AU FIC: Settling Into Now 11/12
Title: Settling Into Now
Author: jeyhawk
Pairings/Characters: Jared/Jensen, Michael Rosenbaum, Tom Welling, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and others.
Rating: Overall NC17
Category: Romance, Angst, AU
Word Count: 23 576 (for the entire series)
Summary: Going to college in a new town, far away from home, Jared finds friends and maybe more, but he also realizes that you can't hide your past forever.
Disclaimer: I don't know them, own them or make any money from them. This is just a bunch of inventive lies.
Warnings: Dark themes (rape, abuse, self harm)! All in the past but they inpact the present.
Betas: clex_monkie89, soar38 and mesnica. Thanks ladies! (As you understand with that gaggle of helpful people all remaining mistakes are totally my own).
Notes: This fic introduces emo!Jared, a kid with a bagful of bad memories and loads of issues. *pets him* He showed up in my brain one night and forced me to write down 23 000 words in a little over a week. *g* I wish he'd been around when I did NaNo last year. I would have finished in two weeks. ;0P This story deals with a lot of dark themes, but mostly it's a story about love and you know, Rosenbaum's in it, so it's even funny sometimes. :0) Settling Into Now is finshed, but will be posted in parts to give me time to write the next installment and to give my betas time to beat it into shape.
Chapter specific notes: I'm back from outer space, or well family vacation. I missed you all. :0)
Previous chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 /
Chapter Eleven
Jensen would have run after Jared, had not Mike seen it coming and stopped him with an arm around his waist. He’d never known hung-over Mike to be such a fast mover, but then Mike knew him well enough to have been expecting it.
“No,” Mike said softly. “Let him go.”
Jensen struggled against the restraining arm for a moment, before going lax, letting himself sink back against Mike’s body.
“He’s upset,” Jensen said.
“I know… but you can’t always patch him up again, Jen. Sometimes he has to do it for himself.”
Jensen screwed his eyes shut and swallowed. “What if he does something stupid?”
“He won’t,” Mike said, his voice full of assurance Jensen just couldn’t believe in.
“You don’t know that… You didn’t see him last night.”
“Yes I did,” Mike said. “How short a memory do you have? I was the one that carried him back to bed while you were running after Chad and beating the fear of God into him.”
Jensen winced. Beating Chad up was not one of his proudest moments, but he’d just been so angry, worried, and scared that he had to let his feelings out somehow. His father would have a few things to say about that when Jensen told him.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jensen finally said.
Mike sighed, sliding his other hand around Jensen’s waist and giving him and awkward hug. “You’re going to get in front of your computer and do what Jared told you to do. He wants you to know, Jen.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jensen said. The things he’d pieced together over the last few weeks told him more than enough.
“Tough luck,” Mike said, releasing him. “We all know you’re head over heels for that boy, and now you have to face the consequences.”
“You sound like a bad western or something,” Jensen said and turned around to face Mike. He’d known that guy his entire life, yet he’d never quite seen that look upon his face before.
“I mean it, Jen,” he said. “I know you’re scared but… If you want to do this right… this is how it’s going to be.”
Jensen clenched his teeth, hearing Mike being the sensible one was downright scary, and he glanced at Tom who was watching them from the couch as if to say ‘what have you done to him?’ Tom wasn’t looking at him though, he was looking at Mike’s back with an unreadable expression on his face, and Jensen had a feeling a lot was about to change around Suite 40 in the next few weeks.
“Don’t…” Jensen lifted a hand and touched it to Mike’s shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“Of course not, you idiot,” Mike said with one of his normal lopsided grins and Jensen drew a relieved breath. The heartfelt moment seemed to be over for now.
Jensen smiled tightly and turned towards his bedroom. In a way, he no longer wanted to know what had happened to Jared, what little he knew was enough to make his skin crawl and he really didn’t want the visuals. Still, Jared wanted him to know and he knew deep down that they would not be able to go on without the full story on the table. If Jensen didn’t know, then Jared would never be able to believe that Jensen honestly didn’t care about his past.
His fingers were shaking as he brought google.com up and typed Jared’s name into the search field. Not wanting to be faced with too many hits, he chose to click the ‘I feel lucky’ button instead of the search one. The mere thought that Jared’s story was on the internet for everyone to see made him feel sick inside.
A news article dated in May 2002 popped up on the screen, throwing a picture of Jared at thirteen in Jensen’s face. His hair was too long and hung around his face in filthy strands, a large bruise covered one of his cheeks and his dirty torn t-shirt was smeared with blood. Blood covered his arms and had splattered on his neck, but he was holding his head high, staring down the photographer with a defiant look in his eyes and a stubborn set to his chin. Jensen wanted nothing more than to take him out of the picture, clean him up and hold him until the pain went away.
He read the caption under the picture: Jared Padalecki (13) finally free after six months in captivity. His eyes fluttered over the article and it suddenly hit him like a punch to the gut. He knew about this, Jared had been all over the news for weeks. His grandmother had been all but obsessed with the case, calling him with every piece of new information that surfaced. He’d been seventeen at the time, carefree and careless, finding her obsession with a boy they didn’t even know somewhat annoying.
Jared had been kidnapped on the night of Halloween in 2001. At first the police had suspected he just ran away, but then witness reports surfaced from people who had seen a boy matching the description being carried into an old Chevy Van. The van had been found a couple of weeks later, abandoned by the side of the road not far from Dallas, and they had found traces of Jared’s blood in it as well as semen from an unknown assailer. Over the months when no call for ransom came and the reports of people having seen Jared started to taper off, the police had thought him to be dead, less and less resources being divided to the case.
Jensen remembered his grandma being so pissed off about it, ranting about how little they seemed to care for a human life and a little boy’s soul. If he didn’t remember it wrong, she’d even been in contact with Jared’s parents to show her support and offer any help she could give. He rubbed a hand over his face as he remembered the posters. His grandma and grandpa used to own a small advertisement firm and they’d made posters of Jared’s face with a contact number; posters that had been put up all over US by various willing hands which included Jensen and Mike. How could he have forgotten about this?
Swallowing he got up from the chair and opened the door to his closet, rummaging around until he found a paper tube that contained various old posters that he didn’t have up anymore. In the middle smaller than the others he found it, a white poster with Jared’s face on it with the words Have you seen this boy? and a toll free contact number. The words Even sad stories have happy endings where written in the lower right corner in red marker, with the words Thank you underneath.
He stared at the poster for the longest of whiles, a memory of a crusade long forgotten. Jared had come home again, after spending six month in the clutches of one Brian Obern, being raped, beaten and tortured. In the end, it hadn’t been any of their efforts that saved him. Jared had saved himself with a rusty old knife he’d found forgotten under the mattress in one of the countless motel rooms Brian Obern had dragged him to.
Jensen stared at the poster until his eyes started to blur, hot tears running down his cheeks. He’d listened to his grandma going on about the case with half an ear, he’d read a few of the grizzly articles she’d sent him, only to make her happy, not because he cared. He hadn’t even cared enough to remember the boy’s name. Sure, he’d put up posters and handed out flyers, thinking it might give him a gold star in heaven, but he’d had more important things on his mind, like how to get into Rita Layworth’s panties for example.
He’d been touched for a moment when he got this poster with the message from Jared’s mother for about ten seconds until he’d put it in a paper tube and forgotten all about it. Jared had been back home by then and he’d dismissed the entire thing without a second thought.
Still clutching the poster, he walked stiffly back out into the living room. Mike got up from the couch stopping dead in his tracks when Jensen turned the poster around to show him.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “That was Jared?”
“Yeah,” Jensen said, letting the poster drop to the floor and walking right into Mike’s arms. They clung to each other for a few minutes, Jensen sobbing silently into the crook of Mike’s neck before letting go to look at each other.
The guilt Jensen felt was just as visible in Mike’s eyes. They had both been there, but neither of them had remembered.
“I have to find him,” Jensen said.
Mike nodded. “Call your dad. Chances are Jared already did.”
Jensen went back into his room for his cell phone, making himself comfortable on the couch between Tom and Mike before dialing his father’s number. It felt like he was getting the comfort Jared needed right now, and that wasn’t fair, not at all. Still, he couldn’t deny that he needed the familiar weights of Mike and Tom on either side of him to be able to keep it together. He just wanted to see Jared, nothing else mattered right now.
“Dad,” Jensen said when his father picked up. “Have you heard from him?”
Jeff didn’t need any further explanation, already knowing who his son was talking about. “Yes, I’ve talked to him,” he said.
“Is he… Is he okay?”
“Yeah… He’s… Look Jen… I can’t really talk to you about him, you know that.”
Tears welled unbidden into Jensen’s eyes. “I just need to know that he’s alright,” he whispered. “Please dad. I have to find him.”
“Listen very carefully to me now, because I will only say this once… You are my son and I love you, but I know what kind of track record you have. If you screw this up, you will screw him up and I don’t want to see that happening. So if you’re not sure that Jared is who you want to be with, then you better back out right now. He’s probably the strongest person I’ve ever met, but a person can only take so much before breaking.”
Jensen took a deep breath, doing Jared and himself justice by actually thinking about it. He knew that it wouldn’t be easy and that it would be an uphill struggle for the both of them, but his mind shied away from all the options that didn’t include Jared in his life.
“I’m sure, dad,” he said finally. “I… uhm… you know.”
Jeff chuckled at the other end of the line. “What on earth happened to my slut of a son?” he asked with obvious amusement.
“He met Jared Padalecki,” Jensen said wryly.
Jeff laughed. “Yeah, whatever that boy’s got, it’s contagious,” he said. “But you do understand that this means I can’t be Jared’s counselor any longer. You have to tell him I’m your father, because otherwise I will.”
Jensen winced. “Okay,” he muttered. “Do you have any idea where he is?”
“He was out walking when I talked to him, but I think he was sticking pretty close to home. Just you wait, Jen, he’ll come back to you.”
“I will, dad,” he said. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Jeff said before disconnecting.
Chapter Twelve
Author: jeyhawk
Pairings/Characters: Jared/Jensen, Michael Rosenbaum, Tom Welling, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and others.
Rating: Overall NC17
Category: Romance, Angst, AU
Word Count: 23 576 (for the entire series)
Summary: Going to college in a new town, far away from home, Jared finds friends and maybe more, but he also realizes that you can't hide your past forever.
Disclaimer: I don't know them, own them or make any money from them. This is just a bunch of inventive lies.
Warnings: Dark themes (rape, abuse, self harm)! All in the past but they inpact the present.
Betas: clex_monkie89, soar38 and mesnica. Thanks ladies! (As you understand with that gaggle of helpful people all remaining mistakes are totally my own).
Notes: This fic introduces emo!Jared, a kid with a bagful of bad memories and loads of issues. *pets him* He showed up in my brain one night and forced me to write down 23 000 words in a little over a week. *g* I wish he'd been around when I did NaNo last year. I would have finished in two weeks. ;0P This story deals with a lot of dark themes, but mostly it's a story about love and you know, Rosenbaum's in it, so it's even funny sometimes. :0) Settling Into Now is finshed, but will be posted in parts to give me time to write the next installment and to give my betas time to beat it into shape.
Chapter specific notes: I'm back from outer space, or well family vacation. I missed you all. :0)
Previous chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 /
Chapter Eleven
Jensen would have run after Jared, had not Mike seen it coming and stopped him with an arm around his waist. He’d never known hung-over Mike to be such a fast mover, but then Mike knew him well enough to have been expecting it.
“No,” Mike said softly. “Let him go.”
Jensen struggled against the restraining arm for a moment, before going lax, letting himself sink back against Mike’s body.
“He’s upset,” Jensen said.
“I know… but you can’t always patch him up again, Jen. Sometimes he has to do it for himself.”
Jensen screwed his eyes shut and swallowed. “What if he does something stupid?”
“He won’t,” Mike said, his voice full of assurance Jensen just couldn’t believe in.
“You don’t know that… You didn’t see him last night.”
“Yes I did,” Mike said. “How short a memory do you have? I was the one that carried him back to bed while you were running after Chad and beating the fear of God into him.”
Jensen winced. Beating Chad up was not one of his proudest moments, but he’d just been so angry, worried, and scared that he had to let his feelings out somehow. His father would have a few things to say about that when Jensen told him.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jensen finally said.
Mike sighed, sliding his other hand around Jensen’s waist and giving him and awkward hug. “You’re going to get in front of your computer and do what Jared told you to do. He wants you to know, Jen.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jensen said. The things he’d pieced together over the last few weeks told him more than enough.
“Tough luck,” Mike said, releasing him. “We all know you’re head over heels for that boy, and now you have to face the consequences.”
“You sound like a bad western or something,” Jensen said and turned around to face Mike. He’d known that guy his entire life, yet he’d never quite seen that look upon his face before.
“I mean it, Jen,” he said. “I know you’re scared but… If you want to do this right… this is how it’s going to be.”
Jensen clenched his teeth, hearing Mike being the sensible one was downright scary, and he glanced at Tom who was watching them from the couch as if to say ‘what have you done to him?’ Tom wasn’t looking at him though, he was looking at Mike’s back with an unreadable expression on his face, and Jensen had a feeling a lot was about to change around Suite 40 in the next few weeks.
“Don’t…” Jensen lifted a hand and touched it to Mike’s shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“Of course not, you idiot,” Mike said with one of his normal lopsided grins and Jensen drew a relieved breath. The heartfelt moment seemed to be over for now.
Jensen smiled tightly and turned towards his bedroom. In a way, he no longer wanted to know what had happened to Jared, what little he knew was enough to make his skin crawl and he really didn’t want the visuals. Still, Jared wanted him to know and he knew deep down that they would not be able to go on without the full story on the table. If Jensen didn’t know, then Jared would never be able to believe that Jensen honestly didn’t care about his past.
His fingers were shaking as he brought google.com up and typed Jared’s name into the search field. Not wanting to be faced with too many hits, he chose to click the ‘I feel lucky’ button instead of the search one. The mere thought that Jared’s story was on the internet for everyone to see made him feel sick inside.
A news article dated in May 2002 popped up on the screen, throwing a picture of Jared at thirteen in Jensen’s face. His hair was too long and hung around his face in filthy strands, a large bruise covered one of his cheeks and his dirty torn t-shirt was smeared with blood. Blood covered his arms and had splattered on his neck, but he was holding his head high, staring down the photographer with a defiant look in his eyes and a stubborn set to his chin. Jensen wanted nothing more than to take him out of the picture, clean him up and hold him until the pain went away.
He read the caption under the picture: Jared Padalecki (13) finally free after six months in captivity. His eyes fluttered over the article and it suddenly hit him like a punch to the gut. He knew about this, Jared had been all over the news for weeks. His grandmother had been all but obsessed with the case, calling him with every piece of new information that surfaced. He’d been seventeen at the time, carefree and careless, finding her obsession with a boy they didn’t even know somewhat annoying.
Jared had been kidnapped on the night of Halloween in 2001. At first the police had suspected he just ran away, but then witness reports surfaced from people who had seen a boy matching the description being carried into an old Chevy Van. The van had been found a couple of weeks later, abandoned by the side of the road not far from Dallas, and they had found traces of Jared’s blood in it as well as semen from an unknown assailer. Over the months when no call for ransom came and the reports of people having seen Jared started to taper off, the police had thought him to be dead, less and less resources being divided to the case.
Jensen remembered his grandma being so pissed off about it, ranting about how little they seemed to care for a human life and a little boy’s soul. If he didn’t remember it wrong, she’d even been in contact with Jared’s parents to show her support and offer any help she could give. He rubbed a hand over his face as he remembered the posters. His grandma and grandpa used to own a small advertisement firm and they’d made posters of Jared’s face with a contact number; posters that had been put up all over US by various willing hands which included Jensen and Mike. How could he have forgotten about this?
Swallowing he got up from the chair and opened the door to his closet, rummaging around until he found a paper tube that contained various old posters that he didn’t have up anymore. In the middle smaller than the others he found it, a white poster with Jared’s face on it with the words Have you seen this boy? and a toll free contact number. The words Even sad stories have happy endings where written in the lower right corner in red marker, with the words Thank you underneath.
He stared at the poster for the longest of whiles, a memory of a crusade long forgotten. Jared had come home again, after spending six month in the clutches of one Brian Obern, being raped, beaten and tortured. In the end, it hadn’t been any of their efforts that saved him. Jared had saved himself with a rusty old knife he’d found forgotten under the mattress in one of the countless motel rooms Brian Obern had dragged him to.
Jensen stared at the poster until his eyes started to blur, hot tears running down his cheeks. He’d listened to his grandma going on about the case with half an ear, he’d read a few of the grizzly articles she’d sent him, only to make her happy, not because he cared. He hadn’t even cared enough to remember the boy’s name. Sure, he’d put up posters and handed out flyers, thinking it might give him a gold star in heaven, but he’d had more important things on his mind, like how to get into Rita Layworth’s panties for example.
He’d been touched for a moment when he got this poster with the message from Jared’s mother for about ten seconds until he’d put it in a paper tube and forgotten all about it. Jared had been back home by then and he’d dismissed the entire thing without a second thought.
Still clutching the poster, he walked stiffly back out into the living room. Mike got up from the couch stopping dead in his tracks when Jensen turned the poster around to show him.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. “That was Jared?”
“Yeah,” Jensen said, letting the poster drop to the floor and walking right into Mike’s arms. They clung to each other for a few minutes, Jensen sobbing silently into the crook of Mike’s neck before letting go to look at each other.
The guilt Jensen felt was just as visible in Mike’s eyes. They had both been there, but neither of them had remembered.
“I have to find him,” Jensen said.
Mike nodded. “Call your dad. Chances are Jared already did.”
Jensen went back into his room for his cell phone, making himself comfortable on the couch between Tom and Mike before dialing his father’s number. It felt like he was getting the comfort Jared needed right now, and that wasn’t fair, not at all. Still, he couldn’t deny that he needed the familiar weights of Mike and Tom on either side of him to be able to keep it together. He just wanted to see Jared, nothing else mattered right now.
“Dad,” Jensen said when his father picked up. “Have you heard from him?”
Jeff didn’t need any further explanation, already knowing who his son was talking about. “Yes, I’ve talked to him,” he said.
“Is he… Is he okay?”
“Yeah… He’s… Look Jen… I can’t really talk to you about him, you know that.”
Tears welled unbidden into Jensen’s eyes. “I just need to know that he’s alright,” he whispered. “Please dad. I have to find him.”
“Listen very carefully to me now, because I will only say this once… You are my son and I love you, but I know what kind of track record you have. If you screw this up, you will screw him up and I don’t want to see that happening. So if you’re not sure that Jared is who you want to be with, then you better back out right now. He’s probably the strongest person I’ve ever met, but a person can only take so much before breaking.”
Jensen took a deep breath, doing Jared and himself justice by actually thinking about it. He knew that it wouldn’t be easy and that it would be an uphill struggle for the both of them, but his mind shied away from all the options that didn’t include Jared in his life.
“I’m sure, dad,” he said finally. “I… uhm… you know.”
Jeff chuckled at the other end of the line. “What on earth happened to my slut of a son?” he asked with obvious amusement.
“He met Jared Padalecki,” Jensen said wryly.
Jeff laughed. “Yeah, whatever that boy’s got, it’s contagious,” he said. “But you do understand that this means I can’t be Jared’s counselor any longer. You have to tell him I’m your father, because otherwise I will.”
Jensen winced. “Okay,” he muttered. “Do you have any idea where he is?”
“He was out walking when I talked to him, but I think he was sticking pretty close to home. Just you wait, Jen, he’ll come back to you.”
“I will, dad,” he said. “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Jeff said before disconnecting.
Chapter Twelve