Fic: The Unjacketed Feelings Of Jared Padalecki - PG-13, Jared/Jensen, Humor, Romance
jojothecr! Do you remember how Jensen wore that jacket to that convention and then you and I made a lot of, uh, comments about said jacket and then I started writing fic about Jared's reaction to the jacket...but the fic kind of fell off and didn't get finished? I finished it! I pulled it out in honor of your birthday and got that baby done! And okay, your birthday was last week, but still...it is finished! Hope you enjoy! 3,432 words of humor-filled romance and Jensen's clothes! (mild handwave on the timeline).
Title: The Unjacketed Feelings Of Jared Padalecki
Author: The Artful Dodger / dodger_sister
Fandom: CW RPS
Category: Humor, Romance, Altered-Reality (timeline issues)
Characters/Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult Language & Implied Sexual Situations.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Jared blames that damn jacket for his current inability to think about anything other than Jensen; naked, clothed or wet Jensen.
Word Count: 3,432 words.
Date Written: December, 2010 - July, 2013.
Disclaimer: Real people, not mine, never happened. Wrote this story, for fun, not profit.
Feedback: Bring it. dodger_sister / TheArtofDodger@comcast.net
Beta’d: Nope.
Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by the photos of Jensen in that damn leather jacket at the Vancouver Creation Con in 2010 and a subsequent conversation of filth and drooling with jojothecr. We were mildly incoherent and yet managed to have so many inappropriate (or appropriate, depending on your view of the matter) things to say. I got stopped up writing it though and finally, finally decided to tackle it again for her birthday in 2013. I also changed it out from Harley to Sadie, for Reasons, and threw in some references to Henleys, because those are my current favorite pieces to Jensen’s wardrobe. Yes, I may think about Jensen’s clothes almost as much as Jared does in this fic.
Dedication (or Apology): jojothecr, I know I teased you by telling I was writing this and then never getting it finished, but look! I have done it! And it’s all for you, darling!
Pictures taken from the internet. Art made by me!
“Dude,” Jensen said and rolled his eyes at Jared. “We are here to buy me jeans.”
“I’m aware,” Jared said and shifted the large stack of jackets from one arm to the other.
“Those are not jeans,” Jensen told him simply.
“I’m aware,” Jared said again.
“Jay, seriously, I need jeans. Ones that totally show off my ass but…”
“Not your junk. I’m aware. I just think you could also use a new jacket.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
The two men stood in the middle of the clothing store and stared at each other.
For several long seconds.
“Jared! Oh my god. You’re fucking dog ate my fucking jacket again, didn’t she?”
“Define the word ‘ate’.”
Jensen took the pile of jeans he was carrying and unceremoniously dropped them on top of the mound of clothes Jared was already holding.
Then he marched off to the dressing rooms and never checked to see if Jared was following after him.
***
“How about this pair?” Jensen asked and turned so Jared could see his ass.
“Naw. Too baggy. You have a very pert little butt, you should showcase it.”
“Pert?” Jensen asked with a raised eyebrow.
Jared shrugged. “I like the jacket though.”
“I don’t. The color’s all…puke,” Jensen told him and slipped out of the jacket in question.
“Dude. It’s a dark rich velvety green suede.”
“Can’t be velvety and suede at the same time, Jay,” Jensen replied and walked back into the dressing room.
“I meant the color was velvety and the fabric was suede and you are a moron!” Jared hollered after him.
Jensen peeked over the top of the door. “I can hear you, man. Stop yelling. And I didn’t like the damn jacket.”
Jared shrugged. “Brings out the color in your eyes.”
Jensen tossed the jacket out the door. “Then I better not get it. Would hate to kill the fangirls with my exquisite beauty.”
“Pretty much do that every damn day anyway,” Jared grumbled under his breath, just as Jensen reappeared from the dressing room.
“Well?” Jensen asked.
Jared looked him up and down.
“The jacket is too hipster, yeah?” Jensen asked.
“Yeah,” Jared agreed. “And the jeans are way too 80s rock band.”
“I like 80s rock bands,” Jensen said with a pout.
Jared smiled sweetly at him. “Why are you buying jeans again?” he asked in a tone that said he already knew the answer.
Jensen chewed on his lower lip. “Because my mama said if she saw one more picture of me from a convention with holes in my jeans, she was flying to Vancouver just to beat me with a wooden spoon.”
Then he disappeared into the dressing room again.
When he came back out the third time, Jared just smirked and then burst out laughing. Jensen went right back into the dressing room.
The final time he came out, Jared didn’t laugh at all. In fact, he sort of forgot how to breathe. Sometimes it was unfair how smoking hot his costar was.
“How are the jeans?” Jensen asked and tried to look at his own ass in the wall of mirrors.
Jared wasn’t even looking at the jeans though. He was only looking at the jacket. The jacket that was gorgeous on Jensen and made Jared feel like he was on fire inside.
It made Jared feel uncomfortable, that was the truth. It’s not that he had never noticed that Jensen was hot. It’s not that he had never even thought about Jensen in a sexual way before, because Jared would be willing to admit that he had.
But he’d never felt like this before.
“Jared? Dude, s’up?” Jensen asked and his voice was laced with concern.
Jared should have waggled his eyebrows and said ‘my dick’, but his throat suddenly felt dry and by the time he had found his voice, Jensen looked really worried.
“Uh. Yeah. That outfit. Buy that, um, whole thing,” Jared said and made a hand gesture to encompass Jensen’s body. “All good,” he said and was kind of shocked at how fucked out his voice sounded.
“You sure?” Jensen said and looked at himself in the mirror again. “I mean, I think the jeans are good,” and he adjusted his crotch before adding, “It’s not like I don’t get why they won’t let me try on the jeans all commando and shit, but it would really help me asses the dick situation.”
And now Jared was totally thinking about Jensen’s dick.
“But I don’t know about the jacket,” Jensen went on and Jared swallowed hard.
“The jacket is totally the one,” he said and then cleared his throat to get out the remaining gravel that was stuck there.
“I don’t…” Jensen started, but Jared just held up his hand.
“Trust me,” he told Jensen.
“Trust you? Do you remember what happened the last time you said those words to me?”
Jared shook his head, because he really didn’t remember. Of course, his blood flow had all gone south, so his brain was sort of off-line at the moment.
“I ended up with peanut butter down my pants. That’s what happened,” Jensen told him in disgust.
A brief smile flickered across Jared’s face at the memory. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that,” he said, even if he didn’t sound very sorry at all. “But trust me, this is the jacket.”
Jensen still looked skeptical.
Jared shrugged and turned to a customer who was walking past them.
“Ma’am?” Jared asked her and the woman stopped. She was in her late thirties, shoulder length curly brown hair, and Jared thought if they were in bar, he might try to score with this chick.
“Did you just ma’am me?” she asked with a smile. “Come on, I don’t look that old, do I?”
Jared blushed. “No. Sorry. Can you…” and he pointed at Jensen. “Look at him in that jacket. What do you think?”
The woman took her time to appraise Jensen, all of Jensen. Probably more time than she needed actually and Jared had to quash the jealous flare that ripped through him. It’s not like Jensen was his to be jealous over anyway.
“Dude, come on…” Jensen said, rolling his eyes at Jared.
Jared held up his hand and Jensen fell silent, though he squirmed a little under the woman’s appreciative gaze.
“That,” she said at last, “is totally the jacket.”
“Thank you,” Jared replied with a smug air about him while he smirked at Jensen.
“You’re a douche,” Jensen told him, but then smiled politely at the woman.
She glanced between the two of them, let her eyes rake over each of them before letting out a sigh. “Lucky bastards,” she muttered and walked away.
Jared watched her go and when he turned around, Jensen had disappeared back into the dressing room again.
***
“Hang it up in the closet,” Jared said as soon as they walked in the front door. “So Sadie doesn’t get a hold of it.”
“Maybe if Sadie were better mannered,” Jensen said, even as he stooped down to scratch at the dog-in-question’s ears.
Jared briefly wondered how Jensen’s ass would look, all bent over like that, in the new jeans. When he had managed to shake himself free from that thought, he decided to do something productive, like take the dogs for a walk.
After he got home - and the dogs were all settled in their customary spot sprawled across the living room furniture - Jared wandered down to Jensen’s room to ask if his roommate wanted dinner.
“Hey, Jen?” he hollered, before pushing the door open.
There was Jensen, standing in front of the full-length mirror in nothing but his old grey sweatpants and The Jacket.
Yes, with nothing on under it, Jared was sure it deserved all the capital letters his brain wanted to supply.
“Should I wear this to the convention?” Jensen asked.
Jared swallowed hard and managed to squeak out, “Yes…do that,” before promptly running away, Jensen shouting his name after him.
***
Three nights later they went to the nice Mexican restaurant down the street from the studio and Jensen wore the whole new ensemble.
Jared couldn’t decide between sitting next to Jensen and maybe actually having the jacket brush up against him, or sitting across from Jensen and being able to look at him in it and all its magnificent glory.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because it’s not like Jensen actually wore the jacket during dinner.
Jared didn’t know when he had turned into such a mush about it all; drooling over his best friend and laying awake at night thinking about nothing more than kissing Jensen and running his fingers through Jensen’s hair and all other manner of sappy things that were fermenting Jared’s brain right alongside the graphic NC-17 fantasies involving that stupid jacket.
Still, Jared felt strangely happy when Jensen threw away both the phone numbers the wait-staff slipped him that night.
***
“Wanna go to the dog park with us?” Jared asked a few days later, the dogs tugging excitedly on their leashes.
“Yeah, sure,” Jensen said looking up from his script; hair sticking up in all directions, bare-feet tucked under him, glasses askew on his nose.
He looked good like that and Jared wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
“Here,” Jared said, after a moment of admiring the view, and then threw the dog’s leashes at his friend and ran to the closet, pulling out the jacket.
When he handed it to Jensen, his friend just scrunched up his nose and said, “Okay then. I’m gonna pee first.”
In retrospect, it was stupid to think Jensen would have put the jacket on before his socks and shoes anyway, but Jared was an eternally hopeful kind of guy.
***
“I don’t know,” Jensen was saying when Jared entered the kitchen the next day. “Jared seems to like it well enough.”
Jared raised an eyebrow at his friend and Jensen just motioned at the phone tucked up under his chin and made the hand-sign they had invented for ‘mother’; the curve of the belly, followed by one hand on the hip.
Jared stood and waited patiently, while Jensen hummed little noises of ‘I’m listening’ at his mother and then said, “Okay, Ma, I’ll just have Jared take a picture of the outfit and send it your way, okay?”
“Hi, Mama!” Jared yelled into the phone and Jensen pushed him hard enough to send him staggering backwards.
Jensen started motioning towards the couch and Jared went and sat like the little obedient boy that everyone knew he wasn’t. Jensen disappeared down the stairs and Jared mulled over his friend’s words. What was he suppose to be taking a picture of?
‘Please be Jensen’s penis’, he thought and then realized that would be a very weird thing to be sending to Jensen’s mother.
Jensen came back a minute later, dressed in the new jeans and the jacket and shit, yeah, Jared’s day just kept getting better and better.
“My mom wants to know what I’m wearing to the con this weekend,” Jensen told him. “Take my picture and send it to her, would ya’?” and he threw his cell-phone at Jared’s head.
Jared wondered if Jensen could see how pink his cheeks were or hear how hard he was breathing; both involuntary reactions to Jensen in that outfit and dammit, but Jared bet Jensen’s mama could tell, even all the way in Texas.
Jared took three pictures - “From all angles,” he told Jensen - and if he sent them all to himself as well, it’s not like Jensen would ever notice.
***
The convention was in Vancouver, where they lived, so there was absolutely no reason for them to get a hotel room. But Jensen was always really hard to get out of bed in the morning and they had to be there pretty damn early on Sunday, so it really just made more sense to stay in the hotel across the street from the convention center - didn’t it?
Jared slapped himself on his own back, literally, when Jensen bought that line.
The truth was that Jared kind of loved staying in hotels.
The fact that Jensen actually fell asleep in the car ride over there, curled up against Jared’s side - well, that was just a bonus. And if Jared maybe slid his arm around Jensen and slid his hand into the pocket of the jacket - well, he was just making sure his friend didn’t fall face first on the floor.
That was totally all.
***
The hotel had two adjoining rooms for them, with a shared bathroom that was huge and white and contained a bathtub that they could both fit into at the same time, if they were so inclined.
Not that Jared was having any thoughts about taking a bath with Jensen. Because then Jensen wouldn’t be wearing The Jacket and Jensen was always wearing The Jacket in Jared’s fantasies.
Not that he was having fantasies about Jensen. Except for that he totally was.
“Hey, man,” Jensen said and Jared looked up from his longing gaze at the tub to see Jensen standing in the doorway, watching him.
Jensen was wearing the jacket over a grey Henley and a pair of black sweats and somehow it all looked even better than the put-together outfit Jensen was planning to wear to the Q&A.
“You okay?” Jensen asked, concern etched across his face. “You look a little…”
“Fine!” Jared blurted out.
Jensen just raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, you always look fine, Jay, but you also look a little shell-shocked or something.”
“Fine,” Jared said again, only much softer this time.
“Uh-huh,” Jensen told him. “Should I leave you alone with your bathtub?”
“What?” Jared asked, because all his brain could think of was how the bathtub would be so much better if he were very much not alone in it.
“Okay, man, this thing you have with hotel bathrooms is weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Jared muttered. “You’re weird.”
“Right then. I’m going to go get some smokes, so order us room-service or something, would ya’?”
Jensen turned to leave and Jared caught himself staring at the way the jacket moved under the strength of Jensen’s shoulders. It was only after Jensen was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, that Jared remembered he hated it when Jensen smoked and he was supposed to give him a scalding lecture for even the mere mention of such stupidity.
***
“You’re contaminating your awesome body with filth!” Jared blurted out as soon as Jensen came back into the hotel room. “And I ordered us dinner,” he added, the last much quieter than the first.
“All good points,” Jensen told him and shrugged out of the jacket, slinging it haphazardly over the back of a random room chair.
Jared made a little squeak of protest, but stopped himself from actually getting up and hanging the jacket some place more proper, like the closet.
“Seriously?” Jensen asked and Jared whipped his head around to see Jensen watching him as he watched the jacket.
“What?” he asked, at a loss for any other words because Jensen was still wearing the Henley and that was distracting in and of itself.
It occurred to Jared - somewhere in the back of his mind where his inner-voice was too small and far-away to make much of an impact - that his obsession with Jensen, or possibly Jensen’s clothing, was starting to get out of control. If he didn’t get himself pulled together, it was going to come spilling out of his mouth at the most inopportune moment. He had to get himself in check before it was too late.
“Is it because I took it off or because I didn’t hang it up?” Jensen asked and Jared realized belatedly that Jensen had moved across the room to pick the jacket back up, hanging it elegantly over one arm and smoothing out the wrinkles like a tailor with a pair of pressed slacks.
“No, no,” Jared said and then stopped, because he didn’t know what to say or which of those questions was true and his whole face was flushed with embarrassment on top of it all.
“So…can we eat?” Jensen asked and Jared nodded, short little jerks of his head.
Jensen smiled at him, the corners of his mouth turned upwards, crinkles around his eyes coming out to join them and Jared knew, with definite certainty, that it was already too late for him.
He was totally and completely gone for his best friend.
***
“Jesus Christ, man!” Jensen said when Jared opened the bathroom door and walked in.
Jared startled hard and took one giant step backwards, crashing into the bathroom door behind him and slamming it shut with a resounding crack.
“Don’t you knock?” Jensen asked, voice oddly soft against the accusation.
Jared looked over to see Jensen laid out in the bathtub, bubbles cascading over the side, covering him from his armpits down in water and white suds. His eyes were closed, head resting on the wall behind him and he looked contented and peaceful and…beautiful.
“I’m…shit…sorry,” Jared sputtered out and Jensen smiled, soft and sweet, without opening his eyes.
“Adjoining bathroom, man,” Jensen said, but he honestly didn’t sound that upset, didn’t even seem to want to bother to raise his voice above meditation level.
“Yeah, forgot. Was gonna…”
“Pee?” Jensen asked. “Please say ‘pee’.”
“Take a bath?” Jared said, like he was posing a question of his own.
“Oh,” Jensen said and then cracked one eye open to look up at Jared. “That’s even better.”
“But you’re in the tub,” Jared told him, like he was explaining quantum mechanics to a four-year old.
“Exactly.”
‘What?” Jared asked, and for the first time since his brain had decided to start shutting down around Jensen, he thought this one might not actually be the fault of his raging sex drive. Because Jensen was making absolutely no sense whatsoever.
“You know you’re not very subtle, right, Jay?” Jensen asked him. “I mean, I’ve noticed it before, but ever since I got that jacket you’ve been extra blatant. And here I thought you were an actor.”
“What?” Jared repeated and now his heart was hammering super loudly in his chest and he couldn’t believe Jensen didn’t hear it, but his friend just kept laying there in the bathtub like some sort of infuriating zen master.
“You gotta hide your lust better, man. Like me.”
There was a long awkward moment of silence and then Jared muttered, “I was gonna say ‘what’ again but it’s getting kind of redundant.”
Jensen cracked one eye open again and gave Jared a half-smile. “Want me to prompt your next line?” he asked and then both of Jensen’s eyes were open and his smile was spreading across his face, brilliant and shining up at Jared.
Jared’s throat felt stuck, the words wouldn’t come and he was torn between fleeing the room, pretending none of this ever happened, pushing it down like all the feelings he’d been having for Jensen probably since the day they’d met - or staying right there in that hotel bathroom and seeing exactly where Jensen was taking this.
“Line, please,” Jared said, forcing the words out past his tongue.
“Answer me a question first,” Jensen said and he pushed up a little, less relaxed now than he had been a minute ago. “This thing? Is it just the jacket or…is it me?”
Jared let out a breath that had been burning in his chest, forgotten in the deafening moment of Jensen’s pause.
“Shit, Jensen, it’s you. It’s always been you.”
It was true and Jared felt so utterly stupid that it had taken a piece of clothing - albeit a very handsome piece of clothing - and some unguided sexual urges for him to realize it.
“Okay then,” Jensen said and went back to his serene position in the tub, eyes closed, small smile still playing on his lips. “Then I think you have stage directions to get naked and get in here.”
Jared liked the sound of that very, very much.
Later - when Jensen had him pinned against the marble wall of the tub, water lapping at their skin as they rocked together, Jensen’s tongue slipping into Jared’s mouth in short little licks - Jared thought to himself how they should always stay in hotels and he should always help Jensen pick out his clothes and they should always, always be doing exactly this, forever.
The End
Title: The Unjacketed Feelings Of Jared Padalecki
Author: The Artful Dodger / dodger_sister
Fandom: CW RPS
Category: Humor, Romance, Altered-Reality (timeline issues)
Characters/Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Adult Language & Implied Sexual Situations.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Jared blames that damn jacket for his current inability to think about anything other than Jensen; naked, clothed or wet Jensen.
Word Count: 3,432 words.
Date Written: December, 2010 - July, 2013.
Disclaimer: Real people, not mine, never happened. Wrote this story, for fun, not profit.
Feedback: Bring it. dodger_sister / TheArtofDodger@comcast.net
Beta’d: Nope.
Author's Notes: This fic was inspired by the photos of Jensen in that damn leather jacket at the Vancouver Creation Con in 2010 and a subsequent conversation of filth and drooling with jojothecr. We were mildly incoherent and yet managed to have so many inappropriate (or appropriate, depending on your view of the matter) things to say. I got stopped up writing it though and finally, finally decided to tackle it again for her birthday in 2013. I also changed it out from Harley to Sadie, for Reasons, and threw in some references to Henleys, because those are my current favorite pieces to Jensen’s wardrobe. Yes, I may think about Jensen’s clothes almost as much as Jared does in this fic.
Dedication (or Apology): jojothecr, I know I teased you by telling I was writing this and then never getting it finished, but look! I have done it! And it’s all for you, darling!
Pictures taken from the internet. Art made by me!
“Dude,” Jensen said and rolled his eyes at Jared. “We are here to buy me jeans.”
“I’m aware,” Jared said and shifted the large stack of jackets from one arm to the other.
“Those are not jeans,” Jensen told him simply.
“I’m aware,” Jared said again.
“Jay, seriously, I need jeans. Ones that totally show off my ass but…”
“Not your junk. I’m aware. I just think you could also use a new jacket.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
The two men stood in the middle of the clothing store and stared at each other.
For several long seconds.
“Jared! Oh my god. You’re fucking dog ate my fucking jacket again, didn’t she?”
“Define the word ‘ate’.”
Jensen took the pile of jeans he was carrying and unceremoniously dropped them on top of the mound of clothes Jared was already holding.
Then he marched off to the dressing rooms and never checked to see if Jared was following after him.
***
“How about this pair?” Jensen asked and turned so Jared could see his ass.
“Naw. Too baggy. You have a very pert little butt, you should showcase it.”
“Pert?” Jensen asked with a raised eyebrow.
Jared shrugged. “I like the jacket though.”
“I don’t. The color’s all…puke,” Jensen told him and slipped out of the jacket in question.
“Dude. It’s a dark rich velvety green suede.”
“Can’t be velvety and suede at the same time, Jay,” Jensen replied and walked back into the dressing room.
“I meant the color was velvety and the fabric was suede and you are a moron!” Jared hollered after him.
Jensen peeked over the top of the door. “I can hear you, man. Stop yelling. And I didn’t like the damn jacket.”
Jared shrugged. “Brings out the color in your eyes.”
Jensen tossed the jacket out the door. “Then I better not get it. Would hate to kill the fangirls with my exquisite beauty.”
“Pretty much do that every damn day anyway,” Jared grumbled under his breath, just as Jensen reappeared from the dressing room.
“Well?” Jensen asked.
Jared looked him up and down.
“The jacket is too hipster, yeah?” Jensen asked.
“Yeah,” Jared agreed. “And the jeans are way too 80s rock band.”
“I like 80s rock bands,” Jensen said with a pout.
Jared smiled sweetly at him. “Why are you buying jeans again?” he asked in a tone that said he already knew the answer.
Jensen chewed on his lower lip. “Because my mama said if she saw one more picture of me from a convention with holes in my jeans, she was flying to Vancouver just to beat me with a wooden spoon.”
Then he disappeared into the dressing room again.
When he came back out the third time, Jared just smirked and then burst out laughing. Jensen went right back into the dressing room.
The final time he came out, Jared didn’t laugh at all. In fact, he sort of forgot how to breathe. Sometimes it was unfair how smoking hot his costar was.
“How are the jeans?” Jensen asked and tried to look at his own ass in the wall of mirrors.
Jared wasn’t even looking at the jeans though. He was only looking at the jacket. The jacket that was gorgeous on Jensen and made Jared feel like he was on fire inside.
It made Jared feel uncomfortable, that was the truth. It’s not that he had never noticed that Jensen was hot. It’s not that he had never even thought about Jensen in a sexual way before, because Jared would be willing to admit that he had.
But he’d never felt like this before.
“Jared? Dude, s’up?” Jensen asked and his voice was laced with concern.
Jared should have waggled his eyebrows and said ‘my dick’, but his throat suddenly felt dry and by the time he had found his voice, Jensen looked really worried.
“Uh. Yeah. That outfit. Buy that, um, whole thing,” Jared said and made a hand gesture to encompass Jensen’s body. “All good,” he said and was kind of shocked at how fucked out his voice sounded.
“You sure?” Jensen said and looked at himself in the mirror again. “I mean, I think the jeans are good,” and he adjusted his crotch before adding, “It’s not like I don’t get why they won’t let me try on the jeans all commando and shit, but it would really help me asses the dick situation.”
And now Jared was totally thinking about Jensen’s dick.
“But I don’t know about the jacket,” Jensen went on and Jared swallowed hard.
“The jacket is totally the one,” he said and then cleared his throat to get out the remaining gravel that was stuck there.
“I don’t…” Jensen started, but Jared just held up his hand.
“Trust me,” he told Jensen.
“Trust you? Do you remember what happened the last time you said those words to me?”
Jared shook his head, because he really didn’t remember. Of course, his blood flow had all gone south, so his brain was sort of off-line at the moment.
“I ended up with peanut butter down my pants. That’s what happened,” Jensen told him in disgust.
A brief smile flickered across Jared’s face at the memory. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that,” he said, even if he didn’t sound very sorry at all. “But trust me, this is the jacket.”
Jensen still looked skeptical.
Jared shrugged and turned to a customer who was walking past them.
“Ma’am?” Jared asked her and the woman stopped. She was in her late thirties, shoulder length curly brown hair, and Jared thought if they were in bar, he might try to score with this chick.
“Did you just ma’am me?” she asked with a smile. “Come on, I don’t look that old, do I?”
Jared blushed. “No. Sorry. Can you…” and he pointed at Jensen. “Look at him in that jacket. What do you think?”
The woman took her time to appraise Jensen, all of Jensen. Probably more time than she needed actually and Jared had to quash the jealous flare that ripped through him. It’s not like Jensen was his to be jealous over anyway.
“Dude, come on…” Jensen said, rolling his eyes at Jared.
Jared held up his hand and Jensen fell silent, though he squirmed a little under the woman’s appreciative gaze.
“That,” she said at last, “is totally the jacket.”
“Thank you,” Jared replied with a smug air about him while he smirked at Jensen.
“You’re a douche,” Jensen told him, but then smiled politely at the woman.
She glanced between the two of them, let her eyes rake over each of them before letting out a sigh. “Lucky bastards,” she muttered and walked away.
Jared watched her go and when he turned around, Jensen had disappeared back into the dressing room again.
***
“Hang it up in the closet,” Jared said as soon as they walked in the front door. “So Sadie doesn’t get a hold of it.”
“Maybe if Sadie were better mannered,” Jensen said, even as he stooped down to scratch at the dog-in-question’s ears.
Jared briefly wondered how Jensen’s ass would look, all bent over like that, in the new jeans. When he had managed to shake himself free from that thought, he decided to do something productive, like take the dogs for a walk.
After he got home - and the dogs were all settled in their customary spot sprawled across the living room furniture - Jared wandered down to Jensen’s room to ask if his roommate wanted dinner.
“Hey, Jen?” he hollered, before pushing the door open.
There was Jensen, standing in front of the full-length mirror in nothing but his old grey sweatpants and The Jacket.
Yes, with nothing on under it, Jared was sure it deserved all the capital letters his brain wanted to supply.
“Should I wear this to the convention?” Jensen asked.
Jared swallowed hard and managed to squeak out, “Yes…do that,” before promptly running away, Jensen shouting his name after him.
***
Three nights later they went to the nice Mexican restaurant down the street from the studio and Jensen wore the whole new ensemble.
Jared couldn’t decide between sitting next to Jensen and maybe actually having the jacket brush up against him, or sitting across from Jensen and being able to look at him in it and all its magnificent glory.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because it’s not like Jensen actually wore the jacket during dinner.
Jared didn’t know when he had turned into such a mush about it all; drooling over his best friend and laying awake at night thinking about nothing more than kissing Jensen and running his fingers through Jensen’s hair and all other manner of sappy things that were fermenting Jared’s brain right alongside the graphic NC-17 fantasies involving that stupid jacket.
Still, Jared felt strangely happy when Jensen threw away both the phone numbers the wait-staff slipped him that night.
***
“Wanna go to the dog park with us?” Jared asked a few days later, the dogs tugging excitedly on their leashes.
“Yeah, sure,” Jensen said looking up from his script; hair sticking up in all directions, bare-feet tucked under him, glasses askew on his nose.
He looked good like that and Jared wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
“Here,” Jared said, after a moment of admiring the view, and then threw the dog’s leashes at his friend and ran to the closet, pulling out the jacket.
When he handed it to Jensen, his friend just scrunched up his nose and said, “Okay then. I’m gonna pee first.”
In retrospect, it was stupid to think Jensen would have put the jacket on before his socks and shoes anyway, but Jared was an eternally hopeful kind of guy.
***
“I don’t know,” Jensen was saying when Jared entered the kitchen the next day. “Jared seems to like it well enough.”
Jared raised an eyebrow at his friend and Jensen just motioned at the phone tucked up under his chin and made the hand-sign they had invented for ‘mother’; the curve of the belly, followed by one hand on the hip.
Jared stood and waited patiently, while Jensen hummed little noises of ‘I’m listening’ at his mother and then said, “Okay, Ma, I’ll just have Jared take a picture of the outfit and send it your way, okay?”
“Hi, Mama!” Jared yelled into the phone and Jensen pushed him hard enough to send him staggering backwards.
Jensen started motioning towards the couch and Jared went and sat like the little obedient boy that everyone knew he wasn’t. Jensen disappeared down the stairs and Jared mulled over his friend’s words. What was he suppose to be taking a picture of?
‘Please be Jensen’s penis’, he thought and then realized that would be a very weird thing to be sending to Jensen’s mother.
Jensen came back a minute later, dressed in the new jeans and the jacket and shit, yeah, Jared’s day just kept getting better and better.
“My mom wants to know what I’m wearing to the con this weekend,” Jensen told him. “Take my picture and send it to her, would ya’?” and he threw his cell-phone at Jared’s head.
Jared wondered if Jensen could see how pink his cheeks were or hear how hard he was breathing; both involuntary reactions to Jensen in that outfit and dammit, but Jared bet Jensen’s mama could tell, even all the way in Texas.
Jared took three pictures - “From all angles,” he told Jensen - and if he sent them all to himself as well, it’s not like Jensen would ever notice.
***
The convention was in Vancouver, where they lived, so there was absolutely no reason for them to get a hotel room. But Jensen was always really hard to get out of bed in the morning and they had to be there pretty damn early on Sunday, so it really just made more sense to stay in the hotel across the street from the convention center - didn’t it?
Jared slapped himself on his own back, literally, when Jensen bought that line.
The truth was that Jared kind of loved staying in hotels.
The fact that Jensen actually fell asleep in the car ride over there, curled up against Jared’s side - well, that was just a bonus. And if Jared maybe slid his arm around Jensen and slid his hand into the pocket of the jacket - well, he was just making sure his friend didn’t fall face first on the floor.
That was totally all.
***
The hotel had two adjoining rooms for them, with a shared bathroom that was huge and white and contained a bathtub that they could both fit into at the same time, if they were so inclined.
Not that Jared was having any thoughts about taking a bath with Jensen. Because then Jensen wouldn’t be wearing The Jacket and Jensen was always wearing The Jacket in Jared’s fantasies.
Not that he was having fantasies about Jensen. Except for that he totally was.
“Hey, man,” Jensen said and Jared looked up from his longing gaze at the tub to see Jensen standing in the doorway, watching him.
Jensen was wearing the jacket over a grey Henley and a pair of black sweats and somehow it all looked even better than the put-together outfit Jensen was planning to wear to the Q&A.
“You okay?” Jensen asked, concern etched across his face. “You look a little…”
“Fine!” Jared blurted out.
Jensen just raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, you always look fine, Jay, but you also look a little shell-shocked or something.”
“Fine,” Jared said again, only much softer this time.
“Uh-huh,” Jensen told him. “Should I leave you alone with your bathtub?”
“What?” Jared asked, because all his brain could think of was how the bathtub would be so much better if he were very much not alone in it.
“Okay, man, this thing you have with hotel bathrooms is weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Jared muttered. “You’re weird.”
“Right then. I’m going to go get some smokes, so order us room-service or something, would ya’?”
Jensen turned to leave and Jared caught himself staring at the way the jacket moved under the strength of Jensen’s shoulders. It was only after Jensen was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, that Jared remembered he hated it when Jensen smoked and he was supposed to give him a scalding lecture for even the mere mention of such stupidity.
***
“You’re contaminating your awesome body with filth!” Jared blurted out as soon as Jensen came back into the hotel room. “And I ordered us dinner,” he added, the last much quieter than the first.
“All good points,” Jensen told him and shrugged out of the jacket, slinging it haphazardly over the back of a random room chair.
Jared made a little squeak of protest, but stopped himself from actually getting up and hanging the jacket some place more proper, like the closet.
“Seriously?” Jensen asked and Jared whipped his head around to see Jensen watching him as he watched the jacket.
“What?” he asked, at a loss for any other words because Jensen was still wearing the Henley and that was distracting in and of itself.
It occurred to Jared - somewhere in the back of his mind where his inner-voice was too small and far-away to make much of an impact - that his obsession with Jensen, or possibly Jensen’s clothing, was starting to get out of control. If he didn’t get himself pulled together, it was going to come spilling out of his mouth at the most inopportune moment. He had to get himself in check before it was too late.
“Is it because I took it off or because I didn’t hang it up?” Jensen asked and Jared realized belatedly that Jensen had moved across the room to pick the jacket back up, hanging it elegantly over one arm and smoothing out the wrinkles like a tailor with a pair of pressed slacks.
“No, no,” Jared said and then stopped, because he didn’t know what to say or which of those questions was true and his whole face was flushed with embarrassment on top of it all.
“So…can we eat?” Jensen asked and Jared nodded, short little jerks of his head.
Jensen smiled at him, the corners of his mouth turned upwards, crinkles around his eyes coming out to join them and Jared knew, with definite certainty, that it was already too late for him.
He was totally and completely gone for his best friend.
***
“Jesus Christ, man!” Jensen said when Jared opened the bathroom door and walked in.
Jared startled hard and took one giant step backwards, crashing into the bathroom door behind him and slamming it shut with a resounding crack.
“Don’t you knock?” Jensen asked, voice oddly soft against the accusation.
Jared looked over to see Jensen laid out in the bathtub, bubbles cascading over the side, covering him from his armpits down in water and white suds. His eyes were closed, head resting on the wall behind him and he looked contented and peaceful and…beautiful.
“I’m…shit…sorry,” Jared sputtered out and Jensen smiled, soft and sweet, without opening his eyes.
“Adjoining bathroom, man,” Jensen said, but he honestly didn’t sound that upset, didn’t even seem to want to bother to raise his voice above meditation level.
“Yeah, forgot. Was gonna…”
“Pee?” Jensen asked. “Please say ‘pee’.”
“Take a bath?” Jared said, like he was posing a question of his own.
“Oh,” Jensen said and then cracked one eye open to look up at Jared. “That’s even better.”
“But you’re in the tub,” Jared told him, like he was explaining quantum mechanics to a four-year old.
“Exactly.”
‘What?” Jared asked, and for the first time since his brain had decided to start shutting down around Jensen, he thought this one might not actually be the fault of his raging sex drive. Because Jensen was making absolutely no sense whatsoever.
“You know you’re not very subtle, right, Jay?” Jensen asked him. “I mean, I’ve noticed it before, but ever since I got that jacket you’ve been extra blatant. And here I thought you were an actor.”
“What?” Jared repeated and now his heart was hammering super loudly in his chest and he couldn’t believe Jensen didn’t hear it, but his friend just kept laying there in the bathtub like some sort of infuriating zen master.
“You gotta hide your lust better, man. Like me.”
There was a long awkward moment of silence and then Jared muttered, “I was gonna say ‘what’ again but it’s getting kind of redundant.”
Jensen cracked one eye open again and gave Jared a half-smile. “Want me to prompt your next line?” he asked and then both of Jensen’s eyes were open and his smile was spreading across his face, brilliant and shining up at Jared.
Jared’s throat felt stuck, the words wouldn’t come and he was torn between fleeing the room, pretending none of this ever happened, pushing it down like all the feelings he’d been having for Jensen probably since the day they’d met - or staying right there in that hotel bathroom and seeing exactly where Jensen was taking this.
“Line, please,” Jared said, forcing the words out past his tongue.
“Answer me a question first,” Jensen said and he pushed up a little, less relaxed now than he had been a minute ago. “This thing? Is it just the jacket or…is it me?”
Jared let out a breath that had been burning in his chest, forgotten in the deafening moment of Jensen’s pause.
“Shit, Jensen, it’s you. It’s always been you.”
It was true and Jared felt so utterly stupid that it had taken a piece of clothing - albeit a very handsome piece of clothing - and some unguided sexual urges for him to realize it.
“Okay then,” Jensen said and went back to his serene position in the tub, eyes closed, small smile still playing on his lips. “Then I think you have stage directions to get naked and get in here.”
Jared liked the sound of that very, very much.
Later - when Jensen had him pinned against the marble wall of the tub, water lapping at their skin as they rocked together, Jensen’s tongue slipping into Jared’s mouth in short little licks - Jared thought to himself how they should always stay in hotels and he should always help Jensen pick out his clothes and they should always, always be doing exactly this, forever.
The End