Fic: Reconciling Hollywood - Jensen/Misha, NC-17 - chapter five
Five
The driver pulls up outside a red-carpet that is much more active than the one at the premiere had been. They’re outside the Trousdale and Misha can already tell, although he isn’t sure that he’s actually heard of it before, that it’s one of the ‘it’ places right now.
The scantily dressed women lined up out the front, the burly bouncers with metal detectors and the haughty looking door-bitch, the row of limos and drivers lined up down the street. Yeah, Misha is pretty damn sure he isn’t going to enjoy this.
Fuck.
But Jensen is out of the car far too quickly to be anything approaching normal and Misha has to hustle to keep up. Jensen goes straight to the bouncers bypassing the line and half the people waiting bend and stretch to see who the person is that’s famous enough not to have to wait.
Misha doesn't have a problem using fame for things, as long as they're things he thinks he should get by virtue of being a human anyway. Respect, decency, manners. Sometimes being famous means the opportunity to remind people of those things. Celebrity that buys tables without reservations, entrances to parties, gift bags of gadgets for people able to afford them with couch change, has always seemed ridiculous. Even worse is the fame that buys consequential things, a voice when other people had none, money for people already most able to make it. No, Misha has never been squared away totally with the power of celebrity to get things above and beyond what an average human is entitled too.
Apparently, Jensen has no qualms with it.
Jensen leans in and says something to the woman standing behind the muscle in 5 inch heels and smaller than 5 inch strip of leather masquerading as a skirt, and by the time Misha catches up the ropes are being held aside and they’re up the stairs and through the heavy metal doors before the rope even latches behind them.
In the grand scheme of things, jumping a line to get into a mediocre club is not something that Misha is going to throw a fit about. He has no intention of standing in line, but then again, he would also rather skip the line and club both. The fact that Jensen doesn't even seem to question it though? That raises his hackles. Threads a feeling of disappointed resignation through his nerves in the way he hasn't felt around Jensen since they first met. And fucked.
And okay, he's being slightly ridiculous, letting it get to him when it's nothing at all worth caring about. But he's off-side and feeling like he pissed in someones cornflakes and he's not in the mood to be charitable.
Inside, it's fucking loud, a strong bass beating and pulling at the air around them. It’s dark and smoky, purple and green strobe lights swirling the packed dance floor. Misha appreciates music. He appreciates immersion in as such, getting high and existing in it, admiring the intricacies of it, being in it. What's playing here, so loud that he thinks his ears might begin to bleed, is definitely not music. Not by any standard Misha has, and he likes to think his standards are pretty loose. It’s syrupy and peppy in amongst some kind of gangster rap baseline. It may be Britney Freakin’ Spears.
Jensen barely looks back to see if Misha is still in tow before he’s off towards the packed bar, muscling through the crowds with a lascivious smile that would melt butter if given half the chance. It works, allows him to sidle straight up to the bar in seconds, girls and guys alike swooning away to giggle behind their hands. Misha hangs back, watches Jensen chatting up the girl behind the bar. Once again, he’s found another side of Jensen. This version is cocky and sure of himself, aware of his appeal and using it to full advantage. Gone is any trace of the reserved, 'hang back and wait guy' that Jensen usually is amongst strangers.
He turns and looks around the club, at the waifs dancing and the booths huddled in pools of shadow, holding celebrity and money and keeping it safe but on display. The epitome of what everyone else should aspire to, yearn for.
Jensen is back with two Corona’s in hand, limes sticking out of the necks.
“Fly problem?” Misha asks as he accepts the one offered to him. Wishing it were just about anything else. Wishing Jensen had actually asked what he wanted.
Jensen frowns at him, “What?”
Misha shakes his head. “The lime…you know what, never mind. It's not true anyway. So, why are we here again?”
Jensen shrugs but then looks around the room studiously. Halfway through the oscillation he grins and points into the far corner. “That’s why.”
Misha peers into the darkness but can’t make anything out. Turns out that isn’t a problem though when someone in the area stands up and yells “Ackles! Get your pretty ass over here!”
Jensen grins at Misha and then is off, threading through the dancers and drinkers and sweaty, scantily clad people, Misha struggling to keep up.
The corner is sectioned off, another VIP rope barring their way for all of two seconds before it’s lifted on their approach. The area is raised slightly away from the rest of the bar, something that reminds Misha of not being unlike a pedestal. Low velvety couches line the sides, cushions and coffee-tables scattered between. On the couches are an abundance of gorgeous young people. None of whom Misha knows.
Jensen is immediately enfolded in an immense bear hug by the guy Misha supposes is the one who yelled his name out. Manly back-slapping ensues. Misha stands back and tries not to feel like a prom date that just got ditched for the head cheerleader. Quarterback. Whatever.
“Fuck, Ackles. Haven’t seen you in a fucking age man, where the hell have you been?!” The guy grins, falling ass backwards into a corner couch in a lazy sprawl. Next to him is a blond guy, slumped back into the cushions, feet kicked out into the middle of the room, a petite redhead girl straddling him. Unsurprisingly, they're making out. Misha thinks get a room before realising he just aged about 50 years.
“Vancouver.” Jensen deadpans in response. “Where the fuck you think I've been?”
The guy laughs like Jensen’s just said the funniest thing ever, slaps his knee and gropes for the abandoned beer bottle beside him. “Sit your ass down, fucker. And who’s your friend?”
It’s sneered lazily, perhaps meant to sound amused, and Misha takes an instant dislike. Jensen plonks down on the couch to the guy’s left. “This here is the angel Castiel, aka Misha Collins.”
Misha rolls his eyes, sits himself down on an ottoman in front of Jensen resignedly. The blond guy pulls himself out from underneath the girls lips, though not, Misha notes, from under her altogether. He stares at Misha, eyes hooded and dark in the low lighting, lips swollen obscenely. Misha thinks he recognises the guy, one of Jared's friends perhaps. He isn't sure.
“'Meeesha'?” the new guy questions in lieu of saying hello, rolls the name across his tongue in a purr. “Weird name.”
“Hollywood,” Misha replies blankly, takes a swig of the watery beer.
“True,” the guy grins, hands coming around the girl on his lap to fondle her ass. “Least you aren’t named ‘Apple’.”
“Yes,” Misha allows.
Jensen seems to realise he's been remiss at introductory duties and finally waves a hand back and forth between Misha and the guys. "Sorry, Mish," Jensen says, and Misha arches an eyebrow at the sudden nickname use. Jensen indicates the blond guy-girl combo, "You've met Chad right? Jay's friend? And this is Mike. Rosenbaum. From Smallville."
Apparently the girl currently octopussing Chad doesn't get a mention. Which Misha would be pissed off at if it weren't for the fact that she turns around and stares at him, glassy eyed and wet-lipped and pointedly doesn't bother to object to it.
"Ah," Misha replies, because he doesn't have anything else to say to the introductions. He vaguely remembers Jared going on about a Chad. As for Smallville. He's heard of the show, sure. But he doesn't really know what it's about. Let alone who stars in it.
"It's about Superman," Jensen adds, well aware that of Misha's many hobbies, watching television isn't one of them.
Rosenbaum lets out a low whistle. "Jesus. Where the fuck have you been the last ten years," he asks. Chad is sniggering next to him. Actually sniggering. Did people even fucking do that?
It's on the tip of his tongue to answer 'White House,' but somehow he doesn't think these guys would get the irony he'd say it with. "I don't watch television."
He knows the snippish answers are making him sound petulant. And kinda Amish. But he doesn't give a fuck really. The company's shit and the club is atrocious and he's wondering where the hell the nice evening he was having with Jensen has gone to crawl away and die.
Rosenbaum is laughing still. "You don't watch television, you just act on it?"
Misha shrugs and takes a long pull of his beer. Sooner he's finished the sooner he can skip out. Chad and the unnamed redhead have gone back to dry-humping in public.
Jensen leans into Rosenbaum conspiratorially, a hand placed on the guy's splayed knee. "Misha's a free spirit. He made a fucking hot air balloon the other day. In the park."
Misha glances sharply at Jensen, he knows he hasn't had enough to be even slightly tipsy, so whatever the hell is going on, it's deliberate. And shitty.
Rosenbaum's eyebrows rise in what Misha thinks looks like mocking condescension, but could be just surprise. Before he says anything though a blonde girl who had her back to them is whipping around and insinuating herself into the conversation.
"Really? A balloon? That is so fucking cool," she says, eyes sparkling under miles of eyeliner. She looks like a raccoon. She angles herself towards Misha, leaning down just enough that he gets an eyeful of her cleavage.
"Easy, girl," Rosenbaum grins. "Meeesha, here doesn't need your skank ass falling all over him before he's even finished a drink."
Her laugh is a trilling grate. "Shut up, Mike. You're such a fucking cunt."
Rosenbaum erupts into raucous laughter, clear over the noise of the god-awful thump of the music as it changes to something techno and equally horrid. Jensen laughs too.
Undeterred the blonde turns back to Misha. As do her breasts. "Seriously. A balloon? That's just so fucking random. I love it! I bet you write poetry and save whales and shit too, right?"
"He does," pipes up Jensen and when Misha turns to glare at him, because since when was Jensen fucking 22 and a bitch. Jensen at least has the decency to avoid Misha's gaze and guiltily suck down his beer.
Again, Misha finds himself shrugging. He's starting to feel like Marcel Marceau here. All he needs is some fucking face-paint. He's also never saved a whale in his life, nor intends to with any particular fervor, but he gets the point.
He doesn't do shit because it's cool or artsy. He does it because he can and he enjoys it. Somehow he doesn't think that shit will fly in this crowd. He suspects Jensen knew as much when he brought it up.
A flat-chested girl with a pixie cut and sparkly hot-pants comes bouncing in from the right, throws herself down next to Jensen and hooks her legs right up over his thighs, stilletod shoes coming to prod against Rosenbaum's legs. She looks familiar and Misha's fairly sure she's also an actor. There are still no introductions forthcoming of any of the females present.
"Hey, Jensen! Long time no see. How are you, babe?"
Jensen grins, arms coming up to encircle the girl. "Good. Better now you're here." He says it with a dirty wink and a growl in his voice and Misha thinks he just might throw up in his mouth. It's so stupidly put on as to be beneath Jensen. Far beneath.
Misha has no idea what's going on and he fucking hates it. Jensen has turned into some kind of celbribrat in front of him, drinking Corona and fondling the nearest piece of ass, hanging out with dicks and doing a pretty convincing job of being one himself. It doesn't gel with the quiet intense guy who was at the park with him, nor the relaxed happy one at his house.
There are puzzles and then there are fucking mind-games. And Misha's just about had enough of this; sitting up on a pedestal with undulating masses of pretty vacuity all around him. If Paris Hilton turns up, he's going to fucking kill himself. Or squeeze the lime in his eye.
The girl in Jensen's lap fucking giggles as Jensen mouths at her neck, and the blonde is trying to catch Misha's eye, and Misha has had it. He's done. He stands up, leaves his half-drunk Corona on the table beside him.
Jensen looks up at him and for a second Misha sees something in them he can't pin down, some undefinable emotion that were he pressed, he might think was worry or confusion. But as is plainly obvious, he doesn't know Jensen. At all. So really, he has no business interpreting anything he thinks he might see.
"I'm off," he says to Jensen, voice clipped.
"So early?" Jensen asks, the girl in his arms forgotten and pouting about it.
"Yeah."
"Oh..." Jensen says, and looks like he's searching for something else to say, but Misha doesn't feel like waiting around. Not bothering to say goodbye to his new 'pals' he turns on his heel and extricates himself from people and celebrity, winds through the dance floor and through the velvet ropes and finds himself back out in the warm night air. The row of waiting hopefuls is still lined up outside staring at him as he leaves. Probably trying to figure out who the fuck he is.
He hopes they'll clue him in if they work it out.
* * *
chapter six
The driver pulls up outside a red-carpet that is much more active than the one at the premiere had been. They’re outside the Trousdale and Misha can already tell, although he isn’t sure that he’s actually heard of it before, that it’s one of the ‘it’ places right now.
The scantily dressed women lined up out the front, the burly bouncers with metal detectors and the haughty looking door-bitch, the row of limos and drivers lined up down the street. Yeah, Misha is pretty damn sure he isn’t going to enjoy this.
Fuck.
But Jensen is out of the car far too quickly to be anything approaching normal and Misha has to hustle to keep up. Jensen goes straight to the bouncers bypassing the line and half the people waiting bend and stretch to see who the person is that’s famous enough not to have to wait.
Misha doesn't have a problem using fame for things, as long as they're things he thinks he should get by virtue of being a human anyway. Respect, decency, manners. Sometimes being famous means the opportunity to remind people of those things. Celebrity that buys tables without reservations, entrances to parties, gift bags of gadgets for people able to afford them with couch change, has always seemed ridiculous. Even worse is the fame that buys consequential things, a voice when other people had none, money for people already most able to make it. No, Misha has never been squared away totally with the power of celebrity to get things above and beyond what an average human is entitled too.
Apparently, Jensen has no qualms with it.
Jensen leans in and says something to the woman standing behind the muscle in 5 inch heels and smaller than 5 inch strip of leather masquerading as a skirt, and by the time Misha catches up the ropes are being held aside and they’re up the stairs and through the heavy metal doors before the rope even latches behind them.
In the grand scheme of things, jumping a line to get into a mediocre club is not something that Misha is going to throw a fit about. He has no intention of standing in line, but then again, he would also rather skip the line and club both. The fact that Jensen doesn't even seem to question it though? That raises his hackles. Threads a feeling of disappointed resignation through his nerves in the way he hasn't felt around Jensen since they first met. And fucked.
And okay, he's being slightly ridiculous, letting it get to him when it's nothing at all worth caring about. But he's off-side and feeling like he pissed in someones cornflakes and he's not in the mood to be charitable.
Inside, it's fucking loud, a strong bass beating and pulling at the air around them. It’s dark and smoky, purple and green strobe lights swirling the packed dance floor. Misha appreciates music. He appreciates immersion in as such, getting high and existing in it, admiring the intricacies of it, being in it. What's playing here, so loud that he thinks his ears might begin to bleed, is definitely not music. Not by any standard Misha has, and he likes to think his standards are pretty loose. It’s syrupy and peppy in amongst some kind of gangster rap baseline. It may be Britney Freakin’ Spears.
Jensen barely looks back to see if Misha is still in tow before he’s off towards the packed bar, muscling through the crowds with a lascivious smile that would melt butter if given half the chance. It works, allows him to sidle straight up to the bar in seconds, girls and guys alike swooning away to giggle behind their hands. Misha hangs back, watches Jensen chatting up the girl behind the bar. Once again, he’s found another side of Jensen. This version is cocky and sure of himself, aware of his appeal and using it to full advantage. Gone is any trace of the reserved, 'hang back and wait guy' that Jensen usually is amongst strangers.
He turns and looks around the club, at the waifs dancing and the booths huddled in pools of shadow, holding celebrity and money and keeping it safe but on display. The epitome of what everyone else should aspire to, yearn for.
Jensen is back with two Corona’s in hand, limes sticking out of the necks.
“Fly problem?” Misha asks as he accepts the one offered to him. Wishing it were just about anything else. Wishing Jensen had actually asked what he wanted.
Jensen frowns at him, “What?”
Misha shakes his head. “The lime…you know what, never mind. It's not true anyway. So, why are we here again?”
Jensen shrugs but then looks around the room studiously. Halfway through the oscillation he grins and points into the far corner. “That’s why.”
Misha peers into the darkness but can’t make anything out. Turns out that isn’t a problem though when someone in the area stands up and yells “Ackles! Get your pretty ass over here!”
Jensen grins at Misha and then is off, threading through the dancers and drinkers and sweaty, scantily clad people, Misha struggling to keep up.
The corner is sectioned off, another VIP rope barring their way for all of two seconds before it’s lifted on their approach. The area is raised slightly away from the rest of the bar, something that reminds Misha of not being unlike a pedestal. Low velvety couches line the sides, cushions and coffee-tables scattered between. On the couches are an abundance of gorgeous young people. None of whom Misha knows.
Jensen is immediately enfolded in an immense bear hug by the guy Misha supposes is the one who yelled his name out. Manly back-slapping ensues. Misha stands back and tries not to feel like a prom date that just got ditched for the head cheerleader. Quarterback. Whatever.
“Fuck, Ackles. Haven’t seen you in a fucking age man, where the hell have you been?!” The guy grins, falling ass backwards into a corner couch in a lazy sprawl. Next to him is a blond guy, slumped back into the cushions, feet kicked out into the middle of the room, a petite redhead girl straddling him. Unsurprisingly, they're making out. Misha thinks get a room before realising he just aged about 50 years.
“Vancouver.” Jensen deadpans in response. “Where the fuck you think I've been?”
The guy laughs like Jensen’s just said the funniest thing ever, slaps his knee and gropes for the abandoned beer bottle beside him. “Sit your ass down, fucker. And who’s your friend?”
It’s sneered lazily, perhaps meant to sound amused, and Misha takes an instant dislike. Jensen plonks down on the couch to the guy’s left. “This here is the angel Castiel, aka Misha Collins.”
Misha rolls his eyes, sits himself down on an ottoman in front of Jensen resignedly. The blond guy pulls himself out from underneath the girls lips, though not, Misha notes, from under her altogether. He stares at Misha, eyes hooded and dark in the low lighting, lips swollen obscenely. Misha thinks he recognises the guy, one of Jared's friends perhaps. He isn't sure.
“'Meeesha'?” the new guy questions in lieu of saying hello, rolls the name across his tongue in a purr. “Weird name.”
“Hollywood,” Misha replies blankly, takes a swig of the watery beer.
“True,” the guy grins, hands coming around the girl on his lap to fondle her ass. “Least you aren’t named ‘Apple’.”
“Yes,” Misha allows.
Jensen seems to realise he's been remiss at introductory duties and finally waves a hand back and forth between Misha and the guys. "Sorry, Mish," Jensen says, and Misha arches an eyebrow at the sudden nickname use. Jensen indicates the blond guy-girl combo, "You've met Chad right? Jay's friend? And this is Mike. Rosenbaum. From Smallville."
Apparently the girl currently octopussing Chad doesn't get a mention. Which Misha would be pissed off at if it weren't for the fact that she turns around and stares at him, glassy eyed and wet-lipped and pointedly doesn't bother to object to it.
"Ah," Misha replies, because he doesn't have anything else to say to the introductions. He vaguely remembers Jared going on about a Chad. As for Smallville. He's heard of the show, sure. But he doesn't really know what it's about. Let alone who stars in it.
"It's about Superman," Jensen adds, well aware that of Misha's many hobbies, watching television isn't one of them.
Rosenbaum lets out a low whistle. "Jesus. Where the fuck have you been the last ten years," he asks. Chad is sniggering next to him. Actually sniggering. Did people even fucking do that?
It's on the tip of his tongue to answer 'White House,' but somehow he doesn't think these guys would get the irony he'd say it with. "I don't watch television."
He knows the snippish answers are making him sound petulant. And kinda Amish. But he doesn't give a fuck really. The company's shit and the club is atrocious and he's wondering where the hell the nice evening he was having with Jensen has gone to crawl away and die.
Rosenbaum is laughing still. "You don't watch television, you just act on it?"
Misha shrugs and takes a long pull of his beer. Sooner he's finished the sooner he can skip out. Chad and the unnamed redhead have gone back to dry-humping in public.
Jensen leans into Rosenbaum conspiratorially, a hand placed on the guy's splayed knee. "Misha's a free spirit. He made a fucking hot air balloon the other day. In the park."
Misha glances sharply at Jensen, he knows he hasn't had enough to be even slightly tipsy, so whatever the hell is going on, it's deliberate. And shitty.
Rosenbaum's eyebrows rise in what Misha thinks looks like mocking condescension, but could be just surprise. Before he says anything though a blonde girl who had her back to them is whipping around and insinuating herself into the conversation.
"Really? A balloon? That is so fucking cool," she says, eyes sparkling under miles of eyeliner. She looks like a raccoon. She angles herself towards Misha, leaning down just enough that he gets an eyeful of her cleavage.
"Easy, girl," Rosenbaum grins. "Meeesha, here doesn't need your skank ass falling all over him before he's even finished a drink."
Her laugh is a trilling grate. "Shut up, Mike. You're such a fucking cunt."
Rosenbaum erupts into raucous laughter, clear over the noise of the god-awful thump of the music as it changes to something techno and equally horrid. Jensen laughs too.
Undeterred the blonde turns back to Misha. As do her breasts. "Seriously. A balloon? That's just so fucking random. I love it! I bet you write poetry and save whales and shit too, right?"
"He does," pipes up Jensen and when Misha turns to glare at him, because since when was Jensen fucking 22 and a bitch. Jensen at least has the decency to avoid Misha's gaze and guiltily suck down his beer.
Again, Misha finds himself shrugging. He's starting to feel like Marcel Marceau here. All he needs is some fucking face-paint. He's also never saved a whale in his life, nor intends to with any particular fervor, but he gets the point.
He doesn't do shit because it's cool or artsy. He does it because he can and he enjoys it. Somehow he doesn't think that shit will fly in this crowd. He suspects Jensen knew as much when he brought it up.
A flat-chested girl with a pixie cut and sparkly hot-pants comes bouncing in from the right, throws herself down next to Jensen and hooks her legs right up over his thighs, stilletod shoes coming to prod against Rosenbaum's legs. She looks familiar and Misha's fairly sure she's also an actor. There are still no introductions forthcoming of any of the females present.
"Hey, Jensen! Long time no see. How are you, babe?"
Jensen grins, arms coming up to encircle the girl. "Good. Better now you're here." He says it with a dirty wink and a growl in his voice and Misha thinks he just might throw up in his mouth. It's so stupidly put on as to be beneath Jensen. Far beneath.
Misha has no idea what's going on and he fucking hates it. Jensen has turned into some kind of celbribrat in front of him, drinking Corona and fondling the nearest piece of ass, hanging out with dicks and doing a pretty convincing job of being one himself. It doesn't gel with the quiet intense guy who was at the park with him, nor the relaxed happy one at his house.
There are puzzles and then there are fucking mind-games. And Misha's just about had enough of this; sitting up on a pedestal with undulating masses of pretty vacuity all around him. If Paris Hilton turns up, he's going to fucking kill himself. Or squeeze the lime in his eye.
The girl in Jensen's lap fucking giggles as Jensen mouths at her neck, and the blonde is trying to catch Misha's eye, and Misha has had it. He's done. He stands up, leaves his half-drunk Corona on the table beside him.
Jensen looks up at him and for a second Misha sees something in them he can't pin down, some undefinable emotion that were he pressed, he might think was worry or confusion. But as is plainly obvious, he doesn't know Jensen. At all. So really, he has no business interpreting anything he thinks he might see.
"I'm off," he says to Jensen, voice clipped.
"So early?" Jensen asks, the girl in his arms forgotten and pouting about it.
"Yeah."
"Oh..." Jensen says, and looks like he's searching for something else to say, but Misha doesn't feel like waiting around. Not bothering to say goodbye to his new 'pals' he turns on his heel and extricates himself from people and celebrity, winds through the dance floor and through the velvet ropes and finds himself back out in the warm night air. The row of waiting hopefuls is still lined up outside staring at him as he leaves. Probably trying to figure out who the fuck he is.
He hopes they'll clue him in if they work it out.
* * *
chapter six