Down to get down tonight
Title Your Parachute Looks Kinda Like a Kite From Here
By weekend_exile
Fandom Supernatural RPS
Pairing Jared/Jensen
Rating PG
Summary In which Jared's a bigshot artist (or not) who spends most of his time doodling and being ridiculously in love with his roommate, and said roommate tries to put up with his doodling sasquatch ass. AU.
Notes I refuse to accept any responsibility for the unbearble cuteness of this story. It's schmoopy and sweet and SO DOES NOT go with my baddass fic rep. No. Temporary insanity caused by watching too many videos and listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
This one was written after a long drawn-out e-mail conversation with the lovel evian_fork orld domination plans and Ackles fangirls all the way.
The Picture that started the madness:
Your Parachute Looks Kinda Like a Kite From Here
Jared roots around his desk for a Sharpie for a good forty minutes, and this is what he finds:
approximately nine hundred papers with a doodle of one nature or the other scrawled on;
some stale Orios;
a hundred dollar bill;
nine copies of the same pamphlet about skin tones in sketches; and
Seventeen unsharpened pencils.
He organizes the pencils in a row as he eats the Orios. They're different lengths, and all of them have their ends gnawed, so the end result isn't as picturesque as he might have hoped. Ever optimistic, he tries arranging them in order of longest downward, and then from most mutilated upward.
He's still happily playing with his motley assortment of pencils when his phone rings. Jared, being that guy, brightens.
quot;Hey Jen," he says cheerfully. "What's for dinner?"
"Your eyeballs, if you don't tell me whether you finished those sketches for Mike." Jensen snaps without pausing. He sounds pissy and irritable, so Jared guesses he's in the subway. "The deadline's today."
Jared bites his lower lip, glancing guiltily at the Post-It Jensen left. Now that he actually reads it, sure enough, it says 'MIKE'S MAG SKETCHES DUE! DRAW!' in Jensen's slanted scrawl. Earlier, Jared had drawn a slice of bread with a cowboy hat in the background of the message without bothering to pay attention to what was written on it.
On the phone, Jensen sighs gustily. "Why did I assume that you'd just pick up and make my life easier?" He breathes a couple of times, mumbling the colors of the rainbow backwards under his breath. Jared feels momentarily proud: he taught Jen that trick. "Jay. Do you even remember who Mike is?"
"Um." Jared looks at his blunt pencil minions for help. "That, uh, guy." he casts about more desperately when the silence on the other end grows more ominous. He gets a flash of memory, and all but yells, "That magazine guy!"
"Right." Jensen sounds like he's in actual physical pain. "That magazine guy. Jay, he runs the biggest art magazine in the city." He recites more colors, gets to indigo before he addresses Jared again. "Just draw something now, for the love of Christ. We're meeting him for dinner."
"Where?" Jared asks immediately. "Because that Mexican place has this small-scale conspiracy going, and like hell I'm eating poisoned tacos. Steak, maybe. Yeah, I feel up for steak."
"Just go sketch something, Jared." Jensen sounds tired. He's living with Kristen these days, keeping an eye on her after the mugging incident. It's a setup that has both Jensen and Jared in less than the happiest of frames of mind. Jared personally thinks that Kristen's being ridiculous and Jensen's egging her on, because hello, New York. The mugger was probably doing her a favor by showing her how it is so early on.
But no, Jensen's absolutely convinced that Kristen underwent some sort of severe trauma and Kristen, having eyes, doesn't disagree with him. Jensen argues that if a born and bred city animal like himself understands her predicament, a hick from San Antonio like Jared has to.
Jared understands plenty. He understands that Kristen's got her ridiculously pretty blue eyes on the prize, and like hell he's gonna stand for that.
Which is probably why he says what he does next.
"Hey, why don't you bring Kris over?" he asks casually. "For dinner, I mean. It's not like Mike's gonna throw this big black tie deal." at least, he hopes not, not actually remembering the guy all that clearly. "They might hit it off."
When he replies, Jensen sounds suspicious. "Really."
It's not a question. Jared just grins and gives his pencils a thumbs up. "Really." he says happily. Jensen groans.
"You're bouncing right now, aren't you? Don't, it's fucking annoying." Jared can't actually hear the amusement in his voice, but knows it's there. "Go and draw, Jay."
"Okay." he says, and waits until Jensen hangs up.
On the other end, Jensen obviously waits for him to do the same. Jared feels the beginnings of an epically goofy grin as Jensen sounds resigned, and begins counting.
They both hang up when he reaches three, but the grin lasts well into the next hour.
*
It all works out like a fairytale, really.
So now Jared's this bigshot artist, has articles about him written regularly and everything. His drawings are in most every major gallery and the people who count don't get a blank look on their faces when his name's mentioned. Jared knows because he's tried it himself.
And then there's Jensen.
Jensen's this guy, see. Pretty as anything Jared sees in his vivid dreams of paradise. Jared met him when he moved into the apartment, and for a long time, he couldn't get out a proper sentence in his presence, couldn't do much more than stare in awe. It didn't help that Jensen was smart and sarcastic and just so generally awesome it made Jared go a little cross-eyed.
Back then, Jensen was a hooker (Jared had thought it was obvious, and continues to do so, because he's been seeing Jensen pretty much 24/7 for three years and thr sight of him with his hair wet still gets Jared hard.) doing pretty well for himself, too. He didn't actually need a roommate, but he was too used to having his buddy Steve around to plunge into single occupancy. Jared had heard of the whole thing through Misha and had happened to be homeless after Sandy kicked him out for being a, to quote, 'useless bread-drawing freak' (Jared's totally over that. Not everyone can doodle slices of bread. He secretly thinks that his big talent is actually doodling, but Jensen sayys that that's his chronic laziness talking.)
As was pointed out before: fairytale.
Somewhere along the way, Jensen had risen past the ranks of roommate -which involved cooking, cleaning the apartment of Jared's many wads of paper and other scattered trash, making sure Jared made it to meetings on time- to the position of glorified secretary. He's given up on focusing on anything past making sure that Jared's ever-growing mountains of junk didn't topple over and kill them both, and since Jared makes enough to cover pretty much all the bills, it works out in a way that Jared privately thinks is pretty awesome. It almost compensates for wanting to fuck Jensen silly and being unable to.
*
Jared breaks the coffee-maker.
"You broke the coffee-maker." Jensen says, sounding resigned and disappointed, and Jared is reminded of his dogs when they realize he's out of treats. Jared's probably the worst caregiver in the world.
But still.
"You're not even here," he challenges. "That could just be the noise I make when I'm under-caffeinated."
"One, there's no such thing as under-caffeinated when you're involved. Two, you just called our coffee maker a rat fucker, which, aside from being the most gross thing you could call a coffee maker, sounds like you've given it way too much thought." Jensen pauses for breath.
Jared sees an opening and quickly jumps in, full defensive tactics coming into play. What worked best when it came to Jensen was distraction. "We really should name our coffee-maker. I mean, it's annoying to keep calling it 'our coffee-maker' if we’re going to talk about it on a regular basis." He ponders, looking critically at the (un)broken coffee-maker.
"Knock yourself out, Padalecki." Jensen says, just as Jared gets ahead in his staring competition with the coffee-maker by narrowing his eyes. "Places to go, people to see."
Jared loses his epic staring contest with an inanimate object by blinking at Jensen's words. "You're not coming over?"
"Nah." There are a few noises on his end, and Jared guesses Jensen's eating something, a donut, probably, to substitute for both breakfast and lunch. Jensen deeply disturbs him sometimes. "Got a meeting with that gallery downtown, they want some of your stuff, God knows why."
Jared is struck, right that moment, by how much he really misses Jensen. Without Jensen, the apartment feels abandoned and the light catches it wrong. There's no one to steal olives from and no one to play guitar at two in the morning and smile up at him when he goes into the living room to complain, looking happy and sleepy and at peace. The apartment seems too loud and too quiet at the same time without Jensen around talking trash about his drawing and insulting his masculinity.
This all means, of course, that Jared is in very deep shit.
He sighs and pats the coffee-maker. "I'll fix it if you come home." He says, almost sadly.
On the other end, Jensen's quiet. "Alright then," he says, finally.
*
When Jared draws, there's nothing too epic about it. It's just this thing he does, like the way he eats olives in someone else's lunch but never his own and doodles ninja warrior bread on every available surface (Jensen never seems to get quite used to that one, especially when it's on his planner, in the middle of his meticulous notes. Jensen's pretty anal about that planner.) He draws, and puts in colors that make sense and angles and lines he has a vague idea will look pretty. He never officially learned any of this shit, and he thinks he's okay. Kinda thoughtful and abstract pictures, but sometimes his natural boisterousness shines through, and yeah, he's all kinds of amateur.
The critics disagree. They make Jared's ears burn with the things they say, the way they praise it with this look in their eyes that says they mean every word. They make him out to be some king of young god, armed with pencil. Jared sometimes gets drunk on these occasions and goes around telling people he'd rather be a Power Ranger instead.
Jensen rolls his eyes on such times and takes away whatever type of alcohol he has in his hand at the time. Jensen's unnaturally good at rolling his eyes. Jared thinks he has lube in his eyeballs to make them roll easier, except, gross.
Jensen is possibly the only one in the city not in total awe of Jared. Which kinda sucks, because it means that Jensen calls him out on a lot of bullshit when he's trying to sell people the tortured artist act ("My pet goldfish, you know. It...it was tragic. I don't want to talk about it.") it also means that Jensen isn't at all impressed with the fact that he's working for/ living with/ being secretly lusted after by one of the most renowned artists in the whole goddamn state. Jared remembers one morning a couple of months ago, Jensen had actually choked on a swallow of coffee over his morning paper and said, hoarsely, "How does a sasquatch from fucking San Antonio get to become 'Apollo with a paintbrush?" He had made a gagging noise and passed Jared the paper. "There's even one of those digital art things, look."
Jared personally thinks that the digital art thing was kinda insulting. It showed him in some sort of forest with fauns -at least, Jared thinks they were fauns. They might also have been the artist's idea of incubi, but who can tell?- at his feet and a paintbrush and pencil in hand. To add insult to injury, he was wearing a fucking toga.
Jared thinks that that picture and it’s like were the only reason Jensen reads the whole paper instead of skipping to the funnies like every other sane person. It's one of those theories that, once voiced, make Jensen look almost sympathetic, like he's thinking of how hard it must be to live with the brain capacity of a stoner termite the way Jared does.
In any case, Jared 's impressive (and people other than his Momma have told him too, which makes him believe it a bit more, but not much, 'cause his Momma's scary and is he wouldn't put it past her to threaten random people on the street.), yet fails spectacularly to impress Jensen to any degree. That's the sort of shit that can really, deeply suck.
*
"What am I supposed to draw?" Jared whines, dragging out the last syllable so it sounds like he's speaking in slow motion. Jared's brain is a very cool place to live in.
"Unicorns and ponies, maybe a howler monkey or two," Jensen deadpans. "That always seems to work out for you. Which reminds me, do we have anything close to milk in our apartment?"
Jared checks the fridge, and unearths a carton. "We have bacterial life forms, no milk." He affirms.
"It's fungi," Jensen corrects absently. "I'll have to go shopping sometime."
"You'll be coming back soon?" Jared tries to play it off as casual. To emphasize his not-seriousness, he begins munching on some moldy nuts from the fridge.
Jensen hmm's. "Someone's got to cook and clean for your giant ass."
Jared pumps his fist in the air. "You're the most awesome wife ever, I ever tell you that?"
"Nah, your hair pretty much makes you the wife by default here." Jensen says agreeably. "I'm the manly husband who anchors the relationship."
Even as Jared begins a loud and voracious defense of his man-bangs, he grins like a lunatic and thinks that Jensen's mostly right.
*
During the course of the day, he eats four pizzas, draws three legitimate sketches, doodles twenty three ninja bread poses, and calls Jensen seven times. By the end of the seventh call, Jensen sounds freakishly calm and polite as he tells Jared what to wear for dinner, which basically means that he's seconds away from erupting and Jared's screwed.
He tentatively suggests that Jensen should try naming the colors of the rainbow again. Jensen calls him a name he's never heard before, along with an anatomical detail that sounds largely impossible.
They have to count backwards from three again, because neither still had mastered the art of one hanging up on the other. Before Jensen came up with that trick, they'd both been forced to talk way longer than necessary on the phone because neither of them could hang up after the main conversation was over. Jared used to think he was the only one who had a chronic disability to hang up on anyone even after a goodbye.
"Just get here on time, Padalecki." Jensen sounds tired and worn down. Jared guesses that Jensen's being the perfect dinner partner and is taking it out on him. It's a level of honesty that settled itself between them comfortably since day one.
"'Kay. Backup is on the way. Hang in there, soldier. Three, two, one, go." And Jared hangs up.
*
The steakhouse is just a few blocks from where Jared and Jensen live, so Jared locks the door securely behind him and walks.
It's chilly out, summer not quite settled in yet. He walks fast, using his height, and makes it in about ten minutes. He waits to be lead to their table tapping his foot against the carpeted floor, humming something he'd heard the night before on TV, some theme song to a zombie movie he'd kept wanting to laugh at with Jensen.
He's pointed to a table on the far left corner of the richly-lit room. Halfway through it, though, he hears Jensen's low, thrilling laugh and halts in his tracks.
Jensen's talking to a guy with blonde hair Jared almost vaguely recognizes. He's good-looking, in that super-intense kinda way that makes Jared's spine tingle unpleasantly. But that's not important.
What gets him is Jensen.
Jared knows -somewhere in the back of his mind, tucked away where he doesn't stumble and trip over it- that Jensen still sleeps around. He just prefers not to dwell on it out of perfectly healthy reasons. It's just that seeing Jensen with guys like Mike that brings the truth home to him, steals the breath from his lungs and makes his stomach roll; Jensen's not his, in none of the ways that count. And Mike Rosenbaum's showing him exactly that much, and more.
They're flirting; open and so goddamn casual about it Jared lets out a low growl in his throat before he realizes he's doing it.
He has half a mind to throw his portfolio on the table and stomp off, but he really isn't sixteen anymore. So he takes a couple more breaths, recites the colors of the rainbow, and walks over.
Kristen sees him first. She's kinda stupidly gorgeous in a green dress and Jared lets his anger ebb a little in the face of so much sparkle. "Jared!" She cries, standing up, up, and on to her tiptoes even in her heels to hug him. He laughs a little as he hugs back.
"Have you been eating? You don't look well." Kristen says, as he sits down on her booth.
Jensen snorts. "You have no idea."
Jared glares at him directly, and Jensen's eyebrows rise.
Mike reaches out a hand. "So I hear you're absent-minded, so I'll just introduce myself again. Mike Rosenbaum." He grins. He's got nice, even teeth and Jared kinda wants to smash them in.
Jared shakes hands with him, smiling his nastiest. "Yeah, selective memory. I only remember stuff worth the trouble of doing it."
Jensen shoots him an incredulous glare, all what the fuck, dude? and Jared ignores him.
Mike seems to take it in stride. "Lucky you. I still remember the license plate number of my first girlfriend." He makes a face, all exaggerated eyebrows and crimped up mouth.
It s Jared's turn to raise his eyebrows. "That right?"
Heavy silence. And then, Kris clears her throat awkwardly, and starts talking about the weather.
*
Jared stands outside, smoking a cigarette he bummed off a busboy. He's literally, no other word for it, seething.
One whole fucking hour of Mike and Jensen touching like they're...well, like they’re Jared and Jensen. Jared had had quite enough, thank you very much. He'd left for a breath of fresh air and somehow ended up smoking in a back alley. It makes him feel badass, which cheers him up only a little.
Quick beam of light cutting through the cold, brittle night air and Jensen steps out the back door.
Jensen's backlit something perfect by the light filtering from the interior, and his eyes are the color of flawless emeralds. Fuck how pissed off he is; Jared's breathless, awestruck. "Jen," he says, and reaches out a hand.
And immediately feels pathetic.
Jared snaps his hand away, trying for control "Whatcha doing, Jen?" Jared taunts, letting his cigarette fall and stubbing it out viciously with his boot. "Were you checking this place out to see whether you could drag Mike back here later and blow him?"
He feels the anger at the very edge of his fingertips, running up and down his veins like quicksilver. The air tastes gritty and bitter like it’s got miniscule pieces of sandpaper mixed in; there’s really nothing Jared wouldn’t do to stop feeling like this.
Jensen's eyes go wide and narrow almost instantaneously. "Jay," and then he makes a noise of surprise, because Jared's kissing him.
Soft slow kiss, not as rough or as angry as he might have thought, if he had time to think. Jensen's fingers light on his face and his lips plush and welcoming against Jared's; this isn't a you're mine, mine, mine kiss, though it has hints of it. Rather, it's a you're the stupidest fucker I know, and I love you anyway kiss, and when they break off, they're both smiling.
quot;I thought you knew," Jensen says in almost a whisper. Jared tilts his head towards him, bringing their mouths within inches of each other. He rests his forehead against Jensen's briefly, and sees Jensen's white-knuckled grip on the hem of his shirt relax slowly
"Knew what?" he asks, quiet, cautious of this new, shimmering thing between them, catching the light like fairy dust.
There's a pause, and Jared feels Jensen's breath on his skin, hot and hurried. His eyes are wide and almost panicked, but don't waver from Jared's. "It's you, Jay." he says, in the same barely-audible voice. "You're the only person I want to sleep with. Possibly for the rest of my life." His head drops, as if in defeat.
Jared touches the corner of Jensen’s mouth, makes him look up. His grin’s hurting his face, but it makes Jensen get this look in his eyes like he’s not seriously thinking of running like hell.
“Made you say it first,” Jared teases gently, and Jensen’s eyes widen after a beat.
“Fucker,” he says, but he’s grinning hugely, too.
They stand there in a back alley grinning like idiots, hands resting on each other’s waists and probably looking as ridiculous as all fuck. It’s the best day of Jared’s life.
*
When next week, his published sketches all have two stylized J's intertwined in lieu of a signature, Jensen blushes and looks away before cuffing him upside the head and calling him a romantic punk.
Jared points out, “You love it.”
Jensen shrugs. He’s draped in a thin white sheet, still pretty much sprawled shamelessly on Jared’s bed (“It’s bigger. I’m only being practical.” Jensen had said. Jared had said, “You just want to come on my sheets,” and Jensen hadn’t disagreed.) and Jared’s reminded of the digital art of himself as a Greek god. Jensen looks sublime in comparison, breathtaking as the sunlight catches the sweep of his eyelashes, the bow of his mouth and the luminescence of his skin.
Jensen huffs, not noticing the staring Jared’s doing. “Huh. Suppose I do.”
Jared grins. This was turning out to be an awesome idea.
[END]
By weekend_exile
Fandom Supernatural RPS
Pairing Jared/Jensen
Rating PG
Summary In which Jared's a bigshot artist (or not) who spends most of his time doodling and being ridiculously in love with his roommate, and said roommate tries to put up with his doodling sasquatch ass. AU.
Notes I refuse to accept any responsibility for the unbearble cuteness of this story. It's schmoopy and sweet and SO DOES NOT go with my baddass fic rep. No. Temporary insanity caused by watching too many videos and listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
This one was written after a long drawn-out e-mail conversation with the lovel evian_fork orld domination plans and Ackles fangirls all the way.
The Picture that started the madness:
Your Parachute Looks Kinda Like a Kite From Here
Jared roots around his desk for a Sharpie for a good forty minutes, and this is what he finds:
approximately nine hundred papers with a doodle of one nature or the other scrawled on;
some stale Orios;
a hundred dollar bill;
nine copies of the same pamphlet about skin tones in sketches; and
Seventeen unsharpened pencils.
He organizes the pencils in a row as he eats the Orios. They're different lengths, and all of them have their ends gnawed, so the end result isn't as picturesque as he might have hoped. Ever optimistic, he tries arranging them in order of longest downward, and then from most mutilated upward.
He's still happily playing with his motley assortment of pencils when his phone rings. Jared, being that guy, brightens.
quot;Hey Jen," he says cheerfully. "What's for dinner?"
"Your eyeballs, if you don't tell me whether you finished those sketches for Mike." Jensen snaps without pausing. He sounds pissy and irritable, so Jared guesses he's in the subway. "The deadline's today."
Jared bites his lower lip, glancing guiltily at the Post-It Jensen left. Now that he actually reads it, sure enough, it says 'MIKE'S MAG SKETCHES DUE! DRAW!' in Jensen's slanted scrawl. Earlier, Jared had drawn a slice of bread with a cowboy hat in the background of the message without bothering to pay attention to what was written on it.
On the phone, Jensen sighs gustily. "Why did I assume that you'd just pick up and make my life easier?" He breathes a couple of times, mumbling the colors of the rainbow backwards under his breath. Jared feels momentarily proud: he taught Jen that trick. "Jay. Do you even remember who Mike is?"
"Um." Jared looks at his blunt pencil minions for help. "That, uh, guy." he casts about more desperately when the silence on the other end grows more ominous. He gets a flash of memory, and all but yells, "That magazine guy!"
"Right." Jensen sounds like he's in actual physical pain. "That magazine guy. Jay, he runs the biggest art magazine in the city." He recites more colors, gets to indigo before he addresses Jared again. "Just draw something now, for the love of Christ. We're meeting him for dinner."
"Where?" Jared asks immediately. "Because that Mexican place has this small-scale conspiracy going, and like hell I'm eating poisoned tacos. Steak, maybe. Yeah, I feel up for steak."
"Just go sketch something, Jared." Jensen sounds tired. He's living with Kristen these days, keeping an eye on her after the mugging incident. It's a setup that has both Jensen and Jared in less than the happiest of frames of mind. Jared personally thinks that Kristen's being ridiculous and Jensen's egging her on, because hello, New York. The mugger was probably doing her a favor by showing her how it is so early on.
But no, Jensen's absolutely convinced that Kristen underwent some sort of severe trauma and Kristen, having eyes, doesn't disagree with him. Jensen argues that if a born and bred city animal like himself understands her predicament, a hick from San Antonio like Jared has to.
Jared understands plenty. He understands that Kristen's got her ridiculously pretty blue eyes on the prize, and like hell he's gonna stand for that.
Which is probably why he says what he does next.
"Hey, why don't you bring Kris over?" he asks casually. "For dinner, I mean. It's not like Mike's gonna throw this big black tie deal." at least, he hopes not, not actually remembering the guy all that clearly. "They might hit it off."
When he replies, Jensen sounds suspicious. "Really."
It's not a question. Jared just grins and gives his pencils a thumbs up. "Really." he says happily. Jensen groans.
"You're bouncing right now, aren't you? Don't, it's fucking annoying." Jared can't actually hear the amusement in his voice, but knows it's there. "Go and draw, Jay."
"Okay." he says, and waits until Jensen hangs up.
On the other end, Jensen obviously waits for him to do the same. Jared feels the beginnings of an epically goofy grin as Jensen sounds resigned, and begins counting.
They both hang up when he reaches three, but the grin lasts well into the next hour.
*
It all works out like a fairytale, really.
So now Jared's this bigshot artist, has articles about him written regularly and everything. His drawings are in most every major gallery and the people who count don't get a blank look on their faces when his name's mentioned. Jared knows because he's tried it himself.
And then there's Jensen.
Jensen's this guy, see. Pretty as anything Jared sees in his vivid dreams of paradise. Jared met him when he moved into the apartment, and for a long time, he couldn't get out a proper sentence in his presence, couldn't do much more than stare in awe. It didn't help that Jensen was smart and sarcastic and just so generally awesome it made Jared go a little cross-eyed.
Back then, Jensen was a hooker (Jared had thought it was obvious, and continues to do so, because he's been seeing Jensen pretty much 24/7 for three years and thr sight of him with his hair wet still gets Jared hard.) doing pretty well for himself, too. He didn't actually need a roommate, but he was too used to having his buddy Steve around to plunge into single occupancy. Jared had heard of the whole thing through Misha and had happened to be homeless after Sandy kicked him out for being a, to quote, 'useless bread-drawing freak' (Jared's totally over that. Not everyone can doodle slices of bread. He secretly thinks that his big talent is actually doodling, but Jensen sayys that that's his chronic laziness talking.)
As was pointed out before: fairytale.
Somewhere along the way, Jensen had risen past the ranks of roommate -which involved cooking, cleaning the apartment of Jared's many wads of paper and other scattered trash, making sure Jared made it to meetings on time- to the position of glorified secretary. He's given up on focusing on anything past making sure that Jared's ever-growing mountains of junk didn't topple over and kill them both, and since Jared makes enough to cover pretty much all the bills, it works out in a way that Jared privately thinks is pretty awesome. It almost compensates for wanting to fuck Jensen silly and being unable to.
*
Jared breaks the coffee-maker.
"You broke the coffee-maker." Jensen says, sounding resigned and disappointed, and Jared is reminded of his dogs when they realize he's out of treats. Jared's probably the worst caregiver in the world.
But still.
"You're not even here," he challenges. "That could just be the noise I make when I'm under-caffeinated."
"One, there's no such thing as under-caffeinated when you're involved. Two, you just called our coffee maker a rat fucker, which, aside from being the most gross thing you could call a coffee maker, sounds like you've given it way too much thought." Jensen pauses for breath.
Jared sees an opening and quickly jumps in, full defensive tactics coming into play. What worked best when it came to Jensen was distraction. "We really should name our coffee-maker. I mean, it's annoying to keep calling it 'our coffee-maker' if we’re going to talk about it on a regular basis." He ponders, looking critically at the (un)broken coffee-maker.
"Knock yourself out, Padalecki." Jensen says, just as Jared gets ahead in his staring competition with the coffee-maker by narrowing his eyes. "Places to go, people to see."
Jared loses his epic staring contest with an inanimate object by blinking at Jensen's words. "You're not coming over?"
"Nah." There are a few noises on his end, and Jared guesses Jensen's eating something, a donut, probably, to substitute for both breakfast and lunch. Jensen deeply disturbs him sometimes. "Got a meeting with that gallery downtown, they want some of your stuff, God knows why."
Jared is struck, right that moment, by how much he really misses Jensen. Without Jensen, the apartment feels abandoned and the light catches it wrong. There's no one to steal olives from and no one to play guitar at two in the morning and smile up at him when he goes into the living room to complain, looking happy and sleepy and at peace. The apartment seems too loud and too quiet at the same time without Jensen around talking trash about his drawing and insulting his masculinity.
This all means, of course, that Jared is in very deep shit.
He sighs and pats the coffee-maker. "I'll fix it if you come home." He says, almost sadly.
On the other end, Jensen's quiet. "Alright then," he says, finally.
*
When Jared draws, there's nothing too epic about it. It's just this thing he does, like the way he eats olives in someone else's lunch but never his own and doodles ninja warrior bread on every available surface (Jensen never seems to get quite used to that one, especially when it's on his planner, in the middle of his meticulous notes. Jensen's pretty anal about that planner.) He draws, and puts in colors that make sense and angles and lines he has a vague idea will look pretty. He never officially learned any of this shit, and he thinks he's okay. Kinda thoughtful and abstract pictures, but sometimes his natural boisterousness shines through, and yeah, he's all kinds of amateur.
The critics disagree. They make Jared's ears burn with the things they say, the way they praise it with this look in their eyes that says they mean every word. They make him out to be some king of young god, armed with pencil. Jared sometimes gets drunk on these occasions and goes around telling people he'd rather be a Power Ranger instead.
Jensen rolls his eyes on such times and takes away whatever type of alcohol he has in his hand at the time. Jensen's unnaturally good at rolling his eyes. Jared thinks he has lube in his eyeballs to make them roll easier, except, gross.
Jensen is possibly the only one in the city not in total awe of Jared. Which kinda sucks, because it means that Jensen calls him out on a lot of bullshit when he's trying to sell people the tortured artist act ("My pet goldfish, you know. It...it was tragic. I don't want to talk about it.") it also means that Jensen isn't at all impressed with the fact that he's working for/ living with/ being secretly lusted after by one of the most renowned artists in the whole goddamn state. Jared remembers one morning a couple of months ago, Jensen had actually choked on a swallow of coffee over his morning paper and said, hoarsely, "How does a sasquatch from fucking San Antonio get to become 'Apollo with a paintbrush?" He had made a gagging noise and passed Jared the paper. "There's even one of those digital art things, look."
Jared personally thinks that the digital art thing was kinda insulting. It showed him in some sort of forest with fauns -at least, Jared thinks they were fauns. They might also have been the artist's idea of incubi, but who can tell?- at his feet and a paintbrush and pencil in hand. To add insult to injury, he was wearing a fucking toga.
Jared thinks that that picture and it’s like were the only reason Jensen reads the whole paper instead of skipping to the funnies like every other sane person. It's one of those theories that, once voiced, make Jensen look almost sympathetic, like he's thinking of how hard it must be to live with the brain capacity of a stoner termite the way Jared does.
In any case, Jared 's impressive (and people other than his Momma have told him too, which makes him believe it a bit more, but not much, 'cause his Momma's scary and is he wouldn't put it past her to threaten random people on the street.), yet fails spectacularly to impress Jensen to any degree. That's the sort of shit that can really, deeply suck.
*
"What am I supposed to draw?" Jared whines, dragging out the last syllable so it sounds like he's speaking in slow motion. Jared's brain is a very cool place to live in.
"Unicorns and ponies, maybe a howler monkey or two," Jensen deadpans. "That always seems to work out for you. Which reminds me, do we have anything close to milk in our apartment?"
Jared checks the fridge, and unearths a carton. "We have bacterial life forms, no milk." He affirms.
"It's fungi," Jensen corrects absently. "I'll have to go shopping sometime."
"You'll be coming back soon?" Jared tries to play it off as casual. To emphasize his not-seriousness, he begins munching on some moldy nuts from the fridge.
Jensen hmm's. "Someone's got to cook and clean for your giant ass."
Jared pumps his fist in the air. "You're the most awesome wife ever, I ever tell you that?"
"Nah, your hair pretty much makes you the wife by default here." Jensen says agreeably. "I'm the manly husband who anchors the relationship."
Even as Jared begins a loud and voracious defense of his man-bangs, he grins like a lunatic and thinks that Jensen's mostly right.
*
During the course of the day, he eats four pizzas, draws three legitimate sketches, doodles twenty three ninja bread poses, and calls Jensen seven times. By the end of the seventh call, Jensen sounds freakishly calm and polite as he tells Jared what to wear for dinner, which basically means that he's seconds away from erupting and Jared's screwed.
He tentatively suggests that Jensen should try naming the colors of the rainbow again. Jensen calls him a name he's never heard before, along with an anatomical detail that sounds largely impossible.
They have to count backwards from three again, because neither still had mastered the art of one hanging up on the other. Before Jensen came up with that trick, they'd both been forced to talk way longer than necessary on the phone because neither of them could hang up after the main conversation was over. Jared used to think he was the only one who had a chronic disability to hang up on anyone even after a goodbye.
"Just get here on time, Padalecki." Jensen sounds tired and worn down. Jared guesses that Jensen's being the perfect dinner partner and is taking it out on him. It's a level of honesty that settled itself between them comfortably since day one.
"'Kay. Backup is on the way. Hang in there, soldier. Three, two, one, go." And Jared hangs up.
*
The steakhouse is just a few blocks from where Jared and Jensen live, so Jared locks the door securely behind him and walks.
It's chilly out, summer not quite settled in yet. He walks fast, using his height, and makes it in about ten minutes. He waits to be lead to their table tapping his foot against the carpeted floor, humming something he'd heard the night before on TV, some theme song to a zombie movie he'd kept wanting to laugh at with Jensen.
He's pointed to a table on the far left corner of the richly-lit room. Halfway through it, though, he hears Jensen's low, thrilling laugh and halts in his tracks.
Jensen's talking to a guy with blonde hair Jared almost vaguely recognizes. He's good-looking, in that super-intense kinda way that makes Jared's spine tingle unpleasantly. But that's not important.
What gets him is Jensen.
Jared knows -somewhere in the back of his mind, tucked away where he doesn't stumble and trip over it- that Jensen still sleeps around. He just prefers not to dwell on it out of perfectly healthy reasons. It's just that seeing Jensen with guys like Mike that brings the truth home to him, steals the breath from his lungs and makes his stomach roll; Jensen's not his, in none of the ways that count. And Mike Rosenbaum's showing him exactly that much, and more.
They're flirting; open and so goddamn casual about it Jared lets out a low growl in his throat before he realizes he's doing it.
He has half a mind to throw his portfolio on the table and stomp off, but he really isn't sixteen anymore. So he takes a couple more breaths, recites the colors of the rainbow, and walks over.
Kristen sees him first. She's kinda stupidly gorgeous in a green dress and Jared lets his anger ebb a little in the face of so much sparkle. "Jared!" She cries, standing up, up, and on to her tiptoes even in her heels to hug him. He laughs a little as he hugs back.
"Have you been eating? You don't look well." Kristen says, as he sits down on her booth.
Jensen snorts. "You have no idea."
Jared glares at him directly, and Jensen's eyebrows rise.
Mike reaches out a hand. "So I hear you're absent-minded, so I'll just introduce myself again. Mike Rosenbaum." He grins. He's got nice, even teeth and Jared kinda wants to smash them in.
Jared shakes hands with him, smiling his nastiest. "Yeah, selective memory. I only remember stuff worth the trouble of doing it."
Jensen shoots him an incredulous glare, all what the fuck, dude? and Jared ignores him.
Mike seems to take it in stride. "Lucky you. I still remember the license plate number of my first girlfriend." He makes a face, all exaggerated eyebrows and crimped up mouth.
It s Jared's turn to raise his eyebrows. "That right?"
Heavy silence. And then, Kris clears her throat awkwardly, and starts talking about the weather.
*
Jared stands outside, smoking a cigarette he bummed off a busboy. He's literally, no other word for it, seething.
One whole fucking hour of Mike and Jensen touching like they're...well, like they’re Jared and Jensen. Jared had had quite enough, thank you very much. He'd left for a breath of fresh air and somehow ended up smoking in a back alley. It makes him feel badass, which cheers him up only a little.
Quick beam of light cutting through the cold, brittle night air and Jensen steps out the back door.
Jensen's backlit something perfect by the light filtering from the interior, and his eyes are the color of flawless emeralds. Fuck how pissed off he is; Jared's breathless, awestruck. "Jen," he says, and reaches out a hand.
And immediately feels pathetic.
Jared snaps his hand away, trying for control "Whatcha doing, Jen?" Jared taunts, letting his cigarette fall and stubbing it out viciously with his boot. "Were you checking this place out to see whether you could drag Mike back here later and blow him?"
He feels the anger at the very edge of his fingertips, running up and down his veins like quicksilver. The air tastes gritty and bitter like it’s got miniscule pieces of sandpaper mixed in; there’s really nothing Jared wouldn’t do to stop feeling like this.
Jensen's eyes go wide and narrow almost instantaneously. "Jay," and then he makes a noise of surprise, because Jared's kissing him.
Soft slow kiss, not as rough or as angry as he might have thought, if he had time to think. Jensen's fingers light on his face and his lips plush and welcoming against Jared's; this isn't a you're mine, mine, mine kiss, though it has hints of it. Rather, it's a you're the stupidest fucker I know, and I love you anyway kiss, and when they break off, they're both smiling.
quot;I thought you knew," Jensen says in almost a whisper. Jared tilts his head towards him, bringing their mouths within inches of each other. He rests his forehead against Jensen's briefly, and sees Jensen's white-knuckled grip on the hem of his shirt relax slowly
"Knew what?" he asks, quiet, cautious of this new, shimmering thing between them, catching the light like fairy dust.
There's a pause, and Jared feels Jensen's breath on his skin, hot and hurried. His eyes are wide and almost panicked, but don't waver from Jared's. "It's you, Jay." he says, in the same barely-audible voice. "You're the only person I want to sleep with. Possibly for the rest of my life." His head drops, as if in defeat.
Jared touches the corner of Jensen’s mouth, makes him look up. His grin’s hurting his face, but it makes Jensen get this look in his eyes like he’s not seriously thinking of running like hell.
“Made you say it first,” Jared teases gently, and Jensen’s eyes widen after a beat.
“Fucker,” he says, but he’s grinning hugely, too.
They stand there in a back alley grinning like idiots, hands resting on each other’s waists and probably looking as ridiculous as all fuck. It’s the best day of Jared’s life.
*
When next week, his published sketches all have two stylized J's intertwined in lieu of a signature, Jensen blushes and looks away before cuffing him upside the head and calling him a romantic punk.
Jared points out, “You love it.”
Jensen shrugs. He’s draped in a thin white sheet, still pretty much sprawled shamelessly on Jared’s bed (“It’s bigger. I’m only being practical.” Jensen had said. Jared had said, “You just want to come on my sheets,” and Jensen hadn’t disagreed.) and Jared’s reminded of the digital art of himself as a Greek god. Jensen looks sublime in comparison, breathtaking as the sunlight catches the sweep of his eyelashes, the bow of his mouth and the luminescence of his skin.
Jensen huffs, not noticing the staring Jared’s doing. “Huh. Suppose I do.”
Jared grins. This was turning out to be an awesome idea.
[END]