"Don't Stop Me Now"
“Don’t Stop Me Now”
A/N: Okay, guys. We’re all pretending that I’m not writing this again, okay? Title is taken from Queen. For those of you who thought I’d already sold my soul a while ago… surprise!
Special thanks to Crowley for getting this deal for me on such short notice. The breath mint was a great touch.
Set during the filming of 6.16.
Summary: Jensen's sick. And stubborn. It rains a lot. The plot's a little M.I.A., but I threw in extra feverish Jensen to make up for it. And also because this is the last time I will be writing this. (Riiiiiiiight.)
Coda: In which Jared is sick! Written by the lovely 27_jaredjensen, "Karma."
“You sound like death,” Jared’s informing Jensen cheerfully as they’re leaving the makeup trailer. It’s Monday morning, Jensen’s had about three hours of sleep, and he spent the entire weekend pretending that the DayQuil took the edge off of everything and he was fine.
“You mean because I actually was Death a while ago? Wrong episode, dude.” Jensen’s rubbing his temples, already weighing the pros and cons of potential places he could hide out and sleep during their lunch break.
“Nah. More in like a… ‘I think you should take a bath in Germ-X’ kind of way.”
They spot Jim and Mitch standing underneath a tent a few trailers down, obviously waiting for the last possible second before braving the weather, and they walk over to meet them.
Jensen cracks a throat-blistering yawn as they join the others under the tent.
“Good morning to you, too,” Jim observes sardonically.
“Sorry,” Jensen rasps, attempting to clear his throat without rupturing something. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
“Dude,” Jared’s poking him in the arm. “You should’ve slept on the plane.”
“Nah,” Jensen scoffs. “I was on the emergency exit. Had to stay vigilant in case of emergency.”
Truthfully, he’d tried to sleep, but the plane was freezing even though he’d stolen Jared’s blanket early on, and every time he seemed about to drop off to sleep, the seat belt sign seemed to come on or off.
“Hey, guys?” A PA’s holding her hand over the microphone of her headset. “We’re ready for you.”
~~~~~
Time’s blurring like raindrops on a windshield and the wipers are broken. Jensen’s not sure how many times they’ve done this particular scene, but regardless, they’ve been standing in the rain for a long time. Sam, Dean, and Bobby are pretending to care as they stand over Samuel’s grave, but the only thing Jensen’s grieving is the fact that neither he nor Jim seem to be capable of making it through a take without coughing. And the longer they stand out here, the worse Jensen feels, so it’s just an unending cycle. He’s beginning to feel like Dean-perpetuating the same scenario over and over, running in circles for miles but never getting anywhere.
Jensen’s even feeling envious of Mitch.
“Why couldn’t Dean die this week?” he complains to Jared in between takes.
“Are you delirious, man?” Jared jokes, palming his forehead. “I thought you hated death scenes.”
Jensen’s voice cracks. “Yeah, well, if I was dead I could sleep. Hey, Mitch,” he calls down into the grave. “You fall asleep again?”
He turns back to Jared. “See?”
“See?” Jared repeats. “All I see is you being sick as hell, dude.”
“I completely agree with you there, Jensen,” Jim interjects hoarsely. “I never thought I’d say that I’d miss the day that Bobby was in a wheelchair, but…”
Basically, almost everyone here is miserable. Half the crew is sick, and Jensen thinks they could build a scale model of Vancouver with all the empty Kleenex boxes. It hasn’t fazed Jared yet, though- Jensen’s sure that he got about as much sleep as he did, maybe even less, but he still seems like nothing would make him happier than a rainy Monday morning in Vancouver, re-doing the same lines for the thousandth time in hopes that they’ll get a decent take.
Eventually, they do manage to make it through the scene to the director’s liking (secretly Jensen thinks that it was just because he wanted to get out of the rain), and Phil says that it’s okay for them to go on lunch break.
Jared offers Mitch a hand as he’s climbing out of the grave (“Hey, don’t say I never did anything for you, Gramps”), while Jensen stands off to the side and tries to make his lungs behave.
“If you weren’t dead already, I’d kill you for giving this to me,” Jensen tells Mitch as he passes by.
“And I’d thank you for it,” Mitch replies. “You look about as bad as I feel, kid.”
Jared surveys Jensen. “Lunch?”
“The couch?”
“Generally, I don’t eat furniture, but I guess just this once…”
“I have a gun.”
“So do I.”
Suddenly Jensen feels something hard poking him in the back.
“So do I,” Jim’s saying, giving Jensen a gentle shove with Bobby’s revolver. “And I think we should all be getting out of the rain.”
~~~~~
Jensen and Jared take their lunch into Jensen’s trailer. Jensen feels kind of bad for being so asocial, but Jim had already told them that he was crashing not only for the entire lunch break, but “until Sera figures out a plausible paralysis relapse scenario,” so he figures it’s okay.
He gets settled in on his couch gingerly- all that rain seems to have settled deep into his bones, and he feels like he’ll never be warm again unless he can convince Sera to send Dean back to Hell.
Jared plops down on the couch next to him, all gangly legs and that irrepressible smile.
“Dude,” he’s telling Jensen. “You should take some meds now or something, maybe they’ll kick in by the time we have to shoot again.”
Jensen shrugs. “I’m not moving from this couch, man.” He snuffles into the sleeve of his coat. “Besides, they make me all fuzzy, and I’m having a hard enough time remembering my lines as it is.”
“Suit yourself,” Jared says around a mouthful of food.
An hour later, Jensen doesn’t know what happened to the lunch break- one minute he’s sitting there watching Jared eat both their lunches, the next he’s waking up to Jared’s hand on his face.
“Quit molesting me, Jared.”
“Jensen,” Jared’s saying seriously. “You feel pretty warm considering that it’s about forty degrees out and raining.”
“That’s me, hot-blooded,” Jensen says irritably, and shivers.
“Ah-hah. I’m pretty sure that’s more of a Dean thing, Jensen, and anyway, I’m not kidding. I’m surprised the rain doesn’t sizzle when it hits you.”
“I’ll be fine.” Jensen’s standing up now, trying to rally himself for heading back out into the rain and trying to look badass while he feels like he’s going to fall over on his ass and never get up.
He ducks his head and coughs into his elbow. When he surfaces, Jared’s still standing in front of him with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Jensen rasps.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re Sam.”
Jared throws his head back and laughs.
“As if you aren’t channeling Dean right now, all ‘I’m going to say I’m fine until I fall over, and even then I won’t admit it, I’ll blame it on gravity or something’.” Jared’s making quotation marks in the air like he thinks Misha’s around. “Do you know what they call it when you internalize your character like that?”
“Multiple personality disorder?” Jensen guesses dully. He’s following Jared out of his trailer now.
They’re doing some sort of action scene next- running around dodging headstones until they all pile into the Impala and speed away. The first take goes well enough, until they’re all in the car and Jensen’s just sitting there, waiting for something to happen, until he realizes that he’s supposed to be driving.
Take two. Jensen sneezes at the exact wrong moment, and doesn’t hear the director telling him to run. He does hear ‘cut,’ though. Jared’s partway across the cemetery from him, slowing his sprint to a stop and yelling, “Hey, Mr. Fahrenheit, what happened? I thought you traveled at the speed of light or something!”
Take three, both Jim and Jensen are coughing.
Take fuck-it (twelve), they finally get it. Jensen decides on a celebratory nap.
~~~~~
Back in Jared’s trailer, Jensen’s sprawled sideways on his couch- not bothering to take off his boots or his coat.
They’ve got another break for a while before going to the other location- it’s a night scene, so they have to wait until everything is all set up and everyone’s happy with how the lighting looks.
“How come Dean never wears mittens, is what I would like to know.” Jensen’s rubbing his hands together, still chilled from the omnipresent rain and oh yeah, that pesky fever that’s been lurking since the middle of the convention.
“Mittens,” Jared deadpans. “You think Dean should wear mittens.”
“Yes, mittens! When it’s below zero! I’m surprised the guy still has all his fingers!” His voice cracks, and he stops talking to massage his throat.
“… or a hat.”
“Memo to Sera,” Jared dictates. “I, Jensen Ackles, would like to request that Dean wear a hat and mittens from now on. Preferably a matching set. With possible scarf.”
“I’ll cough on you,” Jensen threatens.
“You mean more than you already have? I’m immune, dude. Now, about that hat. Pom-pom, or no pom-pom?”
Jensen just glares at him. “Jared Padalecki, I will get you.” He shivers. “Not… today. But someday.”
Jared ignores him. “Details are important.”
“Shut up,” Jensen says hoarsely. “Let me sleep.”
“You have your own trailer, you know,” Jared observes.
Jensen already has his eyes shut. “Yeah,” he sighs out congestedly. “I know.”
~~~~~
The night shoot ends up being a bust. It’s still raining, Jensen’s voice seems to have flown like paper planes (aka, gone M.I.A.), and he’s shivering so hard that Phil eventually calls in the set medic to take his temperature.
“101.7,” she reads off, and Jensen can see Jared trying not to laugh in the background.
“Is that in, uh, Fahrenheit?” Jared asks, and the medic gives him a strange look.
“Yeah,” she tells him, shaking her head to herself.
Phil’s hovering around looking concerned. “Jesus, Jensen,” he says seriously. “Do you ever stop and take a break?”
Jensen gives a strangled laugh, which turns into a coughing fit. “That answer enough?”
Phil just sighs, tells him that he can go home and that when he gets there he had better be sleeping and taking enough Tylenol to kill a horse.
“Not… literally…” he continues, looking awkward. “But enough to knock back that fever, anyway.”
“He will be,” Jared butts in. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Why, Sammy,” Jensen drawls in a half-whisper. “You’re just getting more like your dad every day.”
“Shut up, or I’ll call you a bitch.”
“That’s my line.”
“Only if you can say it without sounding like you’re dying in the process.”
“You shut up.”
“I thought so.”
~~~~~
The next day they don’t have to be on set until late morning, by which time Jensen’s souped up to the gills on cold medicine and painkillers, thanks to Jared’s regime. Luckily, it’s finally stopped raining, and while he still doesn’t feel great by any means, Jensen’s just glad not to have to be wet all day.
“Hey, kiddo, I brought you something.” Jared’s poking his head in Jensen’s trailer.
“Oh, I’m sorry, but I kind of lost you at ‘kiddo,’ seeing as I’m older than you.”
“Tea, Jensen. I brought you some tea.”
Dean Winchester would make some sort of withering remark about tea, Jensen’s sure, but he’s pretty sure that nothing has ever felt this good on his scratchy throat.
“Thanks, Jared.”
“No problem.” Jared takes a sip from his own travel mug.
“Hey, what are you drinking?” Jensen asks him, stifling a cough against his wrist.
“Um…” Jared looks around evasively. “… Tea?”
“You. Drinking tea. Did I miss the second apocalypse?”
“Um…” Jared’s scratching the back of his head, not looking at Jensen. “Well, I woke up this morning and my throat felt a little weird…”
“You know what that feels like, Mr. Immunity?” Jensen asks him.
“Um, scratchy?” Jared guesses. “Sore?”
“Karma,” says Jensen.
...
The amazing 27_jaredjensen has written a sick!Jared coda to go along with this. It's called.... "Karma."
A/N: Okay, guys. We’re all pretending that I’m not writing this again, okay? Title is taken from Queen. For those of you who thought I’d already sold my soul a while ago… surprise!
Special thanks to Crowley for getting this deal for me on such short notice. The breath mint was a great touch.
Set during the filming of 6.16.
Summary: Jensen's sick. And stubborn. It rains a lot. The plot's a little M.I.A., but I threw in extra feverish Jensen to make up for it. And also because this is the last time I will be writing this. (Riiiiiiiight.)
Coda: In which Jared is sick! Written by the lovely 27_jaredjensen, "Karma."
“You sound like death,” Jared’s informing Jensen cheerfully as they’re leaving the makeup trailer. It’s Monday morning, Jensen’s had about three hours of sleep, and he spent the entire weekend pretending that the DayQuil took the edge off of everything and he was fine.
“You mean because I actually was Death a while ago? Wrong episode, dude.” Jensen’s rubbing his temples, already weighing the pros and cons of potential places he could hide out and sleep during their lunch break.
“Nah. More in like a… ‘I think you should take a bath in Germ-X’ kind of way.”
They spot Jim and Mitch standing underneath a tent a few trailers down, obviously waiting for the last possible second before braving the weather, and they walk over to meet them.
Jensen cracks a throat-blistering yawn as they join the others under the tent.
“Good morning to you, too,” Jim observes sardonically.
“Sorry,” Jensen rasps, attempting to clear his throat without rupturing something. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
“Dude,” Jared’s poking him in the arm. “You should’ve slept on the plane.”
“Nah,” Jensen scoffs. “I was on the emergency exit. Had to stay vigilant in case of emergency.”
Truthfully, he’d tried to sleep, but the plane was freezing even though he’d stolen Jared’s blanket early on, and every time he seemed about to drop off to sleep, the seat belt sign seemed to come on or off.
“Hey, guys?” A PA’s holding her hand over the microphone of her headset. “We’re ready for you.”
~~~~~
Time’s blurring like raindrops on a windshield and the wipers are broken. Jensen’s not sure how many times they’ve done this particular scene, but regardless, they’ve been standing in the rain for a long time. Sam, Dean, and Bobby are pretending to care as they stand over Samuel’s grave, but the only thing Jensen’s grieving is the fact that neither he nor Jim seem to be capable of making it through a take without coughing. And the longer they stand out here, the worse Jensen feels, so it’s just an unending cycle. He’s beginning to feel like Dean-perpetuating the same scenario over and over, running in circles for miles but never getting anywhere.
Jensen’s even feeling envious of Mitch.
“Why couldn’t Dean die this week?” he complains to Jared in between takes.
“Are you delirious, man?” Jared jokes, palming his forehead. “I thought you hated death scenes.”
Jensen’s voice cracks. “Yeah, well, if I was dead I could sleep. Hey, Mitch,” he calls down into the grave. “You fall asleep again?”
He turns back to Jared. “See?”
“See?” Jared repeats. “All I see is you being sick as hell, dude.”
“I completely agree with you there, Jensen,” Jim interjects hoarsely. “I never thought I’d say that I’d miss the day that Bobby was in a wheelchair, but…”
Basically, almost everyone here is miserable. Half the crew is sick, and Jensen thinks they could build a scale model of Vancouver with all the empty Kleenex boxes. It hasn’t fazed Jared yet, though- Jensen’s sure that he got about as much sleep as he did, maybe even less, but he still seems like nothing would make him happier than a rainy Monday morning in Vancouver, re-doing the same lines for the thousandth time in hopes that they’ll get a decent take.
Eventually, they do manage to make it through the scene to the director’s liking (secretly Jensen thinks that it was just because he wanted to get out of the rain), and Phil says that it’s okay for them to go on lunch break.
Jared offers Mitch a hand as he’s climbing out of the grave (“Hey, don’t say I never did anything for you, Gramps”), while Jensen stands off to the side and tries to make his lungs behave.
“If you weren’t dead already, I’d kill you for giving this to me,” Jensen tells Mitch as he passes by.
“And I’d thank you for it,” Mitch replies. “You look about as bad as I feel, kid.”
Jared surveys Jensen. “Lunch?”
“The couch?”
“Generally, I don’t eat furniture, but I guess just this once…”
“I have a gun.”
“So do I.”
Suddenly Jensen feels something hard poking him in the back.
“So do I,” Jim’s saying, giving Jensen a gentle shove with Bobby’s revolver. “And I think we should all be getting out of the rain.”
~~~~~
Jensen and Jared take their lunch into Jensen’s trailer. Jensen feels kind of bad for being so asocial, but Jim had already told them that he was crashing not only for the entire lunch break, but “until Sera figures out a plausible paralysis relapse scenario,” so he figures it’s okay.
He gets settled in on his couch gingerly- all that rain seems to have settled deep into his bones, and he feels like he’ll never be warm again unless he can convince Sera to send Dean back to Hell.
Jared plops down on the couch next to him, all gangly legs and that irrepressible smile.
“Dude,” he’s telling Jensen. “You should take some meds now or something, maybe they’ll kick in by the time we have to shoot again.”
Jensen shrugs. “I’m not moving from this couch, man.” He snuffles into the sleeve of his coat. “Besides, they make me all fuzzy, and I’m having a hard enough time remembering my lines as it is.”
“Suit yourself,” Jared says around a mouthful of food.
An hour later, Jensen doesn’t know what happened to the lunch break- one minute he’s sitting there watching Jared eat both their lunches, the next he’s waking up to Jared’s hand on his face.
“Quit molesting me, Jared.”
“Jensen,” Jared’s saying seriously. “You feel pretty warm considering that it’s about forty degrees out and raining.”
“That’s me, hot-blooded,” Jensen says irritably, and shivers.
“Ah-hah. I’m pretty sure that’s more of a Dean thing, Jensen, and anyway, I’m not kidding. I’m surprised the rain doesn’t sizzle when it hits you.”
“I’ll be fine.” Jensen’s standing up now, trying to rally himself for heading back out into the rain and trying to look badass while he feels like he’s going to fall over on his ass and never get up.
He ducks his head and coughs into his elbow. When he surfaces, Jared’s still standing in front of him with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Jensen rasps.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re Sam.”
Jared throws his head back and laughs.
“As if you aren’t channeling Dean right now, all ‘I’m going to say I’m fine until I fall over, and even then I won’t admit it, I’ll blame it on gravity or something’.” Jared’s making quotation marks in the air like he thinks Misha’s around. “Do you know what they call it when you internalize your character like that?”
“Multiple personality disorder?” Jensen guesses dully. He’s following Jared out of his trailer now.
They’re doing some sort of action scene next- running around dodging headstones until they all pile into the Impala and speed away. The first take goes well enough, until they’re all in the car and Jensen’s just sitting there, waiting for something to happen, until he realizes that he’s supposed to be driving.
Take two. Jensen sneezes at the exact wrong moment, and doesn’t hear the director telling him to run. He does hear ‘cut,’ though. Jared’s partway across the cemetery from him, slowing his sprint to a stop and yelling, “Hey, Mr. Fahrenheit, what happened? I thought you traveled at the speed of light or something!”
Take three, both Jim and Jensen are coughing.
Take fuck-it (twelve), they finally get it. Jensen decides on a celebratory nap.
~~~~~
Back in Jared’s trailer, Jensen’s sprawled sideways on his couch- not bothering to take off his boots or his coat.
They’ve got another break for a while before going to the other location- it’s a night scene, so they have to wait until everything is all set up and everyone’s happy with how the lighting looks.
“How come Dean never wears mittens, is what I would like to know.” Jensen’s rubbing his hands together, still chilled from the omnipresent rain and oh yeah, that pesky fever that’s been lurking since the middle of the convention.
“Mittens,” Jared deadpans. “You think Dean should wear mittens.”
“Yes, mittens! When it’s below zero! I’m surprised the guy still has all his fingers!” His voice cracks, and he stops talking to massage his throat.
“… or a hat.”
“Memo to Sera,” Jared dictates. “I, Jensen Ackles, would like to request that Dean wear a hat and mittens from now on. Preferably a matching set. With possible scarf.”
“I’ll cough on you,” Jensen threatens.
“You mean more than you already have? I’m immune, dude. Now, about that hat. Pom-pom, or no pom-pom?”
Jensen just glares at him. “Jared Padalecki, I will get you.” He shivers. “Not… today. But someday.”
Jared ignores him. “Details are important.”
“Shut up,” Jensen says hoarsely. “Let me sleep.”
“You have your own trailer, you know,” Jared observes.
Jensen already has his eyes shut. “Yeah,” he sighs out congestedly. “I know.”
~~~~~
The night shoot ends up being a bust. It’s still raining, Jensen’s voice seems to have flown like paper planes (aka, gone M.I.A.), and he’s shivering so hard that Phil eventually calls in the set medic to take his temperature.
“101.7,” she reads off, and Jensen can see Jared trying not to laugh in the background.
“Is that in, uh, Fahrenheit?” Jared asks, and the medic gives him a strange look.
“Yeah,” she tells him, shaking her head to herself.
Phil’s hovering around looking concerned. “Jesus, Jensen,” he says seriously. “Do you ever stop and take a break?”
Jensen gives a strangled laugh, which turns into a coughing fit. “That answer enough?”
Phil just sighs, tells him that he can go home and that when he gets there he had better be sleeping and taking enough Tylenol to kill a horse.
“Not… literally…” he continues, looking awkward. “But enough to knock back that fever, anyway.”
“He will be,” Jared butts in. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Why, Sammy,” Jensen drawls in a half-whisper. “You’re just getting more like your dad every day.”
“Shut up, or I’ll call you a bitch.”
“That’s my line.”
“Only if you can say it without sounding like you’re dying in the process.”
“You shut up.”
“I thought so.”
~~~~~
The next day they don’t have to be on set until late morning, by which time Jensen’s souped up to the gills on cold medicine and painkillers, thanks to Jared’s regime. Luckily, it’s finally stopped raining, and while he still doesn’t feel great by any means, Jensen’s just glad not to have to be wet all day.
“Hey, kiddo, I brought you something.” Jared’s poking his head in Jensen’s trailer.
“Oh, I’m sorry, but I kind of lost you at ‘kiddo,’ seeing as I’m older than you.”
“Tea, Jensen. I brought you some tea.”
Dean Winchester would make some sort of withering remark about tea, Jensen’s sure, but he’s pretty sure that nothing has ever felt this good on his scratchy throat.
“Thanks, Jared.”
“No problem.” Jared takes a sip from his own travel mug.
“Hey, what are you drinking?” Jensen asks him, stifling a cough against his wrist.
“Um…” Jared looks around evasively. “… Tea?”
“You. Drinking tea. Did I miss the second apocalypse?”
“Um…” Jared’s scratching the back of his head, not looking at Jensen. “Well, I woke up this morning and my throat felt a little weird…”
“You know what that feels like, Mr. Immunity?” Jensen asks him.
“Um, scratchy?” Jared guesses. “Sore?”
“Karma,” says Jensen.
...
The amazing 27_jaredjensen has written a sick!Jared coda to go along with this. It's called.... "Karma."