SPN RPS Fic - An Absence of Rain
I dedicate this fic to three people: Victoria, Todd the TA, and of course, Dr. Jellison. Also, first-ever RPF and first-ever slash in general. Wow. Two birds, meet my one stone.
Title: An Absence of Rain
Pairing: J2 (AU)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Inspired by a comment unreckless made during our History Through Film class after we watched The Grapes of Wrath. Set in the 1930s in the Dust Bowl part of Kansas.
--
An Absence of Rain
--
He can taste the dust heavy inside his mouth all the time now. He can taste it mixed into the biscuits, he can see it film across the surface of the coffee. When he walks it shakes loose from the folds in his clothing, drifts from his hair.
He remembers running through the wheat back when he was a kid, how his poppa used to whip him for trampling too much. Well now poppa’s gone, and momma back last May, and just like them the land’s dried up and rolled over and gone to meet Jesus. Whatever stunted crops had tried to grow this year have been long sanded down now, and he’s borrowed too much against this year’s crops to ever pay back.
This isn’t home anymore. Whatever he remembered has gone, blown away with the dust.
--
He scrounges together the last of his money and catches a ride on a rattling converted farm truck, sitting atop a filthy mattress roped on top of somebody’s old bureau. He’s traveling with the Ritters, from a couple miles away. They got a couple old folks, a couple babies, and some girls with them-nobody able to work their land, if their land had been any more workable than his own.
The only other man was a lanky kid only a few years from the East, son of some immigrants by the name of Padalecki. He’d come out here to make a place for himself, get out of the ghettos and into the air.
Now I’m going out to California, he’d told Jensen as they rattled over potholes and on out of Kansas and down through Oklahoma to pick up Route 66 somewhere in Texas. He'd had a bewildered and hopeful look on his face as he smoothed a handbill out over his knee, jabbing at the PICKERS WANTED - HIGH WAGES in boldface emblazoned across the top. Out to California to make my way, and dad would never've believed it.
Jensen doesn’t think his poppa woulda believed it either.
I’ve only had an orange twice in my life, he confides a few days later, and do you think I might be able to have a windfall or two when I’m picking?
--
Somewhere in New Mexico, on the side of the road in a whisper-thin tent, he gets to fooling around with the Padalecki kid. It doesn’t mean anything, but he’s hungry and road-weary and lonesome, and any body is welcome.
And as his mouth finds shoulder and neck, underneath the sweat he’s sure he tastes dust, old Kansas dust, hiding in the creases of the kid’s skin. She’s following him, the ghost of his poppa’s forty-eight acres, and he shudders.
The kid takes this as a sign he’s doing a good job, and a hand on his cock make Jensen forget soon enough.
--
One by one they lose the members of their party. One of the babies dies when its momma stops making milk for it, she herself half-starved. One morning one of the old Ritters just doesn’t wake up. One girl finds a beau in a camp in Arizona and continues on with his family back East, trying to make it back to fertile farmland.
They can’t afford gas anymore, turning an exodus that should’ve taken days into a multi-week affair. Jensen does odd jobs where they’ll have him, but those places are few and far between. Every penny goes into gasoline, so that he starves himself in the hope that the next mile will be better than the last.
Every night since the one they entered Texas the Padalecki kid has crawled into Jensen’s tent, and every morning Jensen expects to see him gone. But the kid stays, huge and unwieldy and growing progressively thinner. He doesn’t know why he does it, but Jensen starts giving him the bigger potato when they eat, starts ladling just a bit more broth into the kid’s pan than into his own.
They’re still so far from California, and Jensen doesn’t want the kid to leave.
--
They walk the last forty miles into the orange orchards, after the Ritters sympathetically but firmly informed them that they could barely look after their own kin, let alone two homeless bucks.
Jared-somewhere along the line, and Jensen can’t recall quite when, he started being more than just the kid-has spent every moment since Kansas looking to the west, talking about oranges. And they’re here now, they’ve made it.
The reality they find when they reach their destination isn’t what was promised on the now felt-soft handbill Jared’s been saving for months.
They get two cents a pail for the oranges they pick and a spot of land to put up a tent. Between them they make about sixty cents a day, and half a pound of beef costs fifty at the ranch store. Jared can’t eat the windfall, even, because every orange counts when you’re only making two pennies a pail.
They’re no better fed than before, really, and they sure as hell ain’t sleeping any better, and now the hope’s going out of Jared’s eyes.
--
Orange season ends three weeks later, and they’re out of work. They’re as poor and hungry and wretched as they ever were on Route 66, and Jared sleeps facing away from Jensen for the first time, curled into himself like he's trying to hide a hole in his middle.
Jensen’d thought that his ruined farm back in Kansas wasn’t home a few months ago. Now it’s all he dreams about, the dust and the wind and the familiar sky. He wishes he’d never left, but he can’t see any way to ever get back.
--
They get word of cotton ready for picking down south, so they pack up and head down that way. Hiding from the noon sun in the shade of a road sign, they eat soda crackers and pick at the fleabites that dot their arms.
Jensen nudges Jared’s arm and unrolls the canvas of their tent from its neat roll. Nestled inside are two oranges-the late-ripeners that the orchard owner left for dead. Jensen had gotten up early and found them hiding behind clumps of leaves in two otherwise stripped trees, heart thumping at the possibility of being caught by the cops that patrolled the camp confines.
Now he offers one to Jared, the stolen fruits of their labor, and the kid smiles for the first time in weeks.
The oranges are sour, still too early, but they pick every bit out of the rinds anyway.
--
They get ten cents an hour picking cotton, an unbelievable wage. Every three days one of the other families drives into town, so they buy cheaper supplies. Slowly, they begin to save up a little money.
When cotton season ends they prepare to go south again, looking for more work. They’re just biding their time ‘til they find a proper job in a proper town somewhere.
On their last night on the cotton plantation, Jensen notices that Jared doesn’t taste like dust. It’s cotton-leaf and California sweat, and it makes him feel tired-out just recognizing it. But Jared’s fingers dig into his hip and Kansas is forever ago, and now it’s just them, going south towards the sea, looking for work.
A night wind cools the sweat on Jensen’s back, and it smells like rain.
Title: An Absence of Rain
Pairing: J2 (AU)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Inspired by a comment unreckless made during our History Through Film class after we watched The Grapes of Wrath. Set in the 1930s in the Dust Bowl part of Kansas.
--
An Absence of Rain
--
He can taste the dust heavy inside his mouth all the time now. He can taste it mixed into the biscuits, he can see it film across the surface of the coffee. When he walks it shakes loose from the folds in his clothing, drifts from his hair.
He remembers running through the wheat back when he was a kid, how his poppa used to whip him for trampling too much. Well now poppa’s gone, and momma back last May, and just like them the land’s dried up and rolled over and gone to meet Jesus. Whatever stunted crops had tried to grow this year have been long sanded down now, and he’s borrowed too much against this year’s crops to ever pay back.
This isn’t home anymore. Whatever he remembered has gone, blown away with the dust.
--
He scrounges together the last of his money and catches a ride on a rattling converted farm truck, sitting atop a filthy mattress roped on top of somebody’s old bureau. He’s traveling with the Ritters, from a couple miles away. They got a couple old folks, a couple babies, and some girls with them-nobody able to work their land, if their land had been any more workable than his own.
The only other man was a lanky kid only a few years from the East, son of some immigrants by the name of Padalecki. He’d come out here to make a place for himself, get out of the ghettos and into the air.
Now I’m going out to California, he’d told Jensen as they rattled over potholes and on out of Kansas and down through Oklahoma to pick up Route 66 somewhere in Texas. He'd had a bewildered and hopeful look on his face as he smoothed a handbill out over his knee, jabbing at the PICKERS WANTED - HIGH WAGES in boldface emblazoned across the top. Out to California to make my way, and dad would never've believed it.
Jensen doesn’t think his poppa woulda believed it either.
I’ve only had an orange twice in my life, he confides a few days later, and do you think I might be able to have a windfall or two when I’m picking?
--
Somewhere in New Mexico, on the side of the road in a whisper-thin tent, he gets to fooling around with the Padalecki kid. It doesn’t mean anything, but he’s hungry and road-weary and lonesome, and any body is welcome.
And as his mouth finds shoulder and neck, underneath the sweat he’s sure he tastes dust, old Kansas dust, hiding in the creases of the kid’s skin. She’s following him, the ghost of his poppa’s forty-eight acres, and he shudders.
The kid takes this as a sign he’s doing a good job, and a hand on his cock make Jensen forget soon enough.
--
One by one they lose the members of their party. One of the babies dies when its momma stops making milk for it, she herself half-starved. One morning one of the old Ritters just doesn’t wake up. One girl finds a beau in a camp in Arizona and continues on with his family back East, trying to make it back to fertile farmland.
They can’t afford gas anymore, turning an exodus that should’ve taken days into a multi-week affair. Jensen does odd jobs where they’ll have him, but those places are few and far between. Every penny goes into gasoline, so that he starves himself in the hope that the next mile will be better than the last.
Every night since the one they entered Texas the Padalecki kid has crawled into Jensen’s tent, and every morning Jensen expects to see him gone. But the kid stays, huge and unwieldy and growing progressively thinner. He doesn’t know why he does it, but Jensen starts giving him the bigger potato when they eat, starts ladling just a bit more broth into the kid’s pan than into his own.
They’re still so far from California, and Jensen doesn’t want the kid to leave.
--
They walk the last forty miles into the orange orchards, after the Ritters sympathetically but firmly informed them that they could barely look after their own kin, let alone two homeless bucks.
Jared-somewhere along the line, and Jensen can’t recall quite when, he started being more than just the kid-has spent every moment since Kansas looking to the west, talking about oranges. And they’re here now, they’ve made it.
The reality they find when they reach their destination isn’t what was promised on the now felt-soft handbill Jared’s been saving for months.
They get two cents a pail for the oranges they pick and a spot of land to put up a tent. Between them they make about sixty cents a day, and half a pound of beef costs fifty at the ranch store. Jared can’t eat the windfall, even, because every orange counts when you’re only making two pennies a pail.
They’re no better fed than before, really, and they sure as hell ain’t sleeping any better, and now the hope’s going out of Jared’s eyes.
--
Orange season ends three weeks later, and they’re out of work. They’re as poor and hungry and wretched as they ever were on Route 66, and Jared sleeps facing away from Jensen for the first time, curled into himself like he's trying to hide a hole in his middle.
Jensen’d thought that his ruined farm back in Kansas wasn’t home a few months ago. Now it’s all he dreams about, the dust and the wind and the familiar sky. He wishes he’d never left, but he can’t see any way to ever get back.
--
They get word of cotton ready for picking down south, so they pack up and head down that way. Hiding from the noon sun in the shade of a road sign, they eat soda crackers and pick at the fleabites that dot their arms.
Jensen nudges Jared’s arm and unrolls the canvas of their tent from its neat roll. Nestled inside are two oranges-the late-ripeners that the orchard owner left for dead. Jensen had gotten up early and found them hiding behind clumps of leaves in two otherwise stripped trees, heart thumping at the possibility of being caught by the cops that patrolled the camp confines.
Now he offers one to Jared, the stolen fruits of their labor, and the kid smiles for the first time in weeks.
The oranges are sour, still too early, but they pick every bit out of the rinds anyway.
--
They get ten cents an hour picking cotton, an unbelievable wage. Every three days one of the other families drives into town, so they buy cheaper supplies. Slowly, they begin to save up a little money.
When cotton season ends they prepare to go south again, looking for more work. They’re just biding their time ‘til they find a proper job in a proper town somewhere.
On their last night on the cotton plantation, Jensen notices that Jared doesn’t taste like dust. It’s cotton-leaf and California sweat, and it makes him feel tired-out just recognizing it. But Jared’s fingers dig into his hip and Kansas is forever ago, and now it’s just them, going south towards the sea, looking for work.
A night wind cools the sweat on Jensen’s back, and it smells like rain.