(no subject)
Main Street is a long, long stretch of absolutely nothing but green scenery and the vision of the lake off to the side. In fact, Jared’s sure that the only reason that it’s called Main Street is because it was here first and no other road wanted the job. The old railroad tracks run next to the greyed asphalt, but they’ve been out of commission for a while if the state of the beams is anything to go by. The sidewalk ran out when the neighborhood ended, so they’ve got to keep to the patchy stretch of gravel and grass that runs between the track and the road on the off chance that anyone else in the entire town is going to be out and about at five in the morning on a school day.
“Why couldn’t we just take my car?” Jared asks blearily, rubbing out his eyes. He’s used to getting up early, sure, but even if he hadn’t gotten used to sleeping in past eleven over the last week four o’ clock in the morning is pushing it.
“Ew,” Katie scoffs over her shoulder at him from where she’s blazing the trail ahead and Jared reels backwards into Jensen.
“Who actually wants to ride in cars?” Chris sidesteps them and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dumb, new kid. The walk ‘ll do you good.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Jensen mutters with one hand curled under Jared’s elbow.
“Oh, he should worry about me!” Katie calls back warningly.
“Shut up,” Alona laughs.
“We can take your car tomorrow if you want.” Jensen kicks at the gravel, sending little rocks scattering and clattering about in a small cloud of dust.
Technically the high school is one town over from where the house is and the hike out is long enough that Jared’s feet start to ache and he’s biting back petulant whining by the skin of his teeth when he realizes he has blisters because they already think he’s a loser.
There is an oppressive sort of silence to the world this early on a morning this cold and even while Jared’s standing next to Jensen and hearing the gravel crunch under the boots of five others, he feels strangely alone.
Yeah, they’ll take his car tomorrow.
-
They get to class early enough that the halls are mostly empty and there’s no one in the English classroom to shoot them strange looks for coming in together except for Mr. Hawthorne, who only says, “Welcome back, we missed you,” nodding to each of them. “The back of my classroom was as empty as my heart.”
Jared smiles and Jensen rolls his eyes and they take their seats. They get a few surreptitious glances as the other kids file in and Jared smiles at them even though he doesn’t know them and they have shoes that make an astonishing amount of noise that echoes around inside of his head like a car crash in a canyon.
Christ, he missed school.
Four months ago that thought would have been the most ridiculous thing, but right now school feels like a warm bath of normalcy. He knows the rules here.
“You alright?” Jensen asks, leaning over the edge of Jared’s desk and right up into his space.
“Yeah.” Jared grins. “Don’t worry about it, man. It’ll be fi-”
The bell rings like a shrill gunshot right between Jared’s eyes. It rings and rings and rings, loud and forever. It reverberates with the resounding velocity of Jared’s absolute agony between his eardrums and there’s someone shouting and then, even more abruptly than it was there, it’s gone and there’s a room full of strangers staring at him.
“S-Sorry,” Jared stammers, sliding his hands down his face and away from where they were pressed over his ears.
“You okay?” Mr. Hawthorne asks glibly, but his face expresses genuine concern.
Jared glances from him to Jensen, who is in a similar state before he realizes how odd he must look, glancing to the boy sitting next to him in class looking for an answer about his own health.
“Yeah.” Jared shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Headache.”
“Okay,” Hawthorne drawls slowly, pulling away from the query and moving towards the green of the chalk board. He angles a suspicious eye over to Jared’s corner every couple of minutes for the remainder of class and Jared slumps down lower into his seat each time.
When the bell rings again he grits his teeth into it and his ears ring the entire walk to Political Science.
The hallways stink like stale sweat and processed, synthetic fabrics worn warm and unwashed. Jared stumbles once on the stairs when a boy wearing an obscenely overwhelming amount of body spray stalks past, eyes blurring and sinuses burning and for a few moments the only thing keeping him upright is Jensen’s guiding hands on his back and under his wrist.
When Jared was in seventh grade he’d contracted mono. He wasn’t going to go out and say that it was Julie’s fault but they had played seven minutes in heaven at Sandy’s thirteenth birthday party and it took her another four months to start showing symptoms but she was the only girl Jared had ever kissed. The only person period at that point in his life. It felt like his skin was shrinking. His muscles ached, his body was wracked by chilled tremors and then turned back around and soared into delirious fever and he was too exhausted to even roll out of bed to shower the sick off. Like his life force was being sucked out of his chest like those chocolate Oreo cheesecake milkshakes Megan liked to get at Silver Diner, only instead of hovering out little chunks of chocolate cookie it was Jared’s will to live. He’d wanted to sleep. Sleep forever. Until his muscles stopped trembling and his bones stopped aching and his throat stopped burning. Until he was back in control of all his facilities.
This feels like that only worse.
“We can leave if you want,” Jensen mumbles right into his ear. He squeezes Jared’s wrist and Jared hones in on the sensation, the focus grounding him.
“No.” Jared shakes his head, sending his world spinning all over again. His hair swings in front of his eyes in clumps and he must have started sweating at some point, he hadn’t realized. “No, I got it, come on.”
He wanted to be here. He earned this school day. He needs to graduate.
Jared barely stumbles across the threshold of the Political Science classroom before he’s being body slammed.
“Jared!” Chad shouts right into Jared’s ear and he smells so overwhelmingly of pot and hair gel that Jared’s eyes water. All the same, it’s great to see him. Something normal.
Jared likes Chad, he’s glad he met him. He compliments Jared’s neurosis by not caring about anything at all. Chad Michael Murray’s had a pretty shitty life himself, if the rumor mill is to be believed, and Chad’s through with caring about people because he believes at the core of his being that people suck and will inevitably let him down sooner or later, so he’s going to beat them to the punch and let them down first. Jared doesn’t particularly agree with the philosophy, but he admires Chad’s passion in making damn sure that every person in the immediate area of him is aware of how much he doesn’t care because it betrays how much he actually does. Jared, somehow, was an exception to Chad’s rules. He doesn’t pretend to understand it, or Chad really for that matter, but he likes Chad and Chad tolerates him more than anyone else, so it works.
“Hey!” Jared grins.
“Where the hell have you been, man?” Chad slaps him hard on the shoulder and Jared stumbles slightly.
“Sick,” Jared answers easily. “Like meningitis or something.”
“Are you contagious?” Chad takes an exaggerated step backwards, hands held up like he can ward off illness if he can bat it away and it makes Jared laugh. “Swear to God, Jay, if you got me sick-”
“Jay?” Jared can practically hear Jensen’s head tilting to the side behind him.
A small stroke of helpless confusion and distress passes over Chad’s face as his eyes skip focus from Jared to over Jared’s right shoulder to where Jared can feel Jensen doing that thing where he’s trying not to loom but totally looming anyway.
“Dude.” Chad’s voice drops down into a low whisper. “What’s he doing here?”
Jared doesn’t know if Chad knows that Jensen’s related to the ‘those people’ that he and Aldis sneer at from the lunch table or if maybe he just doesn’t like Jensen because he’s quiet and sad and strange, but Jared doesn’t appreciate the tone or the fact that he knows Jensen can hear.
“He switched up classes,” Jared says, a shade more snidely than he had intended and Chad’s confusion deepens but his attention shifts back to Jared. “Don’t be a dick.”
“I’m not being a dick,” Chad denies swiftly. “You’re gone for a week and come back and just start shooting off ‘dicks’ left and right? Rude, Jaybird, rude.”
The bell rings again and Jared flinches so hard that his backpack falls off and before Chad can even stoop to help Jensen’s there, collecting Jared’s spilled papers and staying a respectable distance away despite the fact Jared can see his fingers twitching to touch.
“Dude,” Chad repeats, drawing away with his shoulders uncomfortably from Jared’s contorted frame and Jensen’s eagerness to help. “What the hell-”
“Mr. Murray!” Mrs. Burrows is a severe looking woman with red rimmed glasses, hard eyes, and a sinkhole where her sense of humor should be and she’s always watching for Chad to make some infringement or another so she can swoop down like a falcon and carry him back to her nest of detention. “Take a seat!”
Chad shuffles off to his seat slowly, casting backwards glances as he goes.
“You too, Mr. Padalecki,” she intones sharply. “And…” Her sharp eyes narrow at Jensen shrewdly, searchingly, hunting for a name for a long moment before finally settling on, “Other boy.” She waves at them and the rest of the class bursts into giggles at Jensen’s expense.
Jensen doesn’t seem to notice or care, probably didn’t notice or care about Chad either and that irritates Jared in a way he can’t even begin to describe.
Jensen slings Jared’s backpack over the shoulder he isn’t using for his own and turns for the empty desks towards the back of the room but Jared stops him with a hard hand on the arm mid-turn.
“Ackles,” Jared grits pointedly, tongue scraping his clenched teeth.
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Burrows raises her brows.
“Jensen Ackles,” Jared reiterates slowly, pronouncing pointedly.
No one’s laughing anymore.
“What are you doing?” Jensen mutters under his breath, vexed.
Jared digs his fingers in harder to Jensen’s arm but doesn’t break the hard eye-contact with Mrs. Burrows until she relents for the sake of continuing class.
“Pardon me,” she bites off stiffly. “Mr. Ackles. Take a seat.”
Jared turns heel and doesn’t so much walk to the empty desk as he marches, Jensen keeping up behind him.
“What the hell?” Jensen demands.
“People shouldn’t treat you like that,” Jared clips. “And you shouldn’t let them.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Jensen scoffs under his breath. “They’re just humans.”
Jared turns slowly and levels Jensen with a dead look. “Two weeks ago I was just a human. Did my opinion not matter?”
“I-” Jensen starts, but he doesn’t insult either of them by pretending.
Jared turns away.
-
For the most part Jensen leaves him to his own devices, just keeping a step or two behind. Jared’s not sure what Jensen’s expecting to happen at any given second of the day and the surveillance grates slightly but the fact that he’s back at school, surrounded by the small comforts of routine, is enough to soothe him.
Chad points out Jensen again during third, whispering, “Your stalker’s back,” when he thinks Jensen isn’t paying attention because he doesn’t realize, doesn’t know that Jensen can hear everything Jared can hear.
Jared punches him in the shoulder and tells him to cut it out.
“Ow,” Chad whines, looking wounded.
“What’s the matter, Jared? You sweet on him?” Aldis demands on a grin and even though there’s nothing but friendly teasing in that grin something in Jared’s chest seizes up, frigid.
“Maybe I just don’t like bullies,” Jared retorts sardonically and hopes like hell that the sharpness of his tone doesn’t compromise everything that it’s covering up.
“Dude,” Allison cuts in. “Chill out, will you?”
Jared rolls his eyes and starts packing up his bag.
“Where are you going?” Chad asks, half-demand half-whine.
Jared has half a mind to just bark ‘Away!’ and leave without another word, not to return until his friends decide to stop being douchebags, but instead he just points to the clock which is telling them that there’s five minutes until the lunch bell.
“You gonna sit with us, or with your boyfriend?” Aldis inquires cheekily.
Jared shoots him the bird over his shoulder as he turns towards the door.
“What’s wrong?” Jensen materializes by his side. “Are you feeling okay? Do we need to leave?”
“I’m fine!” Jared snaps.
Jensen falls silently behind him, cowed.
Jared feels shitty. His ears are buzzing, his head is throbbing, he’s been unforgivably short with the handful of people he’s been able to establish connections with since moving up here, he’s sweaty, he’s pissed and the question does remain: who is he going to sit with at lunch?
The problem feels so much larger than it should.
This isn’t a John Hughes film. Where Jared sits in the cafeteria isn’t going to dictate who he is or what people say about him.
Except for how it totally will.
On the one hand he’s sat with Chad since the first day of school and he enjoys lunch time with them because it’s easy and stupid and Chad sticks fries up his nose trying to impress Sophia because somewhere in his mind the ability to snort potato byproduct into his sinuses is supposed to attract women. But on the other Jensen isn’t going to just ditch him for lunch. He’s going to follow Jared at that same respectable distance, giving Jared the room he needs to function independently but making himself available for when Jared’s knees start buckling and the world starts spinning and they’re going to talk about him, point Jensen out as an anomaly and whisper things about him because they don’t understand.
So he can sit with the people he’s always sat with, try and fit back into that hard carved niche and expose Jensen to ridicule, or he can sit with Jensen and expose himself.
“This is so fucked up,” Jared mutters under his breath.
Jensen doesn’t say anything.
The lunch bell rings and rings and rings in Jared’s ears, thrumming in the center of his head and it feels like his brain is swelling up tight in the empty cavity of his skull, ready to burst through explosively at any second.
He crumples against the lockers, breathing heavily into cold, dirty metal with chipping blue paint. He presses his forehead into the vents and his skin slips across the smoothness with accumulated sweat of the day.
Jensen’s there, right behind him, holding him upright with hands under his arm and at the small of his back.
“Come on,” he says. “Before the hallway gets filled.”
Jared nods sloppily, head rolling. “Yeah, alright.”
It takes him a second but he pulls himself together, takes a deep breath and drags himself to his upright and locked position. He runs his hand through his hair, slicking it back out of his face and straightens out his shirt, like it’s going to help make him look even vaguely more presentable.
The rubber soles of shoes dragging across the thin, checked tile of the school hallways sound like tires screeching and cars impacting to Jared and he wonders vaguely to himself what actually listening to tires screeching and cars impacting would sound like to him.
“You okay?” Jensen asks for the millionth time.
“Fine,” Jared retorts. “Just- lunch.”
Jensen looks Jared over skeptically but ultimately concedes.
The cafeteria sounds and smells like an unkempt carnival. Jared walks into a wall of noise of hundreds of people talking all at once, tones and pitches clashing together like warfare and the stink of every conflicting flavor, all of those bodies mingling with their sweat and their breath. It sends him reeling violently, stomach roiling and head hollowing out empty as his blood pressure plummets straight down to his feet and it feels, for all intents and purposes, like the air just punched him right in the fucking face.
Jensen’s hands are hot, too hot, and they’re on Jared’s jaw, angling his face up and Jared thinks that he’s talking, asking something, but Jared can’t hear over the noise.
“No, no, we’re done,” Jensen growls decisively and Jared’s being manhandled and dragged.
People might be watching, whispering about him and adding to the drone of noise filling up Jared’s head so much that there’s no more room for his own thoughts but he doesn’t know, doesn’t even want to care because he’s burning up and his head is turning inside out.
Being a werewolf fucking sucks.
He stumbles where he’s lead, eyes squeezed shut so tightly that his eyes burn.
There’s a clatter, a crack, and then cool, quiet air is bathing over Jared’s face, washing him clean.
The first breath of air he sucks down feels like a baptism, being reborn out of layers of pain so subtle and compacted he hadn’t even realized he was suffering most of it until he can open his eyes in stuttered blinks and he realizes Jensen’s lead them out to the fields.
It smells like crisp winter and grass: clean, harmless.
“Oh my god,” Jared pants, breaths coming out in bursts of fog.
Jensen is doing most of the walking for him, Jared’s arm slung across the width of his shoulders and his feet stumbling ineffectively next to Jensen’s wide, sure strides.
“You’re alright,” Jensen assures as Jared’s head lolls onto his own shoulder.
“This is the worst,” Jared groans.
Jensen huffs a small laugh and hauls Jared’s arm more securely over his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” he assures but Jared doesn’t believe him. “You okay to sit down or do you want to stay up?”
“Down,” Jared moans and Jensen helps ease him down into the winter-coarse grass, stretched out like he’s being crucified. The earth is a solid support under Jared’s spine, holding him up and together all at once. The individual blades of grass are cool against his skin, licking his hands, up his wrists, his ankles where the cuff of his jeans pulled up, over his cheeks. A wind sweeps by, prying Jared’s hair out of his face and carrying the distinct, beautiful scent of nothingness and evergreen with it as it sweeps over his body and turns the burning of him cold.
Jensen eases himself down onto the field next to him facing out towards the forest, situated in the space between Jared’s outstretched arm and his torso. Not close enough that they’re touching, not even really close enough that Jared can call him on it. Just close enough that Jared notices. If Jared wanted to put his arm down by his side he wouldn’t be able to sweep it downwards without hitting Jensen’s back.
“Sorry,” Jensen says after a few minutes of blankness.
“It’s not your fault,” Jared mumbles back, drained.
“I shouldn’t have brought you back to school so soon. I should have waited.”
Jared scoffs and rolls his head along the ground, staring until Jensen glances back over his shoulder at him. “I did this,” Jared intones. “I wanted to come back to school. I made you take me. This one’s on me.”
Jensen looks him over for a few moments before turning back in favor of the tree line. There’s deeper, darker clouds rolling in from the distance, heavy with wet that’s going to come down on their heads in a few hours, probably.
“That thing you did earlier,” Jensen says without turning.
“Thing?” Jared repeats.
“With your friends. For me.”
Jared breathes slowly, waits.
“Thank you.”
Jared doesn’t do the gratitude the disservice of verbally accepting it. He sweeps his hand down through the cool prickles of grass until his fingers knock against one of Jensen’s ratty boots, nudging.
They sit in silence for a few minutes more before Jensen rolls out, laying out splayed in the grass next to Jared and they watch the clouds roll in.
Jared spends his lunch period with Jensen and when the bell rings again Jensen pulls together their things and walks Jared back to the house.
Previous. - Next.
“Why couldn’t we just take my car?” Jared asks blearily, rubbing out his eyes. He’s used to getting up early, sure, but even if he hadn’t gotten used to sleeping in past eleven over the last week four o’ clock in the morning is pushing it.
“Ew,” Katie scoffs over her shoulder at him from where she’s blazing the trail ahead and Jared reels backwards into Jensen.
“Who actually wants to ride in cars?” Chris sidesteps them and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dumb, new kid. The walk ‘ll do you good.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Jensen mutters with one hand curled under Jared’s elbow.
“Oh, he should worry about me!” Katie calls back warningly.
“Shut up,” Alona laughs.
“We can take your car tomorrow if you want.” Jensen kicks at the gravel, sending little rocks scattering and clattering about in a small cloud of dust.
Technically the high school is one town over from where the house is and the hike out is long enough that Jared’s feet start to ache and he’s biting back petulant whining by the skin of his teeth when he realizes he has blisters because they already think he’s a loser.
There is an oppressive sort of silence to the world this early on a morning this cold and even while Jared’s standing next to Jensen and hearing the gravel crunch under the boots of five others, he feels strangely alone.
Yeah, they’ll take his car tomorrow.
-
They get to class early enough that the halls are mostly empty and there’s no one in the English classroom to shoot them strange looks for coming in together except for Mr. Hawthorne, who only says, “Welcome back, we missed you,” nodding to each of them. “The back of my classroom was as empty as my heart.”
Jared smiles and Jensen rolls his eyes and they take their seats. They get a few surreptitious glances as the other kids file in and Jared smiles at them even though he doesn’t know them and they have shoes that make an astonishing amount of noise that echoes around inside of his head like a car crash in a canyon.
Christ, he missed school.
Four months ago that thought would have been the most ridiculous thing, but right now school feels like a warm bath of normalcy. He knows the rules here.
“You alright?” Jensen asks, leaning over the edge of Jared’s desk and right up into his space.
“Yeah.” Jared grins. “Don’t worry about it, man. It’ll be fi-”
The bell rings like a shrill gunshot right between Jared’s eyes. It rings and rings and rings, loud and forever. It reverberates with the resounding velocity of Jared’s absolute agony between his eardrums and there’s someone shouting and then, even more abruptly than it was there, it’s gone and there’s a room full of strangers staring at him.
“S-Sorry,” Jared stammers, sliding his hands down his face and away from where they were pressed over his ears.
“You okay?” Mr. Hawthorne asks glibly, but his face expresses genuine concern.
Jared glances from him to Jensen, who is in a similar state before he realizes how odd he must look, glancing to the boy sitting next to him in class looking for an answer about his own health.
“Yeah.” Jared shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Headache.”
“Okay,” Hawthorne drawls slowly, pulling away from the query and moving towards the green of the chalk board. He angles a suspicious eye over to Jared’s corner every couple of minutes for the remainder of class and Jared slumps down lower into his seat each time.
When the bell rings again he grits his teeth into it and his ears ring the entire walk to Political Science.
The hallways stink like stale sweat and processed, synthetic fabrics worn warm and unwashed. Jared stumbles once on the stairs when a boy wearing an obscenely overwhelming amount of body spray stalks past, eyes blurring and sinuses burning and for a few moments the only thing keeping him upright is Jensen’s guiding hands on his back and under his wrist.
When Jared was in seventh grade he’d contracted mono. He wasn’t going to go out and say that it was Julie’s fault but they had played seven minutes in heaven at Sandy’s thirteenth birthday party and it took her another four months to start showing symptoms but she was the only girl Jared had ever kissed. The only person period at that point in his life. It felt like his skin was shrinking. His muscles ached, his body was wracked by chilled tremors and then turned back around and soared into delirious fever and he was too exhausted to even roll out of bed to shower the sick off. Like his life force was being sucked out of his chest like those chocolate Oreo cheesecake milkshakes Megan liked to get at Silver Diner, only instead of hovering out little chunks of chocolate cookie it was Jared’s will to live. He’d wanted to sleep. Sleep forever. Until his muscles stopped trembling and his bones stopped aching and his throat stopped burning. Until he was back in control of all his facilities.
This feels like that only worse.
“We can leave if you want,” Jensen mumbles right into his ear. He squeezes Jared’s wrist and Jared hones in on the sensation, the focus grounding him.
“No.” Jared shakes his head, sending his world spinning all over again. His hair swings in front of his eyes in clumps and he must have started sweating at some point, he hadn’t realized. “No, I got it, come on.”
He wanted to be here. He earned this school day. He needs to graduate.
Jared barely stumbles across the threshold of the Political Science classroom before he’s being body slammed.
“Jared!” Chad shouts right into Jared’s ear and he smells so overwhelmingly of pot and hair gel that Jared’s eyes water. All the same, it’s great to see him. Something normal.
Jared likes Chad, he’s glad he met him. He compliments Jared’s neurosis by not caring about anything at all. Chad Michael Murray’s had a pretty shitty life himself, if the rumor mill is to be believed, and Chad’s through with caring about people because he believes at the core of his being that people suck and will inevitably let him down sooner or later, so he’s going to beat them to the punch and let them down first. Jared doesn’t particularly agree with the philosophy, but he admires Chad’s passion in making damn sure that every person in the immediate area of him is aware of how much he doesn’t care because it betrays how much he actually does. Jared, somehow, was an exception to Chad’s rules. He doesn’t pretend to understand it, or Chad really for that matter, but he likes Chad and Chad tolerates him more than anyone else, so it works.
“Hey!” Jared grins.
“Where the hell have you been, man?” Chad slaps him hard on the shoulder and Jared stumbles slightly.
“Sick,” Jared answers easily. “Like meningitis or something.”
“Are you contagious?” Chad takes an exaggerated step backwards, hands held up like he can ward off illness if he can bat it away and it makes Jared laugh. “Swear to God, Jay, if you got me sick-”
“Jay?” Jared can practically hear Jensen’s head tilting to the side behind him.
A small stroke of helpless confusion and distress passes over Chad’s face as his eyes skip focus from Jared to over Jared’s right shoulder to where Jared can feel Jensen doing that thing where he’s trying not to loom but totally looming anyway.
“Dude.” Chad’s voice drops down into a low whisper. “What’s he doing here?”
Jared doesn’t know if Chad knows that Jensen’s related to the ‘those people’ that he and Aldis sneer at from the lunch table or if maybe he just doesn’t like Jensen because he’s quiet and sad and strange, but Jared doesn’t appreciate the tone or the fact that he knows Jensen can hear.
“He switched up classes,” Jared says, a shade more snidely than he had intended and Chad’s confusion deepens but his attention shifts back to Jared. “Don’t be a dick.”
“I’m not being a dick,” Chad denies swiftly. “You’re gone for a week and come back and just start shooting off ‘dicks’ left and right? Rude, Jaybird, rude.”
The bell rings again and Jared flinches so hard that his backpack falls off and before Chad can even stoop to help Jensen’s there, collecting Jared’s spilled papers and staying a respectable distance away despite the fact Jared can see his fingers twitching to touch.
“Dude,” Chad repeats, drawing away with his shoulders uncomfortably from Jared’s contorted frame and Jensen’s eagerness to help. “What the hell-”
“Mr. Murray!” Mrs. Burrows is a severe looking woman with red rimmed glasses, hard eyes, and a sinkhole where her sense of humor should be and she’s always watching for Chad to make some infringement or another so she can swoop down like a falcon and carry him back to her nest of detention. “Take a seat!”
Chad shuffles off to his seat slowly, casting backwards glances as he goes.
“You too, Mr. Padalecki,” she intones sharply. “And…” Her sharp eyes narrow at Jensen shrewdly, searchingly, hunting for a name for a long moment before finally settling on, “Other boy.” She waves at them and the rest of the class bursts into giggles at Jensen’s expense.
Jensen doesn’t seem to notice or care, probably didn’t notice or care about Chad either and that irritates Jared in a way he can’t even begin to describe.
Jensen slings Jared’s backpack over the shoulder he isn’t using for his own and turns for the empty desks towards the back of the room but Jared stops him with a hard hand on the arm mid-turn.
“Ackles,” Jared grits pointedly, tongue scraping his clenched teeth.
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Burrows raises her brows.
“Jensen Ackles,” Jared reiterates slowly, pronouncing pointedly.
No one’s laughing anymore.
“What are you doing?” Jensen mutters under his breath, vexed.
Jared digs his fingers in harder to Jensen’s arm but doesn’t break the hard eye-contact with Mrs. Burrows until she relents for the sake of continuing class.
“Pardon me,” she bites off stiffly. “Mr. Ackles. Take a seat.”
Jared turns heel and doesn’t so much walk to the empty desk as he marches, Jensen keeping up behind him.
“What the hell?” Jensen demands.
“People shouldn’t treat you like that,” Jared clips. “And you shouldn’t let them.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Jensen scoffs under his breath. “They’re just humans.”
Jared turns slowly and levels Jensen with a dead look. “Two weeks ago I was just a human. Did my opinion not matter?”
“I-” Jensen starts, but he doesn’t insult either of them by pretending.
Jared turns away.
-
For the most part Jensen leaves him to his own devices, just keeping a step or two behind. Jared’s not sure what Jensen’s expecting to happen at any given second of the day and the surveillance grates slightly but the fact that he’s back at school, surrounded by the small comforts of routine, is enough to soothe him.
Chad points out Jensen again during third, whispering, “Your stalker’s back,” when he thinks Jensen isn’t paying attention because he doesn’t realize, doesn’t know that Jensen can hear everything Jared can hear.
Jared punches him in the shoulder and tells him to cut it out.
“Ow,” Chad whines, looking wounded.
“What’s the matter, Jared? You sweet on him?” Aldis demands on a grin and even though there’s nothing but friendly teasing in that grin something in Jared’s chest seizes up, frigid.
“Maybe I just don’t like bullies,” Jared retorts sardonically and hopes like hell that the sharpness of his tone doesn’t compromise everything that it’s covering up.
“Dude,” Allison cuts in. “Chill out, will you?”
Jared rolls his eyes and starts packing up his bag.
“Where are you going?” Chad asks, half-demand half-whine.
Jared has half a mind to just bark ‘Away!’ and leave without another word, not to return until his friends decide to stop being douchebags, but instead he just points to the clock which is telling them that there’s five minutes until the lunch bell.
“You gonna sit with us, or with your boyfriend?” Aldis inquires cheekily.
Jared shoots him the bird over his shoulder as he turns towards the door.
“What’s wrong?” Jensen materializes by his side. “Are you feeling okay? Do we need to leave?”
“I’m fine!” Jared snaps.
Jensen falls silently behind him, cowed.
Jared feels shitty. His ears are buzzing, his head is throbbing, he’s been unforgivably short with the handful of people he’s been able to establish connections with since moving up here, he’s sweaty, he’s pissed and the question does remain: who is he going to sit with at lunch?
The problem feels so much larger than it should.
This isn’t a John Hughes film. Where Jared sits in the cafeteria isn’t going to dictate who he is or what people say about him.
Except for how it totally will.
On the one hand he’s sat with Chad since the first day of school and he enjoys lunch time with them because it’s easy and stupid and Chad sticks fries up his nose trying to impress Sophia because somewhere in his mind the ability to snort potato byproduct into his sinuses is supposed to attract women. But on the other Jensen isn’t going to just ditch him for lunch. He’s going to follow Jared at that same respectable distance, giving Jared the room he needs to function independently but making himself available for when Jared’s knees start buckling and the world starts spinning and they’re going to talk about him, point Jensen out as an anomaly and whisper things about him because they don’t understand.
So he can sit with the people he’s always sat with, try and fit back into that hard carved niche and expose Jensen to ridicule, or he can sit with Jensen and expose himself.
“This is so fucked up,” Jared mutters under his breath.
Jensen doesn’t say anything.
The lunch bell rings and rings and rings in Jared’s ears, thrumming in the center of his head and it feels like his brain is swelling up tight in the empty cavity of his skull, ready to burst through explosively at any second.
He crumples against the lockers, breathing heavily into cold, dirty metal with chipping blue paint. He presses his forehead into the vents and his skin slips across the smoothness with accumulated sweat of the day.
Jensen’s there, right behind him, holding him upright with hands under his arm and at the small of his back.
“Come on,” he says. “Before the hallway gets filled.”
Jared nods sloppily, head rolling. “Yeah, alright.”
It takes him a second but he pulls himself together, takes a deep breath and drags himself to his upright and locked position. He runs his hand through his hair, slicking it back out of his face and straightens out his shirt, like it’s going to help make him look even vaguely more presentable.
The rubber soles of shoes dragging across the thin, checked tile of the school hallways sound like tires screeching and cars impacting to Jared and he wonders vaguely to himself what actually listening to tires screeching and cars impacting would sound like to him.
“You okay?” Jensen asks for the millionth time.
“Fine,” Jared retorts. “Just- lunch.”
Jensen looks Jared over skeptically but ultimately concedes.
The cafeteria sounds and smells like an unkempt carnival. Jared walks into a wall of noise of hundreds of people talking all at once, tones and pitches clashing together like warfare and the stink of every conflicting flavor, all of those bodies mingling with their sweat and their breath. It sends him reeling violently, stomach roiling and head hollowing out empty as his blood pressure plummets straight down to his feet and it feels, for all intents and purposes, like the air just punched him right in the fucking face.
Jensen’s hands are hot, too hot, and they’re on Jared’s jaw, angling his face up and Jared thinks that he’s talking, asking something, but Jared can’t hear over the noise.
“No, no, we’re done,” Jensen growls decisively and Jared’s being manhandled and dragged.
People might be watching, whispering about him and adding to the drone of noise filling up Jared’s head so much that there’s no more room for his own thoughts but he doesn’t know, doesn’t even want to care because he’s burning up and his head is turning inside out.
Being a werewolf fucking sucks.
He stumbles where he’s lead, eyes squeezed shut so tightly that his eyes burn.
There’s a clatter, a crack, and then cool, quiet air is bathing over Jared’s face, washing him clean.
The first breath of air he sucks down feels like a baptism, being reborn out of layers of pain so subtle and compacted he hadn’t even realized he was suffering most of it until he can open his eyes in stuttered blinks and he realizes Jensen’s lead them out to the fields.
It smells like crisp winter and grass: clean, harmless.
“Oh my god,” Jared pants, breaths coming out in bursts of fog.
Jensen is doing most of the walking for him, Jared’s arm slung across the width of his shoulders and his feet stumbling ineffectively next to Jensen’s wide, sure strides.
“You’re alright,” Jensen assures as Jared’s head lolls onto his own shoulder.
“This is the worst,” Jared groans.
Jensen huffs a small laugh and hauls Jared’s arm more securely over his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” he assures but Jared doesn’t believe him. “You okay to sit down or do you want to stay up?”
“Down,” Jared moans and Jensen helps ease him down into the winter-coarse grass, stretched out like he’s being crucified. The earth is a solid support under Jared’s spine, holding him up and together all at once. The individual blades of grass are cool against his skin, licking his hands, up his wrists, his ankles where the cuff of his jeans pulled up, over his cheeks. A wind sweeps by, prying Jared’s hair out of his face and carrying the distinct, beautiful scent of nothingness and evergreen with it as it sweeps over his body and turns the burning of him cold.
Jensen eases himself down onto the field next to him facing out towards the forest, situated in the space between Jared’s outstretched arm and his torso. Not close enough that they’re touching, not even really close enough that Jared can call him on it. Just close enough that Jared notices. If Jared wanted to put his arm down by his side he wouldn’t be able to sweep it downwards without hitting Jensen’s back.
“Sorry,” Jensen says after a few minutes of blankness.
“It’s not your fault,” Jared mumbles back, drained.
“I shouldn’t have brought you back to school so soon. I should have waited.”
Jared scoffs and rolls his head along the ground, staring until Jensen glances back over his shoulder at him. “I did this,” Jared intones. “I wanted to come back to school. I made you take me. This one’s on me.”
Jensen looks him over for a few moments before turning back in favor of the tree line. There’s deeper, darker clouds rolling in from the distance, heavy with wet that’s going to come down on their heads in a few hours, probably.
“That thing you did earlier,” Jensen says without turning.
“Thing?” Jared repeats.
“With your friends. For me.”
Jared breathes slowly, waits.
“Thank you.”
Jared doesn’t do the gratitude the disservice of verbally accepting it. He sweeps his hand down through the cool prickles of grass until his fingers knock against one of Jensen’s ratty boots, nudging.
They sit in silence for a few minutes more before Jensen rolls out, laying out splayed in the grass next to Jared and they watch the clouds roll in.
Jared spends his lunch period with Jensen and when the bell rings again Jensen pulls together their things and walks Jared back to the house.
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