What if you slept?
And what if in your sleep, you dreamed?
And what if in your dream you went to heaven
and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower?
And what if when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?
Ah! What then?
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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September, 2011
Los Angeles, California
He's going to have to dream soon. He's got enough money for what, a day in the dreamscape, maybe? Jared breathes out, watching his breath fog up the window and evaporate. Maybe his subconscious will cut him a break this time. Or maybe this time, Jensen will meet his eyes.
Jared pushes away from the window. His reflection meets him in the bathroom mirror as soon as he flips on the light-Jesus, is that really him? He looks like he hasn't slept in weeks: ashen skin, dark circles under eyes still squinting in the brightness of the iridescent light. Jared turns on the tap and bends to splash water into his face. He scrubs a wet hand through his hair, wills away the drowsiness, and raises his head to stare back at himself.
Mornings are always the worst, the emptiness of not-dreams like gaping hunger, but it beats the alternative. Dreams aren't meant to reflect reality. Maybe that's what stings the most, waking up with a needle in his arm-Jared only dreams of the possible. He never lets himself dream anything but the truth.
If only Jensen had looked him in the eye, Jared thinks. But he hadn't. Not then. And now, he knows, not ever. Not even in his dreams.
November, 2009
Lower Manhattan, New York
Jensen arrives at the warehouse only ten minutes early, thanks in no small part to public transportation. Namely, his abhorrence of public transportation. He had hoped to take a shorter route by grabbing a different bus, but he hadn't thought about how many stops this one would have to take in getting from point A to point B.
Eight. There were eight bus stops.
He half expects to walk in on a group of people pissed off that there's nobody there to get the show on the road, or at least find someone wandering the halls, trying to find the right floor, but when he walks in there's only one person waiting. Tall, wide shoulders, and a ridiculous grin-there's no mistaking Jared Padalecki.
"Hey, Jensen! Long time no see, man. How've you been?"
"Busy," Jensen hedges.
"Yeah, yeah, that's good," Jared says, smile dimming just a fraction. He dips his right hand into a pocket of his jeans and rocks back on his heels.
"Did you just come off a job?" Jensen asks pointedly, nodding his head toward Jared's hand.
Jared laughs with a bit of embarrassment. "Observant," he says. "Yeah, I finished up late last week. You ever feel like you might as well glue your totem to your hand?"
Jensen hears the door open behind him and sees from the corner of his eye Misha Collins walk in, but Jared's still looking at him with polite amusement.
"I don't have a totem. It's too risky."
Jared smiles just to humor him, hand still deep in his pocket. Jensen can see his knuckles move under the fabric. "I bet I could learn all your secrets," he says, and Jensen snorts.
"I see you two have met," Misha says cheerily, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as he passes the two men. His footsteps echo flatly in the warehouse.
"Sure," Jared says easily. "We stole some trade secrets together once. It was boring as fuck."
"You point men," Misha complains, flopping into a chair. "Always so unimpressed."
"We don't get as much of a chance to fuck with people's heads," Jared says, grinning wide. He takes a seat next to Misha, long legs stretched out before him. "Gotta keep everyone in line."
Jensen doesn't remember Jared keeping him in line. The Cartwright job had gone as smooth as anything, something he wasn't ashamed to attribute to Jared Padalecki being on the job. As infuriatingly cocky as he could be, the kid knew his shit. There was something about his easygoing Texas way that made Jensen trust him quicker than he had ever trusted someone new on the job; it made him think of life back home, when his mama was alive. You treated people like you wanted to be treated, and that was inarguable fact, sure as the sun was a hot living thing.
It makes him a little itchy, the way he has to force himself from returning the grin just to get his mind back on work. Jensen half-glances back at the door, waiting for Chris. The warehouse felt too big, high windows and shadowy corners making the two other people in the room the safest place. Sitting next to Jared would have been too comfortable, somehow, and so he sits on the other side of Misha, some traitorous buzz under his skin.
But Jared leans back in the chair, forearms pressing into the plastic armrests for balance, far enough back that he can see around the man between them.
"You think the job's blasé?" he asks, but Jensen is saved from answering when the door opens, Chris and some wiry-limbed guy Jensen doesn't recognize making their way over to them. Jensen nods quickly at Chris, who raises a hand in greeting.
"Padalecki, my man!" the other guy says, and the two clap each other on the backs grinning.
"Jensen, Misha, this is Chad Murray," Chris introduces.
"Yo," says Chad, spinning his chair around backwards. Jensen rolls his eyes, but Jared sees it and chuckles.
Chris takes stock and says, "Who're we waiting on, McCoy?" and this must be some sort of goddamn reunion, because a tiny dark haired woman hurries through the door at that moment, quick apologies for being late on her lips, and then she stops and Jared's saying, "Sandy!" and wrapping her up in a hug.
"Jeez, that guy gets around," Jensen mutters. Next to him, Chad snorts.
"All right, Padalecki, we know you're everyone's best friend but we have work to do; sit your giant ass down." Jared flips Chris off and goes, but not before kissing McCoy in the cheek, who smiles and pats him twice on the chest in return. Chris settles into the last chair. "Jen?"
Jensen takes his cue and heads over to the whiteboard, glad to be out of the circle.
"Okay, Katie Cassidy." He grabs the pile of half-inch binders and hands them off to Chris so they can be passed around the group.
"Rich bitch?" Chad asks, slowly glancing through the newspaper clippings in the front of the binder. Jensen shrugs a shoulder.
"Not exactly. Rich, yes, but she's sophisticated enough. Graduated from Princeton with a B.A. in Anthropology. Her older brother, uh-" he flips quickly through his notes-"Patrick, was killed in an auto accident about a year ago and she's been working for her father since then. David Cassidy, CFO of the Cohen & Cassidy Group, there's a TIME article on page 4."
Jensen pauses, giving them the chance to skim through. The article outlines the history of the company, ending at Patrick Cassidy's prospects for partnering with his father. He had died three and a half months after the article was published. Easy research, but easy ends there.
"Was there foul play?" asks Jared, and Jensen nods. Everyone else abandons their reading, and at this point Jensen figures they can all read up on everything in their own time.
"Exactly. This is going to be a tricky one; there's a reason I've got so many of you here for this."
"Oh, get on with it," Chris gripes, and Jensen flips him off.
"Patrick's accident is what happens when the mark figures out that his mind has been invaded, wakes himself up early, and tries to fight the driver. The car went into oncoming traffic." He sees Sandy wince, shaking her head. Jared's watching Jensen, leaned back in his seat and chewing the corner of his lip, forehead creased curiously.
"We're here to fix someone else's mistake?" Misha asks, sort of brightly, but Jensen notices Jared's frown deepen.
"Pretty much. But hey, they're willing to pay us a fair price not to fuck this up."
"We're going to be dealing with a militarized subconscious," Jared finally says, and everyone shifts in their seats like they had been hoping nobody would say it out loud.
"Yes. The PASIV was still in the car when the paramedics arrived, and none of the survivors managed to get away clean. I heard a name passing ranks; guy called Merrick who went into subconscious security training. Needless to say, he isn't spoken too highly of anymore. I worked a job in July with Jeff Morgan, guess he used to work regularly with Merrick. Morgan told me the Cassidys offered him twice the amount of money he would have gotten if the job had been successful, and all he had to do was train the family to defend their subconscious. I trust Morgan's word, and I'm thinkin' so should the rest of us, because there's no way we can go ahead with this without figuring Ms. Cassidy's subconscious to be crawling with armed projections."
Jensen half expects someone to walk out, because nobody likes working jobs this risky. Failing means more than losing out on their money; West Point sure as hell doesn't want to lose twice. God only knows what they plan to do with another extraction team that fails. He's surprised when Chad leans forward and claps his hands together eagerly, elbows on his knees.
"This means we're going multi-level, right? You're going to need a sedative."
Chemists. Always up for a challenge. "That's what I'm thinking. The deeper we go, the more time we have before the subconscious realizes something's wrong. We'll have to move to the second level quickly, though, because I'm willing to bet the security will kick in almost immediately on level one."
"And you're sure we can't just isolate her somehow? I don't know, build a maze-like bunker to keep projections away until we can get the information? If any of us gets killed we don't know what will happen, Jensen."
"We all know the risks, Kane," Chad says, slumping back in his chair, bouncing one knee up and down. Sandy looks thoughtful, like she might be entertaining the idea, and Misha is staring at Jensen with such intensity that he doesn't think he wants to know what's going on in his head. Jared is silently flipping through his binder.
They do know the risks. Or at least, they've heard the rumors. People's minds being sent to what they call Limbo, a level so deep you get lost in your own head. Half the time people don't wake up at all; they just stay down there, letting their bodies become vegetables. Or maybe their subconscious is wiped. Jensen shudders at the thought-the idea of awareness being replaced with nothing. Yeah, they know how risky it is.
"We don't get a second chance at this, Chris," Jensen says, meeting his eyes. He already knows Chris's objections-it was his idea to get another point-man, just to make sure that both levels are being covered. Neither Chris nor Jensen has ever pulled off a heist on an armed subconscious without fucking something up along the way, and they'd had to weigh their options carefully. Fuck up the job, and all their lives or reputations are on the line. With the right protection, the team has a better chance of keeping themselves alive in the dream and pulling off a successful job.
"This says she's been taking graduate classes for the past two months," Jared cuts in, as if he hadn't been listening at all. "If we put the first level in a classroom she might not even notice she's dreaming just yet. I mean when I was in school I had nightmares of showing up for an exam unprepared and shit like that all the time. And it would be easy enough to construct a maze off hallways, right Sandy?"
"Sure, kids' stuff," she says, smiling softly at him.
Jensen turns away from them abruptly and finds dry-erase markers in his bag, dragging the whiteboard closer. "So, level one is a college campus, level two is the bank," he tells it, writing the words in two columns. "Misha, we'll need you to forge Richard Tompkins, Ms. Cassidy's personal banker. She's not going to sign anything unless it comes straight from his hands. Page twelve."
"Mmhm," Misha says, and Jensen turns to see his nose already buried in his binder.
"Kane," Jensen says, writing his name under the Level 1 column, "You're putting us under and holding off projections. Padalecki, you're with me. Level 2." He writes the name down and turns back around, carefully avoiding Jared's eyes. He doesn't miss the small smile playing across his face, but he pretends to.
November, 2009
Lower Manhattan, New York
He's not the kind of person one would normally peg as a point man, Jared Padalecki. Growing up in a neat suburban Texas town, going to high school and then college to study history, thinking of maybe getting away from Texas one day for law school but mostly, mostly being okay right where he is-tell 20 year old Jared that he's going to end up part of a secret military development gone rogue and he'd laugh, good-naturedly, in your face.
He's still not sure how he ended up in that warehouse outside of San Antonio. He had a Western Civ exam the next day, that much he remembers, an exam he was going to tank because he was out drinking instead of studying. It's just that the man at the bar was good conversation on top of being dangerously attractive, especially to a newly-out-of-the-closet-and-curious (read: horny-finally properly horny) Jared.
So then he was in that warehouse, letting himself be hooked up by needle to a dream world, and that was that. And he was good at it. Really good, and it was something he wanted for himself, not like going to college because he was supposed to, settling on a major that came just a bit easier than the rest. He wasn't well-traveled, or well-learned, but he was observant. If there was one thing Jared could do, it was hone in on the details about a person, figure out what they wanted and what they liked and going from there. It served him well enough on the small-time heists, and by the time he was getting paid more money for a few hours of dream time than he thought he'd ever see in his life-well, by then he'd been around the block; been around the globe a time or two. By then he knew what it was about those history classes that fascinated him, and it was the details.
Most people are open about themselves, he has learned, even if they don't know it. In fact most people are dying for someone to understand them, and that's what Jared does.
Which is why, when he goes home after the third day of reviewing the Cassidy family background and watching Sandy build a tiny model of a school on his lunch break, Jared is surprised to realize that he really doesn't have a good read on Jensen Ackles at all. He is who he is - that is to say, he's an extractor, through and through.
If the last theft they'd done had been any indication, Jensen kept his private life well separated from his job. All told, Jared had spent seven days of his life with the man and all he could tell you other than his name is that Jensen is very thorough, very good at what he does, has a dry sense of humor and takes no bullshit.
Well, that's a lie. He lets the bullshit slide right past him, no passing go, no collecting two hundred dollars.
Jared has learned to accept that some people want their privacy, and that most of them deserve it. He can't help being curious, though, and Sandy chides him on it the day before the job ("You're like a puppy behind a baby gate, staring with those big dumb eyes") so he decides to keep out of the way as much as he can.
Good intentions, though, have a tricky little way of backfiring.
Dreamscape-Cassidy job; Level 1
There's still gunfire going off down at the end of the hallway and Chris is nowhere to be fucking found. Jared's playing hero with his back to the door, and two of the projections in the corner scream when he pulls a Magnum out of the waistband of his jeans.
"It's fine, you're fine, I'm an undercover cop," Jared says quickly. Jensen has enough time to appreciate his quick thinking before Jared has slipped out of the classroom door and now Jensen is down two men.
Misha has had the good sense to usher all of the projections into the corner of the room, wearing the image of Cassidy's Microeconomics professor, and he's keeping them all well and truly terrified. The more believable the situation, the better, but Jensen is a little worried about how easily the projections are going to turn on them as soon as Chris shows up with the PASIV and they try putting Cassidy under.
Jared flies back in the door, shutting it behind him and turning the deadbolt. He looks worse for wear but is otherwise unhurt.
"Chris is trying to evacuate," Jared tells Jensen, shuffling close.
"All right listen up!" Jensen yells, and the panicked projections immediately quiet down. "We're evacuating. Run as calmly as you can, single-file, got it? Nobody is getting trampled today. Move!"
The students rush all at once toward the door and then Misha takes over, guiding them out one-by-one. Jared sidles up to Cassidy and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Miss Cassidy, we're going to have to ask you to stay behind," he says calmly. Jensen had hoped it wouldn't come to this.
"What?" Cassidy says, eyes wide as she looks up at Jared. "Who are you?"
Jared's jaw tightens and he glances toward Jensen. Jensen nods, a bit reluctantly, and readies his Colt.
"That doesn't matter," Jared says. "We don't think this is an angry student, Miss Cassidy. It's possible that this attack is connected to your brother's death."
Jensen misses her reaction because Chris pushes his way into the room then, just as the last few students leave. He's carrying the PASIV and Cassidy looks at it uncomprehendingly.
"Oh thank fuck," Jensen says. "Where the hell have you been?"
"It's a whole damn school, Jensen," Chris says tightly.
"What's going on? I think I have the right to-" Cassidy starts to say, but before she can finish Jared's got a chloroform-soaked cloth to her nose, and she drops back into him, unconscious, as Jared mutters, "Sorry."
"You didn't tell her anything, did you?" Chris asks, flinging the PASIV onto a desk and undoing the latches.
"Two more minutes and we would have had to," Jensen says bitterly, and Misha says, "Oh just get on with it," settling into a chair.
Chris sets about hooking everyone to the machine, and imparts them all with the advice, "Don't fuck this up," before pressing the Somnacin release, laced with more of Chad's sedative. The last thing Jensen sees is Chris's worried expression, and then everything goes dark.
Dreamscape
Cassidy Job; Level 2
He has to admit, there's a reason Misha's reputation is as good as it is. Jensen has ushered Cassidy into Tompkins' office mere minutes after the dream began, which is nothing short of plain luck-they'd spent too much time trying to play the first lever off as a school shooting when Cassidy's security had opened fire on campus.
"Katie, dear, we have a lot to catch up on!" Misha says, wrapping her small hand around both of his. She relaxes, settling into a chair in front of the desk, and Jensen finds a post by doorway. They're so close to finishing this job - just one signature and access to her account is in Misha's hands. Jensen keeps alert for sounds of Cassidy's security projections.
He's only half-listening to the small talk Misha is making with the mark, explaining what exactly she has been called into the bank to sign and why, but he tunes back in when Misha hesitates at one of her questions. There's nobody coming down the hallway, no projections have stopped to look at them, but Misha starts rifling through the drawers of the desk.
"I don't have any of the forms in my office, do you mind if I send for one? Unless you're short on time?"
"No, I-" Cassidy pauses, and Jensen curses Misha inwardly. Rule number one: do not let the mark think about how they got here or where they're going. She doesn't seem to notice, however, just smiles and repeats, "No, that would be fine. I'll wait here, shall I?"
This is not good. Misha's brushing past him, no words exchanged and then he's gone, and they have no signature, and the clock is ticking. Jensen keeps his eyes trained forward, careful not to give away any of his suspicion. Cassidy taps a finger on the arm of her chair and then leans over to look at something on the desk. She pauses, stands up, turns to look at Jensen.
"Excuse me," she says sweetly, and then slips right past him. Jensen debates holding her back-he doesn't want her getting a good look at him, of course, but he can't let her just walk away either.
"Padalecki," he says into his radio, and hears "Fuck, are - - - problem?“ amidst static. "I need you to detain the mark. She's heading back down the hallway. I'm following for now."
"Ten-four good buddy.“
Jensen slips into the hall. If Cassidy suspects anything, she's got an excellent grip on her subconscious, because none of the projections he passes on his way downstairs even look up.
Jared's talking to Cassidy to the side of the stairwell. "-safety precautions? This is a bank, not a dark alley," is what Jensen catches.
"Ackles, care to explain to Miss Cassidy why leaving the bank would be a terrible idea?" Jared says, but then someone screams, and they're pushing Cassidy into an empty office before the gunfire has stopped sounding.
"Fuck," Jared says. "I told you this was a bad idea!"
Jensen ignores him. "Cassidy, do you know what's happening right now?"
"No! Dude, shut the hell up, you want to deal with the whole damn building collapsing on top of this?"
"I know this is a dream," Cassidy says calmly, and whatever comeback Jensen had at the ready dissolves. "You think I didn't notice your little game?"
He and Jared exchange grim looks. "Listen, we're not here to hurt you," Jared says, and she shakes her head fiercely.
"I know you can't hurt me in a dream. You're ones, aren't you? The men who killed my brother?"
"No, we're not those men, okay? We had nothing to do with that, I promise."
There's a sudden shudder in the dream-like a dropped frame on film; one moment jerks unevenly into the next, and then there's a gun in Cassidy's hand, as if she had been carrying it all along. Jensen's eye supplies the make and model of the gun she's holding, unhelpfully: a Colt 1911, the perfect gun for someone her size, the perfect gun to kill a man at close range.
"Then it's not going to make any difference if I shoot you, right? Whatever it is you want, you're not getting it. Who are you? What information in the entire damn universe was so important that my brother had to die for it?"
"We're trying to tell you-"
"Who. Are you?" she says again, and Jensen notes the strength in her arms as she aims, her posture, the stillness of the barrel. She's had weapons training as well, then. "They were after you, weren't they?" she says lowly, when neither men respond. "The shooters, they were my subconscious defense."
Jared jumps pretty quickly onto the game, here, taking a resigned breath and holding up his hands. "No. The shooters are who you're looking for. They're the ones responsible for your brother. We-" he gestures at Jensen, "Jensen and I, we're you're defense."
"Bullshit. Bullshit, you're lying!" Cassidy shouts. From outside, the chaos grows louder; Jensen hopes to god that Misha has found away into that lock box for the information they need, because they're not getting it out of the mark at this rate.
"Miss Cassidy, Katie, you have to calm down "You know your training, I can see that. Think about it. You remember that we put you under, right? You remember that?" Jared pauses, waiting for the recognition to cross Cassidy's face. "The school, there was a gunman. That is who is after you. I can't tell you who I am because I don't exist anywhere but in your head."
"Jared, we don't have time for this," Jensen warns. Jared shoots him a look that says I know that, dumbass,, and walks over to calmly close the door. The sounds of panic die down.
"You aren't doing a very good job of keeping them in control anymore, are you?" Jensen tells Katie. She looks at him, worrying her lower lip for a moment, and then shakes her head.
"What do you want from us?"
"We want to keep you safe, all right? Katie. Jared is lying." Jared grabs roughly at Jensen's arm, but he shakes him off. "He's gonna be really pissed at me for telling you the truth, but I need to give you all the information I can so that you can make the right decision here."
Katie lowers the gun half an inch in validation. "Tell me."
"You're right, we're here for the same reason that your brother was killed. But we are not the same people. We don't want anybody to get hurt, all right? And that includes ourselves. Did they even tell you, when you did your training, that you can dream within dreams?"
She shakes her head, looking dubious. Katie spares Jared a quick glance, who smiles halfheartedly, but to his credit he's not about to stop Jensen any time soon.
"You can. That is happening to you right at this moment. Think about it. That school wasn't just another dream; we were there, too. Remember? Me and Jared here, and a couple others."
"You said - you said you weren't going to hurt me. And then-"
"Yes, you're right, and we're sorry about that. But we can't maintain a second dream level without a little help. Sedation, I guess you would call it. All I'm trying to say here is that if you shoot us, we will not wake up. I hope that matters to you."
"Matters? Do you want to know what matters to me? My brother's life, asshole!"
She's interrupted by a low, wailing sound from overhead-for half a second Jensen thinks it's coming from outside the door, but then he realizes that it's not coming from the dream at all.
Jared gets it at the same time and Jensen looks at him-music. It's the kick, and they're all about to wake up in a fucking taxi cab with a girl who literally wants to murder them. The same way her brother died, no less, and whose idea was it to do this in a car, anyway?
"Don't worry about that," Cassidy says. "You two aren't waking up anyway."
Jensen tries not to panic, but his voice still comes out all wrong. "Listen to me-listen to me! We are under heavy sedation, if you kill us now-"
"Do you think she cares about that? Katie, never mind what he's saying. We're here to protect you, so you can put the gun down, okay?"
"It's not going to help you. Shooting us is not going to help you."
Jared's hands are up in surrender, Jensen's outstretched and placating, one foot inching forward; if he can just get close enough, he can-
The gunshot is deafening in the small space. Katie's body needs no recovery time; it's her dream, she can ignore the recoil all she wants. Jensen sees Jared's body drop out of the corner of his eye, gunshot still ringing in his ears, and he'll never forget that sound, never, because when the gun goes off again, it only sounds like an echo.
7,294 days, 23 hours, 57 seconds
Jared wakes up gasping, a mouthful of seawater rolling in, and he coughs out the briny taste just in time to be pulled under by another wave. He rolls in the current, opening his eyes to the stinging water and sees the sand not far below him at the same time as his knees slam into it. The sand is packed tight-he's close to the shore. He surfaces again to momentarily calm waters, using the next wave to propel him forward. It brings him far enough in that he can scramble himself upright, head above the water, and the next wave washes him onto the shore. Jared lays gasping up into the sun, blindingly white even through his eyelids, clothes clinging wetly to his skin. Every breath tastes like seawater but he heaves air in anyway, trying to remember where he is. There's a heavy weight in his pocket, and Jared reaches into the heavy fabric of his jeans to pull out his pocket watch. It's a little waterlogged, but it's there, craftsmanship keen enough that when he pops it open water rushes out of the lid, but nothing sloshes around in the gears.
Holding it up to block the sun, Jared has to squint into the shadowed clock face until his eyes adjust enough to let him focus in on detail. There they are, clock hands ticking away. A dream, then. The sound of the waves blocks out the watch's gentle ticking.
Jared thinks back quickly, and the last thing he remembers is the loud crack of a gunshot. Katie Cassidy's determined expression and a panicked voice beside him, Killing us is not going to help you-
Jensen. He's on his feet in an instant. "Jensen!" he yells, hears the wind and the waves swallow them, brushes his wet hair away from his eyes. There, ten feet down the beach: Jensen's crumpled form, face-down in the shallows of the sea, waves rolling in and pushing him lazily along.
"God damn it," Jared mutters, ignoring his heart pounding away in his chest, the burn in his lungs. He splashes back into the surf and grabs Jensen under his arms, hauling him backwards out of the waves.
"Jensen, man, wake up," he pleads, and like an answered prayer, Jensen coughs up seawater, rolls over onto his knees and starts sucking in air in between wracking coughs, rough and choked.
"Oh, god," Jensen says hoarsely, rolling onto his back, and then he says nothing more while Jared kneels next to him, watching him breathe, water still lapping at his heels.
"Y'all right, man, are you okay?" Jared asks, heart rate finally slowing down. Jensen pushes himself to his feet and coughs again. Jared follows him, wraps a hand around his bicep when he stumbles.
"'M fine. Dude, I can breathe now; I'm fucking fantastic."
Jared laughs weakly.
"You, are you.. ?" Jensen asks, squinting at Jared.
"Yeah."
"Smart enough not to try and breathe when you wake up underwater, huh?" Jensen is smiling, but he's still breathing heavily, eyes a little wide. "Where the fuck are we, dude?"
"I think, uh." Jared turns in a quick circle: the beach stretches up and down as far as his eye can see, an ocean stretching back to the horizon. It's nothing but sand in the opposite direction.
"Limbo," Jensen finishes. Then neither of them says anything, seeing the same expression mirrored on each other's faces. Jared can't even find it in him to panic. There's nothing he can do at this point, anyway.
Limbo. So it is real.
"She shot us," Jensen says. Jared nods and looks away. "The kick, it wasn't long before the kick--do we, can we get back from there?" Jensen is talking mostly to himself, but Jared shrugs.
"I don't know, man, I've never been to limbo." That gets him a short laugh, Jensen's voice still rough from seawater. Jared spins around again and trots back to where he dropped the watch, afraid for a moment that he might have flung it close enough for the water to reach its greedy fingers out and grab it, but he spots the sun glancing of its brass casing.
"We've got a few hours until the kick," he says as he walks back, reading the watch. Jensen looks at him dubiously.
"'A few hours' is kind of arbitrary, Jared."
"Okay, then," Jared says, chuckling. "We've got two hours, twelve minutes and about forty seconds."
In the time it had taken Jared to retrieve the watch, Jensen had rid himself of his wet jacket and tie, and Jared takes the hint-he quickly toes of his shoes and peels the wet socks off with one hand, shedding his waterlogged jacket. It thuds wetly onto the sand.
"You don't seem like the kind of man who bothers with punctuality," Jensen says, nodding his head towards the watch clutched in his fist.
Jared grins. "You got that right. It was my grandfather's watch."
When Jensen just looks at him with an expression that reads unimpressed, Jared elaborates. "He used to make me wind it up for him when I was little, I think because he knew I was fascinated by it. Or he just thought that the punk grandson of his who grew up in an age of tiny watch batteries needed to learn a thing or two about the way the world used to be, who knows."
He gets a small smile out of Jensen, who is still standing a careful distance away, which says just about all it really needs to say. There's no one here to care who he's associating with, nobody who will ever know what goes on down here between them. Jensen's pants are rolled up past his ankles, bare feet in the wet sand, and he squints against the sunlight.
"Here", Jared says, moving in close and holding out his totem. It's close enough that Jensen actually has to take a step back, palms out.
"Woah, man, I can't do that. It's your totem; you can't just give it to me."
Jared rolls his eyes. "Take it." He holds it practically under Jensen's nose and Jensen, bewildered, has to reach toward himself just to take it out of Jared's hand.
He feels an odd sort of accomplishment while he watches Jensen look down at it and hooks his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. "It keeps perfect time in a dream."
Jensen looks up from the watch with a raised eyebrow. "Your watch totem does the impossible by keeping time?"
Jared feels his grin widen across his face, feeling a bit like a magician about to pull off the prestige. "My grandfather's watch doesn't have a mainspring anymore. It can't physically wind up."
Jensen nods as he hefts the weight of the pocket watch in his hand, impressed. "Pretty useful totem for a point man. Does it work in multiple levels? Does it account for the compounded time based on reality? No, fuck, don't answer that. I don't need to know this," he amends, shaking his head.
Jared just laughs. "Yes, it does. You've got five minutes on the timer, therefore an hour in the dream, and the watch'll only record the passing of five minutes. It just looks much, much slower on the watch face."
"So, the second hand actually records minutes, and the minute hand actually records hours, and the hour hand actually records... ?"
"One day and sixteen hours of dream time," Jared finishes. "Takes a little math to figure out, but it's useful for timing kicks."
Jensen shakes his head in awe and holds the watch out for Jared to take back, the corner of his mouth turned up in a bemused smile. "Beautiful," he says.
Their fingers brush when Jared takes it from him, returning the watch to his pocket.
|||
"Here."
Jared drops a Browning GP into Jensen's lap.
"What's this?"
"Our ticket out of here."
Jensen swallows, looking down at the gun. "Are you sure? I mean, we've never actually met anyone who has been to limbo. Or at least I haven't. What if this is the reason people end up as vegetables? They shoot themselves, hoping to wake up, and bam, they're destroying their subconscious."
"I don't feel like a subconscious. Do you feel like a subconscious?"
Jensen forces down a smile. "What does that even mean?"
"I don't know, it just doesn't seem likely. It's easy to forget down here, man. I don't know how you manage without a totem." Jensen shrugs noncommittally. "Point is, we missed the kick."
"We what?" Jensen's heart is hammering in his chest. He'd been hoping... goddamn, he didn't even hear anything. Jared nods, holds out his pocket watch.
"We've been in here for three hours, dude. If the kick was going to wake us up, we'd be up."
"So we're going to have to wait until the Somnacin wears off. The Somnacin laced with whatever the hell kind of sedative your friend Chad put in there."
"Hey, you hired the guy."
Jensen ignores that. "That's... how long is that, Jared? Ten years? Fifteen?"
Jared shakes his head. "Twenty. So your choices are the gun, or twenty years."
Something thuds in Jensen's chest. He should choose the gun. He should take the risk. Twenty years.
That's twenty years that he can do whatever he wants with, no consequences. He can be whoever he wants, whatever he wants. He could build a city and live in it. He could create the perfect villa in a village just like the one he saw in the East Indies two years ago, and live in it. He could...
He looks at Jared. He lets himself look, and keep looking, and he wonders if Jared knows what he's thinking, because he doesn't let on.
"Shoot me, Jensen," Jared says quietly. "It's our best option, I promise."
He's right. Choosing to stay is practically begging to wake up a vegetable. How long would his life seem if he didn't wake up? Would he die when his body dies? What happens to the subconscious if it doesn't go with the body?
Jensen takes the pistol and raises it to eye level, head slightly titled as he lines up his shot. Jared doesn't blink.
Moments pass; the determination written in the lines of Jensen's face begins to waver. The gun loosens in this grasp.
"I can't do it."
"Why not? You must've done it a hundred times in a hundred dreams. C'mon, do it."
Jensen licks his lips. "What if we're wrong? What happens if I shoot you and you don't wake up? Man, this doesn't feel right."
"We're dreaming, I promise this is a dream." Jared digs his pocket watch out and holds it out, fingers tight around the clock face. "Look, it's ticking. I know we're dreaming."
Jensen eyes the watch doubtfully, gun still half-raised. He considers Jared's earnest expression for a second longer and then drops his arm, shaking his head. "I can't." He drops the gun and it lands barrel-first in the sand, safety off, dropping harmlessly to its side. Jensen rubs a hand over his face and turns, strides away before it hits the ground.
"Hey! Listen, this is our best chance of getting out of here before we become, I dunno, fucking braindead!" Jared says, setting off after him.
"Then you do it!" Jensen turns, gestures roughly towards the gun in the sand. "Go ahead, shoot yourself. I won't be responsible for what happens."
Jared stops three paces off, shoulders slumped. "I'm not leaving you here," he says quietly.
Jensen considers him. "You're gonna have to make a choice then, because I'm not taking the chance."
Something heavy is weighing Jared's chest down, making it hard for him to breathe. "Do you even-do you realize what you're asking?"
"Yes. I do."
"Twenty years."
Jensen nods, something like a smile at the corner of his mouth as he takes in one deep breath, lets it out to be taken by the salty breeze, towards the vast emptiness of mountains and valleys that he built with a thought; their wide shelter from the world.
"Twenty years," he repeats. He looks at Jared, and Jared looks back.
September, 2011
Los Angeles, California
"Jesus fuck, Jared, you livehere?"
Jared is frowning but he shuts the door behind Chad, welcoming him in. It's been two and a half days since he even attempted to sleep, and he wants to skip the formalities and just force Chad to put him under by any means necessary.
Chad turns to face him after scrutinizing Jared's admittedly piece-of-shit apartment, as if he's never had to scrape by on a dime a day and nothing to show for it. Jared is willing to bet that Chad has seen much, much worse from Somnacin addicts, or even the guys who sell him some of his equipment, but he doesn't call him out on it.
"You look like shit," Chad says. One compliment after another.
"Yeah, dude, I look like shit, the apartment looks like shit, my life has become shit. Can we get on with it?"
Chad sobers. "How long has it been?"
Jared shrugs, looking away. "Couple days."
"You know what I meant."
Jared brushes past him and pulls out the top drawer of the dresser that takes up most of the east wall, pawing past his clean socks and boxers until he finds the small bundle of cash. Dresser drawer is definitely not the safest place to keep his money, but Jared doesn't exactly have anywhere else to put it, and he doubts anyone would attempt to rob this hell hole, anyway. He presses the money to Chad's chest.
"Whatever that will get me, I don't care how crappy the quality. Just, as much as you can give me. Please."
Chad shakes his head slow. He takes the money, but he doesn't put it away, doesn't set down the PASIV, doesn't do anything but look at Jared with the kind of expression that makes Chad look older than he really is, and concerned. Jared can't stand to see it. "Three months."
Chad rubs a thumb and forefinger over his eyes, sighing. "Alright. We'll put you to sleep first, but then we have to talk, okay? I'm worried about you, Jay."
He should be feeling guilty, Jared knows, but the truth is he's just too damn tired to care. He knows he dropped off the radar after he moved out to LA and away from Chad's shop, but he'd needed to get away, get back to the States, clear his head. Being surrounded by strangers was easier than getting calls about jobs he had to turn down, hearing Jensen's name come up from time to time. He'd wanted to become a runaway. He'd wanted to be by the ocean. The Pacific on the Western American coast was dirty and cold, waves small, buildings crowding the skyline-everything that limbo wasn't. But sometimes, he just needed to sleep on the sand.
Chad's already setting up the machine next to the bed Jared has been lying on at night, staring at the ceiling. It was one of the first things he learned, back when he was just getting into dreamshare-you don't get to stop. In the business for too long, and you stop dreaming altogether without the aid of Somnacin. Back then he never thought he would be one of those people, the ones that the word insomniac was too gentle to describe-the ones going slowly crazy. It feels like that was so, so long ago.
"Thanks, Chad," Jared mumbles, tumbling onto the bed. His bones ache. He barely feels the prick of the needle as it slides in. Closing his eyes, the last thought he has if of Jensen; that he hopes he won't see him in his dreams at all, this time.
7,288 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes
"Danny?" Jared asks.
The two of them are back on the same stretch of beach they washed ashore at, building sandcastles. Sandcastles, like they're twelve. The difference is, of course, that sandcastles when they were twelve couldn't become fully realized kingdoms with just a deciding thought.
Jensen, as it turns out, doesn't like to work in silence. It's like someone turned the right key, and Jared is more than willing to listen. They're talking about home, about Texas, how it may well be bigger than limbo itself, if such a thing were possible.
"Hm? Yeah, Danneel."
Jared scratches the back of his neck. He squints through the sunlight at Jensen, sees him washed out in the bright glare off the ocean, glances away when it starts stinging his eyes. "She your girlfriend?" The sun gives him an excuse to look down past his feet when he says it.
"She's... well, she's something," Jensen says, warmth in his voice to match the day. Jared nods, sends a cocky grin in his direction, shielding his eyes with a hand at his brow.
"She pretty?"
Jensen smiles back with a mock-modest shrug. "She is. Danni and I met in school. Partners in crime."
"Yeah but not this crime, right? She doesn't uh, work in dreamshare?"
"Nah. She's a defense lawyer now. "
"Must be tough, with you always being on the job and all."
"She's pretty busy too. 'S why we never really, you know. Got married, I guess. It's sort of easier this way."
Jared's not going to claim that he can read Jensen just yet, but he's been in business with a lot of shady people over the years and he knows a rehearsed speech when he hears one. "You miss her?" Jared asks, and damn what a stupid thing to say. Of course he misses her.
Jensen doesn't say anything outright, doesn't agree without a beat like Jared expected, but he chooses his words carefully.
"Danni's my best friend. It's nice to know that when you go home, you're really going home. Somewhere you can be around people who aren't trying to steal something. She's... grounding. This line of work, you've got to go out in the world sometimes and just live your life. Danneel understands that."
They work in silence after that. Jared doesn't say it out loud, but he thinks maybe Jensen has more in common with Danneel than he thinks he does. He wonders how much of Jensen's life he has actually lived for himself. How much he lives for the dreams.
Jared's sandcastle looks more like a stalactite, sand dripped wetly from between his clenched fingers.
He certainly couldn't begrudge Jensen for that, living for the dreams. He's pretty sure that's what they're all in for, every one of them. Even Chad. Jensen might be the only person he's ever met that goes in to be himself, Jared thinks, and not just so he can pretend to be someone better.
Jared clears his throat and stands, brushing his hands against his jeans to clear them of sand. He wonders if the invasiveness of sand as a general rule will ever be something he'll get used to. Probably not.
"So! Look at us, man. We're dwelling. Dwelling is bad."
"You think we should forget about what's really out there? Is that a good idea?"
Jared looks down at him. Jensen's sandcastle is actually... well. Thorough. It looks like a house and not a lump of sand that represents house, which is how Jared is approaching things. Jensen himself is perpetually squinting into the sunlight, and. Well.
Jared looks away; that way lay madness. He files the way Jensen looks in the sun under unfair and leaves it at that. For now.
"I just mean we shouldn't sit here on the beach missing the rest of the world. We need a plan, here. What've we got, mountains, forests, that mess of skyscrapers over there... what are you thinking?"
Jensen's standing at his elbow now, looking somewhere off to the left. The watch says it's been a week since they first realized they could build limbo like they'd build a dream, but days isn't a really concrete term here. It could be, Jared supposes, they could have sunrises and sunsets and clocks that tell the actual time, but that's dangerous. The less circadian rhythm, they reproduce, the better.
"I was thinking we should ... no, nevermind." Jensen shakes his head as if he can erase the thought.
"Hey," Jared says softly, "it's just us here, man."
Jensen turns a grim look on Jared, eyes serious. He swallows and nods, taking in a deep breath. "I was gonna say we should make a trail through the mountains over there. I don't know about you, but as long as our subconsciouses are going to let us treat our bodies like they're real, I'm going to need to move. And dude, I was in Indonesia once looking for a chemist, right? Have you ever been there? It's beautiful. So, I'm thinking we could make a trail, through there and I can model it off the steppes."
Jared smiles, watching the way Jensen illustrates what he's trying to say with his hands, spreading them enthusiastically out at the horizon, miming the jaunty shape of a mountainous backdrop, spinning his wrist to generalize what he's saying. He's lit up with enthusiasm, and it's catching.
He lets Jensen design for himself, keeping his own opinions out so that Jensen can have this, just his, just pure creation without reserve. The mountains in the distance are breathtaking, the way he can see just a silhouette and at the same time intense detail, the lush green mountainside and the misty peaks both at once; Jared is fascinated instead by the relaxed slope of Jensen's shoulders, the ease of his smiles, the way he forgets himself until he is just himself. He wonders how long it will take for Jensen to drop his façade completely. He has plenty of time.
7,284 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes
"So, Jensen. What's your first name?"
"Jensen."
It takes Jared a second to get it, mouth open in confusion, but then he just nods. "Ah. So, Jensen... ?"
Guy never gives up, he thinks in amusement. "Why are you so interested?"
"We're gonna be stuck down here for a little while at least. I don't know about you, but I spend that long with someone, I don't want them to be a stranger."
Jensen eyes him askance, sizing him up. It's a formality; the decision's been made, he just doesn't want to admit it. Jared makes him want to talk, spill out his thoughts and see what Jared's clever hands will do with them. I bet I could learn all your secrets. Jensen's surprised at how true that really is. He's not sure which he's more afraid of, slipping or hitting the ground, but he's curious to feel the rush of the wind as he falls.
"Ackles," he says cautiously. "Jensen Ackles."
The thing about Jared is that he's curious. There are things he wants to know and he goes out and learns it; it's what makes him such a good point man. But down here, there are only so many things to learn about that don't reside in his own subconscious. So he wants to learn. Wants to know about Jensen. He's the only person he's ever met who actually listens, all of his attention trained on what Jensen is saying. Jared can't even pay attention to himself half the time, off-hand comments turning into long, drawn-out tangents so convoluted that Jensen couldn't follow it if he tried. He tends to just let the words wash over him until Jared asks a question, or gets distracted by something else.
But as soon as Jensen has something to say, whether it's a story to tell or just wondering if they can get it to rain upside down for the hell of it, Jared's quiet. Focused.
So he talks. They never stray too far from that first stretch of beach-the pull of the sand is too strong. Even after Jensen had built an entire city, played with the logistics of it in a way that Jared spends too much time purposefully trying to avoid, he wanted more. A blank canvas. Sitting on the sand, he wonders absently if they'll ever need to get rid of that crutch, that visual representation of their architecture.
"What about you?" Jared is saying.
"'What about me' what?" Jensen asks. Jared's train of thought usually works faster than his mouth, which is saying something right there, and whatever he'd been thinking about must have jumped a few tracks.
"How'd you get into this?"
Jensen looks at his hands, nodding to his lap. Dreamsharing isn't exactly on the list of majors offered in any college. Not very many come by the job honestly-architects, sure, maybe a chemist if they're stumbling onto experimental research that catches the attention of someone in the know. Jensen hasn't met many of the military personnel who have actual training in the matter, just one or two defectors. He doesn't envy the danger they've put themselves in.
He doesn't have a direct answer, can't say which of his bad decisions led him here, and Jared's quiet while he thinks.
"I wanted to know how the mind works." He could leave it at that, he knows. He's aware of Jared's curiosity prickling between them, but Jared doesn't push it.
"My parents died. They were, they were killed. Homicide." He can't bring himself to say the word murder. Jared doesn't recoil, doesn't say he's sorry, doesn't try to offer condolences at all. He just gets up and sits down next to Jensen, shoulder to shoulder. He meets Jensen's eyes solemnly and says, "I didn't know."
Jensen shakes his head. "No, I don't expect people to-I mean, it's better that they just... don't know." He rubs at his jaw. "I was fifteen. Just got home from school and there were these men inside, people my father knew. I recognized their cars. Didn't know anything, I just walked right in."
"Jesus, Jen! That-goddamn," Jared blurts, shaking his head. "Are you... no, God, that's a stupid question. That's, that's rough, man." No, no condolences, but Jared does cover Jensen's knee with one wide palm, rubbing at Jensen's jeans with his fingers before letting his hand slide away. It's not much different from a clap on the back or a quick shake of the shoulder, but Jensen feels Jared's hand there even after it's gone. It's been fifteen years and he's heard every different kind of reaction to his story, but sitting next to Jared feels a lot like it felt back then, sitting in Danneel's room while she kept the media, the rest of the school, the whole goddamn world away from bothering him. A safe place.
Danni had been mourning too, of course, and not just Jensen's parents. He knew he was different after that day, knew he always would be, no matter how bravely he tried to handle it all. Hell, a kid doesn't lose his parents and then just continue on with his life; that's something Jensen accepted a long time ago. It's all a distant memory, one he tries to keep himself from returning to at all costs. There are times when it feels like it happened to someone else altogether. Jensen thinks he prefers it that way.
"It's okay dude, really. I don't remember any of it. It's a psychological thing," he tells Jared.
"Really? Nothing?"
"Well, I mean. I remember walking in there and realizing something was wrong, and that there was a struggle of some kind. That's kind of sketchy, apparently there was evidence of me taking damage, but I don't know how much of that memory is just constructed from hearing the theories. It's hard to tell. And then I, uh, I remember waking up. And they, you know. They were dead. And the guys were gone. They were gone, my parents were gone, all the money was gone. So that was that. I can't remember a damn thing, man, and I was right there. Psychologists said I repressed the memory. Gone. And I didn't like being betrayed by my own mind."
Jared's just nodding, staring straight ahead, and so Jensen knocks a leg into his. "And anyway, I had no money, right? Court gave me a psychologist and I could only go for so long, and I couldn't go to college anyway so I didn't see the point of going to high school anymore, either. Only thing I had left was Danni, and I wasn't much fun to be around anymore. But I wanted to know more about the brain, and one thing led to another, and here I am."
Jared doesn't say anything while he talks but he doesn't look away this time either, and when he's finished, Jensen doesn't mind seeing the pity. There's understanding there, too. All kinds of people in this life, and Jared's probably heard worse stories. He doesn't say anything when Jensen is finished talking, either. The silence is comfortable. Quietly, Jared says, "thank you," sincerity like only Jared Padalecki can manage.
Jensen nods, but it doesn't feel like he has given anything. He should be thanking Jared, he thinks abstractly. He moves his hands from his lap to rest on the ground beside his leg, curling his fingers over the edge of the dock. He lets himself relax, Jared next to him, hands mere centimeters away from each other, close enough to touch.
7,282 days, 17 hours, 55 minutes
"Tell me about your first dreamshare," Jared asks. "C'mon. I love those stories."
"It was a little bit... disappointing."
Jared stops digging. His hand rests in the cool sand and when he looks over, Jensen is lying on his back, hands folded under his head.
"What do you mean?" Jared scoops more sand out, doesn't want to sound too critical so he goes back to building, nonchalant. As if it isn't clawing at him, wanting to know how dreamshare could ever be less than pure fucking magic; wanting to keep Jensen talking.
"I always thought..." Jensen begins, then cuts off with self-deprecating laugh. "Nothing, I just. I guess I'm demanding, wanting more than"-he waves his hand in the air above him, indicating the dream itself, the blank canvas of limbo-"this."
Jared shakes his hand, standing unceremoniously and dumping himself back onto the sand next to where Jensen's lying. "No, man, now you've got me curious. What could we possibly be missing?"
He says it like it's a joke, but Jensen chews at the inside of his lip absently, looking up at the sky but seeing God knows what. "I don't know," he murmurs.
Jared can't help it-he's drawn into this now, zeroing in on details. He doesn't like it when he can't answer his own questions, and Jensen is a huge question mark in his mind. He wants to know the answer. Needs to know why all of his attention pulls to Jensen, like trying to listen to a song on a station that's stuck between frequencies. He leans back on the sand, mirroring Jensen's arm-pillow position, far enough away that Jensen doesn't feel like he needs to explain. They could just lie here, that's okay. But Jensen doesn't make him wait for long.
"I used to hope that dreams meant something more than random nerves misfiring in your brain. Everyone wants to be part of something bigger than them, right?" He looks sideways at Jared, eyes open but guarded, and Jared nods.
"We want to be able to explain our existence. We don't want to be alone."
"Exactly." Jensen's eyes return to the lazy clouds.
For a long moment Jared thinks that's it, and decides halfheartedly that it's enough to go on for now, another clue in his mystery, but then Jensen starts speaking again.
"I thought our dreams were the key to unlocking whatever it is that ties everything together."
"Like fate?"
Jensen shrugs noncommittally. "Maybe. More like, there's something connecting every moment in our lives, and our dreams are a shared thread that runs through them. Everything people experience is all tied together and reality just strings moments along into their proper places. I just... hoped dreams were meant to show us how it all connects."
"The meaning of life."
Jensen brings a hand up to rub at his face. "God, it sounds so... naive."
"I don't think it's naive. No man is an island, right?"
"John Donne." Jensen's looking at him again. "Right. Or Jung's collective unconscious. Dreamshare... I thought that was it. They'd finally figured it out, whoever 'they' are, scientists or biologists or whatever. We could enter that place where dreams live and find out what it all means. But... you know. It's not like that. It's still all in our heads."
"Not here," Jared says. It sounds muffled when he says it because of the blood rushing in his ears. "Here, it's both of us. Our collective subconsious."
"You and me," Jensen says. He sounds a little terrified.
Jared gets up, slowly, like he's approaching a spooked horse; which is ridiculous, of course, because Jensen's not some skittish animal. He drops down next to him on the sand, doesn't say anything, just lets the sun wash over his skin.
"You and me," he mumbles, and when Jensen turns to look at him, he doesn't look back. He lets a smile curve over his face.
They've got time here, nothing at all but time. Jared thinks he could be okay with this just the way it is, watching Jensen open a door to him, letting him in. But he feels Jensen looking sometimes, quiet and curious, and he knows there's something else there. They'll find it. Jared is patient; he can wait.
September, 2011
Los Angeles, California
Jared wakes up in the dead of night. He's not sure what day it is, but Chad's still there, standing in the middle of Jared's kitchenette in his boxers. The tiny window by the cabinets has been thrown open, catching the smoke rising from the cigarette in Chad's hand. He's talking to someone on the phone, free hand gesturing in a way that tells Jared he's caught on to a conversation he can sink his teeth into. For Chad, that usually includes telling someone off or talking about a job, and Jared doesn't care to find out which it is in this case. The cigarette draws patterns in the air, Jared's sleep-addled brain trying to follow them.
"Chad," he croaks, and Chad turns on his heel to squint at him. He props the cigarette in his mouth, switching the phone from one ear to the next, and says, "He's awake. Yeah, man. Yep," then slips it back into his pocket. "Welcome back to the land of the living."
"Yeah. Why aren't you wearing pants?"
"Why don't you have any goddamn food in this place, is what I wanna know."
"What? How long-how much did you give me?"
"Ten hours."
Jared sits up. "Ten? God, no wonder." He presses the heel of his hand into his eye, forcing the bleariness away. The room bounces back into focus. His head is clear for the first time in a very long time.
Five days he spent in that dream, and Jensen hadn't shown up once.
Chad's moving around the apartment, balling up paper bags from the Chinese takeout down the block and tossing them haphazardly in the general direction of the garbage can, pulling on his jeans, muttering about the lack of air conditioning. Jared's skin feels sticky with sweat.
"Uh, thanks, Chad."
"Man," Chad stubs his cigarette out in the sink, "don't even. I don't care what shit you went through, you can't go that long without dreaming."
Jared stares at the floor. This life he's carved out seems fine when it's just Jared and his demons, odd jobs to focus on. He's doing fine, he tells himself, and believes it's true.
Just having a PASIV in his apartment throws everything into perspective, highlights the gaping holes in the wool he's pulled over his eyes. He's being chastised by Chad, and feels it down to his bones.
"I know. I won't," he mutters.
"No, Jay, you're not listening." Chad snaps the PASIV shut and then stands hovering over Jared's bed. He pulls a box of Marlboros out of his pocket and shakes one out. "I just called around about your boy."
Jared's blood drains to his feet. "What?"
"Mmhm. I hate to be the one to say it, I really do, but you've got to give it up. Just got off the phone with Kane; he says Ackles is getting married."
He isn't sure what sort of reaction Chad is expecting. Whatever it is doesn't matter, because Jared just nods. He feels oddly light, and wonders if it has something to do with finally getting proper sleep. Wonders if Jensen moving on is the reason he didn't show up in any of Jared's dreams.
"Is it Danneel?" he asks.
"Sure, if that's her name."
There's a silence in which Chad shifts his weight and Jared keeps his mind empty.
"Look, call me in a few days," Chad finally says, and Jared just nods to the floor. Chad's been gone for a few minutes at least by the time Jared finally stands, stretching.
It's not a conscious decision, but in less than fifteen minutes he has the entire apartment packed in a duffel bag, finding the money he had given Chad tucked neatly back into his dresser. He pockets it, uses the money to pay off the rest of his lease, and then Jared leaves California.
He goes back home, to Texas and the wide blue sky.
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