.0098 - You're Every Minute of My Every Day
Jensen/Jared
2,289 words
Title from Michael Bublé
Prompt: Another good thing about living with Jared? Jensen can wear Jared's hoodies whenever he wants to and blame it on laundry day. Jared loves it. @ j2_a_day
The sun is pale but still quite warm as it hangs on the steel blue sky and flickers sporadically through the dark clouds of shreds, giving the misty morning a sweet aftertaste of the slowly disappearing summer. The leaves scattered all over the ground, toned in every imaginable shade of yellow and red, crackle under each step, filling the air with the heavy smell of earth and decay, and the sense of loss that trickles after every falling leaf.
Sadie doesn’t feel the melancholy, doesn’t mind the wetness or the lack of sunshine, prefers it to heat actually. She loves running through the rustling gold that drops from the trees, spiraling down like colored snowflakes, enjoys jumping into the piles laboriously gathered at the sides of the roads. It’s these times that she forgets to be sad, forgets to glance around or back to where they’ve just come from, looking for Harley who’s not there anymore and waiting for him to catch up with them. When she buries her nose into one of those heaps and rummages through it until leaves are flying into every direction and the neat pile is gone, she’s again the puppy that Jared had adopted and not the lady she’s become. Those moments are painfully rare, though.
Whistling to get her attention, Jared throws the leash over his shoulder and shoves his hands into the pockets of his down vest, heading home.
---
Following the wet trail of dirty paw prints that lead from the main door and disappear behind a corner, Jared walks down the corridor after Sadie, knowing well that wherever she’s going, there is definitely Jensen at the end.
She had liked him from the first day he had moved in, the moment they had met, but now she’s literally become his shadow. Before Harley died, when he was sick and too weak to walk the stairs up to Jared’s bedroom, Sadie slept in the living room with him, watching him, guarding. They had always been that close. But when he passed away, instead of looking for safety in Jared, she has fixated on Jensen. She loves him, and Jared doesn’t blame her, understands it maybe too well. He’s only worried what’s gonna happen with her when Jensen decides to find a place of his own and move out. He’s also, selfishly, a little worried about what’s gonna happen with him when Jensen decides to move out, when his broken heart heals and he finds someone new to love, to rebuild his dreams with. The thing is, Jared really likes how it is now. He loves having Jensen around, all these hours and days, still, each day more, for a wholly different reason, nowhere as innocent as those he had when he had asked him to move in with him. Things have changed, and they’re more than just a little scary.
Rapping his fingers on the doorframe, Jared pokes his head into the laundry room that Sadie had just abandoned, accompanied by Jensen’s soft, “Careful, baby girl, don’t fall.”
The air is different here, humid, soaked up with warm water and washing powder, fabric softener and wet clothes. The smell is surprisingly strong, actually.
“Hey, Jens, I’ve got you the… golf magazine. What is happening?”
There’s water in there. A lot of it. Tepid, slightly dirty water full of suds equally covers every inch of the floor, and, despite the variety of dry and wet clothes scattered all over, it extends beneath the threshold into the corridor. And in the middle of the mess is Jensen, on all fours. Washed out jeans, already thoroughly soaked, rolled up to his knees, hair wet and spiky, pointing to every which direction, obviously by accident, feet bare, trying to save what evidently cannot be saved.
“Hoard the animals, Noah, the Flood is nigh,” he says when he stands up, pushing into Jared’s hands a dark, wet bundle of something that might have been, in a dry state, a T-shirt. Jared drops it back to the floor, just in case it’s not. “Oh, and just so you know? I’m done with this crap. We either buy a new one or, from now on, you’re doing the laundry yourself.” Jensen adds sweetly, giving Jared the darkest, most devilish smirk he can master.
Grinning at the sight in front of him; damp, disheveled Jensen with an angry pout on his lips, so unfairly sexy and cute, Jared nods. “’Kay.” He’s not protesting, because he knows that the washing machine is an old, stubborn bitch that breaks whenever she wants and however she wants, making the chores that neither of them enjoys to begin with even more unpleasant.
“’Kay?” Jensen repeats, a little frown of surprise wrinkling his forehead.
“’Kay, we’re gonna buy a new one.”
“Oh, okay. Alright, I’m… I’m glad you agree.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Jared leans against the door, measuring Jensen with a little, amused smile. He thinks that this man should be actually illegal. He’s fairly sure that no guy over thirty should have the right to look so hot in an old, faded and worn hoodie twice his size, which isn’t even his.
“You know, I was looking for this sweatshirt this morning,” Jared notes, pointing his chin towards the big, albeit slightly washed out logo of Abercrombie & Fitch proudly embroidered on the front of the hoodie.
Jensen pauses in a mid-movement, a completely soaked shirt held loosely in his hands, dripping water all over his feet instead of into the sink he was originally aiming for. He looks down at himself, confused, like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing, like he doesn’t remember putting the hoodie on. Knowing him, Jared thinks it might be actually true.
It’s a peculiar little story, unspoken and yet to be acknowledged, of Jensen’s love for Jared’s hoodies. It’s strange, really, because Jensen doesn’t borrow other people’s clothes, not Misha’s or Richard’s, not his brother’s… that is unhygienic. Yet he absolutely doesn’t mind putting on a hoodie that Jared left wherever he’d dropped it at the time. Jared doesn’t know why he does it, doesn’t understand why he would, but he doesn’t mind. He likes it, in fact, it brings them just that little bit closer, makes their relationship, however innocent actually, oddly intimate.
The first time this happened, or the one Jared remembers, was his own fault. They were at work, waiting for the sun to set, or the set to change, the details are a little vague now, but they’re quite unimportant anyway. Jensen was sick, or getting so, sweating and cold, constantly sneezing and looking for tissues, his eyes watering. Tired of it all, he was falling asleep on Jared’s shoulder, his bare arm, chilly and pebbled with goose bumps, brushing Jared’s ever so often. It was a warm day, hot almost, but Sam’s scene required a sweatshirt so Jared had one nearby. Nudging Jensen awake, as gently as he could, he made him put it on, helping him to guide his limp arms into the sleeves. He was totally unprepared for the sudden, wholly unexpected burst of emotions and feelings, so alien and new at the time, which that simple gesture of resignation and trust raised inside of him. Jensen wasn’t all that smaller, he wasn’t small, well-muscled and taller than most, but he looked almost tiny in Sam’s large hoodie, and so freaking young. His face, already pale, was nearly white in the contrast of the black fabric, and his hair a mess, crumpled by the hood that got caught on Jensen’s forehead before Jared pushed it back. Seeing Jensen, Dean, in a hoodie was a rarity in itself, knowing it was Sam’s, was a little bonus the fans, regretfully, never got to see. Jensen looked adorable. And, strangely, sexy at the same time.
Then, another time, Jared had come back to Vancouver after a week spent in Texas to find Jensen asleep in the living room. He had his glasses on, slipped down his nose and askew so one of the hooks was poking into the tender flesh beneath his eye, millionth re-run of How I Met Your Mother playing in the background, and Jared’s dark blue hoodie on. Jared woke him up and sent him to bed, and never mentioned the dry dip of shaving cream on the front of his hoodie that definitely hadn’t been there seven days ago.
Jared’s favorite moment, though, probably, is a photo he took himself, one Jensen doesn’t even know that exists and that Jared hides in his drawer, among piles of envelopes, cellphone invoices and tenancy agreement. It’s of Jensen sitting on the top stair of the back porch, leaning against the corner pole of the railing, and reading a script for a small independent movie he would never get the time for. Wearing the same light hoodie that Jared had on in the first episode of season five of Gilmore Girls and somehow never remembered to give back. Since the wardrobe department never called, he figured they didn’t really need it. It was sunset, the first one of autumn, one of the last warm evenings in Canada, and Jensen’s brown hair seemed blonde in that orange flare. His features were softened, every hard angle smooth, his expression relaxed, finally, after so many stressful days of shooting. Harley’s head was resting in his lap, heavy and weary like the turning of the whole world was upon his shoulders, and Sadie was curled at their side. It was the picture of perfection, of home Jared had never known he wanted, until then.
Jared wonders if Jensen even knows it, that he does it, that Jared knows. Perhaps they both know. Maybe, just like Jared knows that Jensen borrows his hoodies, Jensen knows that Jared puts them on the second Jensen takes them off, wanting to feel him, his warmth and fragrance that got caught in the fibers of the fabric, hoping to get even closer. Maybe Jensen puts them on for the same damn reason. Maybe they both know and remain silent, just like they ignore the nameless something hanging between them. They’re silent, because it seems to be easier, more comfortable. Jared’s not sure how long they can continue in this, the silence and ignorance of it all, isn’t sure he wants to continue in this at all. In the, ‘Let’s pretend that I don’t want you, and that I don’t fail at it. Let’s pretend that I don’t desperately hope that you feel the same’, but he’s too scared to go and do something about it.
“Oh,” Jensen says now when he realizes that he’s, once again, put on a piece of clothing that isn’t quite his. “Laundry day, you know? I’m out,” he shrugs his shoulders eloquently and tosses the wet shirt into the sink. “Completely. Nothing to wear.”
Still smiling, Jared nods with understanding. They always do the laundry this late, when they’re close to walking around naked.
“Really,” Jensen insists.
“Yeah.”
“Uhm… Sorry?”
“Hmm, it’s alright, didn’t really need it in the end.”
Jensen nods, then pauses again, looking a little nervous when Jared doesn’t move, keeps on watching him with that little, bewitched grin.
“What?”
“Do you have any idea how sexy you look right now?”
Arching his eyebrow quizzically, Jensen glances down and eyes himself critically; the large hoodie, his old, soaked jeans, bare feet standing in cooling, dirty water, then up at Jared with a look that clearly suggests that he’s doubting Jared’s mental health. “No,” he chuckles amusedly. “No, I really do not.”
Pushing away from the door, Jared reaches for Jensen, curling his fingers in the front of Jensen’s hoodie and tugging him closer. “That’s a shame you don’t,” he says quietly, his eyes caught on Jensen’s lips, so full and tempting.
Puzzled, Jensen stumbles involuntarily forward, “Wha-what you’re--”
“’Cause you really, really do.” Holding Jensen’s eyes, so freaking huge and deep, quite terrified, frankly, Jared leans a little closer, now desperately wanting to feel Jensen’s mouth, taste it, but giving him the chance and time to stop him, stop it all.
Jensen doesn’t. Parting his lips slightly, he steps on his toes and presses his mouth to Jared’s, just barely, letting out a quiet sigh, a warm puff of breath that tastes of bitter coffee and sweet orange juice. His lips are warm and smooth, pliant, opening beneath Jared’s at the slightest pressure. Just the briefest touch of his tongue makes Jared go weak at the knees.
Breaking the kiss a moment later with a gentle nip at Jared’s bottom lip, Jensen pulls away and runs his hand through his hair, looking around. “We should--” He clears his throat and tries again, blushing a little at how rough, fucked out his voice sounds. “We should really clean the mess here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, totally,” Jared agrees, not allowing Jensen to take a single step backward. “Stay.”
“What?”
“Stay. With me. With… us. Here. Don’t look for another place, not this year, not the next. Jensen, stay with me. Be… with me.”
Jensen’s gaze is intent, penetrating and curious when he asks, “Are you… Are you asking me to date you?”
“Uhm… Yes.” It comes out more as a question than a firm statement, a request, unsure and a bit panicked.
Jensen smiles, though, and, God, he could really melt an iceberg with that one. “Okay,” he says, like it's really all that simple.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, then… Oh, and Jen?”
“Yeah?”
“Just… out of curiosity. Why do you wear my hoodies?”
Grinning, Jensen shakes his head, then pulls Jared in by the hem of his T-shirt, his lips so near again they brush Jared’s with each word. “Because they’re yours. Silly.”
2,289 words
Title from Michael Bublé
Prompt: Another good thing about living with Jared? Jensen can wear Jared's hoodies whenever he wants to and blame it on laundry day. Jared loves it. @ j2_a_day
The sun is pale but still quite warm as it hangs on the steel blue sky and flickers sporadically through the dark clouds of shreds, giving the misty morning a sweet aftertaste of the slowly disappearing summer. The leaves scattered all over the ground, toned in every imaginable shade of yellow and red, crackle under each step, filling the air with the heavy smell of earth and decay, and the sense of loss that trickles after every falling leaf.
Sadie doesn’t feel the melancholy, doesn’t mind the wetness or the lack of sunshine, prefers it to heat actually. She loves running through the rustling gold that drops from the trees, spiraling down like colored snowflakes, enjoys jumping into the piles laboriously gathered at the sides of the roads. It’s these times that she forgets to be sad, forgets to glance around or back to where they’ve just come from, looking for Harley who’s not there anymore and waiting for him to catch up with them. When she buries her nose into one of those heaps and rummages through it until leaves are flying into every direction and the neat pile is gone, she’s again the puppy that Jared had adopted and not the lady she’s become. Those moments are painfully rare, though.
Whistling to get her attention, Jared throws the leash over his shoulder and shoves his hands into the pockets of his down vest, heading home.
---
Following the wet trail of dirty paw prints that lead from the main door and disappear behind a corner, Jared walks down the corridor after Sadie, knowing well that wherever she’s going, there is definitely Jensen at the end.
She had liked him from the first day he had moved in, the moment they had met, but now she’s literally become his shadow. Before Harley died, when he was sick and too weak to walk the stairs up to Jared’s bedroom, Sadie slept in the living room with him, watching him, guarding. They had always been that close. But when he passed away, instead of looking for safety in Jared, she has fixated on Jensen. She loves him, and Jared doesn’t blame her, understands it maybe too well. He’s only worried what’s gonna happen with her when Jensen decides to find a place of his own and move out. He’s also, selfishly, a little worried about what’s gonna happen with him when Jensen decides to move out, when his broken heart heals and he finds someone new to love, to rebuild his dreams with. The thing is, Jared really likes how it is now. He loves having Jensen around, all these hours and days, still, each day more, for a wholly different reason, nowhere as innocent as those he had when he had asked him to move in with him. Things have changed, and they’re more than just a little scary.
Rapping his fingers on the doorframe, Jared pokes his head into the laundry room that Sadie had just abandoned, accompanied by Jensen’s soft, “Careful, baby girl, don’t fall.”
The air is different here, humid, soaked up with warm water and washing powder, fabric softener and wet clothes. The smell is surprisingly strong, actually.
“Hey, Jens, I’ve got you the… golf magazine. What is happening?”
There’s water in there. A lot of it. Tepid, slightly dirty water full of suds equally covers every inch of the floor, and, despite the variety of dry and wet clothes scattered all over, it extends beneath the threshold into the corridor. And in the middle of the mess is Jensen, on all fours. Washed out jeans, already thoroughly soaked, rolled up to his knees, hair wet and spiky, pointing to every which direction, obviously by accident, feet bare, trying to save what evidently cannot be saved.
“Hoard the animals, Noah, the Flood is nigh,” he says when he stands up, pushing into Jared’s hands a dark, wet bundle of something that might have been, in a dry state, a T-shirt. Jared drops it back to the floor, just in case it’s not. “Oh, and just so you know? I’m done with this crap. We either buy a new one or, from now on, you’re doing the laundry yourself.” Jensen adds sweetly, giving Jared the darkest, most devilish smirk he can master.
Grinning at the sight in front of him; damp, disheveled Jensen with an angry pout on his lips, so unfairly sexy and cute, Jared nods. “’Kay.” He’s not protesting, because he knows that the washing machine is an old, stubborn bitch that breaks whenever she wants and however she wants, making the chores that neither of them enjoys to begin with even more unpleasant.
“’Kay?” Jensen repeats, a little frown of surprise wrinkling his forehead.
“’Kay, we’re gonna buy a new one.”
“Oh, okay. Alright, I’m… I’m glad you agree.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Jared leans against the door, measuring Jensen with a little, amused smile. He thinks that this man should be actually illegal. He’s fairly sure that no guy over thirty should have the right to look so hot in an old, faded and worn hoodie twice his size, which isn’t even his.
“You know, I was looking for this sweatshirt this morning,” Jared notes, pointing his chin towards the big, albeit slightly washed out logo of Abercrombie & Fitch proudly embroidered on the front of the hoodie.
Jensen pauses in a mid-movement, a completely soaked shirt held loosely in his hands, dripping water all over his feet instead of into the sink he was originally aiming for. He looks down at himself, confused, like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing, like he doesn’t remember putting the hoodie on. Knowing him, Jared thinks it might be actually true.
It’s a peculiar little story, unspoken and yet to be acknowledged, of Jensen’s love for Jared’s hoodies. It’s strange, really, because Jensen doesn’t borrow other people’s clothes, not Misha’s or Richard’s, not his brother’s… that is unhygienic. Yet he absolutely doesn’t mind putting on a hoodie that Jared left wherever he’d dropped it at the time. Jared doesn’t know why he does it, doesn’t understand why he would, but he doesn’t mind. He likes it, in fact, it brings them just that little bit closer, makes their relationship, however innocent actually, oddly intimate.
The first time this happened, or the one Jared remembers, was his own fault. They were at work, waiting for the sun to set, or the set to change, the details are a little vague now, but they’re quite unimportant anyway. Jensen was sick, or getting so, sweating and cold, constantly sneezing and looking for tissues, his eyes watering. Tired of it all, he was falling asleep on Jared’s shoulder, his bare arm, chilly and pebbled with goose bumps, brushing Jared’s ever so often. It was a warm day, hot almost, but Sam’s scene required a sweatshirt so Jared had one nearby. Nudging Jensen awake, as gently as he could, he made him put it on, helping him to guide his limp arms into the sleeves. He was totally unprepared for the sudden, wholly unexpected burst of emotions and feelings, so alien and new at the time, which that simple gesture of resignation and trust raised inside of him. Jensen wasn’t all that smaller, he wasn’t small, well-muscled and taller than most, but he looked almost tiny in Sam’s large hoodie, and so freaking young. His face, already pale, was nearly white in the contrast of the black fabric, and his hair a mess, crumpled by the hood that got caught on Jensen’s forehead before Jared pushed it back. Seeing Jensen, Dean, in a hoodie was a rarity in itself, knowing it was Sam’s, was a little bonus the fans, regretfully, never got to see. Jensen looked adorable. And, strangely, sexy at the same time.
Then, another time, Jared had come back to Vancouver after a week spent in Texas to find Jensen asleep in the living room. He had his glasses on, slipped down his nose and askew so one of the hooks was poking into the tender flesh beneath his eye, millionth re-run of How I Met Your Mother playing in the background, and Jared’s dark blue hoodie on. Jared woke him up and sent him to bed, and never mentioned the dry dip of shaving cream on the front of his hoodie that definitely hadn’t been there seven days ago.
Jared’s favorite moment, though, probably, is a photo he took himself, one Jensen doesn’t even know that exists and that Jared hides in his drawer, among piles of envelopes, cellphone invoices and tenancy agreement. It’s of Jensen sitting on the top stair of the back porch, leaning against the corner pole of the railing, and reading a script for a small independent movie he would never get the time for. Wearing the same light hoodie that Jared had on in the first episode of season five of Gilmore Girls and somehow never remembered to give back. Since the wardrobe department never called, he figured they didn’t really need it. It was sunset, the first one of autumn, one of the last warm evenings in Canada, and Jensen’s brown hair seemed blonde in that orange flare. His features were softened, every hard angle smooth, his expression relaxed, finally, after so many stressful days of shooting. Harley’s head was resting in his lap, heavy and weary like the turning of the whole world was upon his shoulders, and Sadie was curled at their side. It was the picture of perfection, of home Jared had never known he wanted, until then.
Jared wonders if Jensen even knows it, that he does it, that Jared knows. Perhaps they both know. Maybe, just like Jared knows that Jensen borrows his hoodies, Jensen knows that Jared puts them on the second Jensen takes them off, wanting to feel him, his warmth and fragrance that got caught in the fibers of the fabric, hoping to get even closer. Maybe Jensen puts them on for the same damn reason. Maybe they both know and remain silent, just like they ignore the nameless something hanging between them. They’re silent, because it seems to be easier, more comfortable. Jared’s not sure how long they can continue in this, the silence and ignorance of it all, isn’t sure he wants to continue in this at all. In the, ‘Let’s pretend that I don’t want you, and that I don’t fail at it. Let’s pretend that I don’t desperately hope that you feel the same’, but he’s too scared to go and do something about it.
“Oh,” Jensen says now when he realizes that he’s, once again, put on a piece of clothing that isn’t quite his. “Laundry day, you know? I’m out,” he shrugs his shoulders eloquently and tosses the wet shirt into the sink. “Completely. Nothing to wear.”
Still smiling, Jared nods with understanding. They always do the laundry this late, when they’re close to walking around naked.
“Really,” Jensen insists.
“Yeah.”
“Uhm… Sorry?”
“Hmm, it’s alright, didn’t really need it in the end.”
Jensen nods, then pauses again, looking a little nervous when Jared doesn’t move, keeps on watching him with that little, bewitched grin.
“What?”
“Do you have any idea how sexy you look right now?”
Arching his eyebrow quizzically, Jensen glances down and eyes himself critically; the large hoodie, his old, soaked jeans, bare feet standing in cooling, dirty water, then up at Jared with a look that clearly suggests that he’s doubting Jared’s mental health. “No,” he chuckles amusedly. “No, I really do not.”
Pushing away from the door, Jared reaches for Jensen, curling his fingers in the front of Jensen’s hoodie and tugging him closer. “That’s a shame you don’t,” he says quietly, his eyes caught on Jensen’s lips, so full and tempting.
Puzzled, Jensen stumbles involuntarily forward, “Wha-what you’re--”
“’Cause you really, really do.” Holding Jensen’s eyes, so freaking huge and deep, quite terrified, frankly, Jared leans a little closer, now desperately wanting to feel Jensen’s mouth, taste it, but giving him the chance and time to stop him, stop it all.
Jensen doesn’t. Parting his lips slightly, he steps on his toes and presses his mouth to Jared’s, just barely, letting out a quiet sigh, a warm puff of breath that tastes of bitter coffee and sweet orange juice. His lips are warm and smooth, pliant, opening beneath Jared’s at the slightest pressure. Just the briefest touch of his tongue makes Jared go weak at the knees.
Breaking the kiss a moment later with a gentle nip at Jared’s bottom lip, Jensen pulls away and runs his hand through his hair, looking around. “We should--” He clears his throat and tries again, blushing a little at how rough, fucked out his voice sounds. “We should really clean the mess here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, totally,” Jared agrees, not allowing Jensen to take a single step backward. “Stay.”
“What?”
“Stay. With me. With… us. Here. Don’t look for another place, not this year, not the next. Jensen, stay with me. Be… with me.”
Jensen’s gaze is intent, penetrating and curious when he asks, “Are you… Are you asking me to date you?”
“Uhm… Yes.” It comes out more as a question than a firm statement, a request, unsure and a bit panicked.
Jensen smiles, though, and, God, he could really melt an iceberg with that one. “Okay,” he says, like it's really all that simple.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, then… Oh, and Jen?”
“Yeah?”
“Just… out of curiosity. Why do you wear my hoodies?”
Grinning, Jensen shakes his head, then pulls Jared in by the hem of his T-shirt, his lips so near again they brush Jared’s with each word. “Because they’re yours. Silly.”