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Entry tags:
Digging Deep, 2/?, NC-17, Jensen/Jared, WIP
Title: Digging Deep, Part 2/?
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
tru_faith_lost
Pairings: Jared/Jensen, eventually
Rating: NC-17, eventually
Words: ~3200, this part.
Warnings: Language and bad attitudes, but I swear the attitudes will change. It's called character development. Gotta start somewhere. WIP. AU. Disabled comments.
Summary: Jared was at the beginning of his running career. Jensen thought he was at the end of his own. Time to find out if those who can't, teach, or if those who teach, can. Hurt!Sick!Jensen randomly interspersed throughout, because there really is no other motivation like that one.
Disclaimer:Not to be taken seriously by the readers or those whose names may be mentioned herein.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
“Ah! Christ!” Not a morning prayer. Nothing wrong with a little religion in the morning, but Jared tended to spend his nights worshipping at a whole other altar. Speaking of which, there were probably enough residual,Oh God-ohgodohgodohgod’s hanging in the air just then to warrant a prayer for the forgiveness of blasphemy. Except Jared wasn’t sorry. He was prepared to be smote down for homosexuality, if it turned out that was actually a sin (he suspected that was bullshit), but he wasn’t going to be taken down for hypocrisy. He started to flip over in his bed, buried his face away from the sunlight creeping in through the blinds, and grunted when the bruises on his hipbones pressed into the mattress, throbbing. He sucked in a hiss of breath, lips curling back in a pleased grin, because, God, that hurt so good.
And he wasn’t apologizing for that little blaspheme either.
In turning, enough of the sheets came rucked up around him to make it obvious the bed was empty except for him. Awesome. Perfect. Just what Jared liked -- no fuss, no muss, no stranger he barely remembered (and what was that guy’s name anyway? Dave? Dirk? Dick?) looking to trade awkward touches and get all cooshy in Jared’s bed. The wet spot probably wasn’t even cold yet when the dude high-tailed it out of there. Jared should really get an electric timing device for his bedroom door. One of these guys was bound to set a land speed record, and Jared would be sure to send him flowers to commemorate the occasion.
It never ceased to amaze him how fast drunk, bicurious, and willing to put it in any slippery hole, flip flopped into mortified and looking to commandeer a canoe down that fabled river in Egypt once the endorphins wore off.
His life was a Katy Pery song, and it wasn’t the one about kissing girls.
“Mmm,” he waited for the ache to subside, settled on his stomach, arms and pillow over his head. Good thing last night’s guy... okay, he was going with Dick, because that’s all he really was to Jared, anyway... Good thing Dick was gone, because Jared had practice that morning (cross country practice, fuckity, fuck... sideways), and he wanted first shower, didn’t think Sam would appreciate him leaving his boytoy for her to find when she came in to get the laundry. As house mothers went, Samantha Ferris was pretty awesome, but she never subscribed to the whole, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” mentality. She didn’t have to ask, considered that an insult to the intelligence of everyone involved, and she didn’t need permission to say exactly what was on her mind. She had no problem cleaning skid marks out of shorts, but if she had to strip a bed around a one night stand, that was one stain that wasn’t getting lifted. And Jared would hear about it, just like everyone in the house got to hear the stain in progress.
Lucky for Jared, his frat brothers didn’t do his laundry, because he wasn’t about to put a damper on his bedroom crosstraining any time soon, and he had a thing for clean sheets. He had another for not pissing off Sam. Sure, he was a Teek, fabled brother of meatheads across the country all proudly waving the Tau Kappa Epsilon banner, but he wasn’t so much thick in the head as just... thick all over and used to getting his own way.
Today, his way would be to find an email in his box announcing that the whole cancellation of his track program was a sick joke and that he could blow off cross country and the totally craptastic morning practices. But he’d fought it tooth and nail for the majority of the past summer, his daddy’s alum status and giant pocketbook as his sword and shield. There just wasn’t enough money in the world to buy off the NCAA or convince his Texas school to cancel football instead. Still, even death row inmates occasionally got a last minute pardon. He fumbled on the nightstand for his phone, just in case such an email had managed to find its way to his inbox.
Glancing at the touch screen as it gleamed to life, he had half a second to think, “Whoa that’s a lot of messages,” and open the first one before he realized said message had been sent at 7:30 a.m., which couldn’t possibly be right because his alarm was set for... “Oh shit.” His next motion was exactly what he’d imagined as a child every time someone read him the part in ’Twas the Night Before Christmas where the dude “sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.” Only Jared knew what the matter was. The matter was, his alarm clock was cold and dead on the bedroom floor, its backup battery dangling from beneath like entrails from a gut wound.
Hindsight being twenty/twenty and all, he figured it was possible that one of the loud crashes the night before had actually been the clock taking a dive off the end table and not just another routine, shut-the-fuck-up-over-there wall fist from Chad in the next room. That would, of course, explain why the first message on his phone was Chad, already at practice and wondering where the fuck was Jared.
First day of practice with the new assistant coach, and Jared was still in bed, rode hard and put up wet by last night’s cowboy up. Way to make a first impression.
Reaching for his pants, he one-thumbed a quick and poorly spelled, ‘AM CUMMIN,’ to Chad with his phone hand, barely noticing that the resulting message actually implied something else entirely, then clicked End and scrambled into his clothes without showering. A little more funk wasn’t going to hurt anything. That part of Texas smelled like used cat litter on humid mornings, anyway. Yet another reason Jared preferred afternoon practices.
He nearly took down Sam on his way into the hallway as she made her way out of Chad’s room with a basket full of laundry. Unperturbed at being near trampled by stampeding Padalope, she blew the mussed hair out of her eyes and blocked him from getting past. “Y’know there’s a hefty fine for hit and run drivers in these parts, Jared.”
Flustered and torn between giving her his full attention or jerking his shoes on the rest of the way so he wasn’t walking on the backs of them, he compromised, made a sweeping bow, arm across his waist as he bent. “Ladies, first,” and used the time he was bent over to pull his shoes up. He begged apology with his eyes as he straightened, “Late for practice.”
“So, I gathered,” Sam shrugged. “Nobody else in the house except Tom and Matt.”
“Lucky bastards. Football still practices at a reasonable hour,” Jared snorted.
“And the rest of you running fools don’t stay up all hours of the night, gettin’ them damned temporary tattoos all over themselves,” Sam chastised, indicating the line of hickeys coloring Jared’s collar bone.
“That’s only because the haven’t discovered the wonders of post-coital endorphins as performance enchancing drugs. Too bad for them,” Jared teased, giving her a quick peck on the forehead as he brushed past. “Don’t worry. He’s gone.”
Sam humphed and shouldered into Jared’s room, mumbling. “More worried about the fact that you’re so good at running ‘em off.”
Jared paused with his hand poised to knock on Tom’s door. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means even prostitutes have regulars, punkin,” and she said it with an ‘aww, it’s so tragic he doesn’t see it’ tilt to her head. Then, she rolled her eyes and dropped her clothes basket, went to work cleaning.
“Oookay,” Jared mimed, pounding Tom’s door. “Tom! Tommmaaaay, I need a ride to practice!” He really should’ve been more affable with his request. It wasn’t Tom’s fault that Jared had no car. (Which wasn’t fair to begin with. Jared wasn’t even in his car when that guy hit it. The insurance company was being paranoid to restrict his coverage to within his parents’ hometown. His parents were being completely unreasonable by enforcing the restriction, but so far, no luck getting the ban lifted. Of course, he was always free to buy his own car and get his own insurance, but that sounded like, uh, too muchresponsibility trouble.) “Tommmaaaay!”
From the other side of the door, a muffled, “Fuck you, Padalecki.”
“Sorry. You’re too gay for me, Welling. Might want a relationship or something.” He was about to open the door when it swung inward away from his hand, and a key pressed into his palm. “Hey, thanks... but, these aren’t your car keys...”
“Bike rack. There’s a wrench on that keychain to put the wheel back on.” The devious smirk on his face was somehow nullified by the raging case of bedhead going on above it.
“Your bike?” Jared scoffed. “I don’t ride bikes.” Very few things made him hyper aware of his six foot four inch stature. Bikes were one of them. Somehow riding with A) his ass a foot above the bike frame or B) his knees hitting him in the chest, made him feel like a stilt walker. Besides, those seats were just... He felt himself clenching at the prospect. Not like he owned a pair of padded shorts or anything. “Just... no.” The keys dangled in his hand like something he’d just removed from a mousetrap.
“Then I suggest you start running, track star,” Welling sneered. The door shut hard enough to blow the hair off Jared’s forehead and force him to take a step back.
“Track star. Right. Practice. Right. Well, shit.” He tossed the keychain in the air once, caught it, shaking his head, and trotted down the stairs. Late was one thing. Completely absent was grounds for a full team dogpile of harassment. Jared wasn’t afraid of recrimination. He’d kicked the asses of everyone on the team at least once. You didn’t get to be out and proud in this neck of the woods without flexing a little muscle. But he’d be a knee-bouncing, toe-tapping bundle of nerves if he didn’t get his run in.
His shoulders sagged at the bike rack, eyeballing Tom’s Mongoose like it was something out of the Spanish Inquisition. The sacrifices a guy wouldn’t make to stay in the game. His ride to practice was definitely going to be spent devising a method of torture suitable for Welling. It wouldn’t be hard. Tom was a football player. Jared was a runner. Running was every other sport’s punishment.
--
If Jared ever entertained the possibility of reconciling Cross Country with Track under the delusion that all running endorphins were created equal, Cross Country lost considerable ground on the basis of, well, the grounds. Show up late to a Track practice, and all Jared had to do was cut under the bleachers to the far side of the track and capitalize on the fact that Coach didn’t have eyes on the back of his head. Try to sneak across the golf course to the polo field, late and on a bike, and he might as well have been a swan in a gaggle of geese.
Luckily, not all of the geese were onto Jared. All he needed was... there. He dumped the bike on the side of the trail and fell into step along the next guy to run by. Actually, limp by was a more apt description. He’d seen the occasional runner with an unorthodox gait. In his high school, one of the girls on the team had been hit by a car as a kid and dragged one leg through the two mile at every meet. Sad thing was, she could, and most of the girls with two legs couldn’t. He hadn’t seen anyone with quite this much hitch in his giddyup at the college level, but then, he’d never gone to a cross country meet. He hadn’t met half of the guys on the integrated team. For all he knew, the dude was just running with an unfortunate case of morning wood. Of course, those bowlegs couldn’t have been helping his cause any.
Shrugging internally, Jared stuck out his hand. “Jared,” he offered, “And don’t tell me I’m about to be lapped.”
The guy took his hand. “Jensen,” he said, barely glancing over, his eyes fixed on the horizon, footsteps perfectly metered, despite the awkward stride, everything above his waist the picture of balance and control, breath huffing in and out to a three count in time with his feet. “And it’d be pretty hard to get lapped on a single loop, unless you’re running backwards.”
“Heh.” Funny guy was funny. Not. Jared cleared his throat, the exercise just starting to loosen the phlegm in his chest. “You caught me.”
“Caught you what?”
Okay, now, there was such a thing as intense, but this Jensen was focused to a whole other level of self-absorbed. Jared could appreciate a certain level of determination in a fellow athlete, that ability to tune out everything except the challenge and the drive to meet it.
He wasn’t quite as appreciative of the ability to tune him out. He kinda wanted to trip this guy. Instead, he put on his best dimpled smile, ducked his head with mock embarrassment. “Well, I sorta forgot the route. I’m used to running on a track.”
Jensen nodded, curt.
Jared tried again. “So, this is the right trail, then? I got turned around at the water hazard, couldn’t remember if we were supposed to go around the north side or the south.”
“It’s the right trail,” Jensen said. “Keep on the rough until you hit the green at the ninth hole and then veer around the polo field, loop back around to the parking lot where we started.”
For a second, Jared thought maybe he was the one limping, his entire equilibrium thrown off just as effectively as a kick to the sack. This guy was giving him the brush off? Guys didn’t brush Jared off. Jared drove them away. That was the way of the universe, and Jared’s universe did not just bend like light around a heavenly body. Especially not around crooked-legged (but otherwise, yeah, heavenly-bodied) guys named Jensen. “Y’know, I’ve never actually been to the polo field. You mind if I run with you?”
“Won’t that ruin your pace?” Jensen asked.
“Oh, I never pay attention to pace,” Jared said. “I listen to my body. It lets me know where it wants to groove.”
Jensen’s Adam’s apple jumped, a silent hmmph of, his mouth turning down at the corners.
“What?” Jared sniped, his aggravation finally bubbling to the surface. “Not everyone runs like there’s a scientific equation to it. Some of us have this thing called talent. You might have heard of it? Generally comes with a little voice called intuition?”
Jared knew he’d lost his cool. His field of vision narrowed as his normally open expression started to clamp down. Lips pressed tightly together, his chin jutted forward, and his feet quickened their pace.
He was a good three strides ahead when he heard Jensen laugh.
“So, what you’re saying,” Jensen chuckled, “Is that those who can, do, and those who can’t, pretend to know more than those who can.”
Jared slowed again, mulled that over. “In a roundabout way, I guess, yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
For the first time since Jared stepped on the trail, Jensen turned his full gaze on him. He had green eyes that crinkled at the corners, either with amusement or from looking into the sun. “I’m sure the new coach will be glad to hear that, since he assigned everyone a training pace for the day based on their best recorded mile time.” He shrugged, mouth quirking. “I’m just guessing that since you’re such a natural talent, your assigned pace must be a lot faster than a gimp like me can handle.”
“Uh...” Jared wondered how he managed to get his foot so far down his throat without ever missing a step. “Well, it probably would be...” he waffled, “except that I don’t have a best mile time.”
“You’ve never run a mile?” Now there was no question this guy was laughing at him. Jared wanted to be pissed, but it turned out he preferred being laughed at to being ignored.
“Of course, uh, I have,” Jared explained. “Y’know, in practice. But not at race pace, exactly. I’m more of a sprinter.”
“What is, ‘not at race pace, exactly?’”
At that point, Jared couldn’t help but laugh at himself, too. “That’s kind of a funny story.”
“I might be a little gimpy, but my ears work just fine,” Jensen said.
“I raced a mile once, but I wasn’t used to all the runners being in the same lane.” Jared fixed his gaze up the road, fully aware how this was going to make him sound. “I got frustrated when I coudn’t get around them and ran off the track, so technically, I DQ’d.”
This time it was a real laugh, started deep in Jensen’s chest and rumbled up his throat before he tipped his head back and laughed out loud. “Oh, that is classic!” After a few solid guffaws at Jared’s expense (which Jared actually didn’t mind) Jensen regained his composure enough to add, “But seriously, even if you DQ’d, there should’ve been a watch time.”
“Oh, there was,” Jared huffed, his mood suddenly sullen.
“And?”
“And Coach wouldn’t let them tell me what it was. Said I didn’t earn it because I cheated.”
Jensen didn’t seem surprised. “Oh yeah, that sounds like Christian, all right.”
Jared didn’t so much miss a step as stop in his tracks. “Wait? Christian? You know the Coach?”
Jensen stopped, then, too, mopped at the sweat on the back of his neck. “Kind of.”
“Kind of how?” Jared asked. He suspected that raccoon they’d caught in the garage last semester had felt its skin shrink up just this tight when that trap door slammed shut on his ring-tailed ass.
“We ran track together in high school,” Jensen dead panned. “That’s why he asked me to come help him coach Cross Country.” He stuck out his hand. “Jensen Ackles, assistant coach. I’ve heard a lot about you, Jared.”
Jared didn’t forget the way Jensen had just used that particular hand to wipe sweat when he shook it, anyway. He was in shit so deep, a little sweat was the least of his worries. “I-I’ll bet you have.” He waited for Jensen to turn away and pick up his run before he added, “Ah, Christ.”
This time, it might have been a prayer.
TBC
A/N: Sorry it took me awhile to get this posted. Turns out running is like a second job. :/ I'm aware that this Jared is a little dickish at this point in the story. I mentioned this to my compadre, and she said, "Yeah, but he kind of has to be for the story to work." She's right, of course. She's always right. Think of it as leaving plenty of room for character growth, and I promise he'll be the Jared we all know and love by the end. He has his reasons for acting the way he does. Also, it's probably obvious I haven't had this betaed. I'll probably read it over after it's been up for a few days and then facepalm at the mistakes in it, but I won't make you wait any longer. Free fic. Yum. Good.
Author:
tru_faith_lostPairings: Jared/Jensen, eventually
Rating: NC-17, eventually
Words: ~3200, this part.
Warnings: Language and bad attitudes, but I swear the attitudes will change. It's called character development. Gotta start somewhere. WIP. AU. Disabled comments.
Summary: Jared was at the beginning of his running career. Jensen thought he was at the end of his own. Time to find out if those who can't, teach, or if those who teach, can. Hurt!Sick!Jensen randomly interspersed throughout, because there really is no other motivation like that one.
Disclaimer:Not to be taken seriously by the readers or those whose names may be mentioned herein.
Chapter One
“Ah! Christ!” Not a morning prayer. Nothing wrong with a little religion in the morning, but Jared tended to spend his nights worshipping at a whole other altar. Speaking of which, there were probably enough residual,Oh God-ohgodohgodohgod’s hanging in the air just then to warrant a prayer for the forgiveness of blasphemy. Except Jared wasn’t sorry. He was prepared to be smote down for homosexuality, if it turned out that was actually a sin (he suspected that was bullshit), but he wasn’t going to be taken down for hypocrisy. He started to flip over in his bed, buried his face away from the sunlight creeping in through the blinds, and grunted when the bruises on his hipbones pressed into the mattress, throbbing. He sucked in a hiss of breath, lips curling back in a pleased grin, because, God, that hurt so good.
And he wasn’t apologizing for that little blaspheme either.
In turning, enough of the sheets came rucked up around him to make it obvious the bed was empty except for him. Awesome. Perfect. Just what Jared liked -- no fuss, no muss, no stranger he barely remembered (and what was that guy’s name anyway? Dave? Dirk? Dick?) looking to trade awkward touches and get all cooshy in Jared’s bed. The wet spot probably wasn’t even cold yet when the dude high-tailed it out of there. Jared should really get an electric timing device for his bedroom door. One of these guys was bound to set a land speed record, and Jared would be sure to send him flowers to commemorate the occasion.
It never ceased to amaze him how fast drunk, bicurious, and willing to put it in any slippery hole, flip flopped into mortified and looking to commandeer a canoe down that fabled river in Egypt once the endorphins wore off.
His life was a Katy Pery song, and it wasn’t the one about kissing girls.
“Mmm,” he waited for the ache to subside, settled on his stomach, arms and pillow over his head. Good thing last night’s guy... okay, he was going with Dick, because that’s all he really was to Jared, anyway... Good thing Dick was gone, because Jared had practice that morning (cross country practice, fuckity, fuck... sideways), and he wanted first shower, didn’t think Sam would appreciate him leaving his boytoy for her to find when she came in to get the laundry. As house mothers went, Samantha Ferris was pretty awesome, but she never subscribed to the whole, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” mentality. She didn’t have to ask, considered that an insult to the intelligence of everyone involved, and she didn’t need permission to say exactly what was on her mind. She had no problem cleaning skid marks out of shorts, but if she had to strip a bed around a one night stand, that was one stain that wasn’t getting lifted. And Jared would hear about it, just like everyone in the house got to hear the stain in progress.
Lucky for Jared, his frat brothers didn’t do his laundry, because he wasn’t about to put a damper on his bedroom crosstraining any time soon, and he had a thing for clean sheets. He had another for not pissing off Sam. Sure, he was a Teek, fabled brother of meatheads across the country all proudly waving the Tau Kappa Epsilon banner, but he wasn’t so much thick in the head as just... thick all over and used to getting his own way.
Today, his way would be to find an email in his box announcing that the whole cancellation of his track program was a sick joke and that he could blow off cross country and the totally craptastic morning practices. But he’d fought it tooth and nail for the majority of the past summer, his daddy’s alum status and giant pocketbook as his sword and shield. There just wasn’t enough money in the world to buy off the NCAA or convince his Texas school to cancel football instead. Still, even death row inmates occasionally got a last minute pardon. He fumbled on the nightstand for his phone, just in case such an email had managed to find its way to his inbox.
Glancing at the touch screen as it gleamed to life, he had half a second to think, “Whoa that’s a lot of messages,” and open the first one before he realized said message had been sent at 7:30 a.m., which couldn’t possibly be right because his alarm was set for... “Oh shit.” His next motion was exactly what he’d imagined as a child every time someone read him the part in ’Twas the Night Before Christmas where the dude “sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.” Only Jared knew what the matter was. The matter was, his alarm clock was cold and dead on the bedroom floor, its backup battery dangling from beneath like entrails from a gut wound.
Hindsight being twenty/twenty and all, he figured it was possible that one of the loud crashes the night before had actually been the clock taking a dive off the end table and not just another routine, shut-the-fuck-up-over-there wall fist from Chad in the next room. That would, of course, explain why the first message on his phone was Chad, already at practice and wondering where the fuck was Jared.
First day of practice with the new assistant coach, and Jared was still in bed, rode hard and put up wet by last night’s cowboy up. Way to make a first impression.
Reaching for his pants, he one-thumbed a quick and poorly spelled, ‘AM CUMMIN,’ to Chad with his phone hand, barely noticing that the resulting message actually implied something else entirely, then clicked End and scrambled into his clothes without showering. A little more funk wasn’t going to hurt anything. That part of Texas smelled like used cat litter on humid mornings, anyway. Yet another reason Jared preferred afternoon practices.
He nearly took down Sam on his way into the hallway as she made her way out of Chad’s room with a basket full of laundry. Unperturbed at being near trampled by stampeding Padalope, she blew the mussed hair out of her eyes and blocked him from getting past. “Y’know there’s a hefty fine for hit and run drivers in these parts, Jared.”
Flustered and torn between giving her his full attention or jerking his shoes on the rest of the way so he wasn’t walking on the backs of them, he compromised, made a sweeping bow, arm across his waist as he bent. “Ladies, first,” and used the time he was bent over to pull his shoes up. He begged apology with his eyes as he straightened, “Late for practice.”
“So, I gathered,” Sam shrugged. “Nobody else in the house except Tom and Matt.”
“Lucky bastards. Football still practices at a reasonable hour,” Jared snorted.
“And the rest of you running fools don’t stay up all hours of the night, gettin’ them damned temporary tattoos all over themselves,” Sam chastised, indicating the line of hickeys coloring Jared’s collar bone.
“That’s only because the haven’t discovered the wonders of post-coital endorphins as performance enchancing drugs. Too bad for them,” Jared teased, giving her a quick peck on the forehead as he brushed past. “Don’t worry. He’s gone.”
Sam humphed and shouldered into Jared’s room, mumbling. “More worried about the fact that you’re so good at running ‘em off.”
Jared paused with his hand poised to knock on Tom’s door. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means even prostitutes have regulars, punkin,” and she said it with an ‘aww, it’s so tragic he doesn’t see it’ tilt to her head. Then, she rolled her eyes and dropped her clothes basket, went to work cleaning.
“Oookay,” Jared mimed, pounding Tom’s door. “Tom! Tommmaaaay, I need a ride to practice!” He really should’ve been more affable with his request. It wasn’t Tom’s fault that Jared had no car. (Which wasn’t fair to begin with. Jared wasn’t even in his car when that guy hit it. The insurance company was being paranoid to restrict his coverage to within his parents’ hometown. His parents were being completely unreasonable by enforcing the restriction, but so far, no luck getting the ban lifted. Of course, he was always free to buy his own car and get his own insurance, but that sounded like, uh, too much
From the other side of the door, a muffled, “Fuck you, Padalecki.”
“Sorry. You’re too gay for me, Welling. Might want a relationship or something.” He was about to open the door when it swung inward away from his hand, and a key pressed into his palm. “Hey, thanks... but, these aren’t your car keys...”
“Bike rack. There’s a wrench on that keychain to put the wheel back on.” The devious smirk on his face was somehow nullified by the raging case of bedhead going on above it.
“Your bike?” Jared scoffed. “I don’t ride bikes.” Very few things made him hyper aware of his six foot four inch stature. Bikes were one of them. Somehow riding with A) his ass a foot above the bike frame or B) his knees hitting him in the chest, made him feel like a stilt walker. Besides, those seats were just... He felt himself clenching at the prospect. Not like he owned a pair of padded shorts or anything. “Just... no.” The keys dangled in his hand like something he’d just removed from a mousetrap.
“Then I suggest you start running, track star,” Welling sneered. The door shut hard enough to blow the hair off Jared’s forehead and force him to take a step back.
“Track star. Right. Practice. Right. Well, shit.” He tossed the keychain in the air once, caught it, shaking his head, and trotted down the stairs. Late was one thing. Completely absent was grounds for a full team dogpile of harassment. Jared wasn’t afraid of recrimination. He’d kicked the asses of everyone on the team at least once. You didn’t get to be out and proud in this neck of the woods without flexing a little muscle. But he’d be a knee-bouncing, toe-tapping bundle of nerves if he didn’t get his run in.
His shoulders sagged at the bike rack, eyeballing Tom’s Mongoose like it was something out of the Spanish Inquisition. The sacrifices a guy wouldn’t make to stay in the game. His ride to practice was definitely going to be spent devising a method of torture suitable for Welling. It wouldn’t be hard. Tom was a football player. Jared was a runner. Running was every other sport’s punishment.
--
If Jared ever entertained the possibility of reconciling Cross Country with Track under the delusion that all running endorphins were created equal, Cross Country lost considerable ground on the basis of, well, the grounds. Show up late to a Track practice, and all Jared had to do was cut under the bleachers to the far side of the track and capitalize on the fact that Coach didn’t have eyes on the back of his head. Try to sneak across the golf course to the polo field, late and on a bike, and he might as well have been a swan in a gaggle of geese.
Luckily, not all of the geese were onto Jared. All he needed was... there. He dumped the bike on the side of the trail and fell into step along the next guy to run by. Actually, limp by was a more apt description. He’d seen the occasional runner with an unorthodox gait. In his high school, one of the girls on the team had been hit by a car as a kid and dragged one leg through the two mile at every meet. Sad thing was, she could, and most of the girls with two legs couldn’t. He hadn’t seen anyone with quite this much hitch in his giddyup at the college level, but then, he’d never gone to a cross country meet. He hadn’t met half of the guys on the integrated team. For all he knew, the dude was just running with an unfortunate case of morning wood. Of course, those bowlegs couldn’t have been helping his cause any.
Shrugging internally, Jared stuck out his hand. “Jared,” he offered, “And don’t tell me I’m about to be lapped.”
The guy took his hand. “Jensen,” he said, barely glancing over, his eyes fixed on the horizon, footsteps perfectly metered, despite the awkward stride, everything above his waist the picture of balance and control, breath huffing in and out to a three count in time with his feet. “And it’d be pretty hard to get lapped on a single loop, unless you’re running backwards.”
“Heh.” Funny guy was funny. Not. Jared cleared his throat, the exercise just starting to loosen the phlegm in his chest. “You caught me.”
“Caught you what?”
Okay, now, there was such a thing as intense, but this Jensen was focused to a whole other level of self-absorbed. Jared could appreciate a certain level of determination in a fellow athlete, that ability to tune out everything except the challenge and the drive to meet it.
He wasn’t quite as appreciative of the ability to tune him out. He kinda wanted to trip this guy. Instead, he put on his best dimpled smile, ducked his head with mock embarrassment. “Well, I sorta forgot the route. I’m used to running on a track.”
Jensen nodded, curt.
Jared tried again. “So, this is the right trail, then? I got turned around at the water hazard, couldn’t remember if we were supposed to go around the north side or the south.”
“It’s the right trail,” Jensen said. “Keep on the rough until you hit the green at the ninth hole and then veer around the polo field, loop back around to the parking lot where we started.”
For a second, Jared thought maybe he was the one limping, his entire equilibrium thrown off just as effectively as a kick to the sack. This guy was giving him the brush off? Guys didn’t brush Jared off. Jared drove them away. That was the way of the universe, and Jared’s universe did not just bend like light around a heavenly body. Especially not around crooked-legged (but otherwise, yeah, heavenly-bodied) guys named Jensen. “Y’know, I’ve never actually been to the polo field. You mind if I run with you?”
“Won’t that ruin your pace?” Jensen asked.
“Oh, I never pay attention to pace,” Jared said. “I listen to my body. It lets me know where it wants to groove.”
Jensen’s Adam’s apple jumped, a silent hmmph of, his mouth turning down at the corners.
“What?” Jared sniped, his aggravation finally bubbling to the surface. “Not everyone runs like there’s a scientific equation to it. Some of us have this thing called talent. You might have heard of it? Generally comes with a little voice called intuition?”
Jared knew he’d lost his cool. His field of vision narrowed as his normally open expression started to clamp down. Lips pressed tightly together, his chin jutted forward, and his feet quickened their pace.
He was a good three strides ahead when he heard Jensen laugh.
“So, what you’re saying,” Jensen chuckled, “Is that those who can, do, and those who can’t, pretend to know more than those who can.”
Jared slowed again, mulled that over. “In a roundabout way, I guess, yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
For the first time since Jared stepped on the trail, Jensen turned his full gaze on him. He had green eyes that crinkled at the corners, either with amusement or from looking into the sun. “I’m sure the new coach will be glad to hear that, since he assigned everyone a training pace for the day based on their best recorded mile time.” He shrugged, mouth quirking. “I’m just guessing that since you’re such a natural talent, your assigned pace must be a lot faster than a gimp like me can handle.”
“Uh...” Jared wondered how he managed to get his foot so far down his throat without ever missing a step. “Well, it probably would be...” he waffled, “except that I don’t have a best mile time.”
“You’ve never run a mile?” Now there was no question this guy was laughing at him. Jared wanted to be pissed, but it turned out he preferred being laughed at to being ignored.
“Of course, uh, I have,” Jared explained. “Y’know, in practice. But not at race pace, exactly. I’m more of a sprinter.”
“What is, ‘not at race pace, exactly?’”
At that point, Jared couldn’t help but laugh at himself, too. “That’s kind of a funny story.”
“I might be a little gimpy, but my ears work just fine,” Jensen said.
“I raced a mile once, but I wasn’t used to all the runners being in the same lane.” Jared fixed his gaze up the road, fully aware how this was going to make him sound. “I got frustrated when I coudn’t get around them and ran off the track, so technically, I DQ’d.”
This time it was a real laugh, started deep in Jensen’s chest and rumbled up his throat before he tipped his head back and laughed out loud. “Oh, that is classic!” After a few solid guffaws at Jared’s expense (which Jared actually didn’t mind) Jensen regained his composure enough to add, “But seriously, even if you DQ’d, there should’ve been a watch time.”
“Oh, there was,” Jared huffed, his mood suddenly sullen.
“And?”
“And Coach wouldn’t let them tell me what it was. Said I didn’t earn it because I cheated.”
Jensen didn’t seem surprised. “Oh yeah, that sounds like Christian, all right.”
Jared didn’t so much miss a step as stop in his tracks. “Wait? Christian? You know the Coach?”
Jensen stopped, then, too, mopped at the sweat on the back of his neck. “Kind of.”
“Kind of how?” Jared asked. He suspected that raccoon they’d caught in the garage last semester had felt its skin shrink up just this tight when that trap door slammed shut on his ring-tailed ass.
“We ran track together in high school,” Jensen dead panned. “That’s why he asked me to come help him coach Cross Country.” He stuck out his hand. “Jensen Ackles, assistant coach. I’ve heard a lot about you, Jared.”
Jared didn’t forget the way Jensen had just used that particular hand to wipe sweat when he shook it, anyway. He was in shit so deep, a little sweat was the least of his worries. “I-I’ll bet you have.” He waited for Jensen to turn away and pick up his run before he added, “Ah, Christ.”
This time, it might have been a prayer.
TBC
A/N: Sorry it took me awhile to get this posted. Turns out running is like a second job. :/ I'm aware that this Jared is a little dickish at this point in the story. I mentioned this to my compadre, and she said, "Yeah, but he kind of has to be for the story to work." She's right, of course. She's always right. Think of it as leaving plenty of room for character growth, and I promise he'll be the Jared we all know and love by the end. He has his reasons for acting the way he does. Also, it's probably obvious I haven't had this betaed. I'll probably read it over after it's been up for a few days and then facepalm at the mistakes in it, but I won't make you wait any longer. Free fic. Yum. Good.