Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Fic - Covers, Pt. 2/2

[daniomalley22]

Part One
Jensen decided he wanted to make a gesture to show Jared that he appreciated their friendship. Halloween was coming up, and Jensen knew that there was a horror-themed night happening at the amusement park in town. He also knew that it would be out of Jared’s budget. He worked as many hours as he could spare, but generally saved his money for necessities. So, after an interminable amount of deliberation over whether he should go for it or not, Jensen bought two tickets and presented them to Jared three days before Halloween.

“Jensen!” Jared exclaimed, his face lighting up. “What a surprise!”

It ended up being a little spookier than Jensen had anticipated. After the third time he nearly jumped out of his skin from someone creeping up behind him, Jared laughed at him and put an arm around his shoulders, keeping him close to Jared’s side. Jensen didn’t mind it, not at all. The tickets came with unlimited rides, and they spent a while wandering around searching out the ones that weren’t too boring for Jared or too extreme for Jensen. The lines were long, but Jared was entertaining company while they waited.

“I’ve never been to anything like this before,” Jensen admitted while they waited in line for the rollercoaster.

“What, a Halloween-themed amusement park?”

“No. Or any amusement park, actually. Sometimes my school would hold a fair as a fundraiser, and there were rides and stuff, but it was way smaller than this.”

“Huh. Yeah, I haven’t been to anything like this in a long time, actually. The last time I remember... I must have been really young, because Dad was still alive.”

“Oh... I didn’t know your dad...”

“Yeah, well, I don’t talk about my parents a lot. It just gets awkward, people get all concerned and in your face about it. ‘Ooooh, how teeerrible, ooooh, I’m so sooory,’” Jared mocked.

Jensen nodded and bit back the words on the tip of his tongue. “Yeah, that must be pretty annoying.”

“Yeah. And anyway, it sucked at the time, but it was a long time ago. There’s nothing anyone can do about it, so I always wish people would just... treat me normally, you know?”

Jensen nodded again, and caught movement from the corner of his eye. Looking over, he saw one of the amusement park workers, in an artfully tattered suit with pale yellow contacts in his eyes. The man met his gaze and Jensen bit his lip. He crept up behind Jared, put a hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear.

“Aaaaagh!” Jared shrieked, leaping away and nearly knocking Jensen over. Jared caught himself at the last minute, finding his feet and grabbing Jensen’s shoulders to hold him steady, which was lucky because Jensen was laughing too hard to save himself.

“You jerk!” said Jared. “A little warning would have been good!”

“Sorry,” Jensen said unrepentantly. He was at least eighty percent sure that Jared had seen some of his earlier scares coming and decided to keep quiet about them.

When they were both starting to get tired and considering heading back, Jared stopped them at one of the games near the exit.

“You’ve got to try to win a ridiculously oversized stuffed... Cthulhu,” Jared insisted, looking over the selections. “It’s traditional.”

“Well, I’m not one to go against tradition,” Jensen said.

“I know. Anyway, it’s easy,” said Jared, taking three rubber balls. “It’s just math. You’ve got to get the curve and the angle just right.” He launched his first ball, and missed the bucket by a good six inches. “Oh, and you’ve also got to aim, of course,” Jared added. His next shot landed in the bucket, but bounced right out again. “And you can’t make the arch too high, or it will build up too much momentum.” The last ball hit the edge of the bucket and bounced right out again. Jared pouted.

“Math,” Jensen snickered. “Okay.” He paid for three balls. He weighed the first one in his hand, tossed it gently, and grinned as it landed in the bucket. The second and third followed quickly. “It’s physics,” he gloated. “Energy has to go somewhere. You’ve got to make sure it goes where you want, and there’s not too much of it.”

“Every action has an equal and opposite blah blah blah,” Jared said, rolling his eyes. “We can’t all be science geeks like you.”

Jensen took his stuffed Cthulhu, and, seeing Jared’s sad face, impulsively held it out. “Here,” he said. “For you.”

“For me?” Jared asked, affecting a ridiculously over the top accent. “An eldritch abomination to call my own! Does this mean we’re going steady now?”

Startled, Jensen stammered, “Um... uh, I didn’t, I just... uh...”

Jared’s smile faded a little before coming back, brighter than ever. “Relax, dumbass, it was a joke.”

“Oh,” Jensen said, but he was surprised to find that far from being relieved, he was slightly disappointed.

***

Things fell apart shortly after that, when Jensen received back his most recent Bio Ethics paper and found that he’d been given a C.

“I’m doomed,” he moaned into his pillow. “I’m a dunce. A failure. They should send me home in disgrace.”

Jensen heard Jared sigh heavily and felt the mattress sink as he sat down. “I thought we’d been over this,” he said patiently. “No, you’re not, and no, they won’t.”

“I don’t like this subject, Jared,” Jensen admitted for the first time. “I think I hate it.”

“Well... do you hate it because you’re not doing as well as you’d like, or are you not doing as well as you’d like because you hate it?” Jensen didn’t answer, and Jared said, “Because I think the solution is going to depend very much on which it is.”

“Do you think med school will all be like this?” Jensen wondered. “All this... ethics where you don’t know what to do, but you have to do something because that’s your job, and if you get it wrong someone dies?”

This time it was Jared who didn’t answer the question. “No one’s saying you have to be a doctor,” he said instead.

“But I’ve always wanted to be a doctor!” said Jensen. “Always. When I was seven, I dressed as a doctor for Halloween, and I told my mom, ‘I wanna be a doctor when I grow up,’ and she said, ‘You can be anything you want to be, Jensen.’ And since then they’ve done everything to support me. If I change my mind, they’ll be so disappointed.”

“Jensen...” Jared sounded unsure of what he was about to say, but he continued nonetheless. “No one will be disappointed if you decide you don’t want the career you thought you wanted when you were seven. That’s just stupid.”

“They will be.”

“Then let them be disappointed!” Jared said, starting to sound a little angry. “It’s your life!”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Jensen said, moving to another topic since this one seemed to have reached a dead end. “Since I’m obviously incapable of learning. I’ll be a failure at whatever else I decide to do.”

Jared stood up, and Jensen could hear him drawing a deep breath. “You are, literally, the most infuriating and ridiculous person I have ever met. Ever!” He poked Jensen in the side. “Sit up.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Don’t care. I can keep doing this all day.” Jared poked his fingers hard into Jensen’s side, and when Jensen grumbled and didn’t move, he started to tickle. Jensen swatted Jared’s hands away none too gently, but Jared just grinned at him, showing no sign of his earlier irritation.

“You are not incapable of learning.” Jared pulled his guitar case out and opened it. He dropped the guitar in Jensen’s lap. “Hold this. Sit on the edge of the bed. No, more.” Jensen obligingly shuffled forward and Jared squeezed onto the bed behind him, putting his arms around Jensen and over his hands on the guitar.

“What are you doing?” Jensen asked.

“Just pay attention. This string is E. This one is A, this is D...”

“Why doesn’t it go A, B, C?” Jensen asked.

“It’s not a piano,” Jared said curtly. “You probably took a year of piano lessons when you were a kid.”

“Two years. But all I can remember is how to play Chopsticks.”

“God help us,” Jared muttered. “Okay, focus. This is G. And this is how you play a G chord...”

By the time Jared had coached Jensen through the first verse of Bad Moon Rising, he was feeling a lot better. Jared rested his chin on Jensen’s shoulder and pressed his temple against Jensen’s. “You’re not stupid,” he whispered. “And you can learn stuff. But you can’t be brilliant at something you hate doing. Most people can’t, and the ones who can, I bet it’s not really worth it.”

“I’m a mess,” said Jensen quietly, tensing in Jared’s arms slightly for fear that the admission would be swiftly punished by some cosmic force.

“Just like the rest of us, then,” Jared said, squeezing Jensen slightly.

Jensen turned his head. Jared was right there, his lips mere inches away, so inviting. Jensen sighed and leaned in, kissing Jared hungrily. Jared kissed back, the metal of his lip ring a cool and intriguing presence against Jensen’s mouth, but he pulled away far too soon.

“What are you doing?” Jared asked.

“Kissing you?” Jensen said. “If you couldn’t tell, I must not have done it right.”

Jared smiled at the feeble joke, but said seriously, “I don’t think this is the right time.”

“Too close to dinner?” Jensen asked stupidly.

“You’ve got a lot on your mind right now, maybe you should be focusing on that, and not...”

“On what, on what I want to do?” Jensen stood up and stepped back from Jared, holding the guitar in front of himself like a shield. “On you, on someone I care about, instead of what everyone else tells me to care about? I thought... stupid of me. I thought you were...”

“Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I’d like to be more to you than just something to take your mind off your problems, and I think if we start this now, that’s what would happen. I think we should wait.”

“For what?” Jensen demanded. “Until everything’s perfect? That’s never going to happen.”

“Maybe not, but I’m not going to jump into something that’s just going to get me hurt. Sorry.”

“Okay, fine,” Jensen snapped, angry and hurt. “Just forget about it.” He shoved the guitar at Jared, who took it and moved off the bed.

“Fine,” Jared said, scowling.

“Fine!”

***

Jensen tried to avoid Jared after that, but it was a little difficult to keep away from someone while sleeping in the same room as them. Jared didn’t help, being unbearably kind and friendly and completely romantically unavailable. He never failed to ask Jensen what was up if he looked out of sorts.

“I dropped Bio Ethics,” Jensen told him one such day.

“You did? That’s good!” Jared said. “Isn’t it?”

“I guess it is,” Jensen said. “It’s a huge relief, anyway. I just have to figure out how to tell my parents now.”

“Well... maybe you don’t have to tell them. At least, not straight away.”

Jensen considered that, but the suggestion didn’t really appeal. “They’ll ask me how I’m going. And I think the longer I put it off, the more pissed off they’ll be when they find out the truth.”

“Yeah, you might be right,” Jared allowed.

Jensen ended up talking to his parents that weekend. What followed was the biggest argument he’d ever had with them. Actually, it was really the only argument he’d ever had with them, at least the only argument that wasn’t over his bedtime or whether four slices of birthday cake was too many.

Jared came home from work while it was in full swing, walked in on Jensen bellowing at his phone “You can’t tell me what to do! I make my own decisions now, it’s my choice, not yours!” and promptly walked out again.

He was leaning against the wall when Jensen cracked the door open afterwards. “You okay?” he asked.

Jensen shrugged, not really sure and not feeling like talking anyway.

“Come on,” Jared said, grabbing Jensen’s wrist and tugging. “It’s a beautiful day, and you need to be distracted.”

He dragged Jensen down to the quad and forced him to play Frisbee for hours until he was exhausted and his breath was growing misty in the cold air. It got Jensen’s mind off his family, which was a welcome surprise, and that night he managed to go to sleep without too much tossing and turning.

***

A week later, Jared asked Jensen, “So, you going home for Thanksgiving?”

“I haven’t talked to Mom and Dad,” Jensen admitted.

“Not at all?” Jared asked, sounding surprised. Jensen couldn’t blame him. As a rule, he always talked to his parents at least every two or three days.

“I’m still mad at them. I’m not even sure if they’d want me to come home.” Jared looked miserable, and Jensen kind of wanted to take back what he’d said. He was pretty sure they wouldn’t actually tell him not to come home. They’d be glad to see him, but they’d be glad partly for the opportunity to confront him face to face and convince him to change his mind. He didn’t want to go through that.

“That sucks,” Jared said. “I wish there was something I could do, but... well, if you don’t want to go home, you can come stay with me for Thanksgiving.”

“Really?” Jensen said, considering it.

“It’ll be fun,” said Jared. “None of us are amazing cooks, so the food’s nothing special, but we always play games and watch movies and just do whatever the fuck we want for the whole weekend. I promise you’ll have a good time.”

Jared did make it sound pretty appealing, definitely much more so than going home. They caught a bus to San Antonio on Wednesday, sharing a bag of Skittles and Jensen’s iPod for the six hour drive. They reached the bus depot and Jared’s brother met them by the door. Jensen craned his neck backward to look at him, and said, “You’re even taller than Jared!”

Jensen blushed to have said something so stupid, but Jeff just laughed. Jared groaned and said “Rub it in, why don’t you?” but he didn’t sound all that mad.

Instead of turkey and stuffing, they had nachos and pizza, but it was pretty good nonetheless. It was a quiet Thanksgiving, very different to the huge family get-together that Jensen’s family usually held. Just Jared and Jeff, their little sister Megan, and now Jensen.

“Don’t you have any other family?” Jensen asked that night, when Jeff and Megan had gone to bed and he was sitting up with Jared playing Crash Bandicoot.

“It’s just us,” said Jared. “When Mom got sick, Jeff was only seventeen. We had Social Services watching us to make sure Jeff could take care of me and Megan and we could all take care of Mom so that we wouldn’t get split up. He did his GED, but he couldn’t go to college because he had to take care of us. That’s why...” Jared went quiet.

“Why what?” prompted Jensen.

“That’s why it’s so important to me to do well in college. Jeff didn’t get a chance to go, so I feel like I’ve got to make the most of it. He gave that up for me, you know? For us.”

Jensen didn’t answer straight away, and when he realised Jared was looking at him he said, “It’s really important to you, isn’t it? It’s funny, it’s just that... it’s like you try to hide that you care about your grades. You don’t show it at all.”

“Yeah, well.” Jared shrugged. “School I went to, if you were actually putting effort into your schoolwork you made sure no one knew about it. It’s just a habit.”

Jensen nodded, but the whole idea was sort of foreign to him. “At my school, the kids would all try to show one another up. Who could do the best project, who could spend the most money on it. It was really competitive.”

“Were your projects always the best?” Jared asked, the corner of his mouth quirking up slightly.

Jensen considered it. “I think I worked the hardest,” he said, rolling his eyes at Jared when he giggled. “But someone else’s was always flashier. You know, they’d use the latest software, the best materials. They’d put photos of their summer vacation to England into their history work. Stuff like that. Mom and Dad... they had a hard enough time paying our school fees, we didn’t go on many vacations or anything.” Jensen flushed as he stopped reminiscing and looked around, realising that while he was feeling sad about a lack of childhood vacations, Jared had had to get a part time job at fourteen to help his brother make ends meet.

Jared didn’t look annoyed though. “Even at your posh school, you were the odd one out,” he said. “You had to do your work perfectly just to be noticed?” Jensen nodded. It was true, although he’d never really considered it before.

“I wanted to do well,” Jensen said. “Mom and Dad wanted us to have more opportunities than they did. They gave up a lot for us. I’ve always felt like I had to show them it was worth it.”

“I get that,” said Jared. “But you’ve made the most of those advantages, haven’t you? You work hard and it’s paying off. What else can they expect from you?”

“When I told them I’d decided I didn’t want to be a doctor, Mom said I’d let them down,” said Jensen. “I said I wanted to do something else, and she said what, and I said I didn’t know yet. And then she said I was throwing away everything they’d done for me.” As he talked about it Jensen felt removed, almost detached, the flurry of emotions that he’d felt at the time now a faint memory. The only feeling that remained was a sense of mild confusion. “How can they think that letting me choose my own future is wasting everything they’ve given me? Don’t they want me to make my own decisions?”

“I don’t know,” said Jared.

“I thought that’s what was supposed to happen, you know. I had to do everything the right way, and when I was a kid that meant doing it my parents’ way, but eventually I was supposed to grow up and start doing my own thing. But that doesn’t happen - in Mom and Dad’s minds I’m always just going to be this little kid who needs to be told what to do.” He glanced at Jared, anger making his voice louder. Jared looked solemn but said nothing. Jensen leaned towards him. “I’m tired of other people telling me what I should be doing,” he whispered, and he put one hand to Jared’s jaw, kissing him furiously.

This time, Jared waited for Jensen to pull away. He did so a little warily. “Are you going to tell me I don’t know my own mind and I’m making a mistake?” Jensen asked.

“No. But if I think I need to stop things or slow them down to take care of myself, that’s what I’m going to do. I hope you’ll do the same thing,” Jared replied seriously. Jensen considered that and gave an uncertain nod. “I think we could be really good together,” Jared said. “It wouldn’t take much for me to fall for you, you know? But it would be easy to get hurt, too. That’s why I want to be careful. Not because I think you’re going to do anything stupid. I can tell this is important to you. It matters a lot to me too, that’s all.” He fell quiet, maybe waiting for Jensen to say something. When he didn’t, Jared said, “Well? It’s your show, what do you want?”

“Kiss me again,” Jensen demanded.

***

The couch was lumpy and it was kind of cold, even under a pile of blankets, but Jensen was tired and slept until the buzzing of his phone woke him at around nine the next morning. He picked it up with his eyes barely open, and answered it reflexively without looking to see who was calling.

“Jensen,” said his mother’s voice once he’d grunted out a hello.

Jensen nearly dropped his phone, fumbling to keep a grip on it. “Mom?” he asked.

“You didn’t come home for Thanksgiving.” Jensen didn’t answer, not sure what to say. “I thought... I thought that you’d come home.”

“We haven’t talked in more than a week,” Jensen said.

She sniffled. “I’m sorry if we made you feel like you wouldn’t be welcome. We never meant to do that.”

“Well, telling someone what a disappointment they are isn’t exactly a foolproof method of making them feel wanted. If you were wondering.” Jensen had thought he was past feeling angry, but it turned out the feelings were right there under the surface.

“Oh, Jensen!” his mother wailed. “We only get upset because we care, don’t you see?”

Jensen clenched his jaw and struggled to find patience. If he could fix this fight with his family, the way to do it wasn’t by losing his temper and shouting. “I don’t know,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Last time we talked, it sounded a lot like you were upset because you spent a lot of money on me and then I wouldn’t do what you wanted me to do. Like I was supposed to honour some contract we made when I was seven and said I wanted to be a doctor.”

“Medicine is a good career, you’d be able to provide for yourself and a family, and put your gifts to use. You’re so talented, Jensen, so bright, all your teachers have always said so...”

“But I wouldn’t be happy!”

“You’re making a very silly decision because you’ve had a few difficult months. You don’t know that you won’t like being a doctor, you’re just a little anxious!”

“Mom-” Jensen caught himself and bit back the words he wanted to say. “I don’t think we’re going to agree. I’ve made up my mind. If...” He paused, standing up to his mother making him nervous, but forced himself to continue. “If that means you and Dad aren’t going to pay my college expenses anymore, let me know so I can look for work. I’ll call you at Christmas.”

He paused, wondering whether to hang up or not, and heard his mother cry, “Jensen! Jensen, wait!”

He put the phone back to his ear. “Yeah?”

“Of course we’re not going to stop paying for college!” she said, her voice tearful. “We would never do that, no matter how... no matter how much we disagreed.”

“Okay,” Jensen said after a moment, feeling a little choked up himself.

“Are you really planning not to come home for Christmas?”

“I don’t know,” said Jensen, looking around the small living room. He was sure Jared would offer an invitation for Christmas if he asked. But he did want to see his family too. Mackenzie was going to be so pissed off that he hadn’t come home. Josh too. Not to mention his Mom and Dad - he loved them, even when they drove him mad. “I’d like to.”

“Well, we want to see you too. There’s no argument we could have, none, that would make me not want to see you for Christmas, understand?”

Her tone was demanding and so familiar that it brought a tiny smile to Jensen’s face. “I understand, Mom,” he said. They said their goodbyes after that and Jensen ended the call. That was when Jared stepped out of the hallway.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his expression concerned even though Jensen felt like a weight had lifted.

“Everything’s good,” he said. “I really think it’s going to work out.”

Jared nodded, relief crossing his face. “That’s good. So your parents are backing off?”

“I think they’ll always be difficult,” Jensen admitted. “They’ll probably always think I should be letting them make my decisions for me. But now I know that if I stand up to them, the world won’t cave in.”

Jared smiled, but he looked a little sad. Jensen reached out and hugged him. “Thank you,” he whispered. “If I’d had some other roommate, I probably would have crashed and burned after that first Calc test.”

Jared laughed. “Would you have been as much of an asshole to some other roommate?” he asked.

“Probably,” Jensen replied after some consideration. “My standards are hard to meet, after all.”

Jared squawked with laughter and tickled Jensen’s ribs, picking him up and dumping him on the couch when he protested. “You jerk,” he said fondly. “I’m so glad I make the cut.”

“So am I,” Jensen said, grabbing Jared’s shoulders and pulling him down. “Seriously, I don’t even like to think about what I would have done without you.”

“So don’t,” Jared said, shifting to settle above Jensen on the couch. “Let me give you something else to think about instead.”

“More guitar lessons?”

Jared didn’t answer, but a grin overtook his face that was both wicked and predatory. “Not this time,” he said, letting his weight press Jensen down into the couch cushions. He brushed a light kiss against Jensen’s lips, then nipped at Jensen’s jaw with his teeth, and when Jensen gasped and tipped his head back, he put his mouth to Jensen’s throat. Jensen’s eyes rolled back in his head.

Jensen put his arms around Jared, pressing him closer while he sucked at Jensen’s neck. A flick of his tongue made Jensen’s toes curl, and he put one hand to the back of Jared’s head, twining his fingers through Jared’s long, shaggy hair. Jensen slipped his other hand under the hem of Jared’s shirt, hesitating for a moment when Jared gasped and twitched slightly. But Jared sat up and pulled his shirt off in one smooth movement, so Jensen figured he couldn’t have got things too wrong.

Jared went after his shirt next, sliding his hands underneath it and running them up Jensen’s chest, lifting Jensen up off the couch so that he could slide the shirt up at the back. He stretched out over Jensen again once it was off, and feeling Jared’s bare skin against his own was more amazing than anything Jensen could have imagined.

They made out heatedly for a few more minutes, and Jensen would have said there was not even a hint of a rational thought inside his head, but when Jared slid one of his hard muscled thighs between Jensen’s legs, he thrust up against it at the same time he pulled his mouth away from Jared’s.

“What if someone comes down?” he asked breathlessly.

Jared looked tormented for a moment. “Come up to my bedroom,” he said. Jensen nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Fuck. Okay.”

Jared leaped off the couch and pulled Jensen up with him, racing for the stairs like an eager puppy. Jensen had to laugh and followed as quickly as he could, even though walking was awkward, as hard as he was.

Jared shut his bedroom door once Jensen was inside, and pushed him up against it. Jensen leaned forward before Jared could react and proceeded to suck a hickey just over Jared’s collarbone. It was interesting to discover how Jared reacted to the same things he’d done to Jensen. A hint of teeth made him shiver, a flick of his tongue made Jared groan. Jared’s hands were as busy as Jensen’s mouth; he pinched Jensen’s nipple between a thumb and forefinger and continued to tweak it while Jensen squirmed. He ran his other hand down Jensen’s chest and beyond, palming Jensen’s dick firmly through his boxers. Jensen pulled his mouth away from Jared’s neck so he could gasp for air, and his head connected with the door with a solid thump.

“Shhhh,” Jared whispered, giggling. He let go of Jensen’s nipple and put his hand behind Jensen’s head, cushioning it when he slid his hand between Jensen’s legs to cup his balls. He squeezed lightly and Jensen threw his head back again, glad when Jared kept him from hitting the door too hard.

Jensen put his hands to Jared’s hips and pulled him in, gazing down at the truly impressive bulge in Jared’s boxers. With Jared being several inches taller, his dick pressed up against Jensen’s stomach, and his leg against Jensen’s erection. Jensen pressed his face to Jared’s shoulder to muffle his moan as he thrust against Jared’s thigh. Jared brought his mouth around to whisper right into Jensen’s ear.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he said hoarsely. “Can I suck you off?”

And while Jensen desperately wanted to say ‘yes!’ and also ‘please,’ and ‘hurry,’ that short sentence proved to be too much for him, and he bucked his hips one more time and came in his boxer shorts. He instantly wanted to hide somewhere and never come out, but Jared didn’t seem bothered. “Fuck,” he murmured, “so hot.” He shoved a hand into his own boxers and jerked himself off frantically, and less than a minute passed before he was coming as well.

They both leaned against the door, panting harshly. Jensen felt a little awkward and couldn’t figure out what to say, but Jared was never quiet for long, and this was no exception.

“Well, can I? You never said.” Jensen must have looked confused, because Jared clarified, “Suck you off. Can I?”

And to Jensen’s surprise, that was enough to make his dick twitch, although he’d expected it to be hours before he was ready to go again.

“Shit, I hope so,” he said. “If just the mention of it got me off, I can’t wait to see what it’s actually like.”

Jared laughed a little, and pulled Jensen into his arms again.

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