Taking the plunge.
Title: Little Bottles
Author: janissa11
Pairing: JA/JP
Rating: PG
Warnings: Beyond the fact that it's RPS and this totally never, ever happened? Beyond the stone fact that I totally made this up and it's 100% fantasy? Can't really think of any.
Summary: Jensen has a few problems, and Jared has a few coping methods.
Author's notes: Unbetaed, written very quickly, and it's slash but non-graphic. My porn-fu has deserted me. If someone sees it wandering around the neighborhood, would you send it home? I miss it.
Jensen gets this way sometimes. Not exactly regularly, but it’s sort of cyclical, enough that Jared’s seen it way more than once. Enough that he knows the signs, remembers what Jensen’s let slip in the past about the past.
Funny thing is, when it starts is when Jensen’s at his best on set. Like last season, the last three episodes, the big hairy arc thing with Dad and the demon. He channeled all of that, made it pop onscreen, so intense sometimes Jared didn’t know whether to applaud or drag him under the craft services table and screw some of that energy out of him.
It’s not…entirely good energy, that’s the thing. Take now, for a great example. The scene they’ve been shooting is a fairly big one - critter of the week letting it slide that Dean’s been keeping some pretty specific secrets, news brother Sam doesn’t much care for - and Jensen’s like standing next to a goddamn nuclear reactor, all tense focus and edgy, desperate humor. He’s genuinely funny, those dead-on little side takes, and yet the scene isn’t funny, it’s godawful, makes Jared feel like squirming thinking about how their characters must feel, how HE would feel if this really happened to him.
But right now he can see the way Jensen’s jittering off to the side. The four million dead giveaways: bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands shaking when he stops fidgeting long enough for Jared to see, eyes cutting to the sides, no smiles now, gnawing his lower lip until Jared’s sure it’s gonna bleed any time now.
“It’s no big deal,” Jensen had said last year, in that tone of voice that said actually it was a pretty motherfucking big deal indeed. “I’m like, nervous or something. My mom said I was high-strung.” He’d laughed, and it had been sort of horrible, because his hands were shaking on that little bottle of pills, trying to get one out without sending the entire contents rattling all over the trailer.
Jared had nodded and tried to look and sound supportive, but it had creeped him out, honestly, that bottle and all the other ones. “We’re still trying different combinations,” Jensen muttered, and popped that peach-colored pill.
See, Jensen doesn’t do drugs. Not the coke and pot and other shit that’s always around, just in the edge of your vision, on sets, back in California, right here in River City. Jensen’s little bottles are doctor-prescribed, and he’s got the ultra-secretive diagnoses to go along with them. Anxiety disorder, panic disorder. Maybe bipolar, although he says his shrink’s on the fence about that one. Ritalin when he was a kid, and now he’s graduated to Ativan, and Zoloft, Xanax, some kind of shit that he says keeps his heart from beating too fast and Jared privately makes him think Jen’s stoned or something, something people with high blood pressure usually take, and something, Klonotine or Klonosomething, that makes him really sleepy.
Jensen has a full array of prescription happiness in his medicine cabinet - probably got some Valium up there too - and yet none of it keeps him from getting this way, this strung-out high-voltage nervousness that makes him a brilliant, incredibly gifted actor, and a fucking mess everywhere else.
He’ll go and he’ll go, and go some more, taking so many pills Jared’s gotta wonder what’s happening to his BRAIN with all that shit in his system, whether or not one day Jen will pop a stroke or something, already gets panic attacks so bad it’s like he’s having a heart attack or asthma or whatever.
And he’s never been able to just stand around and watch. Let it happen. It kills him, makes him feel like hitting something, breaking something, because when he’s stable Jensen Ackles is just about the fucking coolest person around. When he’s not flipping out he’s kind, and ridiculously generous, and funny as shit, wry and self-deprecating and totally fun to be around. And that is, to be fair, a bigger percentage of the time, right?
But these…phases happen, and seeing that level of electric misery makes Jared feel like he’s being boiled in oil. He can’t fix Jensen permanently, can’t ease his mind enough. Screw the Winchester demon; Jensen’s demon lives inside him 24/7, inside his quick, complicated brain, and if Jared thought there was even a chance in hell one of Sam Winchester’s exorcisms would actually work, he’d have done it long, long ago. Anything. Anything to give Jensen a little peace.
Instead he has only himself, and sometimes friends, the few folks who know just how twisted up Jen is inside, the even fewer who will take the time and effort to stick around anyway. Jensen’s talented and beautiful, and so goddamn messed up.
He flinches like a gun went off when Jared walks up. “Hey,” Jared says softly, that gentle voice he’s always used, like he’s trying not to scare away a feral dog. “You okay?”
Jensen pats his pockets, nods fast but doesn’t meet his eyes after that first white-rimmed look. “We gonna be done soon?” There’s a thrum of something in his voice, and he’s breathing way too fast.
Jared feels tense just standing next to him. “Think so. Come on, they’ll call us if they need us.”
“Need a cigarette.”
He only smokes when he’s like this. Jared nods anyway, says, “You got some in your trailer, don’t you? Come on.”
Jensen’s trailer reflects things, too. When he’s normal, when he’s okay, it’s pretty neat. He’s told Jared before, it’s like, it’s his, but it’s shared space kinda, too. Not really his. So he keeps things picked up, doesn’t just let it go.
But now it’s like a high wind blew through, scripts and isolated single pages that Jared knows will never be matched to the right script, at least six mostly empty coffee cups and way too many soda cans, takeout cartons and paperwork and newspapers, clothes and too much shit for Jared to really take in. It smells kinda off, and he watches Jensen root around in his bag for smokes, sees the tremble in his fingers, and goes to clear off a space on the couch.
“Come here,” Jared says, and sits down.
Jensen can barely get his cigarette lit, and in the trailer’s unsympathetic lighting he looks drawn and sorta - tubercular or something, ill, breathing too fast, still chewing on his lips. “You wanna run lines?” he asks, and Jared shakes his head.
“Dude. Come here.”
Jensen sits like he’s spring-loaded, and flinches again when Jared touches his iron-tight back. “I’m okay,” Jensen whispers.
“No, you’re not,” Jared says gently.
Jensen takes a drag off the cigarette and drops it in a Diet Coke can. It fizzles when it goes out. He doesn’t look at Jared.
Jared had no experience when he started this show, no history with someone like this. He’s always been laid-back, everyone in his family laid-back, whatever, it’ll all work out. His grandmother used to say God will provide, and Jared’s not real religious and that isn’t exactly right for him, but It’ll all work out has been kinda his thing for as long as he can remember, and until he met Jensen he’d never been around someone who could never, ever believe that. He doesn’t get it, never has, but thing is, he’s learned, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t get it. It’s real, it’s kind of Jensen’s personal hell, and all Jared can do is help any way he can.
Jensen goes stiff as a board when Jared’s arm slides around him. “No.”
“Jen, man, come here. Just come here.”
And he does, but it’s like holding that scared wild dog, feeling Jensen’s heart going way too fast, that trembling not just in his hands but all OVER, and Jared thinks randomly about someone doing the Watusi in the electric chair while he pulls Jensen closer, tucks him up against his side and turns his head to press his nose against Jen’s hair.
“Relax,” he whispers, slow and long on the vowels. “Take a few deep breaths.”
“I need a pill,” Jensen says jerkily, and there are tears on the edges of the words, there is broken glass in his throat and it cuts Jared to the bone.
“No more pills. I’m right here.”
Energy he can handle. Working out all that steam, playing some hoops or going out, dancing or just drinking, playing hard because he works hard, all of that makes sense. But right now it’s the most natural thing in the world to be still, because Jensen needs that. Needs to soak in It’ll all work out like Jared sometimes needs to go for a run, needs to find a focus for his own energy. Jensen needs Jared’s sanity, and he’s got more than enough to share.
Jensen’s nose is poking into Jared’s chest, and he huffs a fast breath and sighs, and Jared smiles and says, “That’s it. Let it go, Jen.”
“I’m kinda tired,” Jensen whispers.
“I know.”
He’s tried different approaches. Early on, when things were electric in ways that weren’t quite so deep, he’d thought sex was the way to fix Jensen. And sometimes it had worked, but it wasn’t coming that really made things better. It was stillness, and the fact of love like granite under his jittering feet, that made him solid.
When they get done tonight, whenever that is, he’ll pack Jensen in Jared’s car and take him home. Jared’s home, where the only little bottles have things like Tylenol in them, and the dogs are there like non-feral furry canine therapists, piling on Jensen like their long-lost best friend. Licking his face and nudging him with cold noses, beating him with their tails. He’ll let Jensen sit with the dogs and go and make something warm, cocoa or something, and they’ll turn on the tube to something stupid and funny, and maybe they’ll make out or something but mostly he’ll feel Jensen’s body lose some of that awful live-wire tension, see him smile and laugh, and eventually he’ll take him to bed.
And that’s the only exorcism he knows that will work on Jensen’s demons. Not permanent, not really, but enough.
“I’m so fucked up,” Jensen says against Jared’s chest, voice thick with exhaustion and tears, and Jared thinks, Yeah, man. You are. But it’s okay. It’ll all work out.
He puts his mouth against Jensen’s sweaty temple and rubs Jen’s back, feels the tension ebbing away. When Kim pokes his head in at some point, Jensen’s too lulled to notice, and Jared looks over Jen’s head and speaks with his eyes. Kim nods and disappears, and Jared sits for a second before saying softly, “Dude, we’re done for tonight. You wanna go home?”
Jensen is a heavy weight against him, still trembling but not so much now, and he nods slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author: janissa11
Pairing: JA/JP
Rating: PG
Warnings: Beyond the fact that it's RPS and this totally never, ever happened? Beyond the stone fact that I totally made this up and it's 100% fantasy? Can't really think of any.
Summary: Jensen has a few problems, and Jared has a few coping methods.
Author's notes: Unbetaed, written very quickly, and it's slash but non-graphic. My porn-fu has deserted me. If someone sees it wandering around the neighborhood, would you send it home? I miss it.
Jensen gets this way sometimes. Not exactly regularly, but it’s sort of cyclical, enough that Jared’s seen it way more than once. Enough that he knows the signs, remembers what Jensen’s let slip in the past about the past.
Funny thing is, when it starts is when Jensen’s at his best on set. Like last season, the last three episodes, the big hairy arc thing with Dad and the demon. He channeled all of that, made it pop onscreen, so intense sometimes Jared didn’t know whether to applaud or drag him under the craft services table and screw some of that energy out of him.
It’s not…entirely good energy, that’s the thing. Take now, for a great example. The scene they’ve been shooting is a fairly big one - critter of the week letting it slide that Dean’s been keeping some pretty specific secrets, news brother Sam doesn’t much care for - and Jensen’s like standing next to a goddamn nuclear reactor, all tense focus and edgy, desperate humor. He’s genuinely funny, those dead-on little side takes, and yet the scene isn’t funny, it’s godawful, makes Jared feel like squirming thinking about how their characters must feel, how HE would feel if this really happened to him.
But right now he can see the way Jensen’s jittering off to the side. The four million dead giveaways: bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands shaking when he stops fidgeting long enough for Jared to see, eyes cutting to the sides, no smiles now, gnawing his lower lip until Jared’s sure it’s gonna bleed any time now.
“It’s no big deal,” Jensen had said last year, in that tone of voice that said actually it was a pretty motherfucking big deal indeed. “I’m like, nervous or something. My mom said I was high-strung.” He’d laughed, and it had been sort of horrible, because his hands were shaking on that little bottle of pills, trying to get one out without sending the entire contents rattling all over the trailer.
Jared had nodded and tried to look and sound supportive, but it had creeped him out, honestly, that bottle and all the other ones. “We’re still trying different combinations,” Jensen muttered, and popped that peach-colored pill.
See, Jensen doesn’t do drugs. Not the coke and pot and other shit that’s always around, just in the edge of your vision, on sets, back in California, right here in River City. Jensen’s little bottles are doctor-prescribed, and he’s got the ultra-secretive diagnoses to go along with them. Anxiety disorder, panic disorder. Maybe bipolar, although he says his shrink’s on the fence about that one. Ritalin when he was a kid, and now he’s graduated to Ativan, and Zoloft, Xanax, some kind of shit that he says keeps his heart from beating too fast and Jared privately makes him think Jen’s stoned or something, something people with high blood pressure usually take, and something, Klonotine or Klonosomething, that makes him really sleepy.
Jensen has a full array of prescription happiness in his medicine cabinet - probably got some Valium up there too - and yet none of it keeps him from getting this way, this strung-out high-voltage nervousness that makes him a brilliant, incredibly gifted actor, and a fucking mess everywhere else.
He’ll go and he’ll go, and go some more, taking so many pills Jared’s gotta wonder what’s happening to his BRAIN with all that shit in his system, whether or not one day Jen will pop a stroke or something, already gets panic attacks so bad it’s like he’s having a heart attack or asthma or whatever.
And he’s never been able to just stand around and watch. Let it happen. It kills him, makes him feel like hitting something, breaking something, because when he’s stable Jensen Ackles is just about the fucking coolest person around. When he’s not flipping out he’s kind, and ridiculously generous, and funny as shit, wry and self-deprecating and totally fun to be around. And that is, to be fair, a bigger percentage of the time, right?
But these…phases happen, and seeing that level of electric misery makes Jared feel like he’s being boiled in oil. He can’t fix Jensen permanently, can’t ease his mind enough. Screw the Winchester demon; Jensen’s demon lives inside him 24/7, inside his quick, complicated brain, and if Jared thought there was even a chance in hell one of Sam Winchester’s exorcisms would actually work, he’d have done it long, long ago. Anything. Anything to give Jensen a little peace.
Instead he has only himself, and sometimes friends, the few folks who know just how twisted up Jen is inside, the even fewer who will take the time and effort to stick around anyway. Jensen’s talented and beautiful, and so goddamn messed up.
He flinches like a gun went off when Jared walks up. “Hey,” Jared says softly, that gentle voice he’s always used, like he’s trying not to scare away a feral dog. “You okay?”
Jensen pats his pockets, nods fast but doesn’t meet his eyes after that first white-rimmed look. “We gonna be done soon?” There’s a thrum of something in his voice, and he’s breathing way too fast.
Jared feels tense just standing next to him. “Think so. Come on, they’ll call us if they need us.”
“Need a cigarette.”
He only smokes when he’s like this. Jared nods anyway, says, “You got some in your trailer, don’t you? Come on.”
Jensen’s trailer reflects things, too. When he’s normal, when he’s okay, it’s pretty neat. He’s told Jared before, it’s like, it’s his, but it’s shared space kinda, too. Not really his. So he keeps things picked up, doesn’t just let it go.
But now it’s like a high wind blew through, scripts and isolated single pages that Jared knows will never be matched to the right script, at least six mostly empty coffee cups and way too many soda cans, takeout cartons and paperwork and newspapers, clothes and too much shit for Jared to really take in. It smells kinda off, and he watches Jensen root around in his bag for smokes, sees the tremble in his fingers, and goes to clear off a space on the couch.
“Come here,” Jared says, and sits down.
Jensen can barely get his cigarette lit, and in the trailer’s unsympathetic lighting he looks drawn and sorta - tubercular or something, ill, breathing too fast, still chewing on his lips. “You wanna run lines?” he asks, and Jared shakes his head.
“Dude. Come here.”
Jensen sits like he’s spring-loaded, and flinches again when Jared touches his iron-tight back. “I’m okay,” Jensen whispers.
“No, you’re not,” Jared says gently.
Jensen takes a drag off the cigarette and drops it in a Diet Coke can. It fizzles when it goes out. He doesn’t look at Jared.
Jared had no experience when he started this show, no history with someone like this. He’s always been laid-back, everyone in his family laid-back, whatever, it’ll all work out. His grandmother used to say God will provide, and Jared’s not real religious and that isn’t exactly right for him, but It’ll all work out has been kinda his thing for as long as he can remember, and until he met Jensen he’d never been around someone who could never, ever believe that. He doesn’t get it, never has, but thing is, he’s learned, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t get it. It’s real, it’s kind of Jensen’s personal hell, and all Jared can do is help any way he can.
Jensen goes stiff as a board when Jared’s arm slides around him. “No.”
“Jen, man, come here. Just come here.”
And he does, but it’s like holding that scared wild dog, feeling Jensen’s heart going way too fast, that trembling not just in his hands but all OVER, and Jared thinks randomly about someone doing the Watusi in the electric chair while he pulls Jensen closer, tucks him up against his side and turns his head to press his nose against Jen’s hair.
“Relax,” he whispers, slow and long on the vowels. “Take a few deep breaths.”
“I need a pill,” Jensen says jerkily, and there are tears on the edges of the words, there is broken glass in his throat and it cuts Jared to the bone.
“No more pills. I’m right here.”
Energy he can handle. Working out all that steam, playing some hoops or going out, dancing or just drinking, playing hard because he works hard, all of that makes sense. But right now it’s the most natural thing in the world to be still, because Jensen needs that. Needs to soak in It’ll all work out like Jared sometimes needs to go for a run, needs to find a focus for his own energy. Jensen needs Jared’s sanity, and he’s got more than enough to share.
Jensen’s nose is poking into Jared’s chest, and he huffs a fast breath and sighs, and Jared smiles and says, “That’s it. Let it go, Jen.”
“I’m kinda tired,” Jensen whispers.
“I know.”
He’s tried different approaches. Early on, when things were electric in ways that weren’t quite so deep, he’d thought sex was the way to fix Jensen. And sometimes it had worked, but it wasn’t coming that really made things better. It was stillness, and the fact of love like granite under his jittering feet, that made him solid.
When they get done tonight, whenever that is, he’ll pack Jensen in Jared’s car and take him home. Jared’s home, where the only little bottles have things like Tylenol in them, and the dogs are there like non-feral furry canine therapists, piling on Jensen like their long-lost best friend. Licking his face and nudging him with cold noses, beating him with their tails. He’ll let Jensen sit with the dogs and go and make something warm, cocoa or something, and they’ll turn on the tube to something stupid and funny, and maybe they’ll make out or something but mostly he’ll feel Jensen’s body lose some of that awful live-wire tension, see him smile and laugh, and eventually he’ll take him to bed.
And that’s the only exorcism he knows that will work on Jensen’s demons. Not permanent, not really, but enough.
“I’m so fucked up,” Jensen says against Jared’s chest, voice thick with exhaustion and tears, and Jared thinks, Yeah, man. You are. But it’s okay. It’ll all work out.
He puts his mouth against Jensen’s sweaty temple and rubs Jen’s back, feels the tension ebbing away. When Kim pokes his head in at some point, Jensen’s too lulled to notice, and Jared looks over Jen’s head and speaks with his eyes. Kim nods and disappears, and Jared sits for a second before saying softly, “Dude, we’re done for tonight. You wanna go home?”
Jensen is a heavy weight against him, still trembling but not so much now, and he nods slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~