Never-Finished Fic: Habibi (Jared/Jensen college AU with belly dance)
Origins and Troubles
My inner Mary Sue wanted to teach Jensen how to do sways, so I sent college AU Jared and Jensen to a belly dance class. Even as I was writing it, I kept thinking that it was the kind of thing that might be annoying if I were reading it.
I wanted to finish this, and going to my dance class kept giving me inspiration, but I couldn't quite figure out where to go with their second semester of belly dance.
I also had trouble with the POV. It was supposed to be third person omniscient, but it turns out that's really hard to write, and I had to keep wresting it back from being third limited to Jensen.
***
Habibi
"What are we doing here again?" Jensen asks.
"Chicks, man," Chad answers. "Lots of chicks."
Jared nudges Jensen with his elbow. "You need one more PE to graduate." Which is true. "Come on." He throws an arm around Jensen's shoulder. "It'll be fun."
"It was Chad's idea," Jensen reminds him. But Jared's had a lot of fun with Chad's ideas over the years, and this one didn't seem all that out there.
There are, it turns out, a lot of girls there. A lot of girls. In fact, Jared, Jensen, and Chad are the only guys in the whole room.
"Belly dance," Svetlana, the teacher, announces, "is about moving your hips." Apparently class is starting. Jensen tries to figure out her accent. Eastern European, he thinks. Maybe Russian. Who belly dances in Russia?
"You cannot move your hips if your knees are straight. You must bend them." She looks over the class as they all bend their knees. Some of the girls have obviously done this before, because they just fall into place.
"Bend!" she yells. "Even you, Mr. thinks he's so tall."
Jared flushes and tries to bend his knees farther. He seriously needs to work on his quads if he's going to be able to keep this up.
They learn a hip lift first, and all three of them look silly, although it's Chad, of all people, who looks the least silly. Unlike these gangly fuckers, he hit his full height early and knows what to do with his body. And then she has them do something like a hip lift only rounder, where they move their hips out and up. Jensen's surprised to look up at himself in the mirror and find that his body actually does move that way.
In the next class, they learn to shimmy, and then she makes them fucking walk with it, and because Jared's freaking gigantic and even his small steps are big, he ends up in front of Jensen, and Jensen can't believe how much Jared can shake his ass.
In the second week, they start doing improvisational tribal, and Chad's really good at it. He can follow like nobody's business, and catch every cue.
***
"You still have three weeks to drop it," Sandy says when Jensen complains about Svetlana the drill sergeant later in the week. Sandy and Sophia are sitting cross-legged on the floor of the room he shares with Jared.
Jensen's still not quite sure how he ended up rooming with Jared, or taking belly dance as his PE. Sure, they grew up down the street from each other, but Jensen's four years older, and he actually babysat Jared once when Jared's parents went out on a night when both his older brother Jeff, who could have done the babysitting, and his younger sister Megan, who would have needed a real babysitter, were at sleepovers. Well, Jensen babysat in the sense that he bribed Jared with candy to go to bed before his parents got back home and not tell them Jensen let him stay up late and watch cable with him. What can he say? Jensen was 13 and Jared was 9.
"Yeah," Jensen sighs, "but I still need a PE, and the only other things that fit into my schedule are triathlon and social dance."
"Social dance," Chad says from the doorway. "Lots of girls there too."
Both girls roll their eyes and Jensen says. "It's full."
Jared's been watching the conversation, and he's not sure he likes it. "You can't drop," he says. "You keep saying you don't want a PE next semester, so this is it. Besides, it's fun."
Jared seems to think that settles it, and Jensen doesn't drop the class, so maybe it does.
***
There's a festival two hours away the weekend after midterms, and Svetlana offers extra-credit to anyone who goes and writes a paragraph about their experience and turns it in with their ticket stub. Jensen would prefer to stay home and work on writing up his anatomy lab or maybe go out drinking with Chris, but he gets talked into going.
All five of them - Jared, Jensen, Chad, Sandy, and Sophia - cram into Sophia's car, and somehow Jared and Jensen end up in the back with Sandy while Chad and Sophia get the front.
"This is so not fair," Jared says with his knees practically up around his ears. This is supposed to be the age of the SUV, and Sophia drives a freakin' Corolla.
"It's my car," Sophia says for the millionth time. "No way one of you chuckleheads is driving it, and Sandy's shorter than I am."
"And I'm too cool to sit in the back," Chad reminds them, also for the millionth time. He really is, too.
It's a long two hours.
The festival is pretty cool, though. Lots of women in skimpy clothes and dancing of varying quality, a food booth that's not bad if overpriced, and it's pretty funny to watch Chad's eyes bug out at pretty much every vendor.
Sophia buys a hip shawl and a choli, and Sandy gets a skirt that possibly weighs more than she does. Jared teases Jensen with a hip shawl and what he seems to think is a manly vest, despite the pink roses all over it. Jensen buys a thirty-five-dollar set of Saroyan zils, which he blames on Chris. When your best friend is working on his master's in music, you start to hate cheap sound, and the zils Chad found them for class at the beginning of the semester are nothing if not cheap. Jared longs for one of the swords - they're so cool - but they're too expensive, and he knows he won't use it enough to justify it.
They watch some dancing, too, and Sandy's done their homework for them and makes sure they catch the male dancers. There's one guy, Jim Boz, who seems to be a pretty big name - Jensen notices him selling his DVDs and t-shirts later - and he does a lot of walking around on stage, which Jared guesses, is what you can do when you don't have breasts to show off.
There's another guy, in a troupe, who makes them all stop talking and pay attention. It's one of those edgy tribal troupes - and look at that, Jensen can identify different styles now - where they all have tattoos and wear lots of eyeliner. Jared notices the way the guy's eyeliner makes the brown of his eyes stand out so much more and wonders if that would work on him, or even Jensen. Jensen watches the guy open a number doing some solo taxim and realizes he actually knows how to do everything the guy is doing. Chad wants the guy's pants; they'd look so much better on him. Sandy and Sophia start thinking two hours isn't that bad in the realm of long-distance relationships - the troupe is local - and wonder if they can just ask the guy for his number.
***
"Chad's kind of an ass," Sandy announces. Neither Jensen nor Jared looks up from their reading, because, well, duh. "But," she continues, "he's kind of an ass who's kind of in love with Sophia." She smiles hopefully at Jared. "Can I sleep here tonight?"
Like Jared would ever say no to her. "Yeah, of course you can."
Thank God Jensen's phone rings right then, and it's Chris and not his mother. "Jenny! We're at the Rat, drinking."
"It's Thursday. I have class tomorrow," Jensen protests. It's a weak protest, and he knows it.
"Not until nine." Chris knows his schedule pretty damn well. "You can even stay up until then."
"I'm not staying up all night." Jensen glances over at Sandy painting her toenails on Jared's bed and gives in. "Two beers, that's it." He closes up his books and says goodbye. He really does only have two beers.
When he comes back after the bar closes at two, Jared's flat on his back, and Sandy's all curled up on his chest. She looks like a kitten.
***
Svetlana warns them that for their final, they have to dance a solo, at least two minutes. Chad complains so much about not having anything to wear that Kristin, one of the other girls who's friends with Sophia through some convoluted route none of the boys can understand, offers to make them all harem pants for the cost of the fabric plus three evenings of pizza, so they have at least part of a costume. Chris smuggles CDs out of the music library for them, and those plus the CDs Svetlana put on reserve for them are on pretty constant rotation on Jensen's iPod. Jared reads online about some contest where people actually belly danced to country music, and he's determined to do something like that. Chad just improvises his way up and down the hall a lot.
"Hey, Sandy," Jensen turns around from where he was concentrating on his organic chem lab report to ask the question before he can chicken out, "are you using your sword for your final solo?"
Sandy and Jared, who had been working on their calc assignment exchange a look - What the hell? I don't know - and she says, "No."
"Can I borrow it?" Jensen bites his lip once he has it out.
"Uh, yeah, sure." This is really not what she expects from Jensen. "I'll bring it over later."
"Thanks." Jensen turns back to his report and forces his hands to stop shaking so he can type the rest of it up.
***
"Svetlana said she's doing a level two class for people who've taken this one."
Jensen's straddling his chair, and he puts his head down on his hands on the back of it. "No, Jared. I just need this PE to graduate, and then that's it. I have two labs and an anatomy class next semester. I don't have time for dance."
"Sandy, Sophia," Jared calls to them as they walk past the door, presumably on their way to their room. "Tell Jensen," he says when they stop at Jared and Jensen's room, "that we should take Svetlana's level two class."
Sophia nods. "Jensen should totally take the level two class."
"See!" Jared's excited to have someone agree with him until he realizes she's only half agreeing with him. "You don't think I should take it?"
Sophia sighs. "Jared," she says patiently, "this is you." She drops her backpack on the floor and does a fairly creditable impression of one of Jared's less competent attempts at doing snake arms while shimmying, whole body shaking and limbs flying everywhere. Jensen's pretty sure that when he did it in class, it made Svetlana reconsider her decision to ever leave Russia.
Jared's a good sport, though, and he laughs. "That's why I should take it. I need the practice."
"You should really think about it," Sandy tells Jensen while Sophia hikes her backpack back up onto her shoulder. "You're really good." Great. Just what he always wanted: to be good at belly dance.
On Jensen's Sunday for registration, he puts in the requests for all his major classes first. He goes to log out, and then he sighs and adds Svetlana's level two class.
***
Svetlana encouraged them to invite people to their final, so when they start filtering into class - in whatever costumes they could come up with, and Jared's still marveling that Jensen let Sandy put eyeliner on him - there are a lot of people there. Like, a lot of people. Even Chris is there, and Jensen knows for damn sure he didn't tell him about it.
Sophia opens the show. She's one of the girls who's taken belly dance before, and somehow that's supposed to make them all relax. It doesn't work, but at least Jared is second. Nothing freaks Jared out, and he's practically laughing the whole time as he shimmies to Garth Brooks, which really shouldn't be as hot as it is.
Jensen misses the next few because he's starting to get nervous, and then it's his turn. He gets in place, back to the audience, sword held up over his head, and Svetlana starts the music. He's still for the first few beats, and he settles into it. He can do this. He's wearing eyeliner and a vest made out of an old shirt of Jared's (Who else would own a button-down in fiery orange and gold?) and harem pants with one of Sophia's scarves tied around his waist, and he has a sword in his hand, and he knows exactly what to do.
He lets the sword complete the circle it outlines part of and turns with it, so he's sideways to the audience. His hip snaps down and up on a sharp pair of beats. He lets himself go liquid again, turning to face the audience. On the next sharp pair, his right hip goes up, then his left. He completes the turn to the other side, and it's that hip that goes down and up this time.
He follows the music around so he's facing the audience again, and he doesn't dare look at them. He keeps his eyes on the sword as he brings it down and then back up, and then he holds it there and imagines himself hanging from it while his hips move slow as molasses. He uses the space, the way Svetlana keeps lecturing them to do, and lets the sword lead him across the stage and back again, alternating movement with those slow, sinuous movements where the sword is just there to frame his body. On the last two eight counts of the song, he turns the sword again, follows it around so his back is to the audience again, does one more set of slow moves of his hip, and finishes with the last note.
There's a freaky moment of silence and then the clapping's pretty damn loud. Jensen turns around to take a bow, and his eyes catch on Jared, who's still pretty stunned by all of it. His hands are clapping, but his face is saying, "What the fuck just happened here?"
When their grades are posted, Jensen and Sophia get As, Chad and Sandy get Bs, and Jared squeaks through with a C.
***
Jared actually has a truck, but his parents wouldn't let him take it his first semester. He's kind of hoping to talk them into letting him bring it back with him after break, but in the meantime he packs all his stuff into Jensen's older Buick and bums a ride home with him.
Jensen's lying around the living room stuffed full of food on Christmas afternoon when Jared comes over. Jared brings him a long, thin box covered in cheerful paper and a hell of a lot of tape. Sometimes Jensen thinks he really is just a big kid. Jared is very proud of the wrapping job.
"Merry Christmas!" he says when Jensen's mom lets him in. He puts the box down in front of Jensen. "This is from all of us: me and Sandy and Sophia, and we even got Chad to chip in too." If he were standing, he'd be bouncing up and down on his toes. As it is, he's sitting cross-legged on the other side of the box from Jensen and wiggling a little.
Jensen smiles at him and slips his fingers under the tape to peel the paper up. He has no idea what the hell it might be. The box itself isn't taped shut, and he pulls it open easily. He slides the sword out and rests it across his lap. They got him a sword. A fucking sword. He runs his hands over the sheath and tries to absorb that.
The realization that he loves it, loves belly dance smacks him over the head. And Jared, because he's sure this was Jared's idea, knows him better than he knows himself.
Jared's never seen anyone look gobsmacked before, but he has now. He really wants to kiss Jensen.
If Jensen were a girl, he'd be crying, or maybe leaning across the sword and the box between them to kiss Jared. Instead, he looks up and meets Jared's eyes, and says, "Thank you."
Jared's so happy he smiles so hard he thinks his face might split in two. They sit there for a long moment just smiling at each other.
Jensen finally breaks the moment by reaching over to slide the last present out from under the tree. He'd given out other presents - earrings for Sophia and a necklace for Sandy, and even a six-pack for Chad - before they left for break, but he'd brought Jared's home with him. "Merry Christmas."
Jared attacks the present like a kid, tearing the paper off the box in ragged pieces. When he gets down to the plain brown cardboard, he jerks the flaps up, almost tearing them off in his eagerness to see what Jensen got him. The box is filled, filled, like to the fucking brim filled, with gummi worms and Sour Patch Kids and M&M's. Now he thinks he might really kiss Jensen, so he tears open a package of gummi worms and shoves a handful of them into his mouth instead.
***
For warmup on the first class of the semester, Svetlana doesn't tell them what she's doing, just dances and expects them to follow along. Sophia and Chad both love it and totally get it. Jensen gets maybe one move in three, Sandy more like one in two. Jared's perpetually lost, and eventually just does whatever he wants.
The second class of the semester they spend the whole hour doing improvisational tribal. Svetlana splits them into groups and makes everyone take a turn leading. They get a short break when she reshuffles the groups, but still. Jared's arms feel like they're going to fall off by the time she lets them go.
"You need to start lifting weights," Chad tells him on the way back to the dorm, "if you want to keep up with us." He pokes at Jared's bicep. "Your weak ass arms aren't good enough for this." Jensen's arms are barely even sore, but he has those naturally strong arms. Jared tries not to look at them too obviously.
***
The semester ramps up pretty quickly for Jensen. He thinks about dropping Svetlana's class because there's so much work to do for his other classes. On the other hand, he really does love it and it's nice to have three hours a week when he specifically doesn't think about his lab results or worry about all the studying he should be doing. The deadline for dropping comes and goes, and Jensen's still in the class.
***
"Kid can really shake it," Chris says.
Jensen laughs at him. "Yeah, sure." He sips his beer and turns so he can see the stage where Jason's getting ready for his set.
"Saw you watching his ass."
Jensen glances over at Chris. "You watching me again, Kane?"
"Watching out for you." Chris taps his fingers against the glass of his beer bottle in time to Jason's tuning and sound check. "Watch your back."
Jensen just laughs at that. "Jared couldn't hurt a mosquito."
Chris taps his fingers once against Jensen's beer bottle and then lets it rest.
***
Dance References and Resources
I have no idea how much the dancing stuff makes sense if you don't know anything about belly dance, so here are some dance notes.
I looked for a good clip of someone teaching the basic hip lift, but the only ones I found told you to push off the ball of your foot, when you should really be lifting with your torso. The softer move they learn is a sway, where you bring your hip out and up and back in.
Saroyan really is the big name in zils.
Jim Boz is real, and he does have a tendency to do a lot of walking on stage.
The troupe with a male dancer is based on Sacramento's Verbatim (video here).
The competition where people have danced to country music is Wiggles of the West, which I've never been to, but which has an alternative music category. (They've moved to Las Vegas, which makes me somewhat less likely to go, although my carsickness made even Reno iffy.)
Jensen's dance for their final is loosely based on a dance I once saw someone from my class do to a Loreena McKennitt song.
Belly dance sword.
My inner Mary Sue wanted to teach Jensen how to do sways, so I sent college AU Jared and Jensen to a belly dance class. Even as I was writing it, I kept thinking that it was the kind of thing that might be annoying if I were reading it.
I wanted to finish this, and going to my dance class kept giving me inspiration, but I couldn't quite figure out where to go with their second semester of belly dance.
I also had trouble with the POV. It was supposed to be third person omniscient, but it turns out that's really hard to write, and I had to keep wresting it back from being third limited to Jensen.
***
Habibi
"What are we doing here again?" Jensen asks.
"Chicks, man," Chad answers. "Lots of chicks."
Jared nudges Jensen with his elbow. "You need one more PE to graduate." Which is true. "Come on." He throws an arm around Jensen's shoulder. "It'll be fun."
"It was Chad's idea," Jensen reminds him. But Jared's had a lot of fun with Chad's ideas over the years, and this one didn't seem all that out there.
There are, it turns out, a lot of girls there. A lot of girls. In fact, Jared, Jensen, and Chad are the only guys in the whole room.
"Belly dance," Svetlana, the teacher, announces, "is about moving your hips." Apparently class is starting. Jensen tries to figure out her accent. Eastern European, he thinks. Maybe Russian. Who belly dances in Russia?
"You cannot move your hips if your knees are straight. You must bend them." She looks over the class as they all bend their knees. Some of the girls have obviously done this before, because they just fall into place.
"Bend!" she yells. "Even you, Mr. thinks he's so tall."
Jared flushes and tries to bend his knees farther. He seriously needs to work on his quads if he's going to be able to keep this up.
They learn a hip lift first, and all three of them look silly, although it's Chad, of all people, who looks the least silly. Unlike these gangly fuckers, he hit his full height early and knows what to do with his body. And then she has them do something like a hip lift only rounder, where they move their hips out and up. Jensen's surprised to look up at himself in the mirror and find that his body actually does move that way.
In the next class, they learn to shimmy, and then she makes them fucking walk with it, and because Jared's freaking gigantic and even his small steps are big, he ends up in front of Jensen, and Jensen can't believe how much Jared can shake his ass.
In the second week, they start doing improvisational tribal, and Chad's really good at it. He can follow like nobody's business, and catch every cue.
***
"You still have three weeks to drop it," Sandy says when Jensen complains about Svetlana the drill sergeant later in the week. Sandy and Sophia are sitting cross-legged on the floor of the room he shares with Jared.
Jensen's still not quite sure how he ended up rooming with Jared, or taking belly dance as his PE. Sure, they grew up down the street from each other, but Jensen's four years older, and he actually babysat Jared once when Jared's parents went out on a night when both his older brother Jeff, who could have done the babysitting, and his younger sister Megan, who would have needed a real babysitter, were at sleepovers. Well, Jensen babysat in the sense that he bribed Jared with candy to go to bed before his parents got back home and not tell them Jensen let him stay up late and watch cable with him. What can he say? Jensen was 13 and Jared was 9.
"Yeah," Jensen sighs, "but I still need a PE, and the only other things that fit into my schedule are triathlon and social dance."
"Social dance," Chad says from the doorway. "Lots of girls there too."
Both girls roll their eyes and Jensen says. "It's full."
Jared's been watching the conversation, and he's not sure he likes it. "You can't drop," he says. "You keep saying you don't want a PE next semester, so this is it. Besides, it's fun."
Jared seems to think that settles it, and Jensen doesn't drop the class, so maybe it does.
***
There's a festival two hours away the weekend after midterms, and Svetlana offers extra-credit to anyone who goes and writes a paragraph about their experience and turns it in with their ticket stub. Jensen would prefer to stay home and work on writing up his anatomy lab or maybe go out drinking with Chris, but he gets talked into going.
All five of them - Jared, Jensen, Chad, Sandy, and Sophia - cram into Sophia's car, and somehow Jared and Jensen end up in the back with Sandy while Chad and Sophia get the front.
"This is so not fair," Jared says with his knees practically up around his ears. This is supposed to be the age of the SUV, and Sophia drives a freakin' Corolla.
"It's my car," Sophia says for the millionth time. "No way one of you chuckleheads is driving it, and Sandy's shorter than I am."
"And I'm too cool to sit in the back," Chad reminds them, also for the millionth time. He really is, too.
It's a long two hours.
The festival is pretty cool, though. Lots of women in skimpy clothes and dancing of varying quality, a food booth that's not bad if overpriced, and it's pretty funny to watch Chad's eyes bug out at pretty much every vendor.
Sophia buys a hip shawl and a choli, and Sandy gets a skirt that possibly weighs more than she does. Jared teases Jensen with a hip shawl and what he seems to think is a manly vest, despite the pink roses all over it. Jensen buys a thirty-five-dollar set of Saroyan zils, which he blames on Chris. When your best friend is working on his master's in music, you start to hate cheap sound, and the zils Chad found them for class at the beginning of the semester are nothing if not cheap. Jared longs for one of the swords - they're so cool - but they're too expensive, and he knows he won't use it enough to justify it.
They watch some dancing, too, and Sandy's done their homework for them and makes sure they catch the male dancers. There's one guy, Jim Boz, who seems to be a pretty big name - Jensen notices him selling his DVDs and t-shirts later - and he does a lot of walking around on stage, which Jared guesses, is what you can do when you don't have breasts to show off.
There's another guy, in a troupe, who makes them all stop talking and pay attention. It's one of those edgy tribal troupes - and look at that, Jensen can identify different styles now - where they all have tattoos and wear lots of eyeliner. Jared notices the way the guy's eyeliner makes the brown of his eyes stand out so much more and wonders if that would work on him, or even Jensen. Jensen watches the guy open a number doing some solo taxim and realizes he actually knows how to do everything the guy is doing. Chad wants the guy's pants; they'd look so much better on him. Sandy and Sophia start thinking two hours isn't that bad in the realm of long-distance relationships - the troupe is local - and wonder if they can just ask the guy for his number.
***
"Chad's kind of an ass," Sandy announces. Neither Jensen nor Jared looks up from their reading, because, well, duh. "But," she continues, "he's kind of an ass who's kind of in love with Sophia." She smiles hopefully at Jared. "Can I sleep here tonight?"
Like Jared would ever say no to her. "Yeah, of course you can."
Thank God Jensen's phone rings right then, and it's Chris and not his mother. "Jenny! We're at the Rat, drinking."
"It's Thursday. I have class tomorrow," Jensen protests. It's a weak protest, and he knows it.
"Not until nine." Chris knows his schedule pretty damn well. "You can even stay up until then."
"I'm not staying up all night." Jensen glances over at Sandy painting her toenails on Jared's bed and gives in. "Two beers, that's it." He closes up his books and says goodbye. He really does only have two beers.
When he comes back after the bar closes at two, Jared's flat on his back, and Sandy's all curled up on his chest. She looks like a kitten.
***
Svetlana warns them that for their final, they have to dance a solo, at least two minutes. Chad complains so much about not having anything to wear that Kristin, one of the other girls who's friends with Sophia through some convoluted route none of the boys can understand, offers to make them all harem pants for the cost of the fabric plus three evenings of pizza, so they have at least part of a costume. Chris smuggles CDs out of the music library for them, and those plus the CDs Svetlana put on reserve for them are on pretty constant rotation on Jensen's iPod. Jared reads online about some contest where people actually belly danced to country music, and he's determined to do something like that. Chad just improvises his way up and down the hall a lot.
"Hey, Sandy," Jensen turns around from where he was concentrating on his organic chem lab report to ask the question before he can chicken out, "are you using your sword for your final solo?"
Sandy and Jared, who had been working on their calc assignment exchange a look - What the hell? I don't know - and she says, "No."
"Can I borrow it?" Jensen bites his lip once he has it out.
"Uh, yeah, sure." This is really not what she expects from Jensen. "I'll bring it over later."
"Thanks." Jensen turns back to his report and forces his hands to stop shaking so he can type the rest of it up.
***
"Svetlana said she's doing a level two class for people who've taken this one."
Jensen's straddling his chair, and he puts his head down on his hands on the back of it. "No, Jared. I just need this PE to graduate, and then that's it. I have two labs and an anatomy class next semester. I don't have time for dance."
"Sandy, Sophia," Jared calls to them as they walk past the door, presumably on their way to their room. "Tell Jensen," he says when they stop at Jared and Jensen's room, "that we should take Svetlana's level two class."
Sophia nods. "Jensen should totally take the level two class."
"See!" Jared's excited to have someone agree with him until he realizes she's only half agreeing with him. "You don't think I should take it?"
Sophia sighs. "Jared," she says patiently, "this is you." She drops her backpack on the floor and does a fairly creditable impression of one of Jared's less competent attempts at doing snake arms while shimmying, whole body shaking and limbs flying everywhere. Jensen's pretty sure that when he did it in class, it made Svetlana reconsider her decision to ever leave Russia.
Jared's a good sport, though, and he laughs. "That's why I should take it. I need the practice."
"You should really think about it," Sandy tells Jensen while Sophia hikes her backpack back up onto her shoulder. "You're really good." Great. Just what he always wanted: to be good at belly dance.
On Jensen's Sunday for registration, he puts in the requests for all his major classes first. He goes to log out, and then he sighs and adds Svetlana's level two class.
***
Svetlana encouraged them to invite people to their final, so when they start filtering into class - in whatever costumes they could come up with, and Jared's still marveling that Jensen let Sandy put eyeliner on him - there are a lot of people there. Like, a lot of people. Even Chris is there, and Jensen knows for damn sure he didn't tell him about it.
Sophia opens the show. She's one of the girls who's taken belly dance before, and somehow that's supposed to make them all relax. It doesn't work, but at least Jared is second. Nothing freaks Jared out, and he's practically laughing the whole time as he shimmies to Garth Brooks, which really shouldn't be as hot as it is.
Jensen misses the next few because he's starting to get nervous, and then it's his turn. He gets in place, back to the audience, sword held up over his head, and Svetlana starts the music. He's still for the first few beats, and he settles into it. He can do this. He's wearing eyeliner and a vest made out of an old shirt of Jared's (Who else would own a button-down in fiery orange and gold?) and harem pants with one of Sophia's scarves tied around his waist, and he has a sword in his hand, and he knows exactly what to do.
He lets the sword complete the circle it outlines part of and turns with it, so he's sideways to the audience. His hip snaps down and up on a sharp pair of beats. He lets himself go liquid again, turning to face the audience. On the next sharp pair, his right hip goes up, then his left. He completes the turn to the other side, and it's that hip that goes down and up this time.
He follows the music around so he's facing the audience again, and he doesn't dare look at them. He keeps his eyes on the sword as he brings it down and then back up, and then he holds it there and imagines himself hanging from it while his hips move slow as molasses. He uses the space, the way Svetlana keeps lecturing them to do, and lets the sword lead him across the stage and back again, alternating movement with those slow, sinuous movements where the sword is just there to frame his body. On the last two eight counts of the song, he turns the sword again, follows it around so his back is to the audience again, does one more set of slow moves of his hip, and finishes with the last note.
There's a freaky moment of silence and then the clapping's pretty damn loud. Jensen turns around to take a bow, and his eyes catch on Jared, who's still pretty stunned by all of it. His hands are clapping, but his face is saying, "What the fuck just happened here?"
When their grades are posted, Jensen and Sophia get As, Chad and Sandy get Bs, and Jared squeaks through with a C.
***
Jared actually has a truck, but his parents wouldn't let him take it his first semester. He's kind of hoping to talk them into letting him bring it back with him after break, but in the meantime he packs all his stuff into Jensen's older Buick and bums a ride home with him.
Jensen's lying around the living room stuffed full of food on Christmas afternoon when Jared comes over. Jared brings him a long, thin box covered in cheerful paper and a hell of a lot of tape. Sometimes Jensen thinks he really is just a big kid. Jared is very proud of the wrapping job.
"Merry Christmas!" he says when Jensen's mom lets him in. He puts the box down in front of Jensen. "This is from all of us: me and Sandy and Sophia, and we even got Chad to chip in too." If he were standing, he'd be bouncing up and down on his toes. As it is, he's sitting cross-legged on the other side of the box from Jensen and wiggling a little.
Jensen smiles at him and slips his fingers under the tape to peel the paper up. He has no idea what the hell it might be. The box itself isn't taped shut, and he pulls it open easily. He slides the sword out and rests it across his lap. They got him a sword. A fucking sword. He runs his hands over the sheath and tries to absorb that.
The realization that he loves it, loves belly dance smacks him over the head. And Jared, because he's sure this was Jared's idea, knows him better than he knows himself.
Jared's never seen anyone look gobsmacked before, but he has now. He really wants to kiss Jensen.
If Jensen were a girl, he'd be crying, or maybe leaning across the sword and the box between them to kiss Jared. Instead, he looks up and meets Jared's eyes, and says, "Thank you."
Jared's so happy he smiles so hard he thinks his face might split in two. They sit there for a long moment just smiling at each other.
Jensen finally breaks the moment by reaching over to slide the last present out from under the tree. He'd given out other presents - earrings for Sophia and a necklace for Sandy, and even a six-pack for Chad - before they left for break, but he'd brought Jared's home with him. "Merry Christmas."
Jared attacks the present like a kid, tearing the paper off the box in ragged pieces. When he gets down to the plain brown cardboard, he jerks the flaps up, almost tearing them off in his eagerness to see what Jensen got him. The box is filled, filled, like to the fucking brim filled, with gummi worms and Sour Patch Kids and M&M's. Now he thinks he might really kiss Jensen, so he tears open a package of gummi worms and shoves a handful of them into his mouth instead.
***
For warmup on the first class of the semester, Svetlana doesn't tell them what she's doing, just dances and expects them to follow along. Sophia and Chad both love it and totally get it. Jensen gets maybe one move in three, Sandy more like one in two. Jared's perpetually lost, and eventually just does whatever he wants.
The second class of the semester they spend the whole hour doing improvisational tribal. Svetlana splits them into groups and makes everyone take a turn leading. They get a short break when she reshuffles the groups, but still. Jared's arms feel like they're going to fall off by the time she lets them go.
"You need to start lifting weights," Chad tells him on the way back to the dorm, "if you want to keep up with us." He pokes at Jared's bicep. "Your weak ass arms aren't good enough for this." Jensen's arms are barely even sore, but he has those naturally strong arms. Jared tries not to look at them too obviously.
***
The semester ramps up pretty quickly for Jensen. He thinks about dropping Svetlana's class because there's so much work to do for his other classes. On the other hand, he really does love it and it's nice to have three hours a week when he specifically doesn't think about his lab results or worry about all the studying he should be doing. The deadline for dropping comes and goes, and Jensen's still in the class.
***
"Kid can really shake it," Chris says.
Jensen laughs at him. "Yeah, sure." He sips his beer and turns so he can see the stage where Jason's getting ready for his set.
"Saw you watching his ass."
Jensen glances over at Chris. "You watching me again, Kane?"
"Watching out for you." Chris taps his fingers against the glass of his beer bottle in time to Jason's tuning and sound check. "Watch your back."
Jensen just laughs at that. "Jared couldn't hurt a mosquito."
Chris taps his fingers once against Jensen's beer bottle and then lets it rest.
***
Dance References and Resources
I have no idea how much the dancing stuff makes sense if you don't know anything about belly dance, so here are some dance notes.
I looked for a good clip of someone teaching the basic hip lift, but the only ones I found told you to push off the ball of your foot, when you should really be lifting with your torso. The softer move they learn is a sway, where you bring your hip out and up and back in.
Saroyan really is the big name in zils.
Jim Boz is real, and he does have a tendency to do a lot of walking on stage.
The troupe with a male dancer is based on Sacramento's Verbatim (video here).
The competition where people have danced to country music is Wiggles of the West, which I've never been to, but which has an alternative music category. (They've moved to Las Vegas, which makes me somewhat less likely to go, although my carsickness made even Reno iffy.)
Jensen's dance for their final is loosely based on a dance I once saw someone from my class do to a Loreena McKennitt song.
Belly dance sword.