J2 AU fic; That's How Easy Love Can Be
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: G
Wordcount: 2000
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Jared doesn't understand love.
A/N: Title from The Jackson 5's ABC.
Jared’s Papa drives him to school every day. Every day his Dad kisses his Papa goodbye on their door step. And every morning without fail, Mrs. Blake peeks out from behind her curtains to scowl at them as they get in the car.
One night before bed Jared asks his Dad why they have to kiss every morning, and he tells him, “Because your Papa and I love each other very much.” Then he says goodnight and turns off the light.
Jared lays in bed forever, staring at the ceiling. What sort of thing would make you want to kiss someone, even if it makes your neighbors glare at you behind their curtains? Even if it makes the kids at school talk behind your back.
So he gets out of bed, walks down the hall, shakes his Dad awake and asks, “What’s love?”
His Dad picks him up and brushes a hand through his unruly hair, rubbing at the spot where his glasses sit. Jared can tell it’s a hard question.
After a long moment he whispers, like an important secret, “Love is when you care about someone so much that nothing else matters.”
Jared is suitably shocked, “Nothing?”
His Dad shakes his head, “Not a thing.”
“What about head lice? I couldn’t even like someone with head lice. Or a tornado! Could you love someone so much not even a tornado mattered?"
Dad sighs deeply, looks him right in the eyes and says, “Jared, I love you so much I’d walk straight through a tornado to get to you. Even if the wind picked me up and blew me 100 miles away. Even if you had head lice.”
Jared thinks his Dad is crazy.
He spends the next day scanning the class room for a single person he would even go outside in a tornado for. He looks over at Chad, who’s eating glue at the craft table instead of using it on the paper. Definitely not.
Sandy’s real nice, but she won’t play football and one time she tried to hold his hand. That was weird.
He’s trying to decide if Genevieve would still be pretty with head lice when Miss Beth walks back into the classroom.
She stops at the front of the room and clears her throat, “Class we have a new student joining us today!” She turns to usher someone out from behind her, “Can you tell the class your name?”
The boy is wearing a thinning Metallica shirt that hangs down past his arms and a Batman backpack. He has dark blonde hair that someone tried desperately to flatten and failed. It falls chaotically around his head in messy spikes, obscuring his face as he stares at the ground, shaking his head.
Miss Beth quickly takes pity on him, saying brightly, “This is Jensen, can we all say hello to him?”
There’s a lackluster chorus of “Hello Jensen’s” from around the room, but the boy’s eyes never leave his sneakers. Jared watches the teacher lead Jensen to a desk right next to the window and give him some paper to draw on.
The new boy must notice him staring because his eyes dart up to meet Jared’s, his face colouring bright red when he smiles. Genevieve decides that the new kid is weird, and everyone else promptly agrees. Jared thinks he looks kind of nice.
Jensen doesn’t talk the whole first week. Not during sharing time, or recess or even before snack, when Chad calls him Freckle-Face. Jared’s nervous to talk to him, cause he’s scared he won’t talk back. His Papa says he’s probably just shy, and that it’s hard moving to a new place. So Jared’s decided maybe he’ll just share his lunch with him and then he won’t be so shy anymore.
He spends the whole morning trying to figure out what he’ll say to Jensen when he gives it to him, and decides on “Hi, I’m Jared. Here’s a cookie.” Simple.
Jared goes up to his desk right when the lunch bell chimes, takes one look at Jensen’s green eyes and too big t-shirt and says, “Hi, I’m Jared. Jared Padalecki. But no one can say that part. Some people call me JT, but you can just call be Jared if you want. My Dad made this cookie. And. Um. Here.” Then he turns and walks away as fast as he can.
He’s pretty sure Jensen thinks he’s a huge dork now, so he avoids him the whole rest of the day. Just thinking about it makes his stomach into one big knot. But when he goes to sit at his desk the next morning there’s a giant chocolate chip cookie waiting for him.
Jared’s eyes seek out Jensen at his desk by the window. He’s drawing again, sun filtering in from behind him and lighting his hair up gold. Jensen looks up at him for a moment and smiles.
It’s just a smile, but his freckles crinkle softly around his cheeks and Jared might have had a heart attack.
In the end it’s Chad that makes Jensen talk, of course. He’s made it his own private mission to figure out something that would bug him. Jared’s heard Shortie, Dumbo, Fart Face and his personal favorite, Ugly Snot Head. Chad’s not very creative.
They’re sitting at a picnic table during recess when it happens. Chad’s banging on the wood of the bench, trying to mess up Jensen’s drawing while repeating, “Jensen, Jensen, Jensen”. Even Jared’s getting a little annoyed.
It’s when he clips his name to, “Jen, Jen, Jen” that things get a little out of control. At first he’s so quiet that Jared barely hears it, but the second time the whole class stops talking.
“Don’t call me that,” Jensen says.
Chad is absolutely gleeful, “What, Jen?”
Jensen nods, face the color of a tomato. Chad smiles and predictably starts singing to the tune of Mary Had A Little Lamb, “Jen Jen Jen Jen Jen..” And just like that Jensen jumps up and punches Chad right square in the stomach.
Everyone is too surprised to move at first, and then all the girls are screaming and Chad’s wailing like he’s about to die. Jared thinks he’s probably just as shocked as the rest of them and trying to cover for it.
In all the excitement Jensen manages to run off into the play structure. By then Miss Beth is there and Chad’s halfway through telling her how Jensen “attacked him from behind for no reason like some kind of crazy person”. Jared rolls his eyes and sets out to find him.
The whole play structure is made of brightly colored plastic tubes. It’s very hard to navigate when you’re looking for someone. Jared crawls through four different tubes and goes down at least two slides before he hears him.
There’s a sniffle coming from the red area on the end of the structure. He calls out, “Jensen?”
Nothing but sniffles. Slowly crawling forward he spots him, curled at the very edge of the tube. His face is buried in his shirt and he doesn’t even look up when Jared sits down beside him.
Jared plans to sit in comforting silence, but ends up randomly blurting out, “I, um, really like your shirts.”
To his surprise Jensen peeks out from his arms and says quietly, “They were my Dad’s, he liked a whole bunch of cool stuff.”
Jared shifts closer and asks, “What kinda stuff?”
They end up curled around each other at the end of the tube, Jared playing with the splitting edge of Jensen’s shirt and Jensen talking mostly into his neck. He’s using Jared’s arm as a pillow, and it went numb a while back. He doesn’t really mind.
Jensen eventually looks up and says, “He used to call me Jen, he was the only one that did, and now no one does. So I don’t want Chad calling me that.”
His eyes are tearing up and it’s raising this weird panicky feeling in Jared’s stomach, so he hugs Jensen closer to his body and tells him, “I wouldn’t worry about that. You got him pretty good.”
Jensen laughs softly against him and it brings up a whole different feeling in his stomach.
“Hey,” he says. “Before I got adopted my Mom used to call me Jay. It’s one of the only things I remember about her, but no one calls me that now.”
Jensen looks up shyly through wet lashes, “I could call you Jay maybe, and you could call me Jen. If you wanted.”
Jared grins hugely down and him, and says, “Okay, and I have two Dad’s you know. So if you wanted to share, I wouldn’t mind.”
And when Jen smiles, like the sun after a rainstorm, everything’s bright again.
They’re nearly inseparable after that. Jensen comes over and plays with Jared’s action figures, and Jared gets to read Jensen’s comics. They agree that Batman is better than Spider Man, but Jared prefers Thor where Jensen likes Captain America. That’s okay though because they never fight over who gets to be who when they play super heroes.
They listen to metal bands in Jensen’s basement, and bake cookies in Jared’s kitchen. Jensen doesn’t play football, but he’ll sit outside and draw while Jared does.
One time it starts raining out and instead of running inside Jensen just stands there. Jared watches from the safety of the porch as he spins and spins until he falls down, soaking wet and laughing.
He shouts, “Jared c’mon, it’s fun!” But Jared shakes his head and watches from behind the glass; thinks to himself maybe Jensen’s a little crazy too.
It happens in the Fall, the next school year. Jared will always remember it was Fall because Jensen was constantly stopping to pick up leaves. Something he always thought was dumb before that day.
Mrs. Haggerty had told them to pick out their three favorite things, and they had to get up in front of the class and say what they were and the letter they started with.
Jared’s were F for Football, M for Movies and F for Food. Chad said it didn’t count cause he used the same letter twice, but he couldn’t pick between football and food, so he had to put in both.
Jensen’s been nervous about it all week, he’s never been good talking in front of people. Jared fidgets it his seat when the other boy’s name is called, hoping he does alright.
Jensen seems surprisingly composed, even if he’s twisting his shirt around his hands. Taking a deep breath he says, “D is for drawing. M is for Metallica.”
He looks up, eyes finding Jared in the class room and continues, smiling big like he only does when it’s just them, “And J is for Jay-red.”
Jared’s never blushed before in his life, but he does then. Chad’s making kissing noises and part of him feels embarrassed, but Jen’s still smiling.
It’s that smile Jared’s only seen a handful of times. The one hidden in blanket forts in the middle of the night. Over the glow of their shared flashlight, faces cast half in shadow as Jared tells him every secret he’s never told anyone.
It’s even better in the light of day, blinding. And Jared can’t help but smile back.
They walk home together after school, and Jensen’s lagging way behind, making them late. Again. They make it about half way when the sky cracks wide open. Jared’s about to run for cover when he sees Jensen, face tilted into the storm. It falls around him like a halo, electricity buzzing in the air.
His breath catches in his throat and Jared realizes he doesn’t care anymore. Doesn’t care if he’s soaked to the bone, if lightning hits them, if a tornado takes them a hundred miles away. Because as long as their together nothing else matters.
He runs over, laughing. Holds Jensen’s face in his hands and whispers, “Jen, Jen.” Over and over like a promise.
Jensen opens his eyes to him, like he knew he’d come eventually; bulb-bright in the downpour he says, “Jay.”
And just like that, Jared falls in love.
❤