scanned internet pages for hours and watched documentary channels that Jensen had never even heard of.
Jensen rarely had time for nonsense. He had lasted fourteen minutes into ‘100 Ways to Die’ before he christened it complete crap and wandered off to make popcorn.
Jared loved nonsense though. Facts, trivia; odd titbits of information that he’d find on backs of cereal boxes or in those useless, out of date leaflets in hotel foyers.
“Did you know Satsuma’s have an average of 1.5 seeds per fruit?”
They were two days into shooting the Pilot, sitting at a craft service table while lighting guys and riggers yelled and shuffled around them and, to be fair, Jensen had been peeling an orange into Jared’s empty Cheetos packet, so the point hadn’t been as random as it could have been.
“No,” Jensen mumbled around a segment, wiping a sticky dribble of juice off his chin with the back of hand, “No one needs to know that.”
Jared leant back in his chair, a soda can propped against his thigh with one huge hand, and observed Jensen silently for a moment through narrowed eyes,
“What if you suddenly choke to death while eating that Satsuma and the forensic scientists can only find .5 of a seed in the remaining pieces?” He offers casually, sounding completely serious, as if Jensen wasn’t a fully grown man perfectly capable of handling a tiny, chewable seed the size of his pinkie nail.
“Would it be worth knowing then?”
It was that very afternoon that Jensen began to realise Jared Padalecki wasn’t really like other people.
:::
It took four weeks before one actually registered as out-right weird.
“Hey, do you know there are approximately 22,136,921 gay and lesbian people living in the United States?”
Jensen paused and glanced up from his script, expecting to see Jared reading aloud from one of his weird books or one of the magazines Shannon likes to hoard in the make-up trailers.
The fact that he wasn’t even surprised to find Jared slouched on one of the sofas, idly throwing a tennis ball against the trailer wall proved that he was just spending way too much time with this freak.
He went back to his script.
“Where did you read that?” Jensen mumbled into a highlighted passage, and then looked up when the rhythmic thwack, thwack, thwack of the tennis ball abruptly stopped.
“I didn’t read it,” Jared insisted, his eyes focused strangely on Jensen and the ball hanging loose in one hand, “I just know it.”
Jensen stared back until a strange prickling feeling started to climb up his neck and he broke the gaze and went back to mumbling into his papers, “Jesus Christ, we need a vacation”
:::
“If you chew gum while you peel an onion, your eyes won’t water.”
Jensen peered out at him from watery, blood shot eyes and sniffed pointedly. “You couldn’t have told me this three onions ago?”
Jared shrugs from where he’s stirring a huge pan of chilli sauce at the stove.
“Your eyes weren’t watering three onions ago,” he replied simply, as Jensen tried to carefully maneuver a finger under his eye lid to wipe away the excess moisture without getting more onion juice in his eyeball or dislodging a contact lens.
“And you might have been one of those freaks whose eyes don’t water when they peel onions,” Jared continued, peering intently into the sauce, “My grandma used to wear sunglasses when she peeled them.” He looked up suddenly from the pan with a contagious grin lighting up his face. “It was hilarious! We’d be all over for dinner and she’d be pottering around the kitchen in her tiny, old lady apron and these huge Jackie O sunglasses.”
He was still chuckling to himself as Jensen leaned over to throw a handful of hastily chopped onion into the pan.
Jared turned his head as Jensen leaned in and stared at him closely. Jensen kept his eyes on the bubbling pan, pretending not to feel the warm puff of air against his cheek as Jared spoke.
“You should try it,” Jared told him, his voice too soft and too low to be used in a kitchen, between two guy friends, who’d known each other all of three months. “You look good in sunglasses.”
Jensen startled a little at his words, and turned his head, just slightly, to meet Jared’s eyes; expecting to see his familiar, teasing smirk.
There was no teasing smirk and Jared held his gaze and Jensen stared back, silent, until the air around them started buzzing with energy and the unstirred chilli pot sizzled loudly and spat at them.
Jensen pulled back first, reaching for a discarded dish towel to rub the burning stain off his forearm.
“Yeah, well…” Jensen cleared his throat uneasily. “I’m sure you look good in chaps, but it don’t mean you have to cook in ‘em”
Jared cackled and Jensen threw the towel at him.
They ate chilli and talked football and didn’t look at each other for the rest of the night.
:::
“Hey, did you know that peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite?”
Jensen’s beer paused mid-way to his mouth as he shot a dubious, side-long glance at Chris.
“Have you been talking to Jared?”
He almost sounded accusing, but then decided that was ridiculous.
Jared was a grown ass man and he could talk to whoever he pleased, any time he wanted. Jensen wasn’t his secretary. He didn’t have to keep minutes on every conversation Jared had with any one of Jensen’s friends when he wasn’t there.
Only…if Jared was shooting the shit with Chris on a regular basis (which he was, apparently), then there were suddenly far more interesting things they could be talking about than peanut statistics.
The thought of Chris actually knowing made Jensen want to throw up, but the actual odds of him knowing were slim to none. Jared talked, sure, but they had both agreed pretty early on that the risks were too high to start hedging their bets on something they weren’t really sure of themselves yet.
The less people knew the better. And Chris still counted as people, last time Jensen checked.
And of course, if Chris was savvy to a gay love affair between two of his friends, a provocative acoustic medley with unsubtle gay undertones would most likely have already been left on Jensen’s answering machine.
Chris shrugged obliviously where he was leaned back against the bar beside Jensen, one hand cradling a beer, the other picking at the bowl of peanuts between them.
“What? I can’t just know these things?” He mumbled distractedly, shovelling a handful of the nuts into his mouth and chewing, slowly, while his eyes followed a group of short skirted girls sashaying past them.
One of the blondes in the back turned as they were passing and shot them an inviting look that Jensen assumed was supposed to be a mysteriously alluring offer, but instead came off as a slutty sure thing.
She looked all of eighteen.
Chris whistled anyways and shot her a leer.
Jensen knew Chris would have had at least half of them pressed against a bathroom stall before they leave. If Jared were there he would have laid down twenties and demanded hard numbers.
“Okay, first of all…” Jensen reached around and tugged Chris around and into the stool beside him. “She’s young enough to be your niece, dude. It’s gross.”
Chris frowned around a sip of his beer, but didn’t turn back.
“And secondly, don’t be listening to Jared and his crap pile of mindless trivia, alright? I think he just makes half of it up in his head.”
Chris snorted and flicked a peanut at the side of Jensen’s face. “Don’t make it any less believable.”
“Don’t make it any more true, either.”
Jensen focused on swallowing down his beer and then flicked a glance over at Chris when he didn’t make any move to respond. He was staring intently at Jensen, eyebrows knitted, a bothered frown on his face.
“What?” Jensen asked, all his defences suddenly hackled, “What’s with the look?”
Chris wiped it clean immediately, leaving Jensen to wonder if he just imagined the whole thing.
“Nothin’,” Chris said mildly, and then dropped his gaze to pick at his beer label.
Jensen flicked an irritated glance at him, “And since when are you and Jared bosom buddies, anyway?”
Chris held up the hand that wasn’t cradling the bottle in surrender. “We ain’t! The boy just tickles me, is all!” He rolled his eyes. “Christ, untwist your panties.”
Jensen frowned and turned his gaze back to the table top, flicking one of the spilled peanuts across the surface. It skidded across the wood and tumbled over the other side.
When Chris spoke up again, his voice was lower. “Speaking of the brain trust, where is he tonight? Haven’t seen him all day. ”
Jensen didn’t avert his gaze from the peanut’s path, and kept his voice level. “San Antonio.” A.k.a the source of Jensen’s foul mood. “He flies out for his mother’s birthday weekend every year.”
He felt Chris nod beside him. “Yeah, I think he mentioned that in one of our late night pillow talks the other night.”
Jensen lifted the bottle to take a gulp and mumbled round the rim, “Fuck off, Chris.”
Chris chuckled, “So you dragged me out late night drinking as a stand in for his lanky, floppy haired ass? Is that it? Cause I gotta tell you man, that kinda hurts! I drag my ass all the way up here for a visit and this is the welcome I get?”
“You dragged your ass up here for a paying gig and a free couch, so don’t kid yourself, asshole!” Jensen retorted knowingly, tipping his beer in Chris’ direction and raising an eyebrow in challenge.
Chris relented, and took a sip of his beer. “When’s he due back?”
Two days, ten hours and however many minutes it takes for Jensen to get to the airport.
“Monday.”
Chris nodded again and let his gaze wander absently over his shoulder towards the girls who had slid themselves into a nearby booth. “So he’ll be back for the gig, right? You’re coming?”
“Yeah,” Jensen sighed. “Probably”
“Well good then.” Chris knocked back the rest if his beer, slammed the bottle down on the bar and rapped on the wood beside Jensen’s hands with his knuckles. “Cause you shouldn’t knock him, Jenny. The kid likes bullshit, so what? What you two got? It’s pretty rare.” He paused and stared Jensen down for a minute, a teasing smirk playing at his mouth. “One in a million”
He shot Jensen a grin and slid out of the stool. “And that there number is all fact, pretty boy.”
Jensen tilted his head to watch Chris make a bee-line over to the gaggle of giggling blondes.
“It’s a bad idea, Chris,” Jensen sing-songed to Chris’ retreating back.
Chris turned and aimed a peanut at the back of Jensen’s head.
“So is fucking your co-star, Sherlock.”
:::
“So…” Jensen mumbled against Jared’s lips, “What’s your statistics about on-set relationships?”
Jared had him pinned against the hallway wall, frames of Jared’s mother and baby sister all grinning wide from either side as he rubbed Jensen’s half hard cock through Dean’s jeans.
Jared kissed him back for second and then pulled back, his hand stalling on Jensen’s crotch. “They’re not statistics,” he told Jensen seriously, breath short and panting as Jensen grappled for his belt, “They’re trivia. Statistics are boring and depressing…” Jensen shoved his hand down the open V of his jeans, “and should never be discussed when you have your hand down my pants.”
“They’re only depressing because they’re true,” Jensen retorted, laying wet kisses along Jared’s jaw and letting out a surprised gasp when he was suddenly shoved hard against the wall and covered by a hundred miles of thick, hard heat.
“You’re depressing,” Jared panted against Jensen’s open mouth. “Now shut up and let me fuck you.”
Finally, Jensen thought, as Jared pulled him sideways into the bedroom, the boy speaks sense.
:::
The only person who really got a kick out of Jared’s bullshit was Misha.
Jensen reasoned it was probably because Jared and Misha had a lot in common. They were both dorks, for one. They were both hyperactive, and tended to talk in tangents. They were both deceptively smart and had a habit of talking in a secret, private language that only deceptively smart, tangent prone dorks seemed to understand.
They both grated on Jensen’s last nerve with it, if he was honest, and no, it had nothing to do with jealously.
“Hey Jen, guess what Misha got me?”
Jensen hummed as a way of feigning interest and focused on piling his plate high with burritos and cornbread. It worked for sixty-five seconds before a colourful square box was thrust under Jensen’s nose.
“Trivia toilet paper!” Jared exclaimed, as if Jensen wasn’t able to read the assaulting large bubble print on the sides of the gift box. “Isn’t it awesome?”
It wasn’t, really, in Jensen’s opinion, but Jared was swiping his hands over the box like it was the Holy Grail, so Jensen nodded encouragingly and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler at the end of the craft table.
“Yeah, sure. Looks awesome, Jay.”
“It says here that it has one piece of trivia on every sheet.” Jared was babbling beside him, falling in step as Jensen bee-lined for his trailer door. “Did you even know there were 600 facts about toilets?”
“Nope.”
Nor did Jensen see the need for 600 facts about toilets. In fact, he saw even less need for 600 facts about toilets in the form of a piece of crap novelty item that no one in their right mind would buy.
But then, Jared always ate shit like that up.
Last year, Jensen had found a dog Pez dispenser with floppy ears and a dorky grin that bared a striking resemblance to Harley and Jared had carried it around for three months dispensing candy to all the extras.
Because Jared loved pieces of crap novelty items that no one else in their right mind would buy.
And for some reason, it itched at Jensen that Misha knew that.
“Hey.” The hand that wasn’t cradling the box of novelty toilet crap reached out and grabbed Jensen’s elbow, halting him in his stride.
Jensen swung round and met Jared’s inquisitive eyes.
“Is something wrong?”
Jensen dropped his gaze immediately and made to move away. “What? No.”
The hand tightened on his elbow and pulled him back and Jared shot him a bothered frown. “Because you’ve been acting weird all morning. Did I do something?”
He hadn’t, actually. Not intentionally, anyway and Jensen immediately felt like an asshole at his sincere tone.
He opened his mouth to assure Jared it was fine, but a booming voice interrupted him from across the sound stage.
“Hey, does anyone happen to know on what note an American toilet flushes?”
Misha was looking around dramatically for an answer from the baffled crew as Jared scrambled to flip the box over beside Jensen and scan the back.
“Why, I believe it’s E Flat, Misha!” He yelled back gleefully, and then burst out laughing.
Jensen rolled his eyes, tightened the grip on his plate and marched up the steps of his trailer, leaving them both falling around in stitches somewhere behind him.
Nope. Nothing to do with jealously at all.
:::
“The longest ever word?” Jared ventured, passing the joint down to Mikey, who was leant back against the sofa near his elbow.
Jensen was about to offer Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious before Jared could sing it out of tune, when Tom spoke up from where he was slouched in the bean bag chair, nursing a beer.
“Well, if you mean the longest word in the OED, then it’s probably Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”
At their blank stares Tom shifted self conscientiously on the beanie. “It’s a type of lung disease,” he mumbled defensively into his beer, eyes averted.
Jared blinked once, slowly, and then reached down to snatch the joint out of Mikey’s hand.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” he mumbles petulantly and Jensen nearly chokes himself laughing.
:::
“You know, you remind me of a shrimp.”
Jensen rolled over to see Jared lying sideways on the opposite pillow, hands tucked under his chin, eyes scanning over Jensen’s face thoughtfully.
“If this is a short joke, I’m going to be very upset.”
Jared smirked, shifted under the sheets, his face so close to Jensen’s he could feel the warm puff of air on his face at each word. “A shrimp’s heart is in its head. It’s a scientific fact.”
“Of course it is,” Jensen mumbled, drowsily, already feeling the heavy weight of sleep pulling at his eyelids.
“A human’s heart is supposed to be in its chest…” Jared continued, not at all concerned by the way Jensen was unresponsive and half unconscious on the pillow beside him. “You think too much with your head heart, you know.”
“Everyone thinks with their head heart,” Jensen replied on a sleepy sigh, not bothering to open his eyes. “The other one is a ball of cardiac muscle that is completely incapable of human thought.”
At Jared’s complete uncharacteristic silence, Jensen cracks one eye open and sees his giant face, slightly blurry, but definitely frowning.
“I can’t believe I fell for a cynic with no sentiment,” Jared said seriously into the folds of the pillow. “I can feel all my Disney idealisms dying a slow death inside my rainbow filled soul.”
He had teasing glint in his eye and a quirk to his mouth but Jensen had frozen: all the breath knocked out of him in a short exhale at Jared’s breezy comment.
“What?” The glint had fallen off Jared’s face, seemingly at Jensen’s suddenly startled look. He lifted his head from the pillow and frowned down at him. “What’s wrong?”
Jensen schooled his face into passive and smiled. “Nothing,” he assured him, suddenly wide awake.
Jared’s giddy laughter bounced off the walls as Jensen suddenly pushed at him and rolled over him in one swift motion.
“You know,” he landed a wet kiss on Jared’s chest and looked up at him through lowered eyes, “I read the other day that 0.3% of men are well endowed enough to blow themselves.”
Jared gasped and widened his eyes in shock. “Really?”
Jensen nodded.
“You read something?”
He choked on his laugh when Jensen kissed a path right under the covers.
:::
Jensen knows that one fourth of all athletic injuries involve the hand or wrist.
He should probably know this because once upon a time he was a biology major in high school and wanted to study sports medicine at college. It’s not because of that though.
It’s actually because of the person currently crowded by medics on the steps to his trailer. The three tiny steps that are apparently too slippery and uneven for a twenty-six year old man to walk up unaided.
Fucking idiot.
“Hey, Jen, you okay?”
One of the grips was prodding Jensen in the arm, his voice too gentle and concerned to be coming from a 300 pound, heavily tattooed Canadian.
Jensen tore his eyes away from the huddle of hassled medics and screaming producers and feigned calm. “Yeah. Sure, Kyle, I’m fine. Thanks.”
He absolutely wasn’t, actually. In fact, Jensen’s pretty sure his heart had stopped beating for a second at Jared’s yell and the sickening thud and Misha’s consecutive screams for a medic. Kyle clearly had an inkling about this, from the way he nodded unconvinced and shuffled away, casting a worried look over his shoulder at him. Jensen didn’t blame him, he knew he looked like crap. He felt all of the blood drain out of his face the second bone hit concrete and hadn’t been able to shift his feet since.
Jensen knew that shallow head wounds bleed profusely because the blood vessels in the scalp are closer to the surface. He knew this.
He just discovered that it doesn’t make it any less fucking terrifying.
“Hey, Jensen…” Misha is bounding over to him, having broken free of the protective huddle of hysterical extras and worried crew members and guys in suits thrusting papers at each other and yelling about ‘safety clauses’.
Jensen managed a tight smile in greeting and pretended it was another day shooting the shit on set. Yup, no one bleeding profusely from the skull here. No siree.
“Yeah?”
A clip board and a pen are thrust towards him without any further preamble. “Here.”
Jensen unfolded his arms in time to grab the stationary and looked down at it in confusion, “What…?”
“He’s probably broken his wrist,” Misha told him, like it’s nothing; like he just bumped his knee on the craft service table again. “They’re taking him to General.” He comes to stand beside Jensen and look out at the crowd of people not ten feet away. He gestured to the board before crossing his arms, mirroring Jensen’s earlier stance. “They need some info for the hospital.”
Jensen glanced over the sheets, the pen loose and shaky in his hand. It was the regular crap, name, date of birth, blood type, allergies and Jensen’s brows furrowed even as he’s listing every answer off in his head from memory. “They should have this on file somewhere,”
Misha looked over at him, startled out of grinning over towards the trailer. “Yeah, but they need it now, you doof,”
Jensen frowned at Misha’s contagious grin and followed where his gaze had been, to where the crowds had parted and Jared was waving across at them, right hand splintered, blood caked down one side of his grinning face.
Jensen shook his head in disbelief as Misha reached out, slapped him on the shoulder and grinned wide. “And you’re the go-to-guy for all things Sasquatch related, right?”
At Jensen’s blank stare Misha’s grin faltered, and he reached for the pen on an afterthought. “But hey, you know if you’re not feeling up to it, I’ll just tell…”
Jensen snatched the board towards his chest before Misha could take it back. “No. No, I can do it.”
Misha smiled wide again and patted Jensen’s arm and bounced back over to where Jared was trying to shakily prop himself up against the trailer and loudly assure everyone that ‘he’s fine, really’ and ‘he always bleeds this much, just ask his Momma,’ and ‘it’s nothing a Winchester can’t handle’.
Jensen caught his eye for a second and shot him a shaky smile. Jared smiled back, a little less assuring and nodded his head towards the ambulance that he was being ushered towards.
Come with me, Jensen knew he meant and Jensen nodded back.
Because Jared? He knows a lot. More than anyone probably should. He knows who invented the electric chair and how many people per year choke on ballpoint pens. He knows Jensen’s high school locker combination and his favourite candy and the exact way to flick his wrist to have Jensen coming in his jeans. He knows Jensen is ass backwards, can’t-think-straight, get-palpitations-everytime-you-make-your-head-bleed in love with him; even though Jensen hasn’t ever told him. Even though he promised himself when they started this that that would be the last thing he’d go and do.
Because Jared tends to know loads of clever stuff like that. But Jensen?
Well, Jensen knows Jared.
Fact.