ht_murray | White Ladder, SN RPS, 5/5, COMPLETE, NC-17 for reel

Title:White Ladder, Ghost rewrite for

reel_spn, part 5/5
Author:

tru_faith_lost
Movie Adapted:Ghost
Genre: Slash, RPS
Characters/Pairings:Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki, also starring Christian Kane, Chad Michael-Murray, and various other family and CW friends
Rating:NC-17
Word Count:5,900 this part

Part One|Part Two|Part Three|Part Four|

Chapter Five—Silver Lining

(Note: For this chapter only, the lyrics, Meet me on the other side will indicate a POV shift. I hope this doesn’t confuse anyone.)

#

I know it would be outrageous, to come on all courageous, and offer you my hand, to pull you up onto dry land, when all I got is sinking sand.

Jared’s hand closes over Jensen’s on the neck of the guitar, and it makes an odd, muted cry not unlike the one Jen makes himself as his lips close over the song in his throat.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Jared lifts the guitar out of Jensen’s grip and sets it against the coffee table as he moves to stand over Jensen’s knees.

“Believe what?” Jensen swallows. He feels exposed and self-conscious without the instrument in his lap. All he’s wearing is Jared’s favorite shirt, and well, socks that don’t even match. They were all he could find in the dark. The songs never give him any warning, or he’d lay out a decent set of pajamas for these midnight excursions, maybe one of the matching jinbei he picked up in Japan that time. Now, with Jared towering over him in jogging pants(on backwards, he notices), Jen’s all too aware the shirttails aren’t enough to conceal his lack of underwear or the rapt attention his body gives Jared.

“You don’t really believe that you have nothing to offer, do you?” Jared asks. He spreads his knees a little further, steps closer so that Jensen has to lean back to see him. Jen loses h is balance and falls back into the cushions of the couch.

His cheeks (all four of them) turn red and hot as Jared just stares down at him, but something about the way Jay swallows hard and his eyes get bigger in the flickering light of the fire makes the tension melt away. Jensen’s legs fall open. The two sides of the unbuttoned shirt part like stage curtains on a one man play, but Jen doesn’t care if all eyes are on him, as long as those eyes are Jared’s.

“God, Jen.” Jared’s whisper is broken and reverent. “I…you have no idea what it does to me to see you like this, what it means to me to have you. When you sing for me…” His Adam’s apple spasms, eyes glistening with more than hour-old afterglow and sleep as he crouches over Jen’s prone form.

Where Jared’s voice fails, Jensen’s takes up.

“Honey, now if I’m honest. I still don’t know what love is,” he sings, rough.

It’s the lyric he’s just been working on. Jared’s never heard it before, and Jen’s only heard it in his head. Jen would sing the whole song, if it were finished. Hell, he’s ready to improvise an ending, if it will keep Jared looking at him like that, but he doesn’t have to. Jared leans over him on the sofa and slides over his body slowly, nose close enough to Jen’s skin that goosebumps rise in its wake.

Jared pauses over Jensen’s face, lips a fraction of an inch apart as Jay’s panting belly rolls through the trickle of precome oozing over the head of Jen’s exposed cock. “Let me show you, Jen.” Jared ducks his head, swallows Jensen’s mouth like a starving baby bird, laves over and into it with his breath and his tongue, the intensity rippling through his neck and shoulders, all the way down his spine. He backs away for a split second, takes a heaving breath, and just holds it as his eyes fix on Jensen’s again. “I love you Jensen Ackles, and if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make sure you believe it.”

#

Jensen’s eyes open suddenly as though a glass of cold water has just been dumped on him, and he sucks in a heaving breath. If someone has, they’ve dumped it in his lap, and fuck, he hasn’t had a wet dream since he was…

There’s a whole lot more in his lap than what smells (thank God) like whiskey from Jen’s stash above the fridge and seems to have sprouted half a dozen knees and elbows. He squints in an effort to make out what the hell’s going, but the angle is all wrong, too close and distorted, too big ears, too short legs, and he has to rely on the familiarity of the drunken grunting, of which he’s no stranger, to identify Chris and…”Chad?”

His surprised grunt succeeds in stopping the squirming and flailing. “The fuck, dudes?” Jen winces as he forgets and tries to pull himself up with his hands, winces again when his head decides alcohol and blood loss make for a pretty shitty start to the day.

Chris and Chad roll off the couch in a surprised heap like oversleeping children whose daddy has just pulled the sheets out from beneath them.

“Jen, man,” Chris says apologetically as he rises to his knees. “We didn’t mean to wake you. Chad was just leaving.” Jen doesn’t miss the suggestive glare that Chris directs at Murray.

“The fuck I was,” Chad spits. He wedges himself between Chris and Jen, volleying for Jen’s attention. “How’s your leg, Jen?” The look on Chad’s face is the look of an apprentice magician who’s been reciting spells from a book for hours with no result and yet is made to recite the next one by rote anyway, this time with feeling. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, doesn’t care what it’s supposed to mean, doesn’t expect any type of reaction. “Harley didn’t draw blood, did he? “

The question is more subtle hint than inquiry, and a cold breeze works its way down Jensen’s spine, like a bucket of ice water. He meets Chad’s gaze and freezes.

Meet me on the other side

Jared waits, what used to be his heart and is now just an echo that whispers, ‘Jensen, Jensen, Jensen’ vibrates inside him, each rattle like a grain of sand draining from an hourglass he can’t see. Jen has to listen.

Chad, never a patient man, caves first, rises to his feet, and starts to turn away.

"I tried, man. I did. He won't listen.,” Chad says. “Fine. I mean, shit, Jay, I see dead people. What did you expect him to say?"

“Don’t you dare leave,” Jared growls. “I’ll find a way to make him listen…” He makes another grab for the guitar, but most of his energy glances off. All he manages to do is shake it a little on its stand. He hears a rattle, like the last penny in an unbroken bank, taunting him with it’s presence but refusing to slide through the slot.

With a huff, Jared turns, searches the room for some other way to get his message across. What he needs is a gust of wind to rush down the chimney, a flare of fire to shoot out beneath the mantle. Yesterday, he could have managed that, but today…

He paces back and forth. His time’s almost up, and he knows it. His energy has crested, and dropped away. Something heavy and demanding tugs at the bottom of his soul like a ripcurrent trying to drag him into the ocean of After. He’s been fighting the pull for so long already, is weary down to the last tattered edges of his being. Much longer, and he’ll either evaporate or go mad with the random explosions of insistence that crackle along his nerve endings like Pop Rocks in Coke.

But he has promises to keep.

His eyes fall to the floor, searching for some buoy to cling to, and his message in a bottle bobs to the surface.

Jared shouts over his shoulder. “Tell him, if he keeps leaving the window open, he’s gonna need balm for more than just his lips.”

Chad assumes a bemused look but repeats it anyway, precedes it with a ‘Jared says,’ and an embarrassed cough into his fist. When he finishes, Jared flicks his foot, and the tube of Lip Smackers, lying forgotten at the base of the guitar stand, rolls across the floor.

Meet me on the other side.

The loft falls silent, except for the slow, trickling roll of the plastic tube across hardwood floor. It’s entirely innocuous, yet has the effect of lightning behind the wavering silhouette of someone who isn’t there. It continues at a constant speed, across the immense span of planked flooring, up to the sofa, under, and out the other side, stops only when it bangs into Jensen’s ankle.

Both dogs have their heads cocked and lowered, mouths slightly open as they leap off the throw rug and woof. The three men in the room aren’t much less comical in their surprise.

Jensen reaches down, picks up the lip balm, and looks around the room. He feels his chin wavering, knows there are tears forming in his eyes as he dares to…suggest?...believe?...hope?

“Jay?”

His only answer is a vibration in the back of the room. It takes him a moment to find it, like a cell phone lost in the cushions of the couch, but his eyes focus long enough to make out the slight shake of his guitar on its stand, Jared’s favorite shirt hanging over it.

From behind him, Chad’s voice mutters, barely a whisper. “He says you look cold, Jen. He wants you to wear his shirt.”

Jensen hears Chris draw in a breath as if to offer protest, then just sigh, because there’s no logical explanation he can offer. Jen wants to believe his best friend’s complete lack of dissention, for the moment, is the same as affirmation. He wants to believe, he does, but there’s no such thing as ghosts.

At the same time he knows, if there is such a thing as ghosts, then Jared believed in them, and that’s Jared’s shirt, Jared’s lip balm, Jared’s welcome-home tail wag his dogs are making, and Jared’s friggin’ J2 heart frosted into the window glass. If there’s such a thing as a ghost, then this ghost is Jared.

And Jensen could never deny Jared anything.

He slides off the couch, feels Chris and Chad both lift under his armpits until he stops wobbling enough to take a step. The long walk to the corner of the room is surreal, a scene in a movie that’s cut with quick flashes of closeup and wide-angle, set to a soundtrack of violins screaming in a rapid, staccato succession of disharmony. Only Jen gets the distinct feeling that’ he’s the psycho in this film, and Jared’s shirt over the guitar is not a shower curtain.

He rubs his face nervously as his skin tingles, knows there’s something here, whether he believes it or not, and wishes he had his glasses, as though wearing them would bring everything to light. Jensen rubs his palms over his jeans before extending his fingers, splayed like he expects something to reach out and grab one and wants to spare the rest if he can.

He lifts the shirt carefully, the way a bridegroom lifts a veil from the face of his beloved before the final kiss. He’s careful, slow, gentle.

So, when the guitar jumps off its stand and crashes to the floor with a twanging, pinging screech, he practically falls on his ass beside it, only barely managing to stay on his feet as his muscles tense in surprise.

“Jesus,” Chris pants from across the room, and Jensen can tell from the breathy tone of his voice that Kane’s as freaked by the situation as he is.

Before he can turn tail and run, the light of the fire twinkles off a flash of platinum. Something rolls out of the hole in the front of the guitar, circles its way around to the toe of Jensen’s sock and then falls over on its side, wobbling for what seems like an eternity before lying flat and still.

Meet me on the other side

“C’mon, pick it up,” Jared whispers. He knows Jensen can’t hear him, but he’s come so far to keep this promise. A guy can wish, can’t he?

Chad takes a step closer, opens his mouth to speak, but Jared shakes his head. Faith is believing in what you can’t see and acting on it. Jen has to do this on his own.

In fact, Chad and Chris still hanging around at all is making Jared’s skin crawl a little, at least the skin he imagines he’s wearing. He gestures with his eyes and his chin toward the door, gives his most reassuring smile, though he’s as nervous as wild horse under a tin roof in a hail storm.

Chad may not make the best life choices, as far as Jared, or well, anyone, is concerned, but he is…was?...is Jared’s best friend, and Jay trusts him to take the hint. It’s the closest he can come to hanging a tie on the doorknob in his current state.

“Uh, Chris, man,” Chad says, turning and placing a hand on Kane’s shoulder, “let’s give our boy here some time to clear his head. I could really use a good night’s sleep. You still got your room at the Sheraton?” He steers Chris toward the door, and maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe just the shock, but Chris lets himself be steered. “We’ve got our phones on if anyone needs us,” Murray adds loudly as they step out.

Jared grins. Chad’s not a douche. He just plays one on television.

The grin fades from his face as the door clicks shut with a jolting snick in the too-still air. Jared turns his gaze back to Jensen whose eyes are fixed on the ring, though he doesn’t seem to be making any attempt to pick it up. Jay falls to his knees at Jensen’s feet, looks up at him beseechingly.

“C’mon, baby. Just pick it up.”

Jen stares, his whole body trembling as though a rockslide has started in his head and is making its way down his internal slopes with bouncing, jagged leaps and scrapes.

Desperate, Jared closes his eyes, wishes just once that his days as Psychic!Sammy Winchester would have given him some practical knowledge on the topic, but he’s got nothing to work with, just Jensen.

Turns out, that’s more than enough.

The ring is the first thing Jared’s actually felt since his death, cold, and hard, but real in a way nothing else is anymore, nothing else but Jen. Jay can’t quite get a hold on it, but by focusing everything he’s got on just the tip of his right index finger, he manages to hook the circle over his fingernail and lift it into the air.

Meet me on the other side

Every ounce of nervous energy flickering inside of Jensen crackles at once, a tiny internal sonic boom that forces a gasp from his lips as the ring levitates off the floor. It takes with it every bit of fight he has left, all the strength he uses to erect walls against the failure he’s come to expect in every aspect of his life.

He’s so tired of waiting for the world to stop so he can get off, tired of waiting to be flung into oblivion by the centripetal forces working against him. He’s tired of feeling like everything’s against him.

Yeah, he’s just…tired.

So maybe he only holds out his hand to find something solid to latch onto as his knees start to buckle beneath him. Or maybe, once all the self-doubt and denial has exhausted itself and him, the little flutter of hope is all that’s left. Either way, he holds out his hand, and the ring slides over his ring finger.

It’s a perfect fit.

Meet me on the other side.

Jared grins high beams as he manages to maneuver the platinum ring over Jensen’s finger, flickers to low beams as Jensen crumples to the floor.

But Jensen doesn’t fall. He’ll never fall so long as Jared’s there to catch him, and Jared does. Long arms snake out and wrap around Jen. They shouldn’t be able to hold him, but they do. They hold him through the last tremors of denial, hold him through the final flutters of doubt, and support him through the last sobs of anguish and abandonment.

Jared’s positive he feels the damp of tears on a shoulder he doesn’t really have to cry on, trembles under sniffles into a neck he isn’t supposed to stick out. But when Jensen turns his ear to the shoulder, presses kisses to the neck, and, God!, holds him back, Jared cries a little himself.

It’s Jensen who breaks the embrace, leans back a little, and searches Jared’s gaze with a look of complete wonder in his eyes.

“Are you…? Is this…?” Jen asks, his voice just the first soft puffs of steam through the whistler on a tea kettle.

“Real?” Jared asks in reply. He rises on his knees, a hand on each side of Jensen’s grief-worn face, thumbs brushing reverently over cheek bones that are a little more prominent than Jared remembers. “Do you want it to be? If you don’t…”

His words are cut off by Jensen’s lips as his left hand, the cold metal of the commitment ring just starting to warm with his body heat, palms the back of Jared’s neck and drags their mouths together. There’s no denying the kiss is real, alive with all the things that make a man more than flesh and blood. It’s desperation and need, hunger and ache, desire and…hope.

Jensen breaks the kiss, just like the embrace, and pants, forehead against Jared’s.

Jared’s never been so glad he doesn’t need to breathe anymore, because he keeps kissing, eyebrows, eyelids, little tear-streaks on cheekbones, doesn’t need to stop until Jensen forces him. Jen’s hand slides around to the front of Jared’s jaw, bandages scraping roughly. His thumb pokes into the divot under Jared’s chin, and forces Jay to lock eyes with him as he asks, “Can we?”

Jared laughs. He lowers his forehead enough to nudge his nose against Jensen’s, feels Jen’s eyelashes flutter over his cheeks. “I kinda think we already are,” he teases. He doesn’t say why it’s possible, or for how long. He doesn’t know, but since when does Jared Padalecki exist anywhere but here, anytime but now? He’s never been one to let opportunity pass him by.

Jared finds himself falling backward as Jensen lunges at him like a starving lion at an antelope. They fall into a pile of Jared’s clothes still heaped in the spot where they were dumped from their box. Jay feels the scratch of denim against sensitive flesh and realizes he’s naked. Being a ghost has its advantages. Quick as a flash nudity is apparently one.

Jensen straddles him and locks their mouths together. Jared threads his fingers under his shirttails, feels Jensen’s back round up into his touch as Jen reaches between them and undoes his own buttons. There’s a moment of desperate fumbling as the buttons tangle in the loose bandages, but Jen gets it worked out, and a second later, their chests press together, flesh on ethereal flesh.

Jared pulls Jen down across him, slows the kiss into a lazy rhythm that Jensen takes up with his torso, rolling his entire upper body against Jared’s from navel to sternum, while their nipples pebble between them.

Jensen keeps the slow pace Jared sets for all of about a minute before he whimpers, slides his lips free of Jared’s, and fastens his teeth possessively over Jay’s jawbone. Rendered nearly motionless by the hold, Jared stills, feels Jensen’s hips rise up off his thighs. Rough breathing against his neck punctuates the tinkle of belt buckle metal against button fly.

Jen’s eye teeth dig a little uncomfortably into tender flesh, then he releases the hold with a growl, stands almost completely up, and shoves his clothes to floor.

Jared watches in rapt amazement. In all the years they’ve been together, he’s never seen Jensen like this. Never seen him so dominating, willing to ask for what he wants and take it when it’s given.

Jared likes it. A lot.

This isn’t about him. It’s about Jen, but that doesn’t stop his cock from working its way into the crease of Jensen’s hip as Jen spreads over him like smoke on water. It doesn’t stop Jared’s hips from thrusting up, or his head from falling back as Jensen sucks a mark over his Adam’s apple.

Jensen’s fingers smooth a path through his own sweat, now pooling in the ridges of Jared’s abs; the heat of their lovemaking and the crackling fire at their heads slicking them both. Growling again, Jensen snaps his hand back and tugs the bandages free with his teeth.

Jared can’t help pulling the hand to his lips. He kisses over the cuts tenderly and nuzzles into the palm as Jensen mouths over his sternum, tongues the groove under his right pec until he settles over a nipple. Jared gasps as saliva drips from Jen’s tongue onto the hardened peak. He sucks in his stomach, curls in enough to look between them as Jensen pauses.

They’re held together by just a stringy thread of spit, and Jen works his tongue in slow circles, lassoing the nipple. Jared’s overwhelmed by the fact that he can actually feel that. God! He arches up, shoulder blades pressing into the folds of old clothes, and keens for more.

Jensen caves, grips the nipple between two teeth. He scissors his teeth back and forth gently until it starts to burn. When Jared hisses, Jen sucks the whole thing into his mouth, caresses away the ache as his hand resumes its journey across the plane of Jared’s stomach and through the prickly warm forest at the end of his happy trail.

Jared writhes against Jensen, expecting to feel those fingers encircle his cock. Instead, they slide past the base under his balls, and caress ever-so-gently the thin skin in the crease behind.

Reflexively, Jared works his fingers into Jensen’s hair, loves the way Jensen’s head nuzzles into his chest with the intensity of his kisses, and hikes one long leg up against his rib cage. His toes curl spastically as Jensen’s hand makes full use of the easier access and thrusts a finger inside.

There’s no burn. Apparently, ghosts are self-lubricating as well. But God, that only makes the need that much more urgent. Jensen lifts his head, lips swollen and red, and looks into Jared’s eyes.

“Like this?” He asks. Jared nods. “You sure?” Jared nods again and only has a second to wonder when Jensen started speaking in two word sentences, before Jens presses in with another finger and makes him gasp.

Four years together, and they’ve never done it like this. It’s always been Jensen who needed, and Jared who gave, and almost always from behind. Faith is believing in what you can’t see, and Jared was always trying to remind Jensen their love was the real thing, asking him to have faith in them. It was always Jensen who needed to be wrapped up, and Jared who was the blanket.

Not now. Finally, finally Jensen gets it. Finally, Jensen’s filled to overflowing and needs to give back. It took Jared coming back from the dead to convince him that love makes its own rules, never dies or slips into the past tense.

Love just is, and Jared’s kept his promise.

Smiling, really smiling for what Jared knows has to be the first time since the alley, Jensen slides over until his shoulder’s under Jared’s knee. He brushes his thumb over Jay’s lips, and Jared can’t resist kissing the pad. Jensen smooths the hand down Jared’s jaw, his neck, across his collar bone, pauses and leans up to initiate another kiss.

Jared feels Jensen’s grip turn into a claw at his waist, tighten around the hard edge of one oblique as their tongues start a slow, rippling fuck. The rhythm works its way lower until Jared’s writhing into Jensen’s tight grip, unconscious of the pinch as their cocks line up and slide together.

In the heat of passion, one foot kicks out and knocks over the piano bench. The hinged lid swings open, spills pages and pages of unfinished songs on crumpled paper over the floor around them. Some catch in the updraft of the heat from the fireplace and float over the two lovers like angel wings before settling onto the hardwood with just a kiss of a whisper.

Oblivious to anything but Jared, Jensen pulls his other hand free of Jay’s ass and slides it between them. He encircles both their cocks in his grip and uses his thumb to smear their mixed precome down his shaft. Finally, finally the hand moves from Jared’s waist and works its way under Jay’s flailing leg. Jensen manages to get both knees over his shoulders and his cock lined up with Jared’s entrance without disrupting the roll of their tongues against each other.

Coming up for air at long last, Jensen sits back. Pauses like the eye of the storm passing over.

Jared watches him slide away through half-lidded eyes, feels the heat of Jensen’s gaze wash over him as he wills himself not to clench against the impending intrusion. He runs his hand down his stomach and grasps his cock, squeezes the head between his thumb and forefinger just to give himself something, anything other than that one stimulation to focus on, or it will all be over too soon.

Jensen circles his hips a few times until the head of his cock seats itself firmly in the opening, and Jared throws his head back as the storm gathers intensity once more.

“Love you,” Jensen says, and presses in.

#

After, while Jensen sleeps in the crook of his arm, Jared rubs his fingers wistfully over the scattered sheet music and whispers, “Back at ya.”

#

Jensen can barely open his eyes, the glare is so intense. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the afterglow is too…glow-y.

His senses come back to him slowly after the first real sleep he’s had in at least a week. Around him, wind swirls in warm currents over his sticky flesh, mingles with the scent of Jared, and sex, and…Jared!

His eyes fly open, despite the burning glare as his heart triphammers beneath his sternum, banging against his chest hard enough to physically hurt. It’s a pain he knows too well and isn’t ready to re-live. Panicked, he reaches for Jared and finds only an indentation in the mound of clothing where Jared used to be.

He sits up, turns his head so fast his neck doesn’t’ get the message in time and sends an agonizing jolt down his back.

Jared stands at the window, clothed in a white robe that ripples around him in the breeze. He looks down at himself, raises his eyebrows and scratches the back of his head sheepishly. Jensen can tell he’s embarrassed by his wardrobe, knows there’s no way Jared picked out that getup himself.

Which, of course, stops his heart in his chest, because if Jared didn’t choose it…

We may race and we may run, we’ll not undo what has been done.

Jensen wants to be angry, knows he should be pissed at Jared for letting him believe, but he can’t. He’s tired of having nothing but dread and worry in his veins. If Jared taught him to have faith instead, then he can’t be angry. It’s a waste of time, and there’s too little of that already.

As he watches, Jared skews in twenty different directions, like the washed out, staticy picture of a stolen cable channel in bad weather. Jared steels himself against whatever it is that’s washing out his signal, but Jensen can tell he can’t do it much longer. He’s just waiting for Jensen to say it’s okay to go, to love him that much.

And Jensen does. He always has.

Jared holds up his left hand, the back toward Jensen, and wiggles his fingers, points at his ring finger with his other hand. He mouths, “The ring,” and smiles as brightly as the bank of white that’s rolling up behind him like a wave on the surface of the sky.

Jen looks down, and for the first time, really sees the ring on his finger. It’s platinum, encrusted in diamonds. Leave it to Jared to go all out. He wipes at his eyes with a thumb and looks up again.

Jared makes a circle of his thumb and forefingers, slides it over his left ring finger and then off again, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

Jensen takes the hint and slides his own ring off. He turns it over in his hand, hypnotized momentarily by the play of light…Jared…over the bejeweled metal band. A hint of skewed light inside the ring makes him look closer. He rubs at his eyes again to clear his vision as best he can, then squints and clears his throat to dispel the rest of the emotional veil.

There’s an inscription inside. Small, to the point. Not much more could fit inside a ring. Nothing more is necessary.

J2-Something to Believe In

That says it all, including goodbye. And Jensen knows, before he looks up, that Jared’s gone.

Epilogue--Four months later

Take this silver lining, keep it in your sweet head, and shine it when the night is burning red.

Jensen fidgets nervously, eyes fixed on the ring as he twists it round and round his finger, sheet music rolled up in his hand. He shouldn’t need sheet music, it’s his song, but no one else has ever heard it, and his nerves twang like overstretched guitar strings beneath his skin. He’s sure he’s going to blank out the second he walks onto the stage.

The roar of applause crackles through the stage door, and he can tell by the whistles and catcalls that it’s the final curtain. He wipes a palm over leg of his navy blue suit pants, brushes the sleeve of his jacket over the beads of sweat beading on his forehead. He’s glad that he decided to forego the tie as he undoes one more button on the collar of his dress shirt.

A few minutes later, the applause dies down. The stage door opens and the cast of the play Jared had been co-producing when he died files past him. He doesn’t meet their eyes as they walk by, but also doesn’t shy away when a few stop to shake his hand or lay a hand on his shoulder. He expects them to go back to their dressing rooms, but they wait in the wings for the final performance of the night.

Sometimes Jensen forgets he’s not the only one who loved(loves) Jared.

Jensen waits, stage right, while a nine-foot Steinway is wheeled in from stage left. The head of the Drama Department has a few words to say on this closing performance of what was supposed to be Jared’s directorial debut, and while he does, Jensen risks a glance into the audience. It’s his first performance since that night at The Queen’s Burrow, and he’s not sure yet whether he can go through with it. If they hadn’t dedicated this performance to Jared and asked Jensen to perform a song in his honor, he doesn’t think he’d be stepping onto the stage this soon.

But there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Jared.

Blaze it in the morning. Wear it like an iron skin.

A sheepish smile tugs at the corners of his mouth when he gets a good look into the auditorium. The entire first two rows are filled with Ackles, Padaleckis, and anyone from the CW that’s managed to catch a flight over. Donna and Sherry have their hands clasped together between them, damp hankies at their sides, and Chris and Chad manage to sit shoulder to shoulder without so much as an evil glare.

Jared’s family. Jensen’s family. J2 in all its glory and standing room only. They did this, brought all these people together, and that’s something to sing about.

Jensen walks onto the stage while the department head is still talking. He really doesn’t care to do the whole formal introduction, smile and wave entrance. This isn’t about him. He sits at the bench, glad for the rumble of the voice over the mike to cover up the scrape as he adjusts his position, the awkward plunk as he fumbles to undo the latch on the keyboard cover and slides it back too quickly.

His hands shake like a mustang on roundup day, and the bend he’s put in his music by rolling it in his hands doesn’t help his cause any. He no sooner gets the pages set up in a line on the music rail, when a breeze from the overhead ceiling fan catches a bent corner and sends them scattering to the floor.

Crouching under the bench to retrieve the lost papers, Jen almost loses his nerve. He’s just not ready. He closes his eyes and wishes it were all over as production assistants come out of the wings to help him gather his papers. He wants to tell them to call it off, instead. He’s got a recording of the song in his pocket, just in case he can’t go through with it, and is already reaching for the plastic case when his hand catches hold of the last fallen page.

When he turns it over, he smiles and changes his mind. He crawls out from under the piano, gives the crowd a comedic shrug of his shoulders to break the tension in the room, and sits back down.

He’s written this song especially for this occasion, months after Jared died. So, there’s no logical explanation for the J2 heart that’s scribbled over every single page of sheet music.

Since when does love need an explanation?

He rolls up the pages and stuffs them in his hip pocket. He never needed them anyway. All he needs is Jared’s hands over his, and now Jensen knows they’re there.

“This one’s for you, Jay,” he whispers. And he plays.

Only things worth living for, are innocence and magic. Amen

We were born with our eyes wide open.
So alive with wild hope, now.
Can you tell me why, time after time,
They drag you down.
Down in the dakness deep.

Fools in their madness all around.
Know that the light don’t sleep.

Know that the light don’t sleep.

No one in the auditorium hears him whisper, “Thank you.” But Jensen smells gummi bears and knows Jared hears.

Know that the light don’t sleep.

The End

A/N: All songs and lyrics in this story are by David Gray. All but “The Other Side,” are on the album, “White Ladder,” after which I’ve named this story. There’s a link to the Album in the sidebar as well as the complete lyrics to all the songs.

A/N2: I wasn’t thinking clearly when I signed up to write this fic, and only remembered after the fact that the movie didn’t really have a happy ending. As it is RPF, I couldn’t think of a way to undo the death part, but I hope the ending is at least a little hopeful. Would love to know how everyone feels about it.
White Ladder poster by me