SPN REVERSE BANG FIC - "Crash" - Chapter Three
MASTERPOST
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CHAPTER THREE
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The world slowly came back to him in starch whites and bitter tastes. When Jared finally managed to unstick his eyelids and open them he was met with a pale ceiling and a lot of noise. Rolling his head to the side he could tell he was on a stretcher still, not a hospital bed. There were dozens of people speeding around. Doctors and nurses and paramedics.
“Oh! Sweetie! You’re finally awake.”
Shifting his head in the opposite direction, he found himself in a small, sort of curtained off room with a couple other people. There was an absolutely adorable woman that had to be 90 if she was a day, with a deep purple bruise on her forehead and pale blue hair to contrast. She was sat in the chair next to his bed and patting his hand with her tiny fingers.
Further behind her were a young couple, maybe barely 20 years old, clutching each other and looking completely terrified. They were sitting together on a stretcher, wet and dirty but relatively unharmed in appearance.
“Who-”
FUCK! His throat was on fire! Just that one word and he was coughing and gagging on the pain. A tiny blonde nurse rushed in from nowhere and snatched up a small paper cup full of water. He tried to drink it down greedily, but she kept making him pause and sip. Finally the pain eased and he could swallow a bit better. The tiny nurse patted his arm lightly.
“I’m glad to see you awake, cowboy. You didn’t have any identification on you and we need to run your information. Can you tell me your full name and birth date, please?”
Jared nodded slowly and supplied the information. As usual he had to repeat his last name several times for her to get it right, but after a lifetime of the experience it didn’t bother him too much. She smiled warmly at him.
“Well, Jared. You got cut up pretty bad. Several lacerations on your legs and feet. One big nasty one on your arm. If you’re not allergic to any kind of medication, we’ll be giving you some shots to stave off any infection, and one for Tetanus as well. Just in case. The doctor will be in later to tell you more. For now, stay put and keep Mrs. Ermel and Jimmy and Kimmy company … and try not to run into any more car wrecks barefoot, okay?”
Her words brought it all crashing back to him. He tried to jump from the bed, but wooziness and pain only let him get a couple inches before falling backwards. The elderly woman (Mrs. Ermel, he supposed) had gasped in surprise, and the nurse had immediately jumped on him to keep him still.
“Mr. Padalecki! Please stay still!”
Jared gripped her arms and shook his head frantically.
“No! No! My best friend! He was in the car! I need to see him! Is he okay?”
“Jared, please calm down!”
He sobbed in a deep breath.
“Please! PLEASE!”
She nodded her head and spoke calmly and slowly.
“He was the young man that was brought in with the four of you, I’m assuming? He’s in surgery now. I’ll go find out what I can if you promise me to keep still and calm down. Okay?”
Tears must have been tracking down his face unbidden, because Mrs. Ermel was suddenly there dabbing at his cheeks with a tissue and cooing at him as if he were a small child. Jared turned towards the sympathy in her voice as the nurse slipped out the door.
“There, there, dear. It’ll be alright. You’ll see.”
She stepped away from him to settle herself back into the chair next to him. She balled up the tissue and tossed it across the five feet to the wire trash basket in the corner in the room. It sailed perfectly into the bin.
“Look at that! Touchdown!”
A soft giggle erupted from the corner, and the young girl (Kimmy?) was stifling a laugh behind her hand. Her boyfriend (Jimmy?) looked so amused at the words, he’d temporarily forgotten to appear scared out of his mind. Jared felt himself sink back further into his bed as he contemplated the little lady before him. She grinned up at him, then reached to grip his hand with both hers again.
“Well, dear… let’s see now. My name is Mrs. Ermel, you heard… but you can call me MiMi. That’s what all my grandchildren do. I remember you running onto the scene … you weren’t in the actual wreck, isn’t that right?”
Jared nodded stiffly.
“My … my roommate… my best friend… he was in the red Civic… he’d just pulled out of our parking lot and I heard the tires and the … the … crash.”
He could feel his bottom lip and chin quivering, but couldn’t command them to stop. Mrs. Ermel nodded and squeezed his hand between hers.
“I see. Well, I was in my Buick turning left at the stop sign, and Jimmy and Kimmy here were in Jimmy’s truck coming up Riverside. It was raining so hard I could barely see… but Jimmy said he was going too fast and hydroplaned.”
On the other stretcher Jimmy sniffled once and buried himself into his girlfriend’s neck.
“The next thing I knew your friend’s little car was being crushed against my big old boat of a car. It’s a real shame, sweetheart. Just a terrible case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sure he’s going to be fine. He was awake when they put him in the ambulance, after all.”
The elder woman continued to speak in a low, soft voice moving away from the topic of the crash and speaking about her grandchildren and the upcoming summer holidays she planned to spend with them. Jared felt his eyes growing heavy and his worn out body and mind succumbing to her dulcet tone.
The next thing he was really aware of was a darkness to the room. Blinking his eyes open, he realized someone had pulled the curtain in their small area completely closed to the emergency room traffic around them and Jimmy and Kimmy were gone. A threadbare hospital blanket had been carefully thrown over him and was tucked up under his chin.
With a quiet sniffle and a shift, Mrs. Ermel’s kind face was suddenly filling his field of vision. She smiled warmly and brushed the bangs off his forehead with a tiny weathered hand.
“Hello there, sleepyhead.”
Jared tried to return her smile, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He was too worn out emotionally, and possibly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His heartache must have shown in his face, because the sweet little woman sobered and leaned forward to continue petting his cheek and hair.
“The police came and took our reports while you were sleeping. Jimmy and Kimmy had to go down to the station. The accident is being ruled as Jimmy’s fault. That poor boy was so distressed. These young kids think they’re so immortal, you know … speeding and showing off to his girl. I know he never meant for this to happen, but what a hard lesson to learn.”
Jared just nodded mutely and tilted his face into her cool, soft hand.
“Your family is on their way. So is your friend’s. They wouldn’t tell me anything, of course, but the sweet blonde nurse said to tell you that he’s holding his own and the doctors are very optimistic. Does that make you feel a little better?”
He released a deep breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding in. Fresh tears were gathering in his eyes, and a tremor of fear at the thought of facing Jensen’s family was sending shivers down his spine.
“We fought.”
Mrs. Ermel tilted her head a fraction at his words, but didn’t stop her calming ministrations.
“Tell me. Get it off your chest, honey.”
Jared nodded and closed his eyes. Without preamble he started to spill the whole tale to this well-meaning stranger. He told her about growing up with Jensen, and going to school with him, how close they were and how he couldn’t imagine his life without him. He told her about the argument and how he knew the whole thing was his fault. He told her about realizing that Jensen was in love with him, and how Jared had turned away from him, and how that was the last thing Jensen had known. Had thought before he’d gotten behind the wheel. That Jared had rejected him.
Tears were flowing freely from his eyes at this point. He opened them to see if this kind old woman would judge Jensen for his sexual orientation, or Jared for his fucked up reaction to it, but she simply nodded and motioned for him to continue.
Then he told her something he’d never told anyone in his life. How every girl he’d dated … he had always compared to Jensen. No matter how perfect she may seem to be, he would always think ‘if only she could be more like Jensen.’ Or sometimes, when he was epically maudlin in his thoughts, how he would wish that Jensen had been born a girl because then he would have been the most perfect human being that Jared could ever imagine.
He went on and on, for nearly half an hour on the merits of his best friend, until he was sure the poor woman was sick of him. When he finally grew quiet however, she simply shifted her face into a look of deep thought and moved her small hands down to smooth the blanket covering his torso. Her fingers came to rest right above his heart and she cleared her throat softly.
“Sweetheart … it sounds to me like your problem … isn’t really a problem at all.”
Jared brought a hand up to wipe the tears from his eyes, then let it drop to cover her fragile ones. It was almost ridiculous how it dwarfed them. He licked his dry lips once before speaking.
“I don’t understand… what do you mean?”
Mrs. Ermel nodded slowly, then shifted so that one of her hands was on top of his, Jared’s giant paw sandwiched between her dainty ones.
“Well, from what you’ve just told me about him … why does Jensen have to be a girl to be the most perfect person in the world for you?”
He could only blink at her. Stunned.
“You’ve just said that you compare all of your girlfriends to him, and that they’re never enough like him to satisfy you. But, honey, there is never going to be a girl that is just like Jensen. Because only Jensen is just like Jensen.”
His throat was closing up tight, he could feel it. That awful burning, itching pain that warned you were about to burst into horrible, wracking sobs. His voice was broken and weak when he spoke.
“It can’t … it can’t be that simple… can it?”
Mrs. Ermel grinned suddenly and gripped his hand tight.
“Why can’t it? You don’t need a substitute for Jensen… you have him. So just … HAVE him. Just have Jensen.”
They stared at each other in silence for a few moments, before words bubbled up from his chest unbidden.
“I’m in love with him, too … aren’t I? I’m in love with him.”
Tears glittered in the older woman’s eyes and she shrugged her shoulders in a ‘what can you do?’ kind of way. Jared shook his head in disbelief.
“Can you … can you really be in love with someone and not even know it?”
Mrs. Ermel chuckled and brought her hand up to tuck some stray hairs behind Jared’s ear.
“Oh, my dear, of course you can. Of course you can.”
They shared one more warm smile before all hell broke loose around them. The Ackles-Padalecki clans had just arrived on the scene.
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Chapter Four
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CHAPTER THREE
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The world slowly came back to him in starch whites and bitter tastes. When Jared finally managed to unstick his eyelids and open them he was met with a pale ceiling and a lot of noise. Rolling his head to the side he could tell he was on a stretcher still, not a hospital bed. There were dozens of people speeding around. Doctors and nurses and paramedics.
“Oh! Sweetie! You’re finally awake.”
Shifting his head in the opposite direction, he found himself in a small, sort of curtained off room with a couple other people. There was an absolutely adorable woman that had to be 90 if she was a day, with a deep purple bruise on her forehead and pale blue hair to contrast. She was sat in the chair next to his bed and patting his hand with her tiny fingers.
Further behind her were a young couple, maybe barely 20 years old, clutching each other and looking completely terrified. They were sitting together on a stretcher, wet and dirty but relatively unharmed in appearance.
“Who-”
FUCK! His throat was on fire! Just that one word and he was coughing and gagging on the pain. A tiny blonde nurse rushed in from nowhere and snatched up a small paper cup full of water. He tried to drink it down greedily, but she kept making him pause and sip. Finally the pain eased and he could swallow a bit better. The tiny nurse patted his arm lightly.
“I’m glad to see you awake, cowboy. You didn’t have any identification on you and we need to run your information. Can you tell me your full name and birth date, please?”
Jared nodded slowly and supplied the information. As usual he had to repeat his last name several times for her to get it right, but after a lifetime of the experience it didn’t bother him too much. She smiled warmly at him.
“Well, Jared. You got cut up pretty bad. Several lacerations on your legs and feet. One big nasty one on your arm. If you’re not allergic to any kind of medication, we’ll be giving you some shots to stave off any infection, and one for Tetanus as well. Just in case. The doctor will be in later to tell you more. For now, stay put and keep Mrs. Ermel and Jimmy and Kimmy company … and try not to run into any more car wrecks barefoot, okay?”
Her words brought it all crashing back to him. He tried to jump from the bed, but wooziness and pain only let him get a couple inches before falling backwards. The elderly woman (Mrs. Ermel, he supposed) had gasped in surprise, and the nurse had immediately jumped on him to keep him still.
“Mr. Padalecki! Please stay still!”
Jared gripped her arms and shook his head frantically.
“No! No! My best friend! He was in the car! I need to see him! Is he okay?”
“Jared, please calm down!”
He sobbed in a deep breath.
“Please! PLEASE!”
She nodded her head and spoke calmly and slowly.
“He was the young man that was brought in with the four of you, I’m assuming? He’s in surgery now. I’ll go find out what I can if you promise me to keep still and calm down. Okay?”
Tears must have been tracking down his face unbidden, because Mrs. Ermel was suddenly there dabbing at his cheeks with a tissue and cooing at him as if he were a small child. Jared turned towards the sympathy in her voice as the nurse slipped out the door.
“There, there, dear. It’ll be alright. You’ll see.”
She stepped away from him to settle herself back into the chair next to him. She balled up the tissue and tossed it across the five feet to the wire trash basket in the corner in the room. It sailed perfectly into the bin.
“Look at that! Touchdown!”
A soft giggle erupted from the corner, and the young girl (Kimmy?) was stifling a laugh behind her hand. Her boyfriend (Jimmy?) looked so amused at the words, he’d temporarily forgotten to appear scared out of his mind. Jared felt himself sink back further into his bed as he contemplated the little lady before him. She grinned up at him, then reached to grip his hand with both hers again.
“Well, dear… let’s see now. My name is Mrs. Ermel, you heard… but you can call me MiMi. That’s what all my grandchildren do. I remember you running onto the scene … you weren’t in the actual wreck, isn’t that right?”
Jared nodded stiffly.
“My … my roommate… my best friend… he was in the red Civic… he’d just pulled out of our parking lot and I heard the tires and the … the … crash.”
He could feel his bottom lip and chin quivering, but couldn’t command them to stop. Mrs. Ermel nodded and squeezed his hand between hers.
“I see. Well, I was in my Buick turning left at the stop sign, and Jimmy and Kimmy here were in Jimmy’s truck coming up Riverside. It was raining so hard I could barely see… but Jimmy said he was going too fast and hydroplaned.”
On the other stretcher Jimmy sniffled once and buried himself into his girlfriend’s neck.
“The next thing I knew your friend’s little car was being crushed against my big old boat of a car. It’s a real shame, sweetheart. Just a terrible case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sure he’s going to be fine. He was awake when they put him in the ambulance, after all.”
The elder woman continued to speak in a low, soft voice moving away from the topic of the crash and speaking about her grandchildren and the upcoming summer holidays she planned to spend with them. Jared felt his eyes growing heavy and his worn out body and mind succumbing to her dulcet tone.
The next thing he was really aware of was a darkness to the room. Blinking his eyes open, he realized someone had pulled the curtain in their small area completely closed to the emergency room traffic around them and Jimmy and Kimmy were gone. A threadbare hospital blanket had been carefully thrown over him and was tucked up under his chin.
With a quiet sniffle and a shift, Mrs. Ermel’s kind face was suddenly filling his field of vision. She smiled warmly and brushed the bangs off his forehead with a tiny weathered hand.
“Hello there, sleepyhead.”
Jared tried to return her smile, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He was too worn out emotionally, and possibly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His heartache must have shown in his face, because the sweet little woman sobered and leaned forward to continue petting his cheek and hair.
“The police came and took our reports while you were sleeping. Jimmy and Kimmy had to go down to the station. The accident is being ruled as Jimmy’s fault. That poor boy was so distressed. These young kids think they’re so immortal, you know … speeding and showing off to his girl. I know he never meant for this to happen, but what a hard lesson to learn.”
Jared just nodded mutely and tilted his face into her cool, soft hand.
“Your family is on their way. So is your friend’s. They wouldn’t tell me anything, of course, but the sweet blonde nurse said to tell you that he’s holding his own and the doctors are very optimistic. Does that make you feel a little better?”
He released a deep breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding in. Fresh tears were gathering in his eyes, and a tremor of fear at the thought of facing Jensen’s family was sending shivers down his spine.
“We fought.”
Mrs. Ermel tilted her head a fraction at his words, but didn’t stop her calming ministrations.
“Tell me. Get it off your chest, honey.”
Jared nodded and closed his eyes. Without preamble he started to spill the whole tale to this well-meaning stranger. He told her about growing up with Jensen, and going to school with him, how close they were and how he couldn’t imagine his life without him. He told her about the argument and how he knew the whole thing was his fault. He told her about realizing that Jensen was in love with him, and how Jared had turned away from him, and how that was the last thing Jensen had known. Had thought before he’d gotten behind the wheel. That Jared had rejected him.
Tears were flowing freely from his eyes at this point. He opened them to see if this kind old woman would judge Jensen for his sexual orientation, or Jared for his fucked up reaction to it, but she simply nodded and motioned for him to continue.
Then he told her something he’d never told anyone in his life. How every girl he’d dated … he had always compared to Jensen. No matter how perfect she may seem to be, he would always think ‘if only she could be more like Jensen.’ Or sometimes, when he was epically maudlin in his thoughts, how he would wish that Jensen had been born a girl because then he would have been the most perfect human being that Jared could ever imagine.
He went on and on, for nearly half an hour on the merits of his best friend, until he was sure the poor woman was sick of him. When he finally grew quiet however, she simply shifted her face into a look of deep thought and moved her small hands down to smooth the blanket covering his torso. Her fingers came to rest right above his heart and she cleared her throat softly.
“Sweetheart … it sounds to me like your problem … isn’t really a problem at all.”
Jared brought a hand up to wipe the tears from his eyes, then let it drop to cover her fragile ones. It was almost ridiculous how it dwarfed them. He licked his dry lips once before speaking.
“I don’t understand… what do you mean?”
Mrs. Ermel nodded slowly, then shifted so that one of her hands was on top of his, Jared’s giant paw sandwiched between her dainty ones.
“Well, from what you’ve just told me about him … why does Jensen have to be a girl to be the most perfect person in the world for you?”
He could only blink at her. Stunned.
“You’ve just said that you compare all of your girlfriends to him, and that they’re never enough like him to satisfy you. But, honey, there is never going to be a girl that is just like Jensen. Because only Jensen is just like Jensen.”
His throat was closing up tight, he could feel it. That awful burning, itching pain that warned you were about to burst into horrible, wracking sobs. His voice was broken and weak when he spoke.
“It can’t … it can’t be that simple… can it?”
Mrs. Ermel grinned suddenly and gripped his hand tight.
“Why can’t it? You don’t need a substitute for Jensen… you have him. So just … HAVE him. Just have Jensen.”
They stared at each other in silence for a few moments, before words bubbled up from his chest unbidden.
“I’m in love with him, too … aren’t I? I’m in love with him.”
Tears glittered in the older woman’s eyes and she shrugged her shoulders in a ‘what can you do?’ kind of way. Jared shook his head in disbelief.
“Can you … can you really be in love with someone and not even know it?”
Mrs. Ermel chuckled and brought her hand up to tuck some stray hairs behind Jared’s ear.
“Oh, my dear, of course you can. Of course you can.”
They shared one more warm smile before all hell broke loose around them. The Ackles-Padalecki clans had just arrived on the scene.
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Chapter Four