Two J2-doing-sports ficlets!
Both originally written for deirdre_c's Gonna Make You Sweat! Sports Comment Fic Meme.
1. Misadventures In Wife Carrying [J2, PG13, 658 words, first posted here]
In which Jared tries to persuade Jensen to participate in the noble sport of wife-carrying, and Jensen isn't convinced.
Jensen’s not convinced when Jared tells him about wife-carrying.
“Wife-carrying,” he says, and pours himself another cup of coffee, because it’s wife-carrying, and Jensen doesn’t think there’s enough coffee in the morning for him to deal with that.
“Your weight in beer, dude. Your weight. In beer,” says Jared as he downs his orange juice in three gulps. Jared clearly doesn’t have any issues with wife-carrying.
“I’m not your wife.” The coffee’s too hot. It burn’s Jensen’s tongue, but he contemplates a third cup anyway.
“May as well be.”
Eyebrows, Jensen decides, are incredibly communicative things. There’s the tiny frown when Jared isn’t quite able to nail a scene, the happy tilt when Jared’s pleased about something, the hopeful wiggle when Jared’s trying to coax Jensen into joining him in the bedroom. And, he learns today, at seven o’ clock in the morning over coffee that’s too hot and toast that isn’t crisp enough, there’s the lascivious quirk which somehow manages to encompass the still-rumpled bed with their shared pillows and covers, the two toothbrushes at the sink, the his-and-his mugs they drink from during breakfast, and the hand Jared has somehow sneakily managed to slip up Jensen’s thigh while Jensen was too busy trying to work his mind around wife-carrying.
“You won’t be able to carry me,” he says instead, finally. He can’t really deny the two toothbrushes at the sink.
“Yeah?” grins Jared. He has put down his glass, and he looks prepared to get up from his seat at any moment, breakfast eggs be damned.
“You won’t be able to carry me and run,” Jensen corrects, because he suddenly remembers Last Saturday, and their rather incredible bout of sex against the bedroom wall.
“Yeah?” Jared is standing. He’s also flexing his biceps, and possibly looming just a little.
“You can’t.”
It turns out that Jared can carry Jensen and run after all.
=-=-=
The entire process is, Jared tells him, rather simple. Jared has to carry Jensen over an obstacle course that’s approximately 250m long. There will be two dry obstacles and a wet one. All that remains to be decided is whether Jensen ought to be carried in a piggyback, in a fireman’s carry, or Estonian-style.
Jensen personally finds the last option rather terrifying. He doesn’t think that having his legs around Jared’s shoulders and his arms around Jared’s waist has a place outside their bedroom (or, if he’s being honest and when neither of them is too picky about carpet burns, in their living room).
“We’re not actually Finnish,” he tries while they negotiate the best way for him to climb onto Jared’s back. They’re in their backyard which, as of this morning, now also boasts an inflatable pool, two hurdles that Jared usually uses for Sadie’s and Harley’s agility training, and a crooked line of plastic orange cones.“So you don’t have to, you know, do this. I’ll even buy you all the beer you want, man.”
Jared grunts as he stands, arms hooked firmly under Jensen’s knees and thighs. Jensen guesses that it must be difficult to talk when you have a 6’1 man on your back, and tries not to be turned on too much by Jared’s muscles.
“We’re not actually married,” Jensen tries again. It’s important that he keeps trying.
Jared grunts again.
“We’re living in sin, dude. That’s not the same as being married.” He runs his palms up Jared’s arms. Jared has rolled his sleeves up for this endeavor, and Jensen has to admit that he is incredibly fond of Jared’s bared arms.
Jared manages three steps before he trips on his shoelaces and falls back against Jensen’s balls.
=-=-=
Jensen’s still not entirely convinced about wife-carrying, but Jared is properly contrite, and even gives Jensen’s poor, aching balls a tongue-bath after he’s carried Jensen into the shower and Jensen’s finally stopped swearing, so Jensen thinks this particular attempt at wife-carrying might count as a win after all.
2. Hogwarts Quidditch AU [J2 preslash, PG13, 1,289 words, first posted here]
In which one Jared is a clumsy Beater, and Jensen the long-suffering Keeper.
It’s not that Jensen doesn’t like being the Keeper.
In fact, he loves being the Keeper. It’s not as glamorous a position as the Seeker’s is, and it doesn’t give him as much a presence on the pitch as being a Chaser would have, but he’s made the role his, and he knows that he rocks at it. He doesn’t even mind that being a Keeper means that he has to suffer the ire of the rest of the House when he’s unable to stop the occasional Quaffle from going in. He’s in his seventh year now, and he’s been on the team since his fourth; three years on the team is certainly long enough for him to have traded his skin for (entirely metaphorical, of course) dragon hide.
What he does mind, however, are people like Padalecki.
Jensen turns a sharp corner on his broom and reaches to his left. He has his palms cupped just so, and he’s pretty confident he’ll be able to knock away Collins’s latest throw. He’s not expecting another collision with their newest Beater.
The stands of the hoops are still no less uncomfortable than they were the three previous times Jensen had been knocked into them since the team had started practicing a little more than an hour ago.
Jensen feels an arm loop around his shoulders, and he’s dimly aware of another large, tanned hand closing around the handle of his Cleansweep, steadying him. It’s Padalecki again, of course; it had been Padalecki the last three times too. Jensen tries not to lean into the curve of Padalecki’s arm too much, and watches the rest of the team fly over instead.
“Merlin’s balls, Padalecki,” says Cortese as she slows her broom to a stop. She frowning, and she sounds more than a little annoyed. “Try to keep out of our Keeper’s way the next time, will you? You’re not even supposed to be near the hoops!”
Jensen privately thinks that Cortese makes for one very terrifying team captain.
He also knows that he is really, really starting to dislike Padalecki.
=-=-=
Padalecki seeks him out in the common room on the night before their first match of the year. It’s altogether rather unexpected - third-years and seventh-years don’t generally mix - and Jensen finds himself gaping rather unattractively for a moment or two before he places his quill down carefully over his Advanced Charms homework.
Padalecki’s still staring at him when Jensen looks up. He’s also picking at the frayed edge of a cushion, and Jensen suddenly feels quite inclined to reach over and to place his hand over the frantically-moving fingers. Instead, Jensen fists his hands in his robes, and waits.
“So,” says Padalecki, finally.
“So,” says Jensen. His palms are surprisingly sweaty.
“First game tomorrow,” Padalecki mutters, and ducks his head.
“Nervous?” Jensen smiles sympathetically. He’s still not entirely certain he’s fond of Padalecki, but they’ve managed to cut their average number of untoward collisions of eighteen per practice session to a rather more reassuring sum of three, and Jensen’s feeling charitable. Besides, he’s been there before. First-game jitters are nasty.
“Yeah,” mumbles Padalecki to Jensen’s knees. He’s still frowning at the scuffed toes of his shoes, and Jensen finds it remarkably difficult to read the expression on his face. “Kind of.”
They’re silent for a while as they listen to the wood in the fire crackle and pop.
“It’ll go well,” Jensen says, eventually. “You’ll see. We’ve been practicing, and we’re great.” Padalecki’s floppy hair looks brown and soft in the flickering firelight, and Jensen suddenly wants nothing more than to tangle his fingers in it, to make Padalecki look up. “Just don’t, you know, get into my way at the hoops.”
“Got ya,” says Padalecki. He even smiles faintly when he finally looks up again, and Jensen thinks he spies the barest hint of dimples.
“Get some sleep, man,” Jensen grins as he begins gathering his parchment and quills. “Just have a good breakfast tomorrow, and play as you did at practice today. I promise you’ll be fine.”
Going up the stairs alone feels oddly uncomfortable. Jensen blames his own pre-match nerves, no doubt exacerbated by the last-minute practice Cortese had put their entire team through that afternoon, and he hugs his books tighter to his chest even as he starts to take the steps two at a time.
When he looks back, he discovers that Padalecki has started picking at the cushion again.
=-=-=
Jensen’s right. The game does go well. Jared manages not to collide into Jensen at all, and they’re one hundred and twenty points ahead of Hufflepuff when Harris catches them the Snitch. It’s an easy win, and Jensen’s looking forward to the party he knows their House will be having in their common room after dinner, flies a celebratory figure-of-eight the moment while the final whistle sounds.
He doesn’t actually see what knocks him off his broom.
The ground, Jensen concludes right before everything goes dark, is much harder than the stands of the hoops.
=-=-=
The first thing Jensen does when he sits up in the hospital wing is to drink from the cup Madam Pomfrey forces into his hands. The potion’s an alarming shade of green that looks as vile as it tastes, and Jensen can’t help but make a face as he turns to look at his teammates. They’re standing in a grimy huddle by his bed, and Jensen thinks they look rather relieved even as he begins coughing.
“Hello,” he finally manages to croak.
“You were hit by a stray Bludger just as the game ended, you idiot,” smirks Welling. Beside him, Rosenbaum starts laughing.
Jensen doesn’t mind. He suspects that he would have found it hilarious too if he hadn’t been the idiot in question who was hit.
“Madam Pomfrey says you can join the party tonight,” Collins tells him. He grins as he cuffs Jensen on the shoulder, and Jensen feels an answering grin stretch wide across his face. “I got us some Firewhiskey, man, so get your lazy ass out of bed and join us.”
Madam Pomfrey chooses that moment to return for Jensen’s cup, and Jensen suddenly finds himself at the center of a flurry of movement as Cortese and Harris kiss on his cheeks, and Rosenbaum and Welling add their own cuffs to his shoulders too. Then they’re gone, and Jensen’s suddenly left alone with a nervous-looking Padalecki.
“Told you we’d win,” Jensen tries when it becomes clear that Padalecki probably isn’t going to say anything.
“I’m sorry,” Padalecki suddenly blurts at the same time. He looks even more miserable than he did a moment before. “I should have seen that Bludger coming and knocked it away.”
“What?” Jensen is starting to feel a little lost. He thinks it’s perfectly justified: he’s still recovering from being knocked off his broom, and the way Padalecki is chewing furiously on his bottom lip is somewhat distracting.
“It’s my fault you were hit.”
“Look - ” begins Jensen, and stops when Padalecki thrusts something into his hands.
It’s a chocolate frog, Jensen discovers. The wrapper crinkles noisily as Jensen turns it over with his fingers.
“Think of it as your get-well present,” Padalecki is saying when Jensen looks up. He’s also shifting his weight from foot to foot, and Jensen suddenly wants to smile. He thinks he might have to change his opinion about Padalecki after all.
He certainly doesn’t expect the kiss Padalecki hurriedly presses to his forehead before darting out of the hospital wing.
Jensen’s still smiling even after he’s finished shrugging his Quidditch robes back on, and he’s careful to tuck the chocolate frog into his pocket before he slips out of the hospital wing too.
1. Misadventures In Wife Carrying [J2, PG13, 658 words, first posted here]
In which Jared tries to persuade Jensen to participate in the noble sport of wife-carrying, and Jensen isn't convinced.
Jensen’s not convinced when Jared tells him about wife-carrying.
“Wife-carrying,” he says, and pours himself another cup of coffee, because it’s wife-carrying, and Jensen doesn’t think there’s enough coffee in the morning for him to deal with that.
“Your weight in beer, dude. Your weight. In beer,” says Jared as he downs his orange juice in three gulps. Jared clearly doesn’t have any issues with wife-carrying.
“I’m not your wife.” The coffee’s too hot. It burn’s Jensen’s tongue, but he contemplates a third cup anyway.
“May as well be.”
Eyebrows, Jensen decides, are incredibly communicative things. There’s the tiny frown when Jared isn’t quite able to nail a scene, the happy tilt when Jared’s pleased about something, the hopeful wiggle when Jared’s trying to coax Jensen into joining him in the bedroom. And, he learns today, at seven o’ clock in the morning over coffee that’s too hot and toast that isn’t crisp enough, there’s the lascivious quirk which somehow manages to encompass the still-rumpled bed with their shared pillows and covers, the two toothbrushes at the sink, the his-and-his mugs they drink from during breakfast, and the hand Jared has somehow sneakily managed to slip up Jensen’s thigh while Jensen was too busy trying to work his mind around wife-carrying.
“You won’t be able to carry me,” he says instead, finally. He can’t really deny the two toothbrushes at the sink.
“Yeah?” grins Jared. He has put down his glass, and he looks prepared to get up from his seat at any moment, breakfast eggs be damned.
“You won’t be able to carry me and run,” Jensen corrects, because he suddenly remembers Last Saturday, and their rather incredible bout of sex against the bedroom wall.
“Yeah?” Jared is standing. He’s also flexing his biceps, and possibly looming just a little.
“You can’t.”
It turns out that Jared can carry Jensen and run after all.
=-=-=
The entire process is, Jared tells him, rather simple. Jared has to carry Jensen over an obstacle course that’s approximately 250m long. There will be two dry obstacles and a wet one. All that remains to be decided is whether Jensen ought to be carried in a piggyback, in a fireman’s carry, or Estonian-style.
Jensen personally finds the last option rather terrifying. He doesn’t think that having his legs around Jared’s shoulders and his arms around Jared’s waist has a place outside their bedroom (or, if he’s being honest and when neither of them is too picky about carpet burns, in their living room).
“We’re not actually Finnish,” he tries while they negotiate the best way for him to climb onto Jared’s back. They’re in their backyard which, as of this morning, now also boasts an inflatable pool, two hurdles that Jared usually uses for Sadie’s and Harley’s agility training, and a crooked line of plastic orange cones.“So you don’t have to, you know, do this. I’ll even buy you all the beer you want, man.”
Jared grunts as he stands, arms hooked firmly under Jensen’s knees and thighs. Jensen guesses that it must be difficult to talk when you have a 6’1 man on your back, and tries not to be turned on too much by Jared’s muscles.
“We’re not actually married,” Jensen tries again. It’s important that he keeps trying.
Jared grunts again.
“We’re living in sin, dude. That’s not the same as being married.” He runs his palms up Jared’s arms. Jared has rolled his sleeves up for this endeavor, and Jensen has to admit that he is incredibly fond of Jared’s bared arms.
Jared manages three steps before he trips on his shoelaces and falls back against Jensen’s balls.
=-=-=
Jensen’s still not entirely convinced about wife-carrying, but Jared is properly contrite, and even gives Jensen’s poor, aching balls a tongue-bath after he’s carried Jensen into the shower and Jensen’s finally stopped swearing, so Jensen thinks this particular attempt at wife-carrying might count as a win after all.
2. Hogwarts Quidditch AU [J2 preslash, PG13, 1,289 words, first posted here]
In which one Jared is a clumsy Beater, and Jensen the long-suffering Keeper.
It’s not that Jensen doesn’t like being the Keeper.
In fact, he loves being the Keeper. It’s not as glamorous a position as the Seeker’s is, and it doesn’t give him as much a presence on the pitch as being a Chaser would have, but he’s made the role his, and he knows that he rocks at it. He doesn’t even mind that being a Keeper means that he has to suffer the ire of the rest of the House when he’s unable to stop the occasional Quaffle from going in. He’s in his seventh year now, and he’s been on the team since his fourth; three years on the team is certainly long enough for him to have traded his skin for (entirely metaphorical, of course) dragon hide.
What he does mind, however, are people like Padalecki.
Jensen turns a sharp corner on his broom and reaches to his left. He has his palms cupped just so, and he’s pretty confident he’ll be able to knock away Collins’s latest throw. He’s not expecting another collision with their newest Beater.
The stands of the hoops are still no less uncomfortable than they were the three previous times Jensen had been knocked into them since the team had started practicing a little more than an hour ago.
Jensen feels an arm loop around his shoulders, and he’s dimly aware of another large, tanned hand closing around the handle of his Cleansweep, steadying him. It’s Padalecki again, of course; it had been Padalecki the last three times too. Jensen tries not to lean into the curve of Padalecki’s arm too much, and watches the rest of the team fly over instead.
“Merlin’s balls, Padalecki,” says Cortese as she slows her broom to a stop. She frowning, and she sounds more than a little annoyed. “Try to keep out of our Keeper’s way the next time, will you? You’re not even supposed to be near the hoops!”
Jensen privately thinks that Cortese makes for one very terrifying team captain.
He also knows that he is really, really starting to dislike Padalecki.
=-=-=
Padalecki seeks him out in the common room on the night before their first match of the year. It’s altogether rather unexpected - third-years and seventh-years don’t generally mix - and Jensen finds himself gaping rather unattractively for a moment or two before he places his quill down carefully over his Advanced Charms homework.
Padalecki’s still staring at him when Jensen looks up. He’s also picking at the frayed edge of a cushion, and Jensen suddenly feels quite inclined to reach over and to place his hand over the frantically-moving fingers. Instead, Jensen fists his hands in his robes, and waits.
“So,” says Padalecki, finally.
“So,” says Jensen. His palms are surprisingly sweaty.
“First game tomorrow,” Padalecki mutters, and ducks his head.
“Nervous?” Jensen smiles sympathetically. He’s still not entirely certain he’s fond of Padalecki, but they’ve managed to cut their average number of untoward collisions of eighteen per practice session to a rather more reassuring sum of three, and Jensen’s feeling charitable. Besides, he’s been there before. First-game jitters are nasty.
“Yeah,” mumbles Padalecki to Jensen’s knees. He’s still frowning at the scuffed toes of his shoes, and Jensen finds it remarkably difficult to read the expression on his face. “Kind of.”
They’re silent for a while as they listen to the wood in the fire crackle and pop.
“It’ll go well,” Jensen says, eventually. “You’ll see. We’ve been practicing, and we’re great.” Padalecki’s floppy hair looks brown and soft in the flickering firelight, and Jensen suddenly wants nothing more than to tangle his fingers in it, to make Padalecki look up. “Just don’t, you know, get into my way at the hoops.”
“Got ya,” says Padalecki. He even smiles faintly when he finally looks up again, and Jensen thinks he spies the barest hint of dimples.
“Get some sleep, man,” Jensen grins as he begins gathering his parchment and quills. “Just have a good breakfast tomorrow, and play as you did at practice today. I promise you’ll be fine.”
Going up the stairs alone feels oddly uncomfortable. Jensen blames his own pre-match nerves, no doubt exacerbated by the last-minute practice Cortese had put their entire team through that afternoon, and he hugs his books tighter to his chest even as he starts to take the steps two at a time.
When he looks back, he discovers that Padalecki has started picking at the cushion again.
=-=-=
Jensen’s right. The game does go well. Jared manages not to collide into Jensen at all, and they’re one hundred and twenty points ahead of Hufflepuff when Harris catches them the Snitch. It’s an easy win, and Jensen’s looking forward to the party he knows their House will be having in their common room after dinner, flies a celebratory figure-of-eight the moment while the final whistle sounds.
He doesn’t actually see what knocks him off his broom.
The ground, Jensen concludes right before everything goes dark, is much harder than the stands of the hoops.
=-=-=
The first thing Jensen does when he sits up in the hospital wing is to drink from the cup Madam Pomfrey forces into his hands. The potion’s an alarming shade of green that looks as vile as it tastes, and Jensen can’t help but make a face as he turns to look at his teammates. They’re standing in a grimy huddle by his bed, and Jensen thinks they look rather relieved even as he begins coughing.
“Hello,” he finally manages to croak.
“You were hit by a stray Bludger just as the game ended, you idiot,” smirks Welling. Beside him, Rosenbaum starts laughing.
Jensen doesn’t mind. He suspects that he would have found it hilarious too if he hadn’t been the idiot in question who was hit.
“Madam Pomfrey says you can join the party tonight,” Collins tells him. He grins as he cuffs Jensen on the shoulder, and Jensen feels an answering grin stretch wide across his face. “I got us some Firewhiskey, man, so get your lazy ass out of bed and join us.”
Madam Pomfrey chooses that moment to return for Jensen’s cup, and Jensen suddenly finds himself at the center of a flurry of movement as Cortese and Harris kiss on his cheeks, and Rosenbaum and Welling add their own cuffs to his shoulders too. Then they’re gone, and Jensen’s suddenly left alone with a nervous-looking Padalecki.
“Told you we’d win,” Jensen tries when it becomes clear that Padalecki probably isn’t going to say anything.
“I’m sorry,” Padalecki suddenly blurts at the same time. He looks even more miserable than he did a moment before. “I should have seen that Bludger coming and knocked it away.”
“What?” Jensen is starting to feel a little lost. He thinks it’s perfectly justified: he’s still recovering from being knocked off his broom, and the way Padalecki is chewing furiously on his bottom lip is somewhat distracting.
“It’s my fault you were hit.”
“Look - ” begins Jensen, and stops when Padalecki thrusts something into his hands.
It’s a chocolate frog, Jensen discovers. The wrapper crinkles noisily as Jensen turns it over with his fingers.
“Think of it as your get-well present,” Padalecki is saying when Jensen looks up. He’s also shifting his weight from foot to foot, and Jensen suddenly wants to smile. He thinks he might have to change his opinion about Padalecki after all.
He certainly doesn’t expect the kiss Padalecki hurriedly presses to his forehead before darting out of the hospital wing.
Jensen’s still smiling even after he’s finished shrugging his Quidditch robes back on, and he’s careful to tuck the chocolate frog into his pocket before he slips out of the hospital wing too.