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Jun 29, 2010 14:46

So I woke up this morning and was like, I think I'll write 2700 words of fic! As you do.

1. This was supposed to be a normal college AU type thing, but then, uh, it wasn't.
2. It's vaguely Friday Night Lights inspired, but it's not a crossover and not really an AU. Think of it as regular college AU fic with a heavy dose of FNL seasoning. It doesn't reference any FNL details or anything, but it's sort of inspired by a certain last season episode.
3. I kind of imprinted on midwestern football players at a really young age, so despite the fact that I hate football and homecoming and all other associated shenanigans, I have this secret nostalgic fondness for it. So consider this a ridiculous love letter to football playing boys everywhere.
4. Sorry the first half of this is like the most depressing thing I've written ever.

Received, J2, R, 2700 words. Kind of a college AU, kind of a high school AU, kind of a best-friends-since-childhood AU, kind of FNL. Just. You know. Fusion. Whatever.

Warnings for character death (not Jared or Jensen) and underage drinking, if those things are not your thing.

Received
When Jared's in high school, he thinks nothing is ever going to be different. Jensen's been his best friend since age two, sharing shovels in the community park sandbox. At seventeen, he thinks the world is going to respect that, their co-captainship of the football team and fifteen years of Friday night sleepovers and getting drunk in the bed of Jared's pickup, ten miles further out than the middle of nowhere.

In June, with their UT acceptance letters occupying identical places on refrigerators two blocks apart, Jensen's mother has a bad doctor's appointment, then another, and another. While Jared's mama is worrying about twin XL sheets and church bake sales, Jensen's mother is checking into the hospital. Jensen spends Friday night throwing up in Jared's bathroom, until Jared gives in and curls up around him on the tile floor, like maybe sheer force of will can make everything all right.

Two weeks before they're supposed to make the drive over, while people are throwing around words like hospice and funeral arrangements, Jensen defers. Jared wants to, because sometimes loyal into the ground means giving things up for the people you love, but Jensen won't let him.

"You have to give him the space to grieve," Jared's mother says, putting together a casserole to join the twenty others in the Ackles' freezer, and Jared thinks that even polite abandonment is still leaving.

"You have to tell me everything," Jensen says, sitting on the front porch of Jared's house while his dad loads the boxes.

The first night, alone in his dorm room with a second empty bed, Jared's two hundred miles further from Jensen than he's ever been before. They fall asleep on the phone together, Jensen's heavy breathing right up against his ear, and it's not the same, but it's something, and it's almost enough to get Jared through.

The funeral's on a Saturday, and Jared has a full tank of gas and a black suit in the back of his car when Jensen calls on Friday morning, just after calculus.

"Don't come," he says, "I don't think I can handle this if you come."

Jared thinks about Jensen's stupid eighteen year old pride and what it means to really know someone. Seeing Jensen at his worst before this meant blackout drunk on cheap vodka and throwing up all over Jared's truck, or maybe pneumonia sophomore year of high school, when Jared spent an entire week learning how to make his mother's chicken soup. This isn't the same and Jared knows it, but he gets in the car anyway.

"Goddamn it, Jared," Jensen says, when he opens the door.

Jared lets him throw the punch, but catches his arm half way there, pulling him in.

"Come on," Jared says, "you think I came home for you? Homecoming's tonight. I couldn't let just anyone pass on that stupid fucking crown."

Jensen laughs in spite of himself, until he's leaning against Jared's side, breathing hard.

"Like you'd pass up fucking the rally girls after the game."

"What, all of them?" Jared says, grinning. "You really think I'm that selfish?"

"Of course not," Jensen says.

"Exactly," Jared says. "You can have one of the freshmen."

Jared parks the car a couple blocks down from the field, close enough that they can hear the roar of the crowd, and he turns on the radio, listening to the announcer call the plays. It's all guys they used to run passes with, people he saw every day in biology, and it all feels really damn far away.

"I got you something," he says, pulling out a take out bag with a couple of burgers and some fries from the backseat, and Jensen shakes his head.

"I can't," he says, finally.

"I got you something else," Jared says, holding up a bottle of Jack Daniels. "But it's conditional. You don't take the first present, you don't get the second."

"Asshole," Jensen says, but he eats the first burger anyway, then the second a little faster, like he's surprised to find out he's hungry.

When he's half way through the fries, Jared passes over the alcohol, turning up the radio.

"I got you, tonight," he says, and Jensen lets out a breath, taking the bottle.

Jared takes it away again after Jensen's had enough, ignoring his protests, and he parks in his driveway and listens to all the things Jensen wouldn't say sober, like how they had to buy a new fucking vacuum before the wake because his dad never learned how to use the old one. Jensen's allergic to the flowers they keep sending, so they're on the front porch so everyone goddamn knows, and he never learned how to bleach things, or make spaghetti, and there are two hundred tulip bulbs in the shed, but the ground froze over last week. He thought he'd have a little longer, Jensen says, and then he didn't, after all.

Jared's dad meets them coming up the stairs, slides an arm under Jensen's other shoulder without comment, and Jared's mother brings him a glass of water and a couple of aspirin, setting them on Jared's dresser, next to little league trophies and photos from summer camp, back when they were twelve.

"Your father's going to get his clothes tomorrow morning," Jared's mother whispers, once Jensen's asleep in Jared's bed, pressed up against the wall in his usual spot. "So let him sleep."

Jared cries at the funeral. Jensen doesn't, at least until Jared's climbing back in the car on Sunday afternoon.

"Fuck," Jensen says, low and a little vicious, scrubbing the back of his hand against his face, "fuck."

"You could come back with me," Jared says. "I could stay."

"No," Jensen says, finally laughing, although it sounds all wrong, "we can't."

Jensen looks threadbare, worn through, and his black sweater suddenly seems inadequate against the October cold, with the wind blowing down across the plains. Jared shrugs out of his letter jacket, passing it over, and then he almost wants to take it back, because it's too damn big and Jensen looks smaller, somehow, inside it.

"You sure you don't want to pass over your championship ring?" Jensen says, finally, leaning up against the car door. "Ask me to prom, you know I'll say yes."

Jared leans in until their foreheads are touching. "I have to drive back," he says, "but I'm not leaving you."

"That doesn't make any fucking sense," Jensen says, finally, but when Jared pulls him into a hug, he lets him, hands tight against the front of Jared's shirt.

After, Jared has four classes and cross country practice and new friends, and his days get full. He talks to Jensen every night on the phone, late, when he's underneath all the blankets on his bed, just listening. He learns how to make pasta in the microwave and brings home a girl after a party, all warm thighs and low noises. She doesn't take the spot up against the wall, and Jared knows what the comparison means, but he's never wanted to think too hard about it. He doesn't tell Jensen about it, and he doesn't call her back.

Jared's family does Thanksgiving at his brother's, so every female relative can admire his new niece, and after dinner, Jared drives an hour north. He brings leftover turkey and his mother's cranberry sauce, and Jensen's dad provides the beer. They watch the Cowboys beat the ever loving shit out of the Bears in full on surround sound in their basement, and it almost feels normal.

At Christmas, Jared spends the better part of the first week playing touch football in Jensen's backyard, letting his mother stuff them both on grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and pot roast on Sunday. On Christmas eve, when Jensen and Jared have always exchanged their presents, Jensen gives Jared a copy of a book on WWII, a new pair of sunglasses, and an envelope with a letter inside. It's a copy of a spring admission, a class schedule, and a room and board contract for Jester 225, where Jared's been watching an empty bed all semester.

"My dad has people here," Jensen says. "I'm tired of talking on the phone."

Jared puts all of Jensen's boxes in the back of his pickup two days before they even have to leave, and the drive down is the happiest he can remember being, better than winning football games or Christmas morning.

When Jared comes back from practice that night, Jensen's things are all put away and the second bed is perfectly made, with a quilt that Jared's mother gave Jensen for his sixteenth birthday and familiar plaid flannel sheets. Jensen, though, is in Jared's bed, and Jared spends a couple of minutes thinking he's asleep, at least until he climbs in on the other side of the tiny bed with his book and finds that Jensen's just buried in the blankets. His eyes are red and Jared's pillow is wet.

"It's so stupid," Jensen says. "Don't tell anyone."

"I can head out if you want to call home," Jared says.

"It's not that," he says, rubbing the back of his hand over his face, like he's trying to pull it together.

"I have beer," Jared offers, because he's not sure what the hell else to do, and Jensen laughs.

"I missed you more," he says. "I miss her, every day, but I had to come out here, because it was like -" Jensen looks away. "You remember that game our sophomore year, that fucking last game of the season, the one that was tied up all through the fourth quarter, and we had a good forty yards on them in the last thirty seconds, and then that goddamned receiver broke through and caught that pass right before the clock ran out?"

"Worst game we ever played," Jared says.

"It felt like that, for four months," Jensen says.

Jared just knows, then, what the right thing is, because it's laid out in front of him like the open Texas highway they've been driving on for so long. When he leans in to kiss Jensen, it feels certain, like an inevitability, like the only thing that can possibly fill up the space. He's wondered for years, what Jensen might do, but here, he's not worried about it, because he already knows.

When Jensen brings his hands up to Jared's face and kisses back, it's not unexpected, but it's right. Jared finally has him where he belongs. Jared lets the first kiss slide over into something else entirely, open-mouthed and warm. Jensen tastes like his mother's apple pie and bitter rest area coffee, and it's so good Jared never wants to stop. He should talk about it, maybe, make sure, say something, but Jared's spent four months talking about everything in his life, and here, he just wants to touch.

Jensen laughs against his mouth, startled, when Jared rolls over on top of him, and when Jensen slides his hands up under Jared's shirt, palms warm and close, it's everything he's ever wanted since he was fifteen and knew better, watching Jensen throw a football across a field for the first time.

Jared pulls his shirt off, then Jensen's, kissing down his neck, memorizing the sharp spot underneath his collarbone, and when Jensen laughs again, it's lower, a little more rough. He wraps a hand around Jared's shoulder, pushing back.

"I want to," Jensen says, honest, "but I haven't exactly been fucking any cheerleaders, Jay."

Jensen kissed a couple of girls at parties freshman year, but Jared knows there hasn't been anything since. He's known for a long time why that might be, but he's never asked, never gone digging through Jensen's hard drive or underneath his mattress, never pushed. Jared's always understood keeping secrets, and Jensen's trusted him with more important things than that.

"Doesn't matter," Jared says, pulling Jensen into another kiss, stroking his hands down his sides, because even if Jensen's never been with anyone else, Jared's never really wanted to. They're not so far apart.

When Jared finally starts to pull his hands away from cupping Jensen's face, he's surprised to find they're shaky with adrenaline and nerves. But Jensen wraps a hand around his wrist, keeping him there, nudging his face up against Jared's palm, and Jared finally starts to breathe.

"Stop that or I'm not letting you put your hands up my skirt," Jensen says, smile bright and full of something that Jared recognizes as happiness.

"Shut up," Jared says, finally, and pushes his hand down into Jensen's jeans, catching the noise he makes in a kiss.

It's not familiar, but Jared still loves it, the way Jensen's hips stutter when he wraps his palm around his cock, the way he kisses while Jared's touching him, hard and messy and breathless, but happy. He loves the way Jensen laughs into his mouth, like he can't believe it's happening, and the way he jerks when Jared rubs his thumb over the head, stroking hard and fast. Jensen's hands go tight on Jared's shoulders just before his back arches and he comes, like he's trying to hang on, and Jared kisses him through it, swallowing down the little noises he makes as he comes down, the way he's breathing.

"Fuck," Jensen says, finally, then shoves him, putting his weight into it until Jared falls back against the foot of the bed, and it's like all the games they've ever played, cops and robbers in the backyard at six, chasing each other in and out of the treehouse, wrestling over Madden at thirteen, football. It's good, and Jared likes the familiarity, at least until Jensen bites his shoulder and kisses his way down his stomach.

"God, I've wanted to," Jensen says, right up against the curve of Jared's hip bone, and then he pulls his jeans off, his boxers down, and licks up his cock.

It feels totally indecent, the kind of thing Jared's only seen in porn, the kind of thing that real people don't do in their bedrooms and in the backseats of cars, but Jared's not complaining. Jensen slides his mouth down over the head of Jared's dick, trying to find some kind of angle that works. It's messy, imperfect, and there's a little more of Jensen's teeth than Jared's really comfortable with. Jared can feel his chapped lips and the inside of his cheek and everything. He pushes at Jensen's shoulder when he's really starting to feel it, not confident enough he can warn him off if he lets himelf get too close, and Jensen slides in against Jared's side and jerks him off the rest of the way, until Jared's breath gets knocked out of him and he comes, his whole body shaking.

Jared finds the kleenex on Jensen's nightstand, exactly where they were when he left in December, and this is where it's always awkward, except it isn't, here. Jensen looks tired, but not the bone deep sort of exhausted he's seemed the past few months, and when Jared looks back, he's smiling.

"Remind me to call home in the morning," he says, drowsy, "and maybe to push the other bed over."

"I kind of love you," Jared says, and Jensen laughs, pulling the blankets up, right against his side.

"You already gave me your goddamned varsity jacket," Jensen says. "I should have figured it out a while ago."

"I knew I should have asked you to homecoming when I had the chance," Jared says.

"Hey," Jensen says, with a grin, "you do still have that fucking ridiculous crown. There's always next year."

"I mean it," Jared says, kissing him, and Jensen smiles up against his mouth.

"Me too," he says. "Me fucking too."

fiction, spn, received, j2

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