The Not-So-Secret Interior Life of the Scientific Moose 3/5
J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 3 of 5
Master post
Art
The Cambridge Center for Adult Education was a good place to go for life drawing open studio, because they held it Thursday afternoons, which didn't interfere with Jared's job or his classes. That was one of the very few perks of working the overnight shift. Also, four hours with live models at CCAE was pretty cheap. He just had to ignore all the studying he could be doing. He had a massive test on Monday and he knew he should be preparing for it.
There were only two other people setting up when he got there, so he took a seat to the side where he'd have a good view of the models but hopefully wouldn't be blocking anyone's way. He turned his phone off, got out his pencils and charcoals, stuck a pen behind his ear just in case, and realized he'd be starving in four hours. He should've brought a snack.
The first model was a good-looking blond guy, which Jared knew would crack Chad up if he found out. He found himself wondering what Jensen Ross looked like without his clothes on, and even though Jared hadn't even tried to Google his face, the thought of his naked body was distracting enough that Jared had to snap his pencil against his own hand to make himself concentrate.
Fortunately the second model looked a lot like -
"Kat?" he said, surprised, as she dropped her robe. Someone hissed "Shh!" in his direction.
"Jared, right?" Kat answered, moving into her first pose. "The Kickstarter comic book guy. I'm not great with names."
"What are you doing here?"
"Modeling. What does it look like?" She grinned.
"Shh!" someone else hissed.
"I can talk and move at the same time." Kat twisted around into a new position. Jared wondered who was so annoyed that there was talking, but he had a pretty, shapely, naked woman standing right in front of him and given a choice, he'd rather draw her than argue with another artist. "What are you doing after this?"
"Eating."
"Can I come?"
"Sure. I'd like the company."
Chad's going to be pissed, he thought, then shrugged the thought away. Chad should know by now that Jared was no kind of competition when it came to girls.
Kat ran through poses for an hour and then everyone got a break, which gave Jared enough time to pee and run across the street to the gourmet Mini-Mart for a bottle of water and a couple of candy bars. Not the healthiest snack, but he'd get fruit or a salad or something later.
A different male model came back after the break - he was older and had a paunch and Jared appreciated the chance to get some practice drawing a middle-aged person who wasn't a hardbody. Kat rounded out the session with a few fifteen-minute poses, and then it was over and everyone was packing up their things and thanking the models (the first male model had returned and apparently the middle-aged guy had snuck in halfway through Kat's shift with his own sketchpad) and Jared had to wait in the hallway for Kat to get dressed.
They went to IHOP, because it was reasonably cheap and Jared had been craving pancakes for several days. He got a giant stack with sausage patties, skillet potatoes, and a fruit salad, and Kat just got a chicken sandwich.
She pointed to her sandwich and then Jared's tower of pancakes, and giggled. "Still a growing boy, huh?"
"Yep." He grinned serenely and forked up a mouthful of potatoes before drowning the pancakes and sausage in syrup. "But growing into what, that's the question."
"How's the Kickstarter going?"
"Well, it's only been up a week, so it's hard to tell. We got a bunch of pledges right away, but we mentioned it on the web site and Twitter and Facebook, so that was probably just the first wave. I think we're going to make our goal, but we'll see." He popped a grape in his mouth. "Did you pledge?" He made an encouraging face.
"Not yet. I'm a broke artist's model, what do you expect from me?" But she grinned. "Alona did, though. She wants the book."
"Cool. If she pledged enough for a sketch tell her I'll draw whatever she wants." He bit into a sausage. "This is the first time I've ever appealed to strangers for money that wasn't for school. It's the first time I ever had to really pimp myself. It's a little weird. I feel like I need a big purple hat and a cane."
"Didn't you have to sell yourself for grad school?"
Jared blinked, surprised Kat knew more about him than just "You're the Kickstarter guy". She just grinned wider.
"Alona told me," she explained. "Besides, I had to read through your site to get some good images for the web. Chad sent me the ones he wanted me to use but I thought I should read it anyway. So I read your bios, so I know you're in grad school. Science, right?"
"Microbiology. Immunology. And yeah, you have to kind of sell yourself to get into the program you want, but your work speaks for itself to a point, and I had really good recommendations."
"I don't really know any scientists. Most of my friends are arty types. I know a couple programmers, though. So geeky." She giggled. "Almost all of them knit, as if that's something they learn along with all the programming and bug-fixing. If you ever want crocheted dolls of your characters, I can hook you up."
Jared tried to imagine a crocheted Haro, either the contemporary crazy-homeless version or the alternate-West gunslinger version. It was kind of giggle-worthy to suddenly picture the guy as cuddly.
"You don't look convinced," Kat said. "That's ok, I'm not either." She took a bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed, asked "Do you like grad school?"
"I like my classes and I share a lab with my friends, which is good because it takes up a lot of time. For example! I have an all-day test on Monday." He cut a wedge of pancake and stuffed it in his mouth while he waited for Kat's reaction. She probably wouldn't believe him, or she would and she'd be appalled.
"Like eight hours?" And yep, she looked skeptical.
Jared nodded, swallowed. "Seven or eight, yeah. Enzymes. Fun stuff."
"Jesus."
There was silence as Jared ate his pancakes and tried to psych himself up for studying, and Kat sipped her soda.
"You've heard of Dr Sketchy's, right?" she asked after a minute. Jared's mouth was full so he just nodded. "You know they have a branch in Allston?" Now he shook his head. He hadn't known that, but to be fair he'd only ever heard of them because of his friend Aldis, and Aldis lived in New York so all of his interesting art-related events tended to be local to him rather than to Jared. "Every second Sunday at Great Scott. One of my friends is going to be modeling at the next one. You should come."
"Sundays, huh?"
"Sundays, huh." Kat sipped her coffee and grinned at him over the rim of the cup. "You won't have class or lab. You know you want to."
And actually, he kind of did.
* * *
Jared finished his full-day eight-hour test in just over seven hours. He'd only had three hours of sleep, but he didn't realize how exhausted he was until he got into his car to go home and all he wanted to do was lie down. He'd had exactly two full-day tests last semester, but clearly he'd blocked them from his mind. The professor, Dr Ferris, had brought in sandwiches and cookies and bottles of water so no one had to leave the room to eat before they were finished with the exam; you weren't allowed to bring in food.
He went home and collapsed for two hours of nap and even though Jared had managed to scarf down a couple of extra candy bars during bathroom breaks, he woke up from his nap starving.
While he thawed a bunch of frozen Texas-shaped waffles to snack on while he tried to figure out what to eat for dinner, Jared realized he hadn't done a damn thing all day besides take his exam. A new comic page was supposed to go up tomorrow and he hadn't lettered it or even finished the shading. He still had studying to do and a paper to read in preparation for group discussion tomorrow, not to mention at least eight hours of lab in his immediate future.
Shit. He leaned forward until his head thunked against the tabletop, then started planning. There was nothing to be gained by whining to himself. He could do the reading now and take his laptop to the lab. The page was already scanned into his hard drive, and he could at least do the lettering
He called Chad, left a voice mail - "What's the latest we can put up the next comic page? I can work on it in the lab but I can't promise anything" - ate a couple tuna sandwiches and a giant bowl of ice cream, and spent an hour and a half reading and trying to digest a couple of papers online before heading off to work.
"What did you think about Dr Ferris' test?" Welling asked Jared when he walked into the lab.
"I need a weekend," was Jared's answer.
"That bad, huh?"
"No, it was ok - I was more prepared than I thought I was, except for how much it made my brain hurt - I just have a lot of shit to do."
"Welcome to the wonderful world of grad school." He patted Jared on the shoulder sympathetically.
Jared stuck his earbuds in his phone, opened the app for the radio station, and put the phone in the pocket of his lab coat, which was, of course, short in the arms and tight across the shoulders. He really needed his own lab coat that fit properly. If Welling was so sympathetic, why hadn't he bought his own, so Jared could wear the one in the lab?
At least he seemed to be making progress on his project. He ignored Genevieve when she said she'd seen Rob earlier and not only was he still convinced someone was sabotaging his work, he was now convinced that whoever it was, was sabotaging other people's work in other labs too.
"Define 'sabotage,'" Welling said.
"Contaminating his cells," Genevieve told him.
"And he's sure it's not just him? Why would someone want to screw with other labs? What do you gain from that?"
Genevieve shrugged. Jared figured a big enough asshole might do that kind of thing, but he'd never met anyone that dickish in the program.
"The dark side of pranking," Danneel suggested. "When landing a TARDIS on the Great Dome is too fun."
"When did you come in?" Genevieve asked her.
"Just now." She ruffled Jared's hair as she walked by him on her way to the freezer. "It's too early for your DJ," she told him, when he looked up at her. He'd set his laptop on his bench and was working on the comic page. It clearly did not interest her, or she would have commented. Told him to take it off the bench, at least. "Are you listening to the station anyway?"
"I needed some music," he said.
"Don’t turn the radio on," Welling called.
"Don't worry."
Welling was still around at midnight, but Jared didn't care that he couldn't turn on the lab radio. He wasn't picky about how he got to hear Jensen Ross' voice, as long as he got to hear it.
Now we got something for the nurses at Brigham and Women's, from Josie and Nadine in pediatric oncology at Mass General. A little Dropkicks for a peaceful evening, here on 92.7 WBBR.
Jared figured that was sarcasm. The Dropkick Murphys were a lot of things, but "peaceful" wasn't generally one of them. He felt the urge to chair-dance.
A minute later Danneel walked by and whapped him on the shoulder with a folder. When he looked around at her she grinned, pointed to his earbuds, and asked "Something good on?"
"Was I chair-dancing?" He shook his ass just to make her giggle.
"If you could call it that." She patted him on the head. "How's your DJ? When you get a chance, can you come look at something for me? I don’t know what I did but it looks like I invented a new and exciting strain of Ebola."
For Jensen Ross' nightly "where are you and what are you doing" question, Jared texted Jared's massaging cells and lettering his comic, and Danneel is doing Ebola one better, to which the DJ's texted response was I hope Danneel is using those powers for good. Jared showed her the exchange, and she laughed.
"I never told you my life's ambition was to be an evil scientist, did I?" she said.
On Friday Jared's enzymes class was unexpectedly canceled when Dr Ferris called in sick at the last minute, so he went home. It was a nice day out - sunny, not ridiculously cold - and if nothing else, he'd just earned himself some extra time to walk the dogs.
Usually he walked them down the bike path to Davis Square and back, because if no one else was on the bike path he could throw balls for them and let them run a little. Today he went the other way out of the house and walked down to Powder House Circle and the giant rotary from hell, because he wanted a change of scenery and he could still throw balls for Harley and Sadie in the park there. Harley liked to pee against the old stone tower that had served as gun powder storage during the Revolutionary War, which Jared thought was kind of sacrilegious, but chasing his dogs up and down and around the hill was always a good workout.
A guy in a blue t-shirt and running shoes sat on a bench sucking on a water bottle and watching the dogs. Jared thought he looked familiar but couldn't figure out why. He was about to go over and say something, but Sadie took off after a squirrel, and by the time Jared got control of her, the guy was gone.
"That looks familiar," Chad commented later, looking over Jared's shoulder at the comic page he was drawing, which coincidentally included a version of the tower he'd walked Harley and Sadie around earlier. He would have added the hot guy on the bench, but it didn't fit the scene.
"The Powder House powder house," Jared said. "I took Harley and Sadie down there today."
"It looks kind of phallic."
"Everything does, to you."
"At least you didn't put the rotary in there. I don't want any of Haro's locations to look too much like Boston."
Chad already knew that contemporary Haro's big American city contained bits of Boston and surrounding towns, as well as bits of San Antonio and Houston and LA, as if Jared had thrown all the big cities he knew into a blender and set it on high. That was so Haro's city looked a little familiar but not entirely, because Chad wanted readers to think it could be anywhere, and so Jared could lay out a fictional city without having to make everything up.
Now Chad took the opportunity to tell Jared about some upcoming plot points and future characters, and then they talked about the next couple of pages, since Jared was working on the next one already, and by the time Jared got to the lab, he was so deep in thought about Haro that he almost walked by Danneel and Dr Whitfield without even seeing them. He wouldn't have expected Dr Whitfield to be here and probably would have passed him anyway if Danneel hadn't said "Just walk on by and don't say anything, it's ok," as he came up to them.
"Oh. Uh. Hi," he stammered, surprised. Danneel grinned brightly.
"Dr Whitfield says you haven't asked him to be on your thesis committee," she said. Dr Whitfield taught Jared's genomics class and was on Danneel's thesis committee. She thought highly of him and had suggested to Jared more than once that he ask the professor to be one of his thesis advisors.
"Have you chosen a committee yet?" Dr Whitfield asked.
"Sort of," Jared confessed, embarrassment making him break eye contact. You were supposed to do it in the beginning of your second year. Jared had set an internal goal for the middle of October, which meant he should have found all his advisors right about now. "I asked Dr Helfer, obviously, and then I got Dr Morgan and Dr Williams, and I asked Dr Hermann but he's retiring and isn't sure he'll be able to do it, and, uh, Dr Whitfield, will you be on my thesis committee?"
Dr Whitfield laughed. "Come see me and we'll discuss it. Miss Harris tried to give me a rundown of your project but I want to hear it from you."
Jared glanced at Danneel, who was trying to look innocent. It wasn't enough she was trying to set him up with Jensen Ross - she had to do it with his thesis advisors too? Although apparently he needed the push, so he shouldn't complain.
Just then someone called "Charles!" and the three of them turned to see Dr F waving and loping down the hallway. Jared really only knew him by sight; he wasn't even sure what Dr F's area of expertise was. He only knew that you'd sometimes see the guy wandering the halls of the building late at night, wearing his lab coat (which you weren't supposed to wear outside your lab) and talking to himself.
"You're here late," he told Dr Whitfield.
"And you're here early," Dr Whitfield said.
"Oh, you know, science never rests." He grinned. "Are these bright-eyed young people your students?"
Danneel snickered. Jared guessed she wasn't used to being called a young person any more than he was. And at nine on a weeknight in the lab, no one was really bright-eyed.
"Mr Padalecki is, yes." Jared waved. "Miss Harris is one of my advisees. She's doing well." Danneel beamed.
"Keep up the good work," Dr F told them.
"We should get back to it," Danneel said. "Bye, Dr Whitfield." She headed down the hall towards the lab and after saying goodbye to the two professors, Jared followed.
"Dr Whitfield said you were doing well," he told her as they walked.
"And the next thing out of his mouth was going to be 'but she could always be doing better,'" Danneel said. "He's more impressed by hard work than schmoozing. You have him for a class. You should know that. Although, to be honest, I kind of wanted to stay and talk to Dr F, just to say I did."
Jared sent himself a note on his phone when they got to the lab - Call Dr Whitfield re: thesis committee - and pulled out his sketchpad while he waited for Welling to finish with the centrifuge. A character based on Dr F was supposed to show up in the comic fairly soon, and now that Jared had gotten a good idea of his size and more than a passing glance at his face, he wanted to make some quickie sketches while he had time.
Later that night Jared was taking a break to stretch his legs and get out of the lab (and to listen to his radio show and his DJ in peace) when he encountered Dr F in the hallway near the lounge with the good vending machines.
"Hello!" Dr F called. "Charles' student, am I right?"
"Charles?" Jared repeated, momentarily confused. He pulled an earbud out of his ear to better hear Dr F. "Oh, you mean Dr Whitfield. Yeah. Hi."
"He's a good teacher. Very smart. Good man to have on your committee. He tells me you're in Tricia's lab. She's very, shall we say, determined. Tough. She demands the best from her lab, but a good scientist does. All the same, don't let her scare you off. Immunology is a fascinating field. Great potential there." He sounded ridiculously chipper and had a quick, clipped way of talking. Jared didn't think Dr F had taken one breath during his speech.
"I like it. It's interesting and it keeps me busy." That was an understatement.
"As it should, as it should. I must go - plans to make, theories to ponder. You know how it is. Good evening, Mr Padalecki." He nodded a goodbye and walked off.
Jared was impressed that Dr F had remembered his name.
"Why wouldn't he?" Genevieve asked later on, after Jared had gone back to the lab and related the story to her and Danneel.
"We only talked to him for three minutes."
"Guess you made an impression," Danneel said. "Call your favorite DJ and make another." She gestured at the radio with an empty cell bottle and grinned. Jared rolled his eyes. "Don't make that face at me. I know you're capable of talking to him without sounding stupid."
"What do I say?"
"What do you say. Say hi! Request a song. Tell him you had a really weird dream last night and he was in it."
She grinned brightly. Jared just rolled his eyes.
The phone line for the station was busy, oddly enough. Jared wondered if that was a sign that he should maybe stick with texts.
* * *
Sitting in the dining room trying to concentrate on his genomics reading, Jared realized that he actually kind of missed listening to his favorite DJ during the day. It was very quiet in the house - the dogs were asleep on his bed upstairs and Chad was at work - and his mind had wandered. He wondered if it was some kind of sign that he missed Jensen Ross' voice, and if so, a sign of what. Excessive reliance on a nice voice to get him through the night? It was just that Jensen sounded like a nice guy, interesting and fun and maybe someone Jared would like if they were to meet in real life.
And they'd had a conversation and Jared hadn't been too much of an idiot and Jensen even read Haro. He remembered something Alona had told him - that when guys said "She looks like a really nice person" about a woman they didn't know, they really meant "She looks hot and I want to bang her". Was he doing the voice version of that very thing? Was it even possible to want to fuck a voice?
Well, it was certainly possible to want to fuck the person behind a voice. And he didn't even know what Jensen looked like.
Jared had to set his mind on something else besides the DJ, and clearly genomics wasn't cutting it. He flipped open his laptop to check his and Chad's Kickstarter project and calculate the chances of them getting enough pledges to fund a trade paperback of their comic.
"Holy shit, we're getting close," he said out loud. "I think we're gonna do it."
He wondered if Jensen Ross had pledged yet.
He needed to start thinking about how long it might take him to draw sketches in people's books and to finish drawings for the couple of eighty-dollar pledges. He needed to talk to Chad - he wanted to ask how long it would take for the finished books to arrive from the printer, now that it looked like they might get all their requested funding and could actually print the damn things. He had to plan ahead.
He hoped he wouldn't have to put any class or lab work aside for Haro. He'd have to TA a class next semester, and he hoped that the comic wouldn't have to take a back seat to school either. Science paid his bills and fed his brain, but drawing fed his soul. He really needed both. He'd cut back on sleep if necessary, so he could have both.
Chad wasn't answering his phone and when Jared tried Excelsior Comics it went to voice mail, so he put on his running shoes and ran down to the store, where Alona, not Chad, sat behind the counter. There were only two other people in the store - a guy with wavy dark brown hair who was quite cute despite his nerdy black-framed glasses and grandpa cardigan, and a little blond boy wearing a bright blue jacket and holding his hand.
"Jared!" Alona said. "Did you ever read Bone?"
"Do you think it's appropriate for kids?" the good-looking guy asked, before Jared could answer her.
"I'd say so, yeah," Jared said. The little boy hanging on to the guy's hand looked expectant. Jared figured the boy was his and realized what the point of this whole exercise probably was. "It's a great epic adventure - princesses, evil queens, a big red dragon, a kingdom in danger. Oh, and locusts. It's also really funny and light-hearted. You'll like the stupid, stupid rat creatures." He knew he sure had. "Get the color trades. It was originally published in black and white but I think the color's more interesting for kids. Unless you want to color it in yourself." He winked at the little boy.
"Sacrilege!" Alona gasped.
"What do you think?" Mr Good-Looking-but-Nerdy asked his kid. "Does that sound good?" The little boy nodded. "Color or black and white?"
"Color!" the kid said.
"Color it is. You can read it to Walker and Henry, how does that sound?"
"No, Daddy, you read it!"
"I do voices," Good-Looking-but-Nerdy explained to Alona and Jared, sounding almost apologetic. Jared thought it was really cute that this guy read to his kids with different voices, but before he could say so, the guy asked "What am I looking for?" and when Alona pointed across the counter at the right shelf, he and his son turned to look.
"Do you want some other suggestions?" Jared asked. He hadn't read a lot of kid-appropriate comic books, but he'd hung around Excelsior long enough and listened to enough people that he could still make recommendations, and he liked getting the chance to talk comics with new people. "Bone's a classic. It's a great comic to start kids on. When you're ready for superheroes, Teen Titans is a pretty good bet - it was a cute cartoon, too - or if you like Bone, try Mouse Guard. It’s also a fantasy comic, although it's completely anthropomorphic - I know, a comic called Mouse Guard, it's about mice, what a surprise - it doesn't have dragons but it does have some fight scenes and maybe it's not - "
"Jared," Alona interrupted.
"What?"
"Don't stress him out."
Good-Looking-but-Nerdy was starting to look a little overwhelmed.
"Sorry about that," Jared said. "Here, it's right in front of you." He helpfully walked over, pulled a copy of the appropriate trade paperback of Bone off the shelf, and handed it over.
Good-Looking-but-Nerdy thanked him and paid for it, and then he and his kid left. Jared watched Alona watch them leave.
"Straight girls everywhere feel so deprived," she sighed. "But he probably makes his boyfriend very happy."
"I didn't think you worked on Thursdays," Jared said. "Where's Chad?"
"Getting lunch. And I don't. I was down here so I came by to say hi and he asked me to man the store while he found something to eat. Oh, you got the new Chew yesterday. I put it in your folder."
So Jared paid for it and talked to Alona about things that weren't grad school or lab work, but were rather comic books and cute boys and Pilates and the weird weather and when was Chad going to find himself a nice girlfriend so he'd stop hitting on all the women who came into the store?
"A girlfriend isn't going to stop him," Jared said. "In college he dated this one girl Sophia for two years and still flirted shamelessly with every girl he thought was cute. Even my sister, when she came to visit." He rolled his eyes, remembering. Fortunately he'd warned Megan about Chad, which was good because Chad hadn't taken Jared seriously when Jared had threatened murder if Chad laid a hand on his baby sister.
"And how did that go?"
"About as well as you probably think. I threatened bodily harm, Chad ignored me, Megan put him off, he persisted, I had to wrestle him to the ground and sit on him."
"I bet he loved that." Alona grinned.
"Who loved what?" Chad asked, appearing in the doorway with a plastic container, which he handed to Alona. "I brought you some baklava for watching the store. Hi, Moose. What are you doing here?"
"Keeping me company," Alona said. "Telling me about your failed attempt to flirt with his sister."
"Did he tell you he almost crushed me to death?"
"Yes." Alona giggled. Jared grinned. Chad sighed, sounding put-upon.
"It's a good thing you're cute," he muttered in Jared's direction.
"I sold a Bone trade but otherwise it was pretty quiet," Alona said, "and now that you're here, I can go." She came out from behind the counter and Chad took her place. "Bye, guys. See you later." And she took her baklava and left.
"Still haven't asked her out, huh?" Jared asked. Chad sighed again.
"She won't have me," he said mournfully. "What are you doing here, anyway? Don't you have pages to draw or books to read or something? Cells to divide? When are you going to get your own love life so you can stop mocking mine?"
"I only mock because I care," Jared said cheerfully. "I needed some exercise. And I wanted to know how long it will take to get the books from the printer, if we make our Kickstarter goal."
"I don't know. Couple weeks? Depends on when we send them our file. They'll send us a proof, we’ll approve it, they'll send us crates of books. You know we'll probably get our funding, right?"
"That's why I wanted to know. I'm trying to plan ahead for all the sketches I'll have to do. Did I already suggest we put Haro on hiatus until I'm done with those?"
"Yeah. It's not a bad idea. You don't want to overextend yourself."
"I'm mostly worried about giving up sleep. Shit, we still need to finalize an idea for the print."
"Finish the layout for the printer first," Chad said. "How are you coming on that, anyway? I know you got all the color covers done. They'll look fucking amazing in print, have I told you that already?"
"Once or twice." Jared grinned, pleased and flattered. "I'm almost finished with the re-lettering. I might take my laptop to the lab tonight so I can get it done. All my experiments are in the 'hurry up, wait' stage, so I have a lot of downtime, and I'm making good progress on the new page."
"Good, good." Chad had turned at least half of his attention to the store computer and was no longer focused on Jared. But Jared didn't mind; he'd gotten an answer to his question, more or less, and he did have other things to do. So he said goodbye to his housemate, did some stretches in the hallway, went up the stairs, held the door for a nicely-built guy in a baseball cap entering the building, and jogged home.
He checked his email when he got back to the house, half expecting something from Dr Helfer, and was subsequently unsurprised that she had emailed him about his project. He composed a response in the shower, typed it up while he ate some waffles and bananas, and forced himself to finish his genomics reading. It never failed to surprise him that no matter what kind of information it was trying to impart, a science textbook could strip out all the really compelling stuff and made it boring as hell, and really hard to focus on.
Welling never showed at the lab, so Jared snagged the appropriately-sized lab coat for once. He turned the radio on around ten and just left it on all night, because he could. He pushed stuff around on his bench to make room for his laptop, and Genevieve hung over his shoulder and watched him re-letter the last couple of pages of Haro's first issue. She only asked two questions - why was he doing it (to make the lettering consistent for the trade paperback) and was he going to re-letter the whole thing (no). He didn't mind.
"Are you going to get the money to print it?" she asked when he was finished.
"Looks like it. I'm preparing myself to make a hundred sketches in a hundred books."
"Sounds like fun."
Jared shrugged. It sounded like work, was what it sounded like. But the idea of getting to sketch a hundred different things for a hundred different people was kind of exciting, and wasn't that why he'd agreed to draw Chad's comic in the first place? To hone his drawing chops, sure, but to do this thing he really enjoyed that he was pretty good at, and to share it with other people?
His thoughts started drifting towards cover designs and the mystery print, and he dragged them back. He turned the radio up to help him concentrate on science instead.
This one's for the Helfer Lab at MIT. The Boss, on WBBR.
The intro to Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love" floated out of the radio. Jared shot a look at Genevieve, who was now sitting in front of the hood with an expression of utmost innocence on her face. She had clearly been taking lessons from Danneel.
Helfer Lab is full of matchmakers, Jared texted Jensen Ross. Cells and virii, living together! Oh, the cellularity!
Heh! Jensen texted back. Funny guy.
Didn't I say I only used my powers for good? : ) I think my friends are trying to set me up.
Any luck?
I don't know, I haven't met him yet. But they're persistent.
If they're really your friends, you shouldn't worry.
I just wish they'd leave me alone for 10 minutes. :/ I gotta get back to work.
Cells and virii, living together. :) Talk to you later!
Jared realized Jensen Ross either hadn't noticed or didn't care that he talked about being set up with a guy. That could be a good sign.
Part Four!
PG-13
Part 3 of 5
Master post
Art
The Cambridge Center for Adult Education was a good place to go for life drawing open studio, because they held it Thursday afternoons, which didn't interfere with Jared's job or his classes. That was one of the very few perks of working the overnight shift. Also, four hours with live models at CCAE was pretty cheap. He just had to ignore all the studying he could be doing. He had a massive test on Monday and he knew he should be preparing for it.
There were only two other people setting up when he got there, so he took a seat to the side where he'd have a good view of the models but hopefully wouldn't be blocking anyone's way. He turned his phone off, got out his pencils and charcoals, stuck a pen behind his ear just in case, and realized he'd be starving in four hours. He should've brought a snack.
The first model was a good-looking blond guy, which Jared knew would crack Chad up if he found out. He found himself wondering what Jensen Ross looked like without his clothes on, and even though Jared hadn't even tried to Google his face, the thought of his naked body was distracting enough that Jared had to snap his pencil against his own hand to make himself concentrate.
Fortunately the second model looked a lot like -
"Kat?" he said, surprised, as she dropped her robe. Someone hissed "Shh!" in his direction.
"Jared, right?" Kat answered, moving into her first pose. "The Kickstarter comic book guy. I'm not great with names."
"What are you doing here?"
"Modeling. What does it look like?" She grinned.
"Shh!" someone else hissed.
"I can talk and move at the same time." Kat twisted around into a new position. Jared wondered who was so annoyed that there was talking, but he had a pretty, shapely, naked woman standing right in front of him and given a choice, he'd rather draw her than argue with another artist. "What are you doing after this?"
"Eating."
"Can I come?"
"Sure. I'd like the company."
Chad's going to be pissed, he thought, then shrugged the thought away. Chad should know by now that Jared was no kind of competition when it came to girls.
Kat ran through poses for an hour and then everyone got a break, which gave Jared enough time to pee and run across the street to the gourmet Mini-Mart for a bottle of water and a couple of candy bars. Not the healthiest snack, but he'd get fruit or a salad or something later.
A different male model came back after the break - he was older and had a paunch and Jared appreciated the chance to get some practice drawing a middle-aged person who wasn't a hardbody. Kat rounded out the session with a few fifteen-minute poses, and then it was over and everyone was packing up their things and thanking the models (the first male model had returned and apparently the middle-aged guy had snuck in halfway through Kat's shift with his own sketchpad) and Jared had to wait in the hallway for Kat to get dressed.
They went to IHOP, because it was reasonably cheap and Jared had been craving pancakes for several days. He got a giant stack with sausage patties, skillet potatoes, and a fruit salad, and Kat just got a chicken sandwich.
She pointed to her sandwich and then Jared's tower of pancakes, and giggled. "Still a growing boy, huh?"
"Yep." He grinned serenely and forked up a mouthful of potatoes before drowning the pancakes and sausage in syrup. "But growing into what, that's the question."
"How's the Kickstarter going?"
"Well, it's only been up a week, so it's hard to tell. We got a bunch of pledges right away, but we mentioned it on the web site and Twitter and Facebook, so that was probably just the first wave. I think we're going to make our goal, but we'll see." He popped a grape in his mouth. "Did you pledge?" He made an encouraging face.
"Not yet. I'm a broke artist's model, what do you expect from me?" But she grinned. "Alona did, though. She wants the book."
"Cool. If she pledged enough for a sketch tell her I'll draw whatever she wants." He bit into a sausage. "This is the first time I've ever appealed to strangers for money that wasn't for school. It's the first time I ever had to really pimp myself. It's a little weird. I feel like I need a big purple hat and a cane."
"Didn't you have to sell yourself for grad school?"
Jared blinked, surprised Kat knew more about him than just "You're the Kickstarter guy". She just grinned wider.
"Alona told me," she explained. "Besides, I had to read through your site to get some good images for the web. Chad sent me the ones he wanted me to use but I thought I should read it anyway. So I read your bios, so I know you're in grad school. Science, right?"
"Microbiology. Immunology. And yeah, you have to kind of sell yourself to get into the program you want, but your work speaks for itself to a point, and I had really good recommendations."
"I don't really know any scientists. Most of my friends are arty types. I know a couple programmers, though. So geeky." She giggled. "Almost all of them knit, as if that's something they learn along with all the programming and bug-fixing. If you ever want crocheted dolls of your characters, I can hook you up."
Jared tried to imagine a crocheted Haro, either the contemporary crazy-homeless version or the alternate-West gunslinger version. It was kind of giggle-worthy to suddenly picture the guy as cuddly.
"You don't look convinced," Kat said. "That's ok, I'm not either." She took a bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed, asked "Do you like grad school?"
"I like my classes and I share a lab with my friends, which is good because it takes up a lot of time. For example! I have an all-day test on Monday." He cut a wedge of pancake and stuffed it in his mouth while he waited for Kat's reaction. She probably wouldn't believe him, or she would and she'd be appalled.
"Like eight hours?" And yep, she looked skeptical.
Jared nodded, swallowed. "Seven or eight, yeah. Enzymes. Fun stuff."
"Jesus."
There was silence as Jared ate his pancakes and tried to psych himself up for studying, and Kat sipped her soda.
"You've heard of Dr Sketchy's, right?" she asked after a minute. Jared's mouth was full so he just nodded. "You know they have a branch in Allston?" Now he shook his head. He hadn't known that, but to be fair he'd only ever heard of them because of his friend Aldis, and Aldis lived in New York so all of his interesting art-related events tended to be local to him rather than to Jared. "Every second Sunday at Great Scott. One of my friends is going to be modeling at the next one. You should come."
"Sundays, huh?"
"Sundays, huh." Kat sipped her coffee and grinned at him over the rim of the cup. "You won't have class or lab. You know you want to."
And actually, he kind of did.
* * *
Jared finished his full-day eight-hour test in just over seven hours. He'd only had three hours of sleep, but he didn't realize how exhausted he was until he got into his car to go home and all he wanted to do was lie down. He'd had exactly two full-day tests last semester, but clearly he'd blocked them from his mind. The professor, Dr Ferris, had brought in sandwiches and cookies and bottles of water so no one had to leave the room to eat before they were finished with the exam; you weren't allowed to bring in food.
He went home and collapsed for two hours of nap and even though Jared had managed to scarf down a couple of extra candy bars during bathroom breaks, he woke up from his nap starving.
While he thawed a bunch of frozen Texas-shaped waffles to snack on while he tried to figure out what to eat for dinner, Jared realized he hadn't done a damn thing all day besides take his exam. A new comic page was supposed to go up tomorrow and he hadn't lettered it or even finished the shading. He still had studying to do and a paper to read in preparation for group discussion tomorrow, not to mention at least eight hours of lab in his immediate future.
Shit. He leaned forward until his head thunked against the tabletop, then started planning. There was nothing to be gained by whining to himself. He could do the reading now and take his laptop to the lab. The page was already scanned into his hard drive, and he could at least do the lettering
He called Chad, left a voice mail - "What's the latest we can put up the next comic page? I can work on it in the lab but I can't promise anything" - ate a couple tuna sandwiches and a giant bowl of ice cream, and spent an hour and a half reading and trying to digest a couple of papers online before heading off to work.
"What did you think about Dr Ferris' test?" Welling asked Jared when he walked into the lab.
"I need a weekend," was Jared's answer.
"That bad, huh?"
"No, it was ok - I was more prepared than I thought I was, except for how much it made my brain hurt - I just have a lot of shit to do."
"Welcome to the wonderful world of grad school." He patted Jared on the shoulder sympathetically.
Jared stuck his earbuds in his phone, opened the app for the radio station, and put the phone in the pocket of his lab coat, which was, of course, short in the arms and tight across the shoulders. He really needed his own lab coat that fit properly. If Welling was so sympathetic, why hadn't he bought his own, so Jared could wear the one in the lab?
At least he seemed to be making progress on his project. He ignored Genevieve when she said she'd seen Rob earlier and not only was he still convinced someone was sabotaging his work, he was now convinced that whoever it was, was sabotaging other people's work in other labs too.
"Define 'sabotage,'" Welling said.
"Contaminating his cells," Genevieve told him.
"And he's sure it's not just him? Why would someone want to screw with other labs? What do you gain from that?"
Genevieve shrugged. Jared figured a big enough asshole might do that kind of thing, but he'd never met anyone that dickish in the program.
"The dark side of pranking," Danneel suggested. "When landing a TARDIS on the Great Dome is too fun."
"When did you come in?" Genevieve asked her.
"Just now." She ruffled Jared's hair as she walked by him on her way to the freezer. "It's too early for your DJ," she told him, when he looked up at her. He'd set his laptop on his bench and was working on the comic page. It clearly did not interest her, or she would have commented. Told him to take it off the bench, at least. "Are you listening to the station anyway?"
"I needed some music," he said.
"Don’t turn the radio on," Welling called.
"Don't worry."
Welling was still around at midnight, but Jared didn't care that he couldn't turn on the lab radio. He wasn't picky about how he got to hear Jensen Ross' voice, as long as he got to hear it.
Now we got something for the nurses at Brigham and Women's, from Josie and Nadine in pediatric oncology at Mass General. A little Dropkicks for a peaceful evening, here on 92.7 WBBR.
Jared figured that was sarcasm. The Dropkick Murphys were a lot of things, but "peaceful" wasn't generally one of them. He felt the urge to chair-dance.
A minute later Danneel walked by and whapped him on the shoulder with a folder. When he looked around at her she grinned, pointed to his earbuds, and asked "Something good on?"
"Was I chair-dancing?" He shook his ass just to make her giggle.
"If you could call it that." She patted him on the head. "How's your DJ? When you get a chance, can you come look at something for me? I don’t know what I did but it looks like I invented a new and exciting strain of Ebola."
For Jensen Ross' nightly "where are you and what are you doing" question, Jared texted Jared's massaging cells and lettering his comic, and Danneel is doing Ebola one better, to which the DJ's texted response was I hope Danneel is using those powers for good. Jared showed her the exchange, and she laughed.
"I never told you my life's ambition was to be an evil scientist, did I?" she said.
On Friday Jared's enzymes class was unexpectedly canceled when Dr Ferris called in sick at the last minute, so he went home. It was a nice day out - sunny, not ridiculously cold - and if nothing else, he'd just earned himself some extra time to walk the dogs.
Usually he walked them down the bike path to Davis Square and back, because if no one else was on the bike path he could throw balls for them and let them run a little. Today he went the other way out of the house and walked down to Powder House Circle and the giant rotary from hell, because he wanted a change of scenery and he could still throw balls for Harley and Sadie in the park there. Harley liked to pee against the old stone tower that had served as gun powder storage during the Revolutionary War, which Jared thought was kind of sacrilegious, but chasing his dogs up and down and around the hill was always a good workout.
A guy in a blue t-shirt and running shoes sat on a bench sucking on a water bottle and watching the dogs. Jared thought he looked familiar but couldn't figure out why. He was about to go over and say something, but Sadie took off after a squirrel, and by the time Jared got control of her, the guy was gone.
"That looks familiar," Chad commented later, looking over Jared's shoulder at the comic page he was drawing, which coincidentally included a version of the tower he'd walked Harley and Sadie around earlier. He would have added the hot guy on the bench, but it didn't fit the scene.
"The Powder House powder house," Jared said. "I took Harley and Sadie down there today."
"It looks kind of phallic."
"Everything does, to you."
"At least you didn't put the rotary in there. I don't want any of Haro's locations to look too much like Boston."
Chad already knew that contemporary Haro's big American city contained bits of Boston and surrounding towns, as well as bits of San Antonio and Houston and LA, as if Jared had thrown all the big cities he knew into a blender and set it on high. That was so Haro's city looked a little familiar but not entirely, because Chad wanted readers to think it could be anywhere, and so Jared could lay out a fictional city without having to make everything up.
Now Chad took the opportunity to tell Jared about some upcoming plot points and future characters, and then they talked about the next couple of pages, since Jared was working on the next one already, and by the time Jared got to the lab, he was so deep in thought about Haro that he almost walked by Danneel and Dr Whitfield without even seeing them. He wouldn't have expected Dr Whitfield to be here and probably would have passed him anyway if Danneel hadn't said "Just walk on by and don't say anything, it's ok," as he came up to them.
"Oh. Uh. Hi," he stammered, surprised. Danneel grinned brightly.
"Dr Whitfield says you haven't asked him to be on your thesis committee," she said. Dr Whitfield taught Jared's genomics class and was on Danneel's thesis committee. She thought highly of him and had suggested to Jared more than once that he ask the professor to be one of his thesis advisors.
"Have you chosen a committee yet?" Dr Whitfield asked.
"Sort of," Jared confessed, embarrassment making him break eye contact. You were supposed to do it in the beginning of your second year. Jared had set an internal goal for the middle of October, which meant he should have found all his advisors right about now. "I asked Dr Helfer, obviously, and then I got Dr Morgan and Dr Williams, and I asked Dr Hermann but he's retiring and isn't sure he'll be able to do it, and, uh, Dr Whitfield, will you be on my thesis committee?"
Dr Whitfield laughed. "Come see me and we'll discuss it. Miss Harris tried to give me a rundown of your project but I want to hear it from you."
Jared glanced at Danneel, who was trying to look innocent. It wasn't enough she was trying to set him up with Jensen Ross - she had to do it with his thesis advisors too? Although apparently he needed the push, so he shouldn't complain.
Just then someone called "Charles!" and the three of them turned to see Dr F waving and loping down the hallway. Jared really only knew him by sight; he wasn't even sure what Dr F's area of expertise was. He only knew that you'd sometimes see the guy wandering the halls of the building late at night, wearing his lab coat (which you weren't supposed to wear outside your lab) and talking to himself.
"You're here late," he told Dr Whitfield.
"And you're here early," Dr Whitfield said.
"Oh, you know, science never rests." He grinned. "Are these bright-eyed young people your students?"
Danneel snickered. Jared guessed she wasn't used to being called a young person any more than he was. And at nine on a weeknight in the lab, no one was really bright-eyed.
"Mr Padalecki is, yes." Jared waved. "Miss Harris is one of my advisees. She's doing well." Danneel beamed.
"Keep up the good work," Dr F told them.
"We should get back to it," Danneel said. "Bye, Dr Whitfield." She headed down the hall towards the lab and after saying goodbye to the two professors, Jared followed.
"Dr Whitfield said you were doing well," he told her as they walked.
"And the next thing out of his mouth was going to be 'but she could always be doing better,'" Danneel said. "He's more impressed by hard work than schmoozing. You have him for a class. You should know that. Although, to be honest, I kind of wanted to stay and talk to Dr F, just to say I did."
Jared sent himself a note on his phone when they got to the lab - Call Dr Whitfield re: thesis committee - and pulled out his sketchpad while he waited for Welling to finish with the centrifuge. A character based on Dr F was supposed to show up in the comic fairly soon, and now that Jared had gotten a good idea of his size and more than a passing glance at his face, he wanted to make some quickie sketches while he had time.
Later that night Jared was taking a break to stretch his legs and get out of the lab (and to listen to his radio show and his DJ in peace) when he encountered Dr F in the hallway near the lounge with the good vending machines.
"Hello!" Dr F called. "Charles' student, am I right?"
"Charles?" Jared repeated, momentarily confused. He pulled an earbud out of his ear to better hear Dr F. "Oh, you mean Dr Whitfield. Yeah. Hi."
"He's a good teacher. Very smart. Good man to have on your committee. He tells me you're in Tricia's lab. She's very, shall we say, determined. Tough. She demands the best from her lab, but a good scientist does. All the same, don't let her scare you off. Immunology is a fascinating field. Great potential there." He sounded ridiculously chipper and had a quick, clipped way of talking. Jared didn't think Dr F had taken one breath during his speech.
"I like it. It's interesting and it keeps me busy." That was an understatement.
"As it should, as it should. I must go - plans to make, theories to ponder. You know how it is. Good evening, Mr Padalecki." He nodded a goodbye and walked off.
Jared was impressed that Dr F had remembered his name.
"Why wouldn't he?" Genevieve asked later on, after Jared had gone back to the lab and related the story to her and Danneel.
"We only talked to him for three minutes."
"Guess you made an impression," Danneel said. "Call your favorite DJ and make another." She gestured at the radio with an empty cell bottle and grinned. Jared rolled his eyes. "Don't make that face at me. I know you're capable of talking to him without sounding stupid."
"What do I say?"
"What do you say. Say hi! Request a song. Tell him you had a really weird dream last night and he was in it."
She grinned brightly. Jared just rolled his eyes.
The phone line for the station was busy, oddly enough. Jared wondered if that was a sign that he should maybe stick with texts.
* * *
Sitting in the dining room trying to concentrate on his genomics reading, Jared realized that he actually kind of missed listening to his favorite DJ during the day. It was very quiet in the house - the dogs were asleep on his bed upstairs and Chad was at work - and his mind had wandered. He wondered if it was some kind of sign that he missed Jensen Ross' voice, and if so, a sign of what. Excessive reliance on a nice voice to get him through the night? It was just that Jensen sounded like a nice guy, interesting and fun and maybe someone Jared would like if they were to meet in real life.
And they'd had a conversation and Jared hadn't been too much of an idiot and Jensen even read Haro. He remembered something Alona had told him - that when guys said "She looks like a really nice person" about a woman they didn't know, they really meant "She looks hot and I want to bang her". Was he doing the voice version of that very thing? Was it even possible to want to fuck a voice?
Well, it was certainly possible to want to fuck the person behind a voice. And he didn't even know what Jensen looked like.
Jared had to set his mind on something else besides the DJ, and clearly genomics wasn't cutting it. He flipped open his laptop to check his and Chad's Kickstarter project and calculate the chances of them getting enough pledges to fund a trade paperback of their comic.
"Holy shit, we're getting close," he said out loud. "I think we're gonna do it."
He wondered if Jensen Ross had pledged yet.
He needed to start thinking about how long it might take him to draw sketches in people's books and to finish drawings for the couple of eighty-dollar pledges. He needed to talk to Chad - he wanted to ask how long it would take for the finished books to arrive from the printer, now that it looked like they might get all their requested funding and could actually print the damn things. He had to plan ahead.
He hoped he wouldn't have to put any class or lab work aside for Haro. He'd have to TA a class next semester, and he hoped that the comic wouldn't have to take a back seat to school either. Science paid his bills and fed his brain, but drawing fed his soul. He really needed both. He'd cut back on sleep if necessary, so he could have both.
Chad wasn't answering his phone and when Jared tried Excelsior Comics it went to voice mail, so he put on his running shoes and ran down to the store, where Alona, not Chad, sat behind the counter. There were only two other people in the store - a guy with wavy dark brown hair who was quite cute despite his nerdy black-framed glasses and grandpa cardigan, and a little blond boy wearing a bright blue jacket and holding his hand.
"Jared!" Alona said. "Did you ever read Bone?"
"Do you think it's appropriate for kids?" the good-looking guy asked, before Jared could answer her.
"I'd say so, yeah," Jared said. The little boy hanging on to the guy's hand looked expectant. Jared figured the boy was his and realized what the point of this whole exercise probably was. "It's a great epic adventure - princesses, evil queens, a big red dragon, a kingdom in danger. Oh, and locusts. It's also really funny and light-hearted. You'll like the stupid, stupid rat creatures." He knew he sure had. "Get the color trades. It was originally published in black and white but I think the color's more interesting for kids. Unless you want to color it in yourself." He winked at the little boy.
"Sacrilege!" Alona gasped.
"What do you think?" Mr Good-Looking-but-Nerdy asked his kid. "Does that sound good?" The little boy nodded. "Color or black and white?"
"Color!" the kid said.
"Color it is. You can read it to Walker and Henry, how does that sound?"
"No, Daddy, you read it!"
"I do voices," Good-Looking-but-Nerdy explained to Alona and Jared, sounding almost apologetic. Jared thought it was really cute that this guy read to his kids with different voices, but before he could say so, the guy asked "What am I looking for?" and when Alona pointed across the counter at the right shelf, he and his son turned to look.
"Do you want some other suggestions?" Jared asked. He hadn't read a lot of kid-appropriate comic books, but he'd hung around Excelsior long enough and listened to enough people that he could still make recommendations, and he liked getting the chance to talk comics with new people. "Bone's a classic. It's a great comic to start kids on. When you're ready for superheroes, Teen Titans is a pretty good bet - it was a cute cartoon, too - or if you like Bone, try Mouse Guard. It’s also a fantasy comic, although it's completely anthropomorphic - I know, a comic called Mouse Guard, it's about mice, what a surprise - it doesn't have dragons but it does have some fight scenes and maybe it's not - "
"Jared," Alona interrupted.
"What?"
"Don't stress him out."
Good-Looking-but-Nerdy was starting to look a little overwhelmed.
"Sorry about that," Jared said. "Here, it's right in front of you." He helpfully walked over, pulled a copy of the appropriate trade paperback of Bone off the shelf, and handed it over.
Good-Looking-but-Nerdy thanked him and paid for it, and then he and his kid left. Jared watched Alona watch them leave.
"Straight girls everywhere feel so deprived," she sighed. "But he probably makes his boyfriend very happy."
"I didn't think you worked on Thursdays," Jared said. "Where's Chad?"
"Getting lunch. And I don't. I was down here so I came by to say hi and he asked me to man the store while he found something to eat. Oh, you got the new Chew yesterday. I put it in your folder."
So Jared paid for it and talked to Alona about things that weren't grad school or lab work, but were rather comic books and cute boys and Pilates and the weird weather and when was Chad going to find himself a nice girlfriend so he'd stop hitting on all the women who came into the store?
"A girlfriend isn't going to stop him," Jared said. "In college he dated this one girl Sophia for two years and still flirted shamelessly with every girl he thought was cute. Even my sister, when she came to visit." He rolled his eyes, remembering. Fortunately he'd warned Megan about Chad, which was good because Chad hadn't taken Jared seriously when Jared had threatened murder if Chad laid a hand on his baby sister.
"And how did that go?"
"About as well as you probably think. I threatened bodily harm, Chad ignored me, Megan put him off, he persisted, I had to wrestle him to the ground and sit on him."
"I bet he loved that." Alona grinned.
"Who loved what?" Chad asked, appearing in the doorway with a plastic container, which he handed to Alona. "I brought you some baklava for watching the store. Hi, Moose. What are you doing here?"
"Keeping me company," Alona said. "Telling me about your failed attempt to flirt with his sister."
"Did he tell you he almost crushed me to death?"
"Yes." Alona giggled. Jared grinned. Chad sighed, sounding put-upon.
"It's a good thing you're cute," he muttered in Jared's direction.
"I sold a Bone trade but otherwise it was pretty quiet," Alona said, "and now that you're here, I can go." She came out from behind the counter and Chad took her place. "Bye, guys. See you later." And she took her baklava and left.
"Still haven't asked her out, huh?" Jared asked. Chad sighed again.
"She won't have me," he said mournfully. "What are you doing here, anyway? Don't you have pages to draw or books to read or something? Cells to divide? When are you going to get your own love life so you can stop mocking mine?"
"I only mock because I care," Jared said cheerfully. "I needed some exercise. And I wanted to know how long it will take to get the books from the printer, if we make our Kickstarter goal."
"I don't know. Couple weeks? Depends on when we send them our file. They'll send us a proof, we’ll approve it, they'll send us crates of books. You know we'll probably get our funding, right?"
"That's why I wanted to know. I'm trying to plan ahead for all the sketches I'll have to do. Did I already suggest we put Haro on hiatus until I'm done with those?"
"Yeah. It's not a bad idea. You don't want to overextend yourself."
"I'm mostly worried about giving up sleep. Shit, we still need to finalize an idea for the print."
"Finish the layout for the printer first," Chad said. "How are you coming on that, anyway? I know you got all the color covers done. They'll look fucking amazing in print, have I told you that already?"
"Once or twice." Jared grinned, pleased and flattered. "I'm almost finished with the re-lettering. I might take my laptop to the lab tonight so I can get it done. All my experiments are in the 'hurry up, wait' stage, so I have a lot of downtime, and I'm making good progress on the new page."
"Good, good." Chad had turned at least half of his attention to the store computer and was no longer focused on Jared. But Jared didn't mind; he'd gotten an answer to his question, more or less, and he did have other things to do. So he said goodbye to his housemate, did some stretches in the hallway, went up the stairs, held the door for a nicely-built guy in a baseball cap entering the building, and jogged home.
He checked his email when he got back to the house, half expecting something from Dr Helfer, and was subsequently unsurprised that she had emailed him about his project. He composed a response in the shower, typed it up while he ate some waffles and bananas, and forced himself to finish his genomics reading. It never failed to surprise him that no matter what kind of information it was trying to impart, a science textbook could strip out all the really compelling stuff and made it boring as hell, and really hard to focus on.
Welling never showed at the lab, so Jared snagged the appropriately-sized lab coat for once. He turned the radio on around ten and just left it on all night, because he could. He pushed stuff around on his bench to make room for his laptop, and Genevieve hung over his shoulder and watched him re-letter the last couple of pages of Haro's first issue. She only asked two questions - why was he doing it (to make the lettering consistent for the trade paperback) and was he going to re-letter the whole thing (no). He didn't mind.
"Are you going to get the money to print it?" she asked when he was finished.
"Looks like it. I'm preparing myself to make a hundred sketches in a hundred books."
"Sounds like fun."
Jared shrugged. It sounded like work, was what it sounded like. But the idea of getting to sketch a hundred different things for a hundred different people was kind of exciting, and wasn't that why he'd agreed to draw Chad's comic in the first place? To hone his drawing chops, sure, but to do this thing he really enjoyed that he was pretty good at, and to share it with other people?
His thoughts started drifting towards cover designs and the mystery print, and he dragged them back. He turned the radio up to help him concentrate on science instead.
This one's for the Helfer Lab at MIT. The Boss, on WBBR.
The intro to Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love" floated out of the radio. Jared shot a look at Genevieve, who was now sitting in front of the hood with an expression of utmost innocence on her face. She had clearly been taking lessons from Danneel.
Helfer Lab is full of matchmakers, Jared texted Jensen Ross. Cells and virii, living together! Oh, the cellularity!
Heh! Jensen texted back. Funny guy.
Didn't I say I only used my powers for good? : ) I think my friends are trying to set me up.
Any luck?
I don't know, I haven't met him yet. But they're persistent.
If they're really your friends, you shouldn't worry.
I just wish they'd leave me alone for 10 minutes. :/ I gotta get back to work.
Cells and virii, living together. :) Talk to you later!
Jared realized Jensen Ross either hadn't noticed or didn't care that he talked about being set up with a guy. That could be a good sign.
Part Four!