(no subject)
Title: Forever
Author: Sweill
Word count: ~9800
Rating: G
Pairing: Jared/Dean (I know... I know. -sigh)
Disclaimer: Whack!AU!fiction. No resemblance to reality. Also unbeta'd.
A/ N: I regret, I totally diverged from the original prompt. The story took on a life of it’s own. I swear. And I don’t know how Harlequinn it ended up being… I think I probably still owe y’all one, but here it is…
Original prompt
71. Kiss and Dwell
Monique Vicknair has a secret-she's a medium, dedicated to helping spirits cross to the other side. Unfortunately, she's been so busy, she hasn't taken care of her own earthly needs. And it's been a long, long time. So when she meets recently deceased-but oh-so-sexy-Ryan Chappelle, she's more than ready for a fling. Even if it is with a ghost!
Ryan is no stranger to the pleasures of a woman's body, and his death hasn't changed that. But he's never wanted anyone the way he wants Monique. So he's refusing to leave this world until he makes love to her. And if he has to break all the laws of heaven and earth to do it, he will. Again and again and again…
* * *
“Forever.”
That’s what Great Grandmomma had told Jared when he asked how long Padalecki’s have been psychics, mediums, advisors. She gestured to the fireplace mantle covered in silver-framed photographs.
The pictures there spanned many generations and the breadth of the continent, but one thing remained constant; in those pictures at least one of the subjects was tall, lanky and smiling broadly at the camera. Well, two things, actually. The other was that next to the tall, smiling person, wherever they are in the picture, whatever time of day or night, there was a lens flare at his or her shoulder.
Jared remembered asking her about that, too.
“Jay-baby,” she said, patting his cheek affectionately, “That ‘spot’ is a guide. And one day, you’re gonna come into your gift and you’ll be able to see the soul livin’ in that bit of light. ”
By age ten, Jared had learned not to call it ‘a bunch of hooey’ to Great-Grandmomma’s face, and figured that if people were in such need of sympathy, some incense and a talk about the ‘dearly departed’ that were willing to pay good money, then it was all in a day’s work. The family business. Helping people.
“Now sweetie,” Great-Grandmomma had told him, the day of his High School graduation, “Don’t fret. You’ll come in to your gift when the universe sees fit. And your guide… well, everyone’s is different and whenever they show, they’re gonna be the most important person in your life for a good long time.”
“But Grandmomma, how am I supposed to have a normal life having some spirit whispering in my ear all the time?”
“Honey, we Padalecki’s don’t really do ‘normal’. Not in our business. But don’t let anyone tell you any different, honey, the living are way more troublesome than the dead.” She gave his hand a little squeeze. “You may not be ‘normal’ but you will be happy. Trust me on this.”
“Professional opinion?” Jared teased.
“Smart mouth,” she scolded, without heat. “I won’t lie, some live folks can’t handle what we do. Some in our family never marry ‘cause of it. But look at that mantle. That’s a whole lot of Padaleckis. It’s not always an easy life, but it’s an important job,” she said with an enigmatic smile, “And things, they work out.”
Jared had gone to college with that bit of information in his head, worked diligently and came home with his shiny new degree, but no guide. Great Grandmomma patted him on the hand, told him to be patient and set him to the business end of the family business, encouraging him to put his energy into getting 150 years of records sorted, scanned and computerized. Jared gained a broader appreciation of the sheer numbers of people his family had ‘advised’. Not to mention a certain pride in the ‘family business’ and the members who used their gifts to counsel the lonely and guide the dead to the next world.
When Great Grandmomma died that winter, Jared stopped wondering when his guide would show and buried himself in his work. Two years passed.
The morning of his twenty-fourth birthday, he practically got the shit scared out of him when his ‘bit of light’ showed up out of the blue. In his bathroom. In a battered leather jacket, tight jeans and three days worth of stubble, no less.
“Dude!” Jared yelped in surprise “Did you have to show up in the john? I thought we conducted family business in the parlor!” Calming his racing heartbeat, Jared didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t just stepped out of the shower. He scrubbed his hands across his eyes, confirming that the apparition was indeed as gorgeous in direct sight as he appeared in the bathroom mirror.
Now accustomed as Jared was to being part of a benignly whacked family, he’d tried to spare his own Momma the pain of knowing that the next “Padalecki: Medium and Advisor” was going to have to come from his cousin Dave. But, apparently the universe, too, knew his secret and, yeah, his guide was someone he wouldn’t mind spending the next seventy years with, if Grandmomma’s longevity had been anything to go by.
“Chill, Jay-baby.” His guide had a liquid drawl, green eyes and a sexy smirk. “Just thought this was more of a -personal- matter than a business one. And you know the parlor smells like mothballs.” he said, his handsome face screwed up into a childlike grimace. “Anyway,” he continued, shrugging his broad shoulders, then extending a hand. “I’m Dean.”
“Yeah, well. I’m Jared,” he said, reaching out to shake what proved to be a surprisingly corporeal hand “And only Great-Grandmomma got to call me Jay-baby.”
“I know. She sends her love.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Dude, she’s my boss.”
* * *
Dean followed Jared into the kitchen, watching with interest as Jared poured coffee.
“Want some?” Jared asked, unsure of spirit protocol but too well-mannered not to offer.
“Oh yeah.” Dean answered with gusto. “Man, I love coffee. The crap I drank back when took forever to make and it kinda sucked but yeah, thanks.” Dean held the cup reverently, inhaled deeply, and took a sip.
“So how does this work?” Jared asked, a bit desperately. “I never saw any of my family’s guides. I don’t know what you do or how you do it. Hell, I didn’t even know if you COULD drink coffee. And how is Great Grandmomma your BOSS?”
Dean leaned a hip against the kitchen counter, drinking deeply from his mug before answering. “Okay, then. It’s like this. Around you, I’m corporeal. You can see me, hear me, touch me,” Dean said, smirking. He paused dramatically before continuing. Jared felt himself redden slightly and cursed the fates for sending him a smart-ass guide. “But other folks can’t. I can manipulate objects, too,” Dean continued, hefting the mug to demonstrate “so people will see shit floating around if we’re not careful.” Dean took another deep drink of his coffee, eyes closed in hedonistic pleasure.
When his eyes popped open suddenly a second later with a mumbled ‘Yes, ma’am’ he explained “THAT was your Great Grandmomma reminding me to watch my language in her kitchen, by the way.”
“No shit!” Jared exclaimed.
At Dean’s raised eyebrow, Jared muttered “Sorry.”
“You Padalecki’s don’t do this side of the job once you die, having put in your time on this side and all, but the ones who just can’t bear to retire…”
“Like Great Grandmomma,” Jared interjected, smiling.
“Yeah, like her, they stay connected and informed. She’s not really my boss, but I think she likes it when I say she is.” Dean and Jared shared a smile. “Anyway”, Dean continued “When we’re working, I’ll be doing the legwork; finding the loved ones for conversation, figuring out the path or the obstacle to crossing over, stuff like that. You’ll be able to see and hear who I bring to the parlor, but those spirits won’t be able to touch you or move stuff, okay?”
“So you’re not the like the spirits we contact or help move on.” Jared observed.
“Yeah. We’re kinda different.”
“But why? How does that happen? Why you and not, say, Pete Maloney?”
“Your buddy in High School? Yeah, well, that’s a part of the story better told in the parlor.”
Jared watched as Dean refilled his coffee mug and strolled into the next room, all easy confidence and slightly bowlegged saunter. The details of his partnership with his guide seemed fairly straightforward, and Jared knew the basics of how the family business was conducted, but the fact that Dean was yet again a different kind of spirit confused and intrigued him.
Jared added cream and sugar to his own coffee and joined Dean in the parlor. Arriving next to Dean at the mantelpiece, Jared was shocked to realize that all the family pictures now looked different. In each and every picture, the ‘lens flare’s had been replaced by, literally, ghostly figures; translucent images of people where the bits of light had been. Dozens of new faces. People of every age, size and color stood grinning next to his family members. His Nana’s guide was a bright-eyed young woman, dressed in clothing 40 years removed from the the early 30’s style in the photo. His great uncle Herman had a young black man beside him, wearing a WWII era sailor uniform. Beside his Great-Grandmomma stood a man half a head taller than she, regal and handsome, smiling.
“Holy…” Jared breathed.
“Not quite, but close.” Jensen quipped, a smile in his voice.
“Huh?”
“We’re not exactly angels." Dean chuckled, perusing the photos on the mantel. “But, hey, it’s good work if you can get it.”
“But I thought the work, it was, I don’t know, more like atonement or something.” Jared said.
“Well, in some situations and for some other spirits, maybe. But we,” Dean made a sweeping gesture at the figures in the family photos “we’re in this for the long haul, not just to right a wrong or something. It’s like… a calling. We choose to do this because its an important job,” Dean put his hand on Jared’s shoulder “and because we want to.”
This touch, like Dean’s very first, was electric. Whether it had been just shock, ghost physics or something else, Jared had been ready to write it off, ignore it, get used to it, whatever. He would be working with this man for the rest of his life and the last thing he needed was to get distracted from the job or screw things up by having inappropriate feelings for his guide. But this feeling… He could feel Dean’s presence, through his shirt, through his whole body. The tingle traveled and where it went it left a persistent feeling, a new awareness of sorts. Jared felt, for lack of a better phrase, ‘turned on’. Like he’d been powered down his whole life and now, at this moment, Dean had flipped a switch in him or installed the final circuit.
“Do you know them?” Jared asked Dean, gesturing at the collection of now-visible guides.
“Some.” Dean replied. “Her.” Nana’s guide. “ Him.” Great-Grandmomma’s. “And this guy.” Jensen reached past Jared, to a photo on a shelf beside the fireplace.
“But…” Jared’s stopped, mid-protest. He knew the picture. A group shot after his high school graduation. Next to Jared, where there had previously been only a shaft of sunlight to Jared’s eyes, now stood Dean, looking much as he did now, wearing his jeans and jacket in the June heat, smiling wide. “But…” Jared took the photo from Dean’s hand, smoothing his fingers across the image of himself, of the man standing next to him.
“Not my best side, but you look good,” Dean observed, cuffing the back of Jared’s neck and gently waggling his head.
They stood in companionable silence, Dean seeming to know instinctually that Jared was putting it all together in his head, processing the monumental shift in his life, in his worldview. After a time, Jared placed the photo, not back on the shelf, but in the center of the mantle. Turning to Dean, Jared paused a moment, composed himself and asked the question that would determine the state of his heart for the rest of this life, and into the next.
“Dean…” Jared looked into Dean’s eyes, “How long have you known me?”
Dean smiled, leaned in, whispering into Jared’s ear.
“Forever.”
Author: Sweill
Word count: ~9800
Rating: G
Pairing: Jared/Dean (I know... I know. -sigh)
Disclaimer: Whack!AU!fiction. No resemblance to reality. Also unbeta'd.
A/ N: I regret, I totally diverged from the original prompt. The story took on a life of it’s own. I swear. And I don’t know how Harlequinn it ended up being… I think I probably still owe y’all one, but here it is…
Original prompt
71. Kiss and Dwell
Monique Vicknair has a secret-she's a medium, dedicated to helping spirits cross to the other side. Unfortunately, she's been so busy, she hasn't taken care of her own earthly needs. And it's been a long, long time. So when she meets recently deceased-but oh-so-sexy-Ryan Chappelle, she's more than ready for a fling. Even if it is with a ghost!
Ryan is no stranger to the pleasures of a woman's body, and his death hasn't changed that. But he's never wanted anyone the way he wants Monique. So he's refusing to leave this world until he makes love to her. And if he has to break all the laws of heaven and earth to do it, he will. Again and again and again…
* * *
“Forever.”
That’s what Great Grandmomma had told Jared when he asked how long Padalecki’s have been psychics, mediums, advisors. She gestured to the fireplace mantle covered in silver-framed photographs.
The pictures there spanned many generations and the breadth of the continent, but one thing remained constant; in those pictures at least one of the subjects was tall, lanky and smiling broadly at the camera. Well, two things, actually. The other was that next to the tall, smiling person, wherever they are in the picture, whatever time of day or night, there was a lens flare at his or her shoulder.
Jared remembered asking her about that, too.
“Jay-baby,” she said, patting his cheek affectionately, “That ‘spot’ is a guide. And one day, you’re gonna come into your gift and you’ll be able to see the soul livin’ in that bit of light. ”
By age ten, Jared had learned not to call it ‘a bunch of hooey’ to Great-Grandmomma’s face, and figured that if people were in such need of sympathy, some incense and a talk about the ‘dearly departed’ that were willing to pay good money, then it was all in a day’s work. The family business. Helping people.
“Now sweetie,” Great-Grandmomma had told him, the day of his High School graduation, “Don’t fret. You’ll come in to your gift when the universe sees fit. And your guide… well, everyone’s is different and whenever they show, they’re gonna be the most important person in your life for a good long time.”
“But Grandmomma, how am I supposed to have a normal life having some spirit whispering in my ear all the time?”
“Honey, we Padalecki’s don’t really do ‘normal’. Not in our business. But don’t let anyone tell you any different, honey, the living are way more troublesome than the dead.” She gave his hand a little squeeze. “You may not be ‘normal’ but you will be happy. Trust me on this.”
“Professional opinion?” Jared teased.
“Smart mouth,” she scolded, without heat. “I won’t lie, some live folks can’t handle what we do. Some in our family never marry ‘cause of it. But look at that mantle. That’s a whole lot of Padaleckis. It’s not always an easy life, but it’s an important job,” she said with an enigmatic smile, “And things, they work out.”
Jared had gone to college with that bit of information in his head, worked diligently and came home with his shiny new degree, but no guide. Great Grandmomma patted him on the hand, told him to be patient and set him to the business end of the family business, encouraging him to put his energy into getting 150 years of records sorted, scanned and computerized. Jared gained a broader appreciation of the sheer numbers of people his family had ‘advised’. Not to mention a certain pride in the ‘family business’ and the members who used their gifts to counsel the lonely and guide the dead to the next world.
When Great Grandmomma died that winter, Jared stopped wondering when his guide would show and buried himself in his work. Two years passed.
The morning of his twenty-fourth birthday, he practically got the shit scared out of him when his ‘bit of light’ showed up out of the blue. In his bathroom. In a battered leather jacket, tight jeans and three days worth of stubble, no less.
“Dude!” Jared yelped in surprise “Did you have to show up in the john? I thought we conducted family business in the parlor!” Calming his racing heartbeat, Jared didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t just stepped out of the shower. He scrubbed his hands across his eyes, confirming that the apparition was indeed as gorgeous in direct sight as he appeared in the bathroom mirror.
Now accustomed as Jared was to being part of a benignly whacked family, he’d tried to spare his own Momma the pain of knowing that the next “Padalecki: Medium and Advisor” was going to have to come from his cousin Dave. But, apparently the universe, too, knew his secret and, yeah, his guide was someone he wouldn’t mind spending the next seventy years with, if Grandmomma’s longevity had been anything to go by.
“Chill, Jay-baby.” His guide had a liquid drawl, green eyes and a sexy smirk. “Just thought this was more of a -personal- matter than a business one. And you know the parlor smells like mothballs.” he said, his handsome face screwed up into a childlike grimace. “Anyway,” he continued, shrugging his broad shoulders, then extending a hand. “I’m Dean.”
“Yeah, well. I’m Jared,” he said, reaching out to shake what proved to be a surprisingly corporeal hand “And only Great-Grandmomma got to call me Jay-baby.”
“I know. She sends her love.”
“You’ve seen her?”
“Dude, she’s my boss.”
* * *
Dean followed Jared into the kitchen, watching with interest as Jared poured coffee.
“Want some?” Jared asked, unsure of spirit protocol but too well-mannered not to offer.
“Oh yeah.” Dean answered with gusto. “Man, I love coffee. The crap I drank back when took forever to make and it kinda sucked but yeah, thanks.” Dean held the cup reverently, inhaled deeply, and took a sip.
“So how does this work?” Jared asked, a bit desperately. “I never saw any of my family’s guides. I don’t know what you do or how you do it. Hell, I didn’t even know if you COULD drink coffee. And how is Great Grandmomma your BOSS?”
Dean leaned a hip against the kitchen counter, drinking deeply from his mug before answering. “Okay, then. It’s like this. Around you, I’m corporeal. You can see me, hear me, touch me,” Dean said, smirking. He paused dramatically before continuing. Jared felt himself redden slightly and cursed the fates for sending him a smart-ass guide. “But other folks can’t. I can manipulate objects, too,” Dean continued, hefting the mug to demonstrate “so people will see shit floating around if we’re not careful.” Dean took another deep drink of his coffee, eyes closed in hedonistic pleasure.
When his eyes popped open suddenly a second later with a mumbled ‘Yes, ma’am’ he explained “THAT was your Great Grandmomma reminding me to watch my language in her kitchen, by the way.”
“No shit!” Jared exclaimed.
At Dean’s raised eyebrow, Jared muttered “Sorry.”
“You Padalecki’s don’t do this side of the job once you die, having put in your time on this side and all, but the ones who just can’t bear to retire…”
“Like Great Grandmomma,” Jared interjected, smiling.
“Yeah, like her, they stay connected and informed. She’s not really my boss, but I think she likes it when I say she is.” Dean and Jared shared a smile. “Anyway”, Dean continued “When we’re working, I’ll be doing the legwork; finding the loved ones for conversation, figuring out the path or the obstacle to crossing over, stuff like that. You’ll be able to see and hear who I bring to the parlor, but those spirits won’t be able to touch you or move stuff, okay?”
“So you’re not the like the spirits we contact or help move on.” Jared observed.
“Yeah. We’re kinda different.”
“But why? How does that happen? Why you and not, say, Pete Maloney?”
“Your buddy in High School? Yeah, well, that’s a part of the story better told in the parlor.”
Jared watched as Dean refilled his coffee mug and strolled into the next room, all easy confidence and slightly bowlegged saunter. The details of his partnership with his guide seemed fairly straightforward, and Jared knew the basics of how the family business was conducted, but the fact that Dean was yet again a different kind of spirit confused and intrigued him.
Jared added cream and sugar to his own coffee and joined Dean in the parlor. Arriving next to Dean at the mantelpiece, Jared was shocked to realize that all the family pictures now looked different. In each and every picture, the ‘lens flare’s had been replaced by, literally, ghostly figures; translucent images of people where the bits of light had been. Dozens of new faces. People of every age, size and color stood grinning next to his family members. His Nana’s guide was a bright-eyed young woman, dressed in clothing 40 years removed from the the early 30’s style in the photo. His great uncle Herman had a young black man beside him, wearing a WWII era sailor uniform. Beside his Great-Grandmomma stood a man half a head taller than she, regal and handsome, smiling.
“Holy…” Jared breathed.
“Not quite, but close.” Jensen quipped, a smile in his voice.
“Huh?”
“We’re not exactly angels." Dean chuckled, perusing the photos on the mantel. “But, hey, it’s good work if you can get it.”
“But I thought the work, it was, I don’t know, more like atonement or something.” Jared said.
“Well, in some situations and for some other spirits, maybe. But we,” Dean made a sweeping gesture at the figures in the family photos “we’re in this for the long haul, not just to right a wrong or something. It’s like… a calling. We choose to do this because its an important job,” Dean put his hand on Jared’s shoulder “and because we want to.”
This touch, like Dean’s very first, was electric. Whether it had been just shock, ghost physics or something else, Jared had been ready to write it off, ignore it, get used to it, whatever. He would be working with this man for the rest of his life and the last thing he needed was to get distracted from the job or screw things up by having inappropriate feelings for his guide. But this feeling… He could feel Dean’s presence, through his shirt, through his whole body. The tingle traveled and where it went it left a persistent feeling, a new awareness of sorts. Jared felt, for lack of a better phrase, ‘turned on’. Like he’d been powered down his whole life and now, at this moment, Dean had flipped a switch in him or installed the final circuit.
“Do you know them?” Jared asked Dean, gesturing at the collection of now-visible guides.
“Some.” Dean replied. “Her.” Nana’s guide. “ Him.” Great-Grandmomma’s. “And this guy.” Jensen reached past Jared, to a photo on a shelf beside the fireplace.
“But…” Jared’s stopped, mid-protest. He knew the picture. A group shot after his high school graduation. Next to Jared, where there had previously been only a shaft of sunlight to Jared’s eyes, now stood Dean, looking much as he did now, wearing his jeans and jacket in the June heat, smiling wide. “But…” Jared took the photo from Dean’s hand, smoothing his fingers across the image of himself, of the man standing next to him.
“Not my best side, but you look good,” Dean observed, cuffing the back of Jared’s neck and gently waggling his head.
They stood in companionable silence, Dean seeming to know instinctually that Jared was putting it all together in his head, processing the monumental shift in his life, in his worldview. After a time, Jared placed the photo, not back on the shelf, but in the center of the mantle. Turning to Dean, Jared paused a moment, composed himself and asked the question that would determine the state of his heart for the rest of this life, and into the next.
“Dean…” Jared looked into Dean’s eyes, “How long have you known me?”
Dean smiled, leaned in, whispering into Jared’s ear.
“Forever.”