FIC: Keep My Fingernails Clean
Keep My Fingernails Clean - j2 | R | 5.8k
Jared's a teenage mortician secretly running the family's funeral home business when his ailing father can no longer do so. Jensen's a beauty pageant contestant who ends up on Jared's embalming table after he dies on stage.
Warning: underage, handwave-y techniques and aftermath
Originally written for spn_cinema and inspired by Elvis & Anabelle (but because I'm an asshole-failure-creaton, I missed the posting cut-off) ♥ Very quickly, whimsically, and self-indulgently written.
AO3
"Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”
- Stephen King
Keep My Fingernails Clean
Jared’s day begins when someone dies.
They might be across town somewhere when it happens, at the county fair or the church picnic or the last old five and dime left standing. Maybe they're just down the dirt road from Jared, past the tilted, sagging mailbox that now, over time, has come to simply read: PAD L CKI. And Jared himself might be cooking breakfast for the two of them - egg and cheese burrito for himself, cream of wheat for dad - and watching the local morning news on the tiny TV above the refrigerator, talking mostly to himself about an impending rain storm or the blueberry picking festival that's starting soon.
He might be doing any number of things actually, but Jared’s days don’t fully start until he gets that call. And it always comes. Death is a finicky old thing. It doesn't bother to slow down for holidays, stick to a weekday schedule. Like clockwork, it arrives.
Jared used to carry around a constant worry that today would be the day he'd have to work on a body he knows.
You can't think of them as somebody, son. It's just a body now.
A body. Not somebody.
He doesn't have that worry-itch these days though, it's fine, he's all better; because Jared's stopped knowing people. And the ones he did, they sleep comfortably underground now.
-
Dad wasn't always sick like this, before.
There were times, good times, when he'd take Jared down to the pond in the evenings, when Jared was still really little, a tiny, skinny boy of six or so. They'd sit out on a couple of wide rocks, naturally sculpted into just-right benches, and point out flickering lightning bugs, make up silly stories about the shapes that star clusters made in the inked out sky. Jared's daddy was a lively man, serious and hard-working, but secretly funny in this special way he shared only with Jared.
They'd catch toads and crickets and little fuzzy moths, and Jared would give them all proper names - Sally the salamander and Gary G. Grasshopper - before they released them back out into the night on the walk home.
Better to never get attached, was how Jared understood it. Nothing ever lasts, being the silent fine print.
Jared never had any pets, and he never minded this, not once.
Dad was built of big bones, then, a looming stature that Jared was always awed by but never afraid of. He was grand and mysterious and he was every conqueror in every story Jared's momma would read to him before bed; he was every knight, every gun-slinging cowboy crusader, every Bo Duke a town could need on their side.
Joseph Padalecki, small-town mortician and father of one, was made of the very stuff superheroes were founded on.
Then one day out of the blue Momma got sick.
It was vitriolic and ruthless and the doctors said she felt no pain. Jared was all of twelve years old the day they placed Momma under her favorite lemon tree in the back, for keeps.
Dad was never quite the same after that. Jared, to this day even, thinks that part of him expired right along with her, unable to bear the hurt of the empty spaces between his fingers where warmer, smaller ones used to be, everyday for twenty years.
-
Even when he tries real hard, even though dad was his best childhood friend and Jared would sure miss him if he ever went anywhere, Jared can't fully imagine any sort of emotion strong enough to cripple him in that way.
And Jared doesn't want to. No attachment to things that won't last. That's a recipe for heartbreak. Joseph Padalecki taught his hardest lesson by embodying the very thing he warned his small son against.
-
The first person that shows up on Jared's table that weekend is Arthur Lutz. Deaf in one ear, frail, and with an almost curlicued stark white mustache. Mr. Lutz, eighty-nine years of age and living alone, was sweeping his front porch area when he lost his footing on a small step and tumbled into a busy anthill, breaking his hip along the way. It reawakened Mr. Lutz's heart condition.
Making neat little incisions and hooking up his tubes, Jared hopes it was a quick passing for the old man. Over a hundred ant bites on his arms and legs, it's terrible to even think about.
That's why Jared usually doesn't.
The next person has to be picked up from their home, and Jared drives the old blue hearse out past Richter Creek to retrieve her. This one Jared actually does know. Her name is Lora and she used to sit behind him in math class, back before he was home-schooled. Lora had a penchant for pilfering pain pills from the medicine cabinet at home, Jared remembers that. She used to bring them to school to share with her friends.
Jared wasn't ever her friend, wasn't anybody's friend, but that was just as well.
He rubs her down with a soapy sponge, discovers a music note tattoo on her hip, and ties off the vein and artery when he's done. He wonders what bands she might've liked.
The third and last person to arrive at the Padaleckis' mortuary on Sunday evening, accompanied by grieving parents and wearing a Mister Texas Rose beauty pageant sash draped across the torso, turns out to be the one great love of Jared's life. His only love, in fact.
-
"Is there somebody else I should be speaking to?" Mrs. Ackles-Bluff says, peering drippy mascara eyes around the room like somebody might magically sift through the wall.
"No ma'am, I handle all of the paperwork here."
"You seem awfully-" ...inadequate, inexperienced... "-young. I'm sorry."
Jared smiles, polite and self-sure. "Don't be. My father's the one who handles the meat of the business." Mr. Bluff, second husband and well-to-do stepfather, looks horrified at Jared's word choice. Jared's never had wonderful people skills. "I help out where he needs it, phone calls and paperwork. This is standard procedure, I assure you."
"My son is-he's my baby. My only baby. I just can't bear it. I can't, I can't."
Mr. Bluff places a meaty hand over her diamond-adorned thin one, lets her weep into his pastel golf polo.
"You'll take good care of my little boy here, won't you?" She dabs at the rim of one eye.
"The finest care, utmost respect." Jared nods sincerely. He means it. The Padaleckis have always taken pride in their work.
"Jensen is special," she says through a film of tears, hiccuped chokes. "My Jensen is so special."
-
Two hours later, after Jared's managed to convince them that his father's a busy man, can't come greet them at the moment, will treat their son with diligence and competence, and after he's spoon-fed dad his soupy peas and chunks of cornbread, Jared heads back to the cold room to start the process.
He's in his gown and apron, shoe covers and rubber gloves, and he's tiptoeing around the table the way he always does, readying his equipment and mixing the fluids. Jared's not one for making a whole lot of noise, especially in a place of such solitude. He's always thought it rather uncouth. He'd never bring in a little radio, some headphones, nothing like that.
Nothing to disturb the dead.
Jared knows whatever was once in there, ceases to be at the moment of conclusion. Still, this doesn't change his mind.
He snaps his little polaroid photos, one of each person who visits, a tradition passed down from his dad, a keepsake, a note of one's existence, the last footprint left behind, just a small thing in a very large world. Something to help the person say, I was here, once. I lived.
Setting the features comes before the album picture, always. It's only polite that they look their best.
When Jared comes up close to perform this one task though, he's startled by the actuality of what lays on the steel table before him. He never looks too closely when the deceased's loved ones are around.
It's a boy with pallid peach skin, creamy pale and lightly speckled. Smooth like silk, though Jared doesn't dare touch yet. There's a soft bump at the bridge of the nose, adding to the unique and taking nothing at all away. Lips that used to be pink, and upsettingly pretty, and look like they probably loved to smile and laugh and be kissed. The boy's got high, sharp cheekbones and a calm expression, rows of dark gold lashes settled against his cheeks. His face is serene, accepting, like he might've embraced a certain peace in death, a thing not everyone can reach.
Jensen Ackles, as it turns out, is the most exquisitely beautiful thing that Jared's ever come across, heartbeat or not.
-
It takes him too long to reach for the cotton.
Jensen isn't warm anymore, but he's not rigor-stiff either. Nothing's collapsed or sunken, and Jared ends up staring for an inappropriately long time. It doesn't feel right doing it, somehow, plumping his features to look alive. There's nothing for Jared to fix. Jensen Ackles died perfectly.
So far, all he's managed to do is carefully cut away the slim-fit tuxedo and the dainty cumberband. Jared could've just as easily unbuttoned and unzipped, slid the pants down and off, disrobed him in a more obtrusive manner, but when he'd reached for the zip, he'd felt an unexpected rush of shyness and quickly pulled his hand away, gone for the fabric scissors instead.
The pageant sash and matching jewel-encrusted crown sit off to the side, delicately placed with the rest of the belongings to be handed to the family later on.
Just as delayed as he was with the cottoning, Jared's not sure he's ready for the plastic eye caps either.
Work never affects him, not like this, and it unsettles him that it's doing so now.
Jared's a professional, has had to be one since he took over for his ailing parent. He's sixteen and maybe a little clumsy with words, but he knows how to perform his job - day after day, body after body - with all of the precision and none of the unnecessary sentiments.
Mister Texas Rose, with his delicate hands just made for holding, ruins all of that for him in one night.
-
As foreseen, it's the eye caps that rouse his breaking point.
He's got a thin shell held between two fingers, prepared to insert and position, when he lifts up one fragile eyelid and is met with a color more often seen in acrylic paints. Fresh cut grass and cool Spring afternoons after a gush of rain. The little tan eye cap falls to the ground in a series of quick taps, clink clink clink. Silence.
Jared's heart is very noisy.
He scoots around, blindly grabs at the counter at his back, and comes away holding the old camera. It's important that he do this now, for whatever reason that may be. It feels vital. It feels terrifying. It feels like his own bones are liquefying, shaky limbs and erratic, dis-jointed thoughts. This boy is special.
Lens aimed, button half-pressed, a wild thing swoops in and orchestrates his movements, and as the flash goes off, Jared finds his lips to be pressed against the immobile ones, soft and sweet and butterfly gentle.
And Jensen Ackles has both eyes open, staring up at Jared in wet-lashed, wondering confusion.
-
The first thing Jensen does is cough.
The first thing Jared does is scream. High and loud and flailing backwards as he does it.
His tools go flying; drain tubes and sutures scattered in an arc around him on the floor, even the little plastic wash basin takes a suicide dive down. Jared's scrub pants get soaked all along one thigh. He's dizzy and sweat-damp and his ribs keep pushing in and out, in and out, finding breathing to be an incredibly difficult chore at the moment.
"I don't remember the backstage area looking like this," Jensen says, a little croaky. He blinks around at the scenery, scrunches his nose when he looks down. "Why am I naked?"
There's a clean wash towel draped across his groin, placed just so by Jared's gentleman boundaries, but that's the only thing he's got on. Jared didn't look before. He certainly doesn't look now. Jared chews the outside corner of his lip, licks at the sore he's developed from the bad habit, and crawls backwards. Jensen has the voice of a V8 engine and teeth that sparkle bright.
Jensen climbs down off the table, scrap of fabric clutched to cover his modesty, and shifts around on elegantly bare feet, long, thin bones of his toes distracting Jared for a moment. How are feet pretty?
"This isn't the competition venue, is it?"
Jensen's not really asking, so Jared's not really answering.
He's also not considering the high, round shape of Jensen's naked butt in profile.
And then beauty-king-come-to-life says the thing Jared hadn't even thought to start dreading: "Were you kissing me?"
Stupidly, Jared nods. It's not really a lie he'd get away with.
But then: "Was I kissing you back?"
Just as stupidly, Jared shakes his head. Of course Jensen wasn't. Jensen was dead. Holy shit.
"Huh," Jensen says, squinting at Jared's face, studying him, assessing. He doesn't say anything else though, just moves to his little bundle of clothing and tries to slip into his pants. Until he realizes they've been sliced up each leg from ankle to hip. Then he sees his other things. His sweet sash, his pretty crown. "Oh. I won."
He doesn't sound happy.
He doesn't very much look it either.
"You can borrow some of my clothes," Jared finally manages to say, breathy and weird and barely heard over the churning in his gut and the blood-roar in his ears. He practically runs for the door. Jensen's soft bare feet pad along after him quietly.
-
"We have to, uh - call someone."
Jared fiddles with the hem of the long gingham curtain in the sitting room, awkwardly rotating from foot to foot.
"Who?" Jensen asks, head tilted faintly to one side.
"I'm not sure. The hospital? The police." This doesn't exactly happen all that often. "Your parents."
"No." Jensen's head straightens right up, a doll set right again. "I mean. I'm a little tired. That can wait, right? We can hold off 'til morning, and then, first thing with the roosters. If I can just - sleep. Just for a little while, just a couple of hours. I won't take up much space at all, I promise."
And Jared finds himself saying sure and okay and take my bed, the couch is lumpy, all in a matter of seconds.
Jared pokes through the linen closet, finds a quilt and some fresh sheets for Jensen, a faded Charlie Brown pillowcase that he used to sleep with. A little dusty and mothballish, but all clean. Jensen accepts the pile gratefully, wordlessly follows Jared to the back of the cozily cluttered house and up the stairs to Jared's room.
-
Jensen sticks to his word and takes up very little space, curled into a tight ball on Jared's huge mattress when Jared says goodnight, flicks the nightlight on when he leaves. Jared walks to the room across the hall, takes his seat in the rocking chair, and reads aloud the next bit of The Tommyknockers, picking right up where he left off the night before.
"Now there was a shaky drawing of the town-hall clock tower on her board, the scrawled work of a first-grader. Ruth could not stand to work on the dolls in the school room..."
"I like this part," Dad says, mumbled and happy, eyes drooping.
Dad likes every part.
"I know you do," Jared says kindly, and keeps reading. She slices the bellies. Jared likes this part, too.
The old two-story mint green clapboard house shifts on her foundation, creaks and sighs as timely gals like herself are wont to do, and Jared's thoughts tumble over into the squeak of his bed springs, pictures Jensen rolling over into that dip in the middle, where the wire's nearly poking through.
He thinks of that strange, perfect boy bundled up in the quilt Jared's mom sewed for him before she died, wearing Jared's loose gym shorts and the rust colored hoodie he grew out of, sleeping in Jared's ratty old Weezer shirt, holes in the collar and under one armpit, hands made for holding tucked peacefully under his sleepy head.
-
In the morning, Jared makes three separate plates of breakfast for the first time in his life.
Jared has an egg and cheese burrito, Dad has oatmeal with a sprinkle of cinnamon, and Jensen Ackles gets two omelettes and a tall glass of OJ.
"Oh, is that your dad?" Jensen had asked in the upstairs hallway earlier, pointing at some framed photos on the wall, reddened and browned with time. Joseph Padalecki had stood upright and proud, one arm around momma. Everything to be proud of right next to him. "I'd love to meet him."
And Jared had given him a weird look, muttered, "You will." And then after a moment, "Call him Elmer."
"Elmer!" Jensen raised his eyebrows, thinking it over. He smiled immediately. "I've never met an Elmer before."
"Neither had I," Jared said, starting to inch his way down the stairs. Behind him, Jensen had made a soft, curious little noise, and Jared was powerless to resist turning around. "Fronto-temporal dementia."
Jensen doesn't say anything while Jared wipes dribbles of oatmeal from Dad's chin every now and then, sops up spilled tea. He doesn't gawk or stare, but he doesn't quickly divert his eyes either in that way people do when they're trying not to be rude and not realizing it's kind of hurtful anyway. Jensen smiles and eats and fits nicely right at their table.
-
"I thank you so kindly for your hospitality, sirs. Your son sure is a mean egg chef, Elmer," Jensen says, when the dishes are all cleared away.
Dad looks up, rolling a little in his wheelchair. He wheezes a bit, peers around, then says, "Yes. Yes, have you met him? This is my son Bugs, my best boy." Dad sort of tugs Jared back over, presents him like some offering. Jared's ears burn scarlet as Jensen looks on, wondering what he must be thinking. Bugs.
But Jensen isn't mocking at all. Very quaintly, he reaches out and shakes Jared's hand. "It's nice meeting you, Bugs."
Jared's throat feels clogged.
"And who might you be?" Dad asks, as though he hadn't noticed Jensen sitting there next to them the whole meal.
"Daffy," Jensen tells him, nodding and serious.
Jared watches in dazed silence as Dad pauses, seems to take this in, then gasps out a little chuckle, a tiny smile tagging along with it. "I like this one, son. He's a funny one. Ain't he funny?"
"Yes, he is," Jared says quietly, meeting Jensen's eye for a warm molasses second. He diverts his eyes quickly. Jared's always been a little bit rude.
-
"Should I call you that as well?"
"You don't have to call me anything," Jared says, kicking a dried up hornet's nest off the porch.
"But if I want to?"
He'll be gone by the end of the day. What does it even matter?
Still, he can't help whispering Jared into the late morning air, can't help rushing back inside when Jensen whispers it right back. Jared feels too tight, in too many weird places.
-
They hold off alerting the authorities for the rest of the morning, then the afternoon. When night comes around again and they still haven't called, Jared realizes Jensen's unequivocally been putting it off. Tucking it into a corner, covering it with dirt. Yesterday, Jensen died. Today, he doesn't want to go home.
Jensen dons a dirty Budweiser cap, dances in the garden, and throws his hands in the air when it starts to drizzle. Jared hides out under the awning, pretends to read his book, and watches Jensen through his bangs the entire length of the day.
When they sit down for supper, Jensen plunks a bloomed pink tulip into an old jelly jar and places it at the center of the table.
-
Tuesday morning finds Jensen still wringing his hands together, pacing socked feet in the same circle of space on the rug in front of the couch. Jared sits cross-legged on the floor, hunched over the daily newspaper, reading an article on how Jensen Ackles, newly crowned King of the pageant, fell on stage moments after and suffered a fatal blow to the temple.
Jared looks at him now, at Jensen worrying his cheek and mumbling ideas and escape routes to himself, and for just a moment, lets himself believe in real magic.
Jensen stops burning a hole in the floor.
"That night, what were you. I mean, had you started?"
"Embalming you?" Jared asks, and immediately wants to ostrich his head in the sand, the way Jensen goes still, very obviously painting a picture of what else Jared might've thought he meant. Which, oh god. No. Jared would never have done-. No. He wouldn't have. It was just a kiss. "No, not yet. Was just starting prep."
"What's prep?"
"You know, um. Undressing - the body. Washing."
"Washing," Jensen parrots back, glancing down at himself. "Did you-"
Jared shakes his head. "I hadn't yet."
"I do feel a little rancid actually. Would you mind?" He motions upstairs. The bathroom.
Entire face aflame, Jared stares at him open-mouthed, open paper forgotten on his lap, pages fluttering lightly with the breeze from the open window. Surely he doesn't mean... doesn't mean... Jared wouldn't know how, wouldn't know what to do. He's only ever scrubbed down cadavers, never an actual living, breathing person, especially one so-
"May I?" Jensen says, and Jared nods curtly, frantically flips the section over to the comics. So stupid. Of course Jensen was only asking to shower. By himself. Jesus fuck, Jared's a moron.
Tuesday afternoon, Jensen's folks change their mind.
-
"Oh, I see. Well." Jared stares dumbly at the wall. "Yes, actually. We do offer crematory services here."
Jensen practically floats down the stairs, all sunny smiles and smelling like Jared's cheap K-Mart body wash, toweling at his damp, matted hair. As soon as he's fully in the room, able to hear the conversation, he rushes up and latches onto Jared's elbows, clinging tight. He's nodding his head furiously, yes, yes, wide eyes and lifted brows. He's shirtless and too close and Jared's distracted again by shoulder-freckles.
"Are you positive?" Jared says into the phone, but looking into Jensen's eyes.
Jensen kisses Jared's cheek.
"Yes ma'am. No viewing. I understand." He hangs up the old rotary phone.
"What did she say?"
Jared looks at him for a long moment, wants to touch the spot on his face where Jensen's lips had been. He holds his hands at his sides and says to the carpet, "She said she wanted you to be beautiful forever."
Jensen scoffs, pulls a face.
"You already will be," Jared says, and leaves Jensen sitting on the loveseat in a patch of sunlight.
-
At the general store, Jensen gets a poofy loofah and some tropical smelling shampoo. He picks up basic toiletries and some trash magazines and a pack of menthols. Jensen's nineteen, twenty soon, and can purchase things like that if he wants. Jared's just a kid. The girl behind the register doesn't pay any attention to the name on the ID card.
At a yard sale, Jensen finds some pants and things in his size, buys an ugly mustard colored sweater for fifty cents and insists on wearing it home despite the fact that even the cicadas are crying with the heat.
"It's hideous," Jensen giggles, twirling around on the sidewalk. Jared goggles at him, frowns, asks why he'd want the thing. "Because it's hideous," Jensen says, like that makes any sense at all.
-
"I like him," Dad says by habit every evening when Jared tucks him in, a little secret, a made up star-cluster story.
"I like him too," Jared finally relents one humid night after Dad's fallen asleep facing the left side of bed. Momma's side. Every day for twenty years.
-
"You know this is going to be difficult, don't you?" It really seems like Jensen might not know, always so carefree and aimless with things. "You'll need to change your name, for one thing."
"Right now?"
"Well, no. Not right this second. But eventually."
"Well then, eventually I will," Jensen says, blowing a fat, pink Bazooka gum bubble.
"Okay smartass, have you thought of any potential aliases then?"
"Sure I have."
Jared waits.
"I was thinking, maybe I could be your dad's nephew or something. That's plausible, no?"
"Um, I guess so. But what does that-" Wait. "You're planning on taking my - our last name?" Jared's sure this is a hallucination now. Maybe he made the whole thing up. Maybe Jensen was never here at all.
Jensen shrugs, pops a sticky bubble with his teeth, feet up on the arm of the couch. He runs a soft hand over the top of Jared's head, there and then gone, like the wind, like a dream. Jared almost grabs it.
"It's either that or Daffy."
-
"They tore it down," Jared tells him one day, arms full of shopping bags. Jensen hurries over, pulls the screen door closed.
On the highway that leads into town, there's a giant billboard at the edge of the road.
Jensen's second chance at life isn't the only reason he stays at home when Jared heads out to get groceries, hangs back to do crosswords with Jared's dad and never gets too close to the locals. The billboard is plastered with a photo of a smiling, shiny young man - pallid peach skin and a lovely little nose, a real beauty - small town celebutante. Hollow-eyed, but only if you know what you're looking for.
It takes weeks. Weeks of talking to him, and listening to him, sitting on rickety lawn chairs next to the pond and watching ladybugs land on their knees, and hearing, really hearing, the things he says, and the things he doesn't say, but still means. It takes knowing him, before Jared realizes what's wrong in the picture.
"Now it's an ad about erectile dysfunction."
"Better them than me," Jensen says, winking slyly, his smile all real right there in his eyes.
Jared nearly drops a jug of milk on his toes. What.
-
Not every arrival comes in smooth and soft the way Jensen had. There are tragic ones, and there are gruesome ones, and sometimes, even in a place with a population of 992, Jared gets both at once.
There's a high impact collision and there's nothing to be done. A mangled woman arrives in the middle of the day and Jared's with her well into the night. The process changes drastically. Every now and then, Jensen likes to sit in, just to see. Tonight, he stays away.
By the time Jared wraps up, it's late. Too late. He skids into the house, checking the time, racing up the stairs and feeling unforgivably guilty that he missed story time. His poor father probably laid there all alone, wondering why Bugs never showed up. When he reaches the top of the landing, he slides to a quiet halt, holding onto the bannister with clawed fists.
"Alvin Rutledge wasn't the only person who had tried to visit a friend or relative in Haven during July, nor the only one to become ill and turn back."
A page rustles.
"I like this part," Dad says.
"It's real good, huh?" Jared hears Jensen reading in there, a steady string of fondness in his tone. The rocking chair creaks lightly. Jensen even does voices. Dad gets a real kick out of that.
Jared sags against the wall and his heart jerks in his chest. He broke the rules and he broke them hard. He was never, ever supposed to get attached.
-
Unstatistically speaking, there probably aren't that many people who can say they lost their virginity in the back of a hearse.
Jared's cleaning out the vehicle that night, unable to sleep and wired for something to do. The critters at the pond were mostly asleep when he wandered down, and the stars somehow didn't sparkle as cheerfully as they did when he had someone around to keep track of them with him.
The car isn't messy; Jared would never let it be. But he's out there with his spray bottles of disinfectants and his wash rags anyway, sanitizing every little nook and cranny, lint-rolling and re-fluffing the flowy curtains set above the side windows. That's what he's doing when Jensen slides into the long bed of the hearse, dressed in nothing but boxers and a nervous smile.
Soon, it's just the nervous smile.
He pushes his underwear down his legs, in that way Jared couldn't make his own hands do, slides them off one ankle carefully, and waits patiently for Jared's starting-and-stopping brain to catch up.
"If you want to," Jensen says, after so long of Jared staring at him stupidly. If you want me, is what he means.
Jared wants him in ways he can't even put into words.
-
"I would've kissed you back," Jensen sighs, mouthing into Jared's collarbone, sucking a mark. It makes Jared lose what little rhythm he had going and he thrusts in particularly hard, feels Jensen go tense all around him in a really, really good way. "Like that, keep going."
Like Jared could stop.
Jensen's got one long arm snaked around Jared's neck, the other down at the small of his back, pressing and pushing and guiding Jared just right. Jensen's laid out on his back, staring up at Jared so prettily, and Jared's completely overwhelmed by being with someone in this way, everything he pictured, but nothing he ever expected. He thinks he might've cried a little at one point, just a stinging wetness at the edge of his eyes.
It's okay, it's okay, Jensen keeps saying, every few minutes, rubbing soothing touches at Jared's bony shoulder blades, down the length of his spine, like he knows Jared needs the reminder. Jared really does.
They fuck bare, and hard, and Jared doesn't really know what he's doing, inexpertly stuttering his hips around in vain hopes that it'll feel good for Jensen too. He has just enough remaining sanity to think to reach down for Jensen, making a fist for Jensen to strain into. Jensen's really wet. Jared hopes he's doing something right.
Jensen's body is lean and taut and it knows how to move, how to fuck, how to take Jared apart piece by piece. With one foot digging into the meat of Jared's ass and the other pressed against the roof of the car, Jensen takes both of Jared's hands in his, lets Jared hold them down at either side of his head and looks right into his eyes the whole time, watches Jared's face when he comes inside him, smiles small when Jared gasps through the last heavy pulse.
Jensen - sweet, funny, big-hearted Jensen who Jared is impossibly in love with - doesn't even mind when Jared dips curious fingertips down the middle, feels out where he's all used and warm and drippy. Jared fingers experimentally a few times, eyes going large and innocently shocked when it squelches back out in a sticky rush. Jensen quickly clamps his legs shut.
"Holy shit," Jared breathes, and Jensen's laugh goes on and on.
-
They watch the news in the mornings, on the little TV above the refrigerator, and reruns of Happy Days at night, on the huge flatscreen plasma in their bedroom that Jensen finds on sale at K-Mart and lugs home in the hearse.
-
"Are you gonna marry that boy?" Dad said once, while Jared was in the middle of making cooked salami sandwiches for lunch. He only narrowly missed scorching his hand on a swirl burner.
He'd thought Dad was asleep in his chair.
Jared didn't answer him, dug in the refrigerator for trimmings and condiments, poured three glasses of fresh squeezed pink lemonade. His only solace was that he could see Jensen through the gingham curtain, out in the yard trying to start up the old tractor or some mess. Nobody needed to hear things like that, jeez.
"I think he oughta marry that boy. What do you reckon?" Dad was talking to an empty chair. A considerable pause, like someone might be answering him. And then, "I ain't slouchin', Darlene."
Jared startled, stopped slicing the sandwiches into little squares of four each. Darlene Padalecki always harped over the way her husband hunched over when he sat.
It's things like that, tiny nothing moments, that Jared will miss the most.
He'd foolishly spent any number of years thinking of himself in the role of caregiver, the responsible one. And maybe it's true, on some levels. But when Dad leaves him at last, not long after Jared and Jensen start sharing Jared's room upstairs, Jared wonders if Dad wasn't the one taking care of him this whole time, hanging on until he was sure his boy could fly.
They bury him next to Momma, to her right, just under the shade of the lemon tree.
Joseph "Elmer" Padalecki, the little stone reads, and Jared thinks it's a wonderful added touch. Jensen leaves pink tulips for them both once a week.
-
At the end of July, a few days after Jared's 17th birthday, he wakes up one morning to find the other half of the bed empty. The sheets are rumpled, and the pillow has the fragrance of Jensen's tropical hair, coconuts, and there's not a note left anywhere that Jared can see.
He nearly loses it then and there.
After an hour of mindless, frantic searching, shouting up and down the house and throwing the back door open wide, Jared finally finds him - an acre away, sitting in the wheat field, hidden by stalks.
Jensen pokes a dead branch into the little fire in front of him, grins up at Jared when he comes and sits down in the dirt. The flames lick at the satin fabric, distorting and abolishing, and together they sit and watch until the sash is nothing more than little charred out partial letters. The crown is crumbled in a heap at its side.
"I like this part," Jensen says, letting his head fall onto Jared's shoulder. He's sweat-salty, smelling of grass and grime and real, tangible things.
Jared looks up at the cloudless sky, thinks of heroes and conquerors and fingers that fit just right alongside his, and he presses a kiss to the tip of Jensen's thumb.
end.
Jared's a teenage mortician secretly running the family's funeral home business when his ailing father can no longer do so. Jensen's a beauty pageant contestant who ends up on Jared's embalming table after he dies on stage.
Warning: underage, handwave-y techniques and aftermath
Originally written for spn_cinema and inspired by Elvis & Anabelle (but because I'm an asshole-failure-creaton, I missed the posting cut-off) ♥ Very quickly, whimsically, and self-indulgently written.
AO3
"Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”
- Stephen King
Keep My Fingernails Clean
Jared’s day begins when someone dies.
They might be across town somewhere when it happens, at the county fair or the church picnic or the last old five and dime left standing. Maybe they're just down the dirt road from Jared, past the tilted, sagging mailbox that now, over time, has come to simply read: PAD L CKI. And Jared himself might be cooking breakfast for the two of them - egg and cheese burrito for himself, cream of wheat for dad - and watching the local morning news on the tiny TV above the refrigerator, talking mostly to himself about an impending rain storm or the blueberry picking festival that's starting soon.
He might be doing any number of things actually, but Jared’s days don’t fully start until he gets that call. And it always comes. Death is a finicky old thing. It doesn't bother to slow down for holidays, stick to a weekday schedule. Like clockwork, it arrives.
Jared used to carry around a constant worry that today would be the day he'd have to work on a body he knows.
You can't think of them as somebody, son. It's just a body now.
A body. Not somebody.
He doesn't have that worry-itch these days though, it's fine, he's all better; because Jared's stopped knowing people. And the ones he did, they sleep comfortably underground now.
-
Dad wasn't always sick like this, before.
There were times, good times, when he'd take Jared down to the pond in the evenings, when Jared was still really little, a tiny, skinny boy of six or so. They'd sit out on a couple of wide rocks, naturally sculpted into just-right benches, and point out flickering lightning bugs, make up silly stories about the shapes that star clusters made in the inked out sky. Jared's daddy was a lively man, serious and hard-working, but secretly funny in this special way he shared only with Jared.
They'd catch toads and crickets and little fuzzy moths, and Jared would give them all proper names - Sally the salamander and Gary G. Grasshopper - before they released them back out into the night on the walk home.
Better to never get attached, was how Jared understood it. Nothing ever lasts, being the silent fine print.
Jared never had any pets, and he never minded this, not once.
Dad was built of big bones, then, a looming stature that Jared was always awed by but never afraid of. He was grand and mysterious and he was every conqueror in every story Jared's momma would read to him before bed; he was every knight, every gun-slinging cowboy crusader, every Bo Duke a town could need on their side.
Joseph Padalecki, small-town mortician and father of one, was made of the very stuff superheroes were founded on.
Then one day out of the blue Momma got sick.
It was vitriolic and ruthless and the doctors said she felt no pain. Jared was all of twelve years old the day they placed Momma under her favorite lemon tree in the back, for keeps.
Dad was never quite the same after that. Jared, to this day even, thinks that part of him expired right along with her, unable to bear the hurt of the empty spaces between his fingers where warmer, smaller ones used to be, everyday for twenty years.
-
Even when he tries real hard, even though dad was his best childhood friend and Jared would sure miss him if he ever went anywhere, Jared can't fully imagine any sort of emotion strong enough to cripple him in that way.
And Jared doesn't want to. No attachment to things that won't last. That's a recipe for heartbreak. Joseph Padalecki taught his hardest lesson by embodying the very thing he warned his small son against.
-
The first person that shows up on Jared's table that weekend is Arthur Lutz. Deaf in one ear, frail, and with an almost curlicued stark white mustache. Mr. Lutz, eighty-nine years of age and living alone, was sweeping his front porch area when he lost his footing on a small step and tumbled into a busy anthill, breaking his hip along the way. It reawakened Mr. Lutz's heart condition.
Making neat little incisions and hooking up his tubes, Jared hopes it was a quick passing for the old man. Over a hundred ant bites on his arms and legs, it's terrible to even think about.
That's why Jared usually doesn't.
The next person has to be picked up from their home, and Jared drives the old blue hearse out past Richter Creek to retrieve her. This one Jared actually does know. Her name is Lora and she used to sit behind him in math class, back before he was home-schooled. Lora had a penchant for pilfering pain pills from the medicine cabinet at home, Jared remembers that. She used to bring them to school to share with her friends.
Jared wasn't ever her friend, wasn't anybody's friend, but that was just as well.
He rubs her down with a soapy sponge, discovers a music note tattoo on her hip, and ties off the vein and artery when he's done. He wonders what bands she might've liked.
The third and last person to arrive at the Padaleckis' mortuary on Sunday evening, accompanied by grieving parents and wearing a Mister Texas Rose beauty pageant sash draped across the torso, turns out to be the one great love of Jared's life. His only love, in fact.
-
"Is there somebody else I should be speaking to?" Mrs. Ackles-Bluff says, peering drippy mascara eyes around the room like somebody might magically sift through the wall.
"No ma'am, I handle all of the paperwork here."
"You seem awfully-" ...inadequate, inexperienced... "-young. I'm sorry."
Jared smiles, polite and self-sure. "Don't be. My father's the one who handles the meat of the business." Mr. Bluff, second husband and well-to-do stepfather, looks horrified at Jared's word choice. Jared's never had wonderful people skills. "I help out where he needs it, phone calls and paperwork. This is standard procedure, I assure you."
"My son is-he's my baby. My only baby. I just can't bear it. I can't, I can't."
Mr. Bluff places a meaty hand over her diamond-adorned thin one, lets her weep into his pastel golf polo.
"You'll take good care of my little boy here, won't you?" She dabs at the rim of one eye.
"The finest care, utmost respect." Jared nods sincerely. He means it. The Padaleckis have always taken pride in their work.
"Jensen is special," she says through a film of tears, hiccuped chokes. "My Jensen is so special."
-
Two hours later, after Jared's managed to convince them that his father's a busy man, can't come greet them at the moment, will treat their son with diligence and competence, and after he's spoon-fed dad his soupy peas and chunks of cornbread, Jared heads back to the cold room to start the process.
He's in his gown and apron, shoe covers and rubber gloves, and he's tiptoeing around the table the way he always does, readying his equipment and mixing the fluids. Jared's not one for making a whole lot of noise, especially in a place of such solitude. He's always thought it rather uncouth. He'd never bring in a little radio, some headphones, nothing like that.
Nothing to disturb the dead.
Jared knows whatever was once in there, ceases to be at the moment of conclusion. Still, this doesn't change his mind.
He snaps his little polaroid photos, one of each person who visits, a tradition passed down from his dad, a keepsake, a note of one's existence, the last footprint left behind, just a small thing in a very large world. Something to help the person say, I was here, once. I lived.
Setting the features comes before the album picture, always. It's only polite that they look their best.
When Jared comes up close to perform this one task though, he's startled by the actuality of what lays on the steel table before him. He never looks too closely when the deceased's loved ones are around.
It's a boy with pallid peach skin, creamy pale and lightly speckled. Smooth like silk, though Jared doesn't dare touch yet. There's a soft bump at the bridge of the nose, adding to the unique and taking nothing at all away. Lips that used to be pink, and upsettingly pretty, and look like they probably loved to smile and laugh and be kissed. The boy's got high, sharp cheekbones and a calm expression, rows of dark gold lashes settled against his cheeks. His face is serene, accepting, like he might've embraced a certain peace in death, a thing not everyone can reach.
Jensen Ackles, as it turns out, is the most exquisitely beautiful thing that Jared's ever come across, heartbeat or not.
-
It takes him too long to reach for the cotton.
Jensen isn't warm anymore, but he's not rigor-stiff either. Nothing's collapsed or sunken, and Jared ends up staring for an inappropriately long time. It doesn't feel right doing it, somehow, plumping his features to look alive. There's nothing for Jared to fix. Jensen Ackles died perfectly.
So far, all he's managed to do is carefully cut away the slim-fit tuxedo and the dainty cumberband. Jared could've just as easily unbuttoned and unzipped, slid the pants down and off, disrobed him in a more obtrusive manner, but when he'd reached for the zip, he'd felt an unexpected rush of shyness and quickly pulled his hand away, gone for the fabric scissors instead.
The pageant sash and matching jewel-encrusted crown sit off to the side, delicately placed with the rest of the belongings to be handed to the family later on.
Just as delayed as he was with the cottoning, Jared's not sure he's ready for the plastic eye caps either.
Work never affects him, not like this, and it unsettles him that it's doing so now.
Jared's a professional, has had to be one since he took over for his ailing parent. He's sixteen and maybe a little clumsy with words, but he knows how to perform his job - day after day, body after body - with all of the precision and none of the unnecessary sentiments.
Mister Texas Rose, with his delicate hands just made for holding, ruins all of that for him in one night.
-
As foreseen, it's the eye caps that rouse his breaking point.
He's got a thin shell held between two fingers, prepared to insert and position, when he lifts up one fragile eyelid and is met with a color more often seen in acrylic paints. Fresh cut grass and cool Spring afternoons after a gush of rain. The little tan eye cap falls to the ground in a series of quick taps, clink clink clink. Silence.
Jared's heart is very noisy.
He scoots around, blindly grabs at the counter at his back, and comes away holding the old camera. It's important that he do this now, for whatever reason that may be. It feels vital. It feels terrifying. It feels like his own bones are liquefying, shaky limbs and erratic, dis-jointed thoughts. This boy is special.
Lens aimed, button half-pressed, a wild thing swoops in and orchestrates his movements, and as the flash goes off, Jared finds his lips to be pressed against the immobile ones, soft and sweet and butterfly gentle.
And Jensen Ackles has both eyes open, staring up at Jared in wet-lashed, wondering confusion.
-
The first thing Jensen does is cough.
The first thing Jared does is scream. High and loud and flailing backwards as he does it.
His tools go flying; drain tubes and sutures scattered in an arc around him on the floor, even the little plastic wash basin takes a suicide dive down. Jared's scrub pants get soaked all along one thigh. He's dizzy and sweat-damp and his ribs keep pushing in and out, in and out, finding breathing to be an incredibly difficult chore at the moment.
"I don't remember the backstage area looking like this," Jensen says, a little croaky. He blinks around at the scenery, scrunches his nose when he looks down. "Why am I naked?"
There's a clean wash towel draped across his groin, placed just so by Jared's gentleman boundaries, but that's the only thing he's got on. Jared didn't look before. He certainly doesn't look now. Jared chews the outside corner of his lip, licks at the sore he's developed from the bad habit, and crawls backwards. Jensen has the voice of a V8 engine and teeth that sparkle bright.
Jensen climbs down off the table, scrap of fabric clutched to cover his modesty, and shifts around on elegantly bare feet, long, thin bones of his toes distracting Jared for a moment. How are feet pretty?
"This isn't the competition venue, is it?"
Jensen's not really asking, so Jared's not really answering.
He's also not considering the high, round shape of Jensen's naked butt in profile.
And then beauty-king-come-to-life says the thing Jared hadn't even thought to start dreading: "Were you kissing me?"
Stupidly, Jared nods. It's not really a lie he'd get away with.
But then: "Was I kissing you back?"
Just as stupidly, Jared shakes his head. Of course Jensen wasn't. Jensen was dead. Holy shit.
"Huh," Jensen says, squinting at Jared's face, studying him, assessing. He doesn't say anything else though, just moves to his little bundle of clothing and tries to slip into his pants. Until he realizes they've been sliced up each leg from ankle to hip. Then he sees his other things. His sweet sash, his pretty crown. "Oh. I won."
He doesn't sound happy.
He doesn't very much look it either.
"You can borrow some of my clothes," Jared finally manages to say, breathy and weird and barely heard over the churning in his gut and the blood-roar in his ears. He practically runs for the door. Jensen's soft bare feet pad along after him quietly.
-
"We have to, uh - call someone."
Jared fiddles with the hem of the long gingham curtain in the sitting room, awkwardly rotating from foot to foot.
"Who?" Jensen asks, head tilted faintly to one side.
"I'm not sure. The hospital? The police." This doesn't exactly happen all that often. "Your parents."
"No." Jensen's head straightens right up, a doll set right again. "I mean. I'm a little tired. That can wait, right? We can hold off 'til morning, and then, first thing with the roosters. If I can just - sleep. Just for a little while, just a couple of hours. I won't take up much space at all, I promise."
And Jared finds himself saying sure and okay and take my bed, the couch is lumpy, all in a matter of seconds.
Jared pokes through the linen closet, finds a quilt and some fresh sheets for Jensen, a faded Charlie Brown pillowcase that he used to sleep with. A little dusty and mothballish, but all clean. Jensen accepts the pile gratefully, wordlessly follows Jared to the back of the cozily cluttered house and up the stairs to Jared's room.
-
Jensen sticks to his word and takes up very little space, curled into a tight ball on Jared's huge mattress when Jared says goodnight, flicks the nightlight on when he leaves. Jared walks to the room across the hall, takes his seat in the rocking chair, and reads aloud the next bit of The Tommyknockers, picking right up where he left off the night before.
"Now there was a shaky drawing of the town-hall clock tower on her board, the scrawled work of a first-grader. Ruth could not stand to work on the dolls in the school room..."
"I like this part," Dad says, mumbled and happy, eyes drooping.
Dad likes every part.
"I know you do," Jared says kindly, and keeps reading. She slices the bellies. Jared likes this part, too.
The old two-story mint green clapboard house shifts on her foundation, creaks and sighs as timely gals like herself are wont to do, and Jared's thoughts tumble over into the squeak of his bed springs, pictures Jensen rolling over into that dip in the middle, where the wire's nearly poking through.
He thinks of that strange, perfect boy bundled up in the quilt Jared's mom sewed for him before she died, wearing Jared's loose gym shorts and the rust colored hoodie he grew out of, sleeping in Jared's ratty old Weezer shirt, holes in the collar and under one armpit, hands made for holding tucked peacefully under his sleepy head.
-
In the morning, Jared makes three separate plates of breakfast for the first time in his life.
Jared has an egg and cheese burrito, Dad has oatmeal with a sprinkle of cinnamon, and Jensen Ackles gets two omelettes and a tall glass of OJ.
"Oh, is that your dad?" Jensen had asked in the upstairs hallway earlier, pointing at some framed photos on the wall, reddened and browned with time. Joseph Padalecki had stood upright and proud, one arm around momma. Everything to be proud of right next to him. "I'd love to meet him."
And Jared had given him a weird look, muttered, "You will." And then after a moment, "Call him Elmer."
"Elmer!" Jensen raised his eyebrows, thinking it over. He smiled immediately. "I've never met an Elmer before."
"Neither had I," Jared said, starting to inch his way down the stairs. Behind him, Jensen had made a soft, curious little noise, and Jared was powerless to resist turning around. "Fronto-temporal dementia."
Jensen doesn't say anything while Jared wipes dribbles of oatmeal from Dad's chin every now and then, sops up spilled tea. He doesn't gawk or stare, but he doesn't quickly divert his eyes either in that way people do when they're trying not to be rude and not realizing it's kind of hurtful anyway. Jensen smiles and eats and fits nicely right at their table.
-
"I thank you so kindly for your hospitality, sirs. Your son sure is a mean egg chef, Elmer," Jensen says, when the dishes are all cleared away.
Dad looks up, rolling a little in his wheelchair. He wheezes a bit, peers around, then says, "Yes. Yes, have you met him? This is my son Bugs, my best boy." Dad sort of tugs Jared back over, presents him like some offering. Jared's ears burn scarlet as Jensen looks on, wondering what he must be thinking. Bugs.
But Jensen isn't mocking at all. Very quaintly, he reaches out and shakes Jared's hand. "It's nice meeting you, Bugs."
Jared's throat feels clogged.
"And who might you be?" Dad asks, as though he hadn't noticed Jensen sitting there next to them the whole meal.
"Daffy," Jensen tells him, nodding and serious.
Jared watches in dazed silence as Dad pauses, seems to take this in, then gasps out a little chuckle, a tiny smile tagging along with it. "I like this one, son. He's a funny one. Ain't he funny?"
"Yes, he is," Jared says quietly, meeting Jensen's eye for a warm molasses second. He diverts his eyes quickly. Jared's always been a little bit rude.
-
"Should I call you that as well?"
"You don't have to call me anything," Jared says, kicking a dried up hornet's nest off the porch.
"But if I want to?"
He'll be gone by the end of the day. What does it even matter?
Still, he can't help whispering Jared into the late morning air, can't help rushing back inside when Jensen whispers it right back. Jared feels too tight, in too many weird places.
-
They hold off alerting the authorities for the rest of the morning, then the afternoon. When night comes around again and they still haven't called, Jared realizes Jensen's unequivocally been putting it off. Tucking it into a corner, covering it with dirt. Yesterday, Jensen died. Today, he doesn't want to go home.
Jensen dons a dirty Budweiser cap, dances in the garden, and throws his hands in the air when it starts to drizzle. Jared hides out under the awning, pretends to read his book, and watches Jensen through his bangs the entire length of the day.
When they sit down for supper, Jensen plunks a bloomed pink tulip into an old jelly jar and places it at the center of the table.
-
Tuesday morning finds Jensen still wringing his hands together, pacing socked feet in the same circle of space on the rug in front of the couch. Jared sits cross-legged on the floor, hunched over the daily newspaper, reading an article on how Jensen Ackles, newly crowned King of the pageant, fell on stage moments after and suffered a fatal blow to the temple.
Jared looks at him now, at Jensen worrying his cheek and mumbling ideas and escape routes to himself, and for just a moment, lets himself believe in real magic.
Jensen stops burning a hole in the floor.
"That night, what were you. I mean, had you started?"
"Embalming you?" Jared asks, and immediately wants to ostrich his head in the sand, the way Jensen goes still, very obviously painting a picture of what else Jared might've thought he meant. Which, oh god. No. Jared would never have done-. No. He wouldn't have. It was just a kiss. "No, not yet. Was just starting prep."
"What's prep?"
"You know, um. Undressing - the body. Washing."
"Washing," Jensen parrots back, glancing down at himself. "Did you-"
Jared shakes his head. "I hadn't yet."
"I do feel a little rancid actually. Would you mind?" He motions upstairs. The bathroom.
Entire face aflame, Jared stares at him open-mouthed, open paper forgotten on his lap, pages fluttering lightly with the breeze from the open window. Surely he doesn't mean... doesn't mean... Jared wouldn't know how, wouldn't know what to do. He's only ever scrubbed down cadavers, never an actual living, breathing person, especially one so-
"May I?" Jensen says, and Jared nods curtly, frantically flips the section over to the comics. So stupid. Of course Jensen was only asking to shower. By himself. Jesus fuck, Jared's a moron.
Tuesday afternoon, Jensen's folks change their mind.
-
"Oh, I see. Well." Jared stares dumbly at the wall. "Yes, actually. We do offer crematory services here."
Jensen practically floats down the stairs, all sunny smiles and smelling like Jared's cheap K-Mart body wash, toweling at his damp, matted hair. As soon as he's fully in the room, able to hear the conversation, he rushes up and latches onto Jared's elbows, clinging tight. He's nodding his head furiously, yes, yes, wide eyes and lifted brows. He's shirtless and too close and Jared's distracted again by shoulder-freckles.
"Are you positive?" Jared says into the phone, but looking into Jensen's eyes.
Jensen kisses Jared's cheek.
"Yes ma'am. No viewing. I understand." He hangs up the old rotary phone.
"What did she say?"
Jared looks at him for a long moment, wants to touch the spot on his face where Jensen's lips had been. He holds his hands at his sides and says to the carpet, "She said she wanted you to be beautiful forever."
Jensen scoffs, pulls a face.
"You already will be," Jared says, and leaves Jensen sitting on the loveseat in a patch of sunlight.
-
At the general store, Jensen gets a poofy loofah and some tropical smelling shampoo. He picks up basic toiletries and some trash magazines and a pack of menthols. Jensen's nineteen, twenty soon, and can purchase things like that if he wants. Jared's just a kid. The girl behind the register doesn't pay any attention to the name on the ID card.
At a yard sale, Jensen finds some pants and things in his size, buys an ugly mustard colored sweater for fifty cents and insists on wearing it home despite the fact that even the cicadas are crying with the heat.
"It's hideous," Jensen giggles, twirling around on the sidewalk. Jared goggles at him, frowns, asks why he'd want the thing. "Because it's hideous," Jensen says, like that makes any sense at all.
-
"I like him," Dad says by habit every evening when Jared tucks him in, a little secret, a made up star-cluster story.
"I like him too," Jared finally relents one humid night after Dad's fallen asleep facing the left side of bed. Momma's side. Every day for twenty years.
-
"You know this is going to be difficult, don't you?" It really seems like Jensen might not know, always so carefree and aimless with things. "You'll need to change your name, for one thing."
"Right now?"
"Well, no. Not right this second. But eventually."
"Well then, eventually I will," Jensen says, blowing a fat, pink Bazooka gum bubble.
"Okay smartass, have you thought of any potential aliases then?"
"Sure I have."
Jared waits.
"I was thinking, maybe I could be your dad's nephew or something. That's plausible, no?"
"Um, I guess so. But what does that-" Wait. "You're planning on taking my - our last name?" Jared's sure this is a hallucination now. Maybe he made the whole thing up. Maybe Jensen was never here at all.
Jensen shrugs, pops a sticky bubble with his teeth, feet up on the arm of the couch. He runs a soft hand over the top of Jared's head, there and then gone, like the wind, like a dream. Jared almost grabs it.
"It's either that or Daffy."
-
"They tore it down," Jared tells him one day, arms full of shopping bags. Jensen hurries over, pulls the screen door closed.
On the highway that leads into town, there's a giant billboard at the edge of the road.
Jensen's second chance at life isn't the only reason he stays at home when Jared heads out to get groceries, hangs back to do crosswords with Jared's dad and never gets too close to the locals. The billboard is plastered with a photo of a smiling, shiny young man - pallid peach skin and a lovely little nose, a real beauty - small town celebutante. Hollow-eyed, but only if you know what you're looking for.
It takes weeks. Weeks of talking to him, and listening to him, sitting on rickety lawn chairs next to the pond and watching ladybugs land on their knees, and hearing, really hearing, the things he says, and the things he doesn't say, but still means. It takes knowing him, before Jared realizes what's wrong in the picture.
"Now it's an ad about erectile dysfunction."
"Better them than me," Jensen says, winking slyly, his smile all real right there in his eyes.
Jared nearly drops a jug of milk on his toes. What.
-
Not every arrival comes in smooth and soft the way Jensen had. There are tragic ones, and there are gruesome ones, and sometimes, even in a place with a population of 992, Jared gets both at once.
There's a high impact collision and there's nothing to be done. A mangled woman arrives in the middle of the day and Jared's with her well into the night. The process changes drastically. Every now and then, Jensen likes to sit in, just to see. Tonight, he stays away.
By the time Jared wraps up, it's late. Too late. He skids into the house, checking the time, racing up the stairs and feeling unforgivably guilty that he missed story time. His poor father probably laid there all alone, wondering why Bugs never showed up. When he reaches the top of the landing, he slides to a quiet halt, holding onto the bannister with clawed fists.
"Alvin Rutledge wasn't the only person who had tried to visit a friend or relative in Haven during July, nor the only one to become ill and turn back."
A page rustles.
"I like this part," Dad says.
"It's real good, huh?" Jared hears Jensen reading in there, a steady string of fondness in his tone. The rocking chair creaks lightly. Jensen even does voices. Dad gets a real kick out of that.
Jared sags against the wall and his heart jerks in his chest. He broke the rules and he broke them hard. He was never, ever supposed to get attached.
-
Unstatistically speaking, there probably aren't that many people who can say they lost their virginity in the back of a hearse.
Jared's cleaning out the vehicle that night, unable to sleep and wired for something to do. The critters at the pond were mostly asleep when he wandered down, and the stars somehow didn't sparkle as cheerfully as they did when he had someone around to keep track of them with him.
The car isn't messy; Jared would never let it be. But he's out there with his spray bottles of disinfectants and his wash rags anyway, sanitizing every little nook and cranny, lint-rolling and re-fluffing the flowy curtains set above the side windows. That's what he's doing when Jensen slides into the long bed of the hearse, dressed in nothing but boxers and a nervous smile.
Soon, it's just the nervous smile.
He pushes his underwear down his legs, in that way Jared couldn't make his own hands do, slides them off one ankle carefully, and waits patiently for Jared's starting-and-stopping brain to catch up.
"If you want to," Jensen says, after so long of Jared staring at him stupidly. If you want me, is what he means.
Jared wants him in ways he can't even put into words.
-
"I would've kissed you back," Jensen sighs, mouthing into Jared's collarbone, sucking a mark. It makes Jared lose what little rhythm he had going and he thrusts in particularly hard, feels Jensen go tense all around him in a really, really good way. "Like that, keep going."
Like Jared could stop.
Jensen's got one long arm snaked around Jared's neck, the other down at the small of his back, pressing and pushing and guiding Jared just right. Jensen's laid out on his back, staring up at Jared so prettily, and Jared's completely overwhelmed by being with someone in this way, everything he pictured, but nothing he ever expected. He thinks he might've cried a little at one point, just a stinging wetness at the edge of his eyes.
It's okay, it's okay, Jensen keeps saying, every few minutes, rubbing soothing touches at Jared's bony shoulder blades, down the length of his spine, like he knows Jared needs the reminder. Jared really does.
They fuck bare, and hard, and Jared doesn't really know what he's doing, inexpertly stuttering his hips around in vain hopes that it'll feel good for Jensen too. He has just enough remaining sanity to think to reach down for Jensen, making a fist for Jensen to strain into. Jensen's really wet. Jared hopes he's doing something right.
Jensen's body is lean and taut and it knows how to move, how to fuck, how to take Jared apart piece by piece. With one foot digging into the meat of Jared's ass and the other pressed against the roof of the car, Jensen takes both of Jared's hands in his, lets Jared hold them down at either side of his head and looks right into his eyes the whole time, watches Jared's face when he comes inside him, smiles small when Jared gasps through the last heavy pulse.
Jensen - sweet, funny, big-hearted Jensen who Jared is impossibly in love with - doesn't even mind when Jared dips curious fingertips down the middle, feels out where he's all used and warm and drippy. Jared fingers experimentally a few times, eyes going large and innocently shocked when it squelches back out in a sticky rush. Jensen quickly clamps his legs shut.
"Holy shit," Jared breathes, and Jensen's laugh goes on and on.
-
They watch the news in the mornings, on the little TV above the refrigerator, and reruns of Happy Days at night, on the huge flatscreen plasma in their bedroom that Jensen finds on sale at K-Mart and lugs home in the hearse.
-
"Are you gonna marry that boy?" Dad said once, while Jared was in the middle of making cooked salami sandwiches for lunch. He only narrowly missed scorching his hand on a swirl burner.
He'd thought Dad was asleep in his chair.
Jared didn't answer him, dug in the refrigerator for trimmings and condiments, poured three glasses of fresh squeezed pink lemonade. His only solace was that he could see Jensen through the gingham curtain, out in the yard trying to start up the old tractor or some mess. Nobody needed to hear things like that, jeez.
"I think he oughta marry that boy. What do you reckon?" Dad was talking to an empty chair. A considerable pause, like someone might be answering him. And then, "I ain't slouchin', Darlene."
Jared startled, stopped slicing the sandwiches into little squares of four each. Darlene Padalecki always harped over the way her husband hunched over when he sat.
It's things like that, tiny nothing moments, that Jared will miss the most.
He'd foolishly spent any number of years thinking of himself in the role of caregiver, the responsible one. And maybe it's true, on some levels. But when Dad leaves him at last, not long after Jared and Jensen start sharing Jared's room upstairs, Jared wonders if Dad wasn't the one taking care of him this whole time, hanging on until he was sure his boy could fly.
They bury him next to Momma, to her right, just under the shade of the lemon tree.
Joseph "Elmer" Padalecki, the little stone reads, and Jared thinks it's a wonderful added touch. Jensen leaves pink tulips for them both once a week.
-
At the end of July, a few days after Jared's 17th birthday, he wakes up one morning to find the other half of the bed empty. The sheets are rumpled, and the pillow has the fragrance of Jensen's tropical hair, coconuts, and there's not a note left anywhere that Jared can see.
He nearly loses it then and there.
After an hour of mindless, frantic searching, shouting up and down the house and throwing the back door open wide, Jared finally finds him - an acre away, sitting in the wheat field, hidden by stalks.
Jensen pokes a dead branch into the little fire in front of him, grins up at Jared when he comes and sits down in the dirt. The flames lick at the satin fabric, distorting and abolishing, and together they sit and watch until the sash is nothing more than little charred out partial letters. The crown is crumbled in a heap at its side.
"I like this part," Jensen says, letting his head fall onto Jared's shoulder. He's sweat-salty, smelling of grass and grime and real, tangible things.
Jared looks up at the cloudless sky, thinks of heroes and conquerors and fingers that fit just right alongside his, and he presses a kiss to the tip of Jensen's thumb.
end.