White Ladder, SPN RPS fic, JA/JP, 2/5 for reel_spn

[ht_murray]

Title:White Ladder, Part 2/5, for reel_spn
Author:tru_faith_lost
Movie Adapted: Ghost
Genre: Slash, RPS
Characters/Pairings:Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Rating:NC-17
Word Count:5800, this part.

Part One

Chapter Two--This Year's Love


This year's love had better last. Heaven knows it's high time. I've been waiting on my own too long.--This Year's Love, David Gray

"Jared, man, I don't know what you did to him, but he's really turned a corner with this whole music business," Chris observes. He still can't believe Jen's up there on the stage in the middle of Queen's Burrow, a notoriously gay-friendly club in downtown Manhattan. The song is sappy and a little sad with way more true-to-life Jensen Ackles bleeding through than Chris has ever seen when Jen wasn't drunk or sick. He notices the glint in Jen's eyes, the easy way he engages the crowd at the foot of the stage, and wonders how much Jen's actually had to drink already that night, but he knows Jen's drug of choice these days is Jared Padalecki.

Chris' hand encircles the back of Jared's neck and gives it a friendly squeeze and shake, as close to a hug as he's willing to give in mixed company. Chris is cool with Jensen and Jared's relationship, but he is most definitely, "not like that," and doesn't want to give any false impressions, especially not in the mixed company of the roaring club. Hell, he wouldn't mind getting laid tonight himself. His gay best friend should not be the only one getting any action after his performance. There are straight girls here, too, after all. Though, Chris is pretty sure most of them are currently wondering which side of the fence Jensen is on to notice Chris. "I think this is his best yet."

"I know," Jared agrees with a proud twinkle in his eyes that even Chris can read loud and clear. "Padalecki trade secret," he insinuates, sucking his fingers beneath a lewd eyebrow quirk.

"Dude, way too much information." Chris bats Jared's hands down and acts embarrassed, winking at a redhead over Jared's shoulder. She winks, turns away as if inviting him to check out her ass, then wraps an arm, fuck, around the waist of the curvy blonde beside her. Chris is pretty sure it's not an invitation to a threesome as the redhead snarls over her shoulder at him. "Seriously, though, Jared, you're the best thing that's ever happened to Jen. I'm really happy for you guys."

It's true. Jen hadn't even protested all that much when Chris had invited him up on the stage to perform one of his new songs in the middle of Kane's gig. Mr. Shy-as-a-Prairie-Dog-in-Chicken-Hawk-Country Ackles had even suggested it might be good for him to get some live performance experience under his belt before the album is finished. That's definitely not the Jensen that Chris had watched pack up and move across the country six months ago. He doesn't know what he'd been expecting when he'd booked this gig in the Big Apple as an excuse to drop in on his friends, but he's pleasantly surprised and more than a little relieved.

Taking a swallow of his beer and sloshing it down onto the bar, Chris assumes a deliberately far-off gaze in case Jen is watching and asks, "So did you make up your mind? You know, about that little discussion you and I had the other day?"

Goddamn Jared Padalecki would never be able to cut it as a spy. His stealth mode sucks moldy dog logs, Chris decides as Jared's face splits wide open and blushes deep pink. How the fuck Jared had ever been able to keep his intentions a secret from Jen when just an off-handed comment had him blushing like a virgin, Chris had no idea.

"Yeah," Jared mumbled, ducking his face away from the stage. "Yeah, I'm giving it to him tonight."

"I thought you gave it to him every night, Padalecki." Chris punches him on the shoulder, as much a gesture of approval as an attempt to force Jared's game face back into position.

"You know it," Jared smirks, eyebrows raised.

Chris is sure that even a completely neutral bystander would be able to pick up the nervous tremble behind the statement. He feels for the kid, and admires him, too. Jensen's lucky that Jared knows a good thing when he sees it and is willing to put his heart on the line like that. Most straight men aren't as decisive and determined as Jared. Chris knows why Jensen blossoms under the Padalecki sun. He hopes, for Jensen's sake, that the sun never sets.

"So, was it the one you showed me, or did you go with a different one?" Chris asks.

"That's the one," Jared beams.

Chris makes a silent whistle and shakes his head appreciatively. "That one was pretty pricey if I remember right. Big spender, there, Jared. You save anything for the wedding?"

"Fuck off, Kane." Jared elbows him hard enough that some of Chris' beer slops over the side of the bottle. "He's worth every penny."

"No arguments from me," Chris agrees, patting Jared on the back.

"So, you really think he'll accept? I mean, you're his best friend..."

The sound of Jensen's voice wafts between them, over the hushed din of the club as the patrons sway in time to the music, and they fall silent, listening to the song as though it isn't the hundredth time they've each heard it.

"This year's love had better last. This year's love had better last..."

"Nope, Padalecki, you're his best friend, which is why I know he'll say yes. Or haven't you even been listening...?"

"This year's love had better last..."

The song fades away, swallowed by smoke and vapors of liquor, just a few final twinkles of mirrorball reflection before the colored strobes flicker to life and drive the atmosphere into a more techno beat that marks the end of Chris' first set. Jensen stands, shakes the hands of the backing band and heads down the stairs to the dance floor.

"Go get 'em, Tiger," Chris says, winking. He gives Jared a shove as Jensen approaches. "Don't worry about me. I'll just be over here talking to my friend, uh..." He leans over to a lanky, glassy-eyed man sitting on the stool beside him and whispers, "What's your name, friend?"

"Uh, Grady," the man says suspiciously, fidgeting like a crackhead jonesing for a fix.

Chris straightens. "Yeah, I'll just be over here talking to my friend Gary." He turns to Grady with a swagger. "So, uh, Gary."

"Grady..."

"Whatever...Gary, have you ever seen a ring that cost..." He ducks as Jared moves to smack him on the back of his head. "Hey, Jared dude, you made me swear not to tell Jensen. So, I'm not telling Jensen. I'm telling Gary." Chris shoots an evil grin at Jared as Jensen slides into earshot and throws up his hand. "Jensen, man, that was A-1." He claps Jensen on the back and pulls him into a one-armed shoulder hug. "You've really found your groove." Catching Jared's eye, Chris clears his throat and says, "Speaking of which, I think the Jay-man is dying to get you out on the dance floor. That gravelly voice thing you were doing up there had him all twitchy by the first chorus."

"Really?" Jen's face lights up, and Christian swears he sees a blush creep up his friend's cheeks. The dude's just been on stage in front of a couple hundred strangers, singing his heart out, but he blushes in front of Jared. Yeah, they are in way over their heads, or at least way deeper than Chris has ever been. He's more than happy to push them out onto the dance floor together. Unguarded boy love is more than his decidedly not gay processors can take.

"So, Gary, as I was saying..."

"Grady..."


#

Jensen and Jared stay for Chris' next set and then excuse themselves with a thumbs-up and a wave. Jared’s off tonight, a lack of something that Jensen can't quite pinpoint makes for an edgy kind of dissonance in their interactions where before there has only been harmony. Dancing with Jared is usually wildly erotic, almost tribal, but tonight it's more like nursing a flat beer and watching "Dance Off, Pants Off," on MTV.

The buzz of his own performance is still tingling through Jen's extremities, all of them, and Jared's apparent emotional impotence is a little unnerving. Maybe he should've picked another song? "This Year's Love," was maybe too much public display of affection? Is there such a thing as too much public display of affection for Jared Padalecki?

They stroll from the club, hands-in-pockets and shoulders brushing. Nothing out of the ordinary in that. It's their normal street presence, one they've adopted after one too many crazy-assed photographer has snapped pictures of them together and sold them to writers who just couldn't let lie the fact that they'd played brothers on television. Because, you know, God forbid that love could just be love without some freakin' writer, throwing an opinionated spin on things and plastering it all over the news. Okay, yeah, Jen's a little jaded about paparazzi.

"So, you liked the song?" Jen ventures awkwardly. It's usually Jared who initiates these, 'let's talk about our feelings' conversations, and Jensen's out of his element. It's a good thing that the boost of confidence he got from singing without getting booed or hissed or having rotten fruit thrown at him has a long half-life. He can do this. He can. Jensen Ackles can talk about his feelings if it means he can get Jared out of whatever hypno-state he's in and get himself good and fucked before the night is over.

"What?" Jared asks, snapping back from wherever his head's at. "Oh, yeah, Jen," he assures. "I think that's my favorite so far. You were awesome." Jared bumps Jen's shoulder with his own as they move, a sort of walking hug they use to avoid, at all cost, the pretense of girly kiss-blowing and back pocket holding. As far as Jen can tell, Jay's sincere, which still doesn't explain what's up with the stargazer eyes tonight.

"Are you sure? 'Cuz you've seemed a little off ever since I finished singing?" A thought dawns on him. "Was it Chris? Did he say something? If he did, I'll kick his ass, but you know, once he gets a few beers in him, that boy is not responsible for what comes out of his month."

"Just ask Grady," Jared chuckles.

"Who?"

"Never mind," Jared dismisses. "Anyway, no, Chris didn't say anything—nothing bad, at least."

Jensen can tell by the way Jared continues watching his feet, as though an accidental step into a puddle from this afternoon's torrential rains might ruin his expensive shoes (of which he has three more pairs under the bed in their loft), that whatever is on Jared's mind definitely has something to do with Chris and what they talked about while Jen was on stage. "So, uh, what did the two of you talk about, then?" Jen pries.

"Us." Jared says it without any real inflection, good or bad, but the honking horn of a cab passing on the street gives the syllable a somewhat foreboding tone by the time it reaches Jensen's ears. Not that Jensen needs much help to find anything foreboding.

Jen turns into Jared and keeps walking in a strange side-stepping stride that resembles a promenading waltz step they'd tried to teach him at dance cotillion when he was eight. "What?" He asks, voice tinged with panic. "What did he say about us?"

Jared's eyebrow quirks as the opposite side of his face pinches together in what could be disdain or intense curiosity. Somewhere between 'Grady' and 'Us', Jensen seems to have lost his Padalecki translator.

"Why does it matter so much?" Jared asks. "What if Chris said that he thought we were going nowhere and should see other people? Would that make you start playing the field?"

"What?!" Jensen misses the part where Jared's question is hypothetical and flies off the handle. "That son of a bitch?! Where the fuck does he get off..."

"Jen!" Jared grasps Jensen's shoulder and shakes gently. He leans back against the storefront and turns Jensen's chin up to meet his gaze. Jen feels some of the tension ebb, the bristles in his hair settling back against his neck. "Jen he didn't say that," Jared assuages. He ducks his gaze, and Jen can't miss the peek of blush that tips his cheeks, even under the puke green glare of neon street signs. Jared obviously knows it's there, too, and runs the tips of his fingers along the line of his nose and up into his hair casually, as if to brush the color away. "What he actually said was that he was happy for us."

Jen studies Jared for a second, realizes he must be telling the truth, or he wouldn't be colored like the tile under a fully-lit Christmas tree. "Oh."

"Oh?" There's a hint of fatigue in Jared's voice, a tremor of 'what do I have to do', and Jensen's sorry. He wonders when he'll ever stop being sorry and just be Jensen. "Jen, why are you always so ready to accept the negativity when it comes to the two of us? It's almost like you expect us to fail." Jared shrugs himself off the wall and starts walking again, though slower this time as though he's not as anxious to get where they're going as he was before.

Jen knows he's screwed up. He doesn't know how things have gotten so blown out of proportion in just a couple of minutes, but he knows it's something he did. Now is not the time to lie. He falls into step beside Jared, breaks pattern by only putting one hand in his pocket. The other, he places on Jared's shoulder. "Jay, man, I'm sorry. It's not like I expect us to fail. It's just, well, everything usually does. For me, anyway, everything turns to shit and goes away. It's probably me, I know, but sometimes when something good comes along, I think it's going to go away."

Jared doesn't answer, mostly, Jen knows, because so far he hasn't said anything that Jared doesn't already know. Still, he's not really sure he's ever said it aloud, so as long as Jared doesn't stop him, he goes on. "Things are just going so well for us right now. We're…well, we're happy, at least I think we are, and now the music's really starting to work out. Your play is set to open next week. I just don't think I have the right to expect that it's going to stay this good. Jay, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I don't know what I'd do without you." Jen cringes at his own admission, but he can't think of any way to put it that sounds less like it came from a bad '80's movie. "That's why I get so, I dunno, agitated, I guess, when the possibility comes up. Even if it's just talk."

He doesn't know when Jared starts chuckling, but he feels the tremors under his fingertips and lets his hand slide into his pocket again. "What's so damned funny?"

"Nothing," Jared dismisses. "Just that you got all pissed off because of what Chris might have said, and then you came back and said pretty much the exact same thing."

"What? That I'm an insecure asshole who sabotages himself in order to keep life from kicking him in the teeth?"

"No." And there's that blush again. "He said I was the best thing that's ever happened to you."

Jensen makes a sound around a curl of tongue that's supposed to be a protest, but no actual words take shape. He shrugs and clears the broken thought from his throat. "Well, not everything Chris says under the influence is bullshit. But don't go getting a big head or anything. The rest of you's big enough."

"You'd know," Jared nudges with a snicker. They walk another half a block in silence before Jared speaks again. "You know, not every good thing in your life has to go away. Sometimes a good thing just leads to something better."

Jared almost succeeds in pulling off his best 'Buddha say' expression, but Jen catches the smirk that isn't quite held in check. Jensen lengthens his stride to keep up as Jared speeds up, suddenly in a hurry to get home.

"Like what?" Jen asks. Silence. "Jaaaaay, like what?" He asks again.

"I dunno," Jared answers surreptitiously. "Wait and see, I guess." It's the absolute worst job of shrugging off an interrogation Jensen has ever seen, and it hits him finally, that Jared hasn't been broody or introspective all night. Jared's been keeping a fucking secret!

"You shit!" Jensen says. He uses both arms like pinball flappers and ricochets Jared back against the nearest wall. "You're hiding something from me, aren't you?"

"No..."

"Jared Tristan Padalecki, you are the worst liar on the fucking planet," Jensen crows, practically slapping himself in the head. "You've got a secret." He pauses briefly and considers what it could possibly be, then gets an evil grin on his face as he realizes he doesn't have to guess. Jared's going to tell him.

Jensen snakes two fingers in Jared's belt buckle and pulls Jay forward into a snarling kiss. The snarl rumbles in his chest as he moves down, biting along Jared's jaw all the way to the jut of bone behind his sideburns. He scrapes his teeth along the edge and growls into Jared's ear. "You know you're terrible at keeping secrets. You've never been able to keep anything from me. So, either you can tell me now, or I can drag you around the corner and suck it right out of your dick."

Jared's chest heaves against him, and Jensen can already feel the hard line of cock against his hip, belying Jared's obvious plans to postpone the fun until they're back home. "W-wait," Jared pants, eyes fluttering shut.

Jensen grinds his hips upward once, just to drive home the fact that he's not feeling very patient at the moment, and slips around the corner into the alley. Jared has half a second to catch his breath before Jen jerks his belt buckle savagely and drags him into the alley as well.

"Oh, God..."


#

Won't you kiss me, on that midnight street; sweep me off my feet, singing ain't this life so sweet."

In his defense, Jared does make a valiant effort to preserve his honor, something he usually leaves Jensen to worry about for the both of them. Apparently, there is such a thing as too public a display of affection, even for Jared Padalecki. But Jensen swallows Jay's grunts of protest between his lips, drowns them out with a serenade of song hummed around suckling kisses.

By the time Jared surrenders and sags against the wall, barely hidden by an overflowing dumpster, Jensen's got that big Texas belt buckle unfastened and is on his way to releasing the snap. He lowers the zipper beneath it, one metal tooth at a time, punctuating each click with a nip along the jut of collarbone at his lips. Once it's all the way down, he slides his hands up under Jared's shirttail to the small of his back and strokes softly with just his fingertips until goosebumps sprout beneath them.

Jared thrusts away from the touch, seeking friction through the open front of his jeans, but Jen hunches his back like a cat, deftly staying just out of reach of Jay's straining cock. It's manipulative, maybe downright mean, but Jensen knows God gave him that mouth for something, and it isn't kissing his mama.

As Jared leans back into the soft caress of Jensen's fingertips, the only friction he can find, Jen slides his hand down beneath the waistband of the jeans and fans them over the damp divot just under Jared's tailbone. He can feel Jared's cock stretching the elastic of the boxers around the back of his hand as he pushes them down with the jeans but doesn't touch, just ghosts his fingers over the firm ass inside.

Jared's protests start anew, whimpers and moans against the fine hairs at the back of Jensen's neck. No longer caring about being seen, his cries switch from 'stop' and 'not here', to 'touch me, suck me, and please, God, now...'

Jensen kisses up Jared's neck to the lobe of his ear, uses his tongue to tease before whispering, "Gonna tell me your secret?"

The groan Jared grinds out in answer is primal, as much frustration and desperation as lust and surrender. His head slams back against the wall, exposing a long stretch of neck that convulses around twisted, broken words that never make it to his mouth.

Jensen figures 'yes' would have made it out by now if it had been coming. "Not yet?" He asks. "You sure?" He draws his lips back, slides his teeth along Jared's jawbone and down his chin, swallows around his Adam's Apple while humming like he's teaching Jared a song. "Not gonna touch you 'til you tell me," he promises with a taunt in his voice, and he's sure he's heard dying cats make less pitiful noises than Jared makes in reply.

He's never been more glad that Jared is wearing the shirt with snaps down the front instead of buttons. They'd both jokingly dubbed it his rape shirt, and Jensen thinks, 'all the better to molest you in,' while he sucks down that long neck and starts popping the snaps open with his teeth. The slick contour of Jared's chest heaves as the shirt falls away, and Jensen nuzzles his way inside. His kisses stop at the collarbone, though, and all he gives Jared below that is hot breath and the occassional droplet of hungry spit, both of which make him tremble.

Big hands wrap around the back of Jensen's head, steering him over a hill of bulging pectoral muscle to a neglected nipple. Grinning, Jensen huffs over the nub with the hottest breath he can muster and stretches his tongue out as far as it can reach without moving closer, just teasing the tiny peak before twisting his neck and ducking lower again. Jared's fists in Jensen's hair tighten painfully and force Jensen to look up even as his knees sink to the ground.

What he sees is Jared's mouth, open and yearning, his eyes closed beneath a forehead shiny with excitement. Jen stills just to watch. Jared coming apart at the seams is more amazing to him than a Cirque du Soleil hand balancer. The sounds Jen draws out of Jared are more like music than anything he's ever plucked from his guitar, or stroked from his piano, the moans more powerful than any lyric Jensen has ever written.

Jared might be long and goofy, sometimes shaggy and downright noisy, but he will always be Jensen's instrument of choice. He wonders if there was ever music in him before Jared, or if everything he'd played 'til then had just been lip synching and karaoke. Jared makes everything real.

Turning circles and time again, it cut like a knife, oh now. If you love me, got to know... for sure.

Jensen's so enrapt with just watching Jared come unglued that he almost forgets what he's trying to accomplish.

"You ready to talk, yet?" He asks, his voice low and promising like distance thunder over the desert. Jared's jeans and boxers are down far enough for Jensen's breath to slide like shower steam over the length of Jay's straining cock, and Jen encourages him forward with small strokes of his fingers over perineum, thumbs caressing over Jared's ass the way they do over his face when they're lost in a kiss. "I'll let you come if you promise to tell me the secret."

Jared's chest hitches a few times more as determination wars with surrender, but finally, he sighs and nods. His eyes, when they open, are blown wide with 'please...'

Cause who's to worry if our hearts get torn, when that hurt gets thrown? Don't yuh know this life goes on?

"Well, all right, then," Jen grins, his tongue extending toward the head of Jared's cock. He draws back for another second, holds Jared in place with thumbs hooked over hipbones, and relishes the play of the street lights over the ripples of muscle in Jay's chest as it heaves a few more times, then says, "I'm holding you to that." He moves his hands aside and presses them into the wall before swallowing anything else he might have planned to say right along with Jared's dick.


#

'Cause it takes something more this time, than sweet, sweet lies, oh now, before I open up my arms and fall, losing all control, every dream inside my soul.

Jensen rocks his hips languidly into Jared's as he refastens the jeans and the belt buckle with one hand. Jay's trembling against him, his nerves still singing with aftershocks as Jensen captures his slack mouth, sealing the promise with a kiss. His own nerves are tingling with arousal, but he can wait until they're home. Sure, home is wherever Jared is, but Jensen can wait until they're in their own bed, at least. Jared's weight against him makes Jen long for their big bed where all that loose muscle and sated breath can cover him like one of Meemaw's heirloom quilts, let the stillness and warmth promise forever like bedtime stories that end in 'happily ever after.'

But when you hold me, like you do, it feels so right, ah now, I start to forget how my heart gets torn, when that hurt gets thrown...

His kiss revives Jared, a breath of air to a drowning victim, and Jensen opens his mouth wider, lets Jared drink him down, cheeks hollowing out and sucking the flavor of spit and come like a kid trying to pull a milkshake through a crazy straw. He supposes it's quite possible that Jared is trying to get out of keeping his end of the deal, but Jen's frankly not all that concerned about the secret at the moment. He's still working on the 'happily ever after.'

This year's love had better last...

His fingers fumble with the last of the snaps on Jay's shirt, and the metallic click almost camouflages the sound of the gun cocking behind him. Jared tenses under Jen's fingers, his mouth suddenly slack and void of suction as a startled grunt forces its way in where Jay's tongue used to be.

Jensen feels it, then, something hard and unforgiving in his back, ghost whispers of desperate breath against his neck. He can't see who's there, but Jared's eyes are almost wide enough to act as mirrors when Jen looks into them, searching, his heart suddenly pounding with more than arousal. The thud in his chest is exactly what he imagines the other shoe dropping to sound like. He's smelled enough gun oil on the set of Supernatural to deduce that whoever's standing behind him isn't just happy to see him.

The gun jabs into his ribs hard enough to make him gasp.

"Hey there, big spender," the assailant rasps, talking over Jen's shoulder to Jared. "I hear you got a little surprise planned for your boy here. Hand it over..." Gloved hands encircle the back of Jensen's neck. "...and I won't put any holes in him that you haven't already had your dick in."

It makes no sense, Jensen knows, but for some reason, he isn't afraid. He's been expecting this, has felt it coming up behind him like a tidal wave in the night. The whole world has ground to a screeching halt, all of eternity compressed into the tiny space between one panting breath and the next. He's sure there's enough time for rational thought between irrational actions to sort this out, and he raises his hands out to the sides in surrender.

"I...I don't have it," Jared chokes out. Panic is written across his face as his eyes dart to meet Jensen's, his hands tightening around Jen's waist. Jensen wonders when or how Jared became the flighty, panicky one, and Jen became resolute. He's pretty sure it was right about the time someone jammed a gun in his back. He knows the look on Jared's face would be his own if the gun were at Jay's back instead.

"I dont fucking believe you," the attacker accuses. His hand tightens at Jensen's neck, and he shakes it roughly like he expects Jen's head to bobble.

Jensen hears Jared growl in the back of his throat as a protective snarl twists his face.

"Look, Grady," Jared huffs. Jensen can tell that Jared doesn't realize what he's just said. "I don't have it on me. But you can take what we do have. My wallet's..."

"My name...! You said my fucking name! How the fuck do you know me?" Jen feels the hand leave his neck, hears the brush of leather over fabric, and realizes the mugger is adjusting his mask. For the first time in the hundred forevers that have passed since this started, Jensen is afraid.

"Shit! Fuck! Shit! You fucking know me!"

Jen's vision blurs for a moment as the gun jams viciously into his kidney. He stifles the accompanying groan, but his eyes clench tightly with the effort. In the instant that he's blinded, they cross some event horizon that he hasn't seen coming, not even in the mirror orbs of Jared's terrified eyes. It's the split second when a star stops being a balancing gravitational force at the center of its galaxy and becomes the gaping, sucking black hole that swallows it.

This year's love had better last...

Jensen's sure the Earth tilts on its axis as he's jerked one way, then another, stops abruptly with the sound of bone against masonry echoing in his ears, the explosion way louder than he thinks it should be. There's a slow scrape and slide of skin against brick, like the walking bass line of a march, and short, staccato clicks of percussive feet against pavement, a prolonged decrescendo into silence.

This year's love had better last...

Only the silence isn't...empty. Something pulls at his shirt sleeve, and the sensation is what he imagines a drowning victim would feel as the tug brings him up to the surface, sound rushing back through static. He shakes his head from side to side, willing the underwater steam vent between his ears to stop boiling long enough for him to get a grip, and when it dies down, there's the slow gurgle and hiss of bubbles breaking at the surface.

A car horn honks, and Jensen's no longer seeing stars on the backs of his eyelids. Instead, spears of streetlight pierce his brain as he sits with a start. "Jared..."

The alley around him is still except for a trembling pull at his sleeve. He knows before he turns what he'll find, but hopes, yeah hopes, because Jared taught him how, that it's their attacker on the ground beside him, and that the footsteps that ran from the alley were Jared going for help.

This year's love had better last...

But there's a reason Jensen doesn't believe in hope, and it's lying on the ground in a growing pool of blood beside him, pulling at his shirt sleeve. There's too much blood in Jared's throat to breathe and no air for goodbye.

"No!...no,no,no,no,no," Jen chants, a panicked litany that comes from his heart only, because his mind is already gone to that place where he never hoped, never believed, never sang. He crawls over to Jared, yells over his shoulder. "Somebody! Help Us!" But he knows no one will come. Not in time.

There's blood, so much blood, everywhere blood, and it doesn't look real, can't be real, he thinks as he hoists Jared's head into his lap, presses his hand over the hole in his chest. It's such a small hole. The blood can't be real, too much, such a small hole, not real. Not real. Not.

The gurgling he'd heard before opening his eyes is louder now, apparently the only sound Jared can make as he chokes and gasps around something in his throat. Not blood. Not blood. Not real.

This year's love had better last...

"Somebody!" He screams again. Jared's eyes fix on his, the bubbling choke that is Jay's only voice underlines what's written in the watery depths. It's crazy, Jen knows, but he imagines words where there are none, and they're all words he doesn't want to hear. He closes his ears to 'goodbye', and 'sorry,' shuts his heart to 'remember me.'

Footsteps again. This time running up the alley toward them, a crescendo toward panic and urgency. Hands grasp Jensen's shoulders. "We've got it, man. Let us help." He thinks he hears static and radios, wonders if these are policemen or EMTs. Doesn't matter. They can't help.

This year's love had better last...

He won't let go, can't let go as his head falls over Jared's shoulder. His hands fist so tightly in Jared's shirt that he knows he must be pinching, will leave bruises like the claiming hickeys he was going to put there later, and still, he doesn't let go. "Jared!"

Jensen's never been a hanger-on. Jared clings, and Jensen lets him. That's how their relationship works. That's real for them, which is why Jensen knows that this is all some bad outtake from their old TV show. Sam Winchester did the whole leaving thing. He did it a thousand different ways, from an angry exit to a slow fade into oblivion. But Jared Padalecki doesn't leave. He can't. He promised Jensen that he wouldn't, wrote it in smudges across the piano.

This year's love had better last...

"Jared!" Jensen shouts, because his heart has forgotten that his head doesn't hope as Jay's eyes glass over and finally roll up into his head. "Jay!" Jensen shakes him. He shakes him with more than desperation; it's rage and anger flooding through him, and he'll snap Jared's fucking head off if he leaves now, after he fucking made Jensen believe. "You can't do this to me! Goddamnit, Jay! Don't you fucking leave me. Don't you dare fucking leave me! You promised."

This year's love had better last...

Jared is heavy in his arms, then ripped away as someone starts CPR. But they can't start a heart when all the blood is on the outside, on the ground, God, on Jensen's hands, in his hair, his nose, his mouth.

Jen wipes his hands frantically against his jeans, brushes the back of his shirt sleeve over the mouth he tried to kiss Jared alive with, and crabwalks back into the wall as more people arrive with lights, and noise, and absolutely nothing that helps.

"You promised," he whispers, as they pound on Jared's chest.

"You promised," he sobs, when they close the trauma room doors in his face.

"You promised," he cries when they hand him an envelope that says, 'Personal Effects' and ask him if he has a ride home.

"You promised..."

Part Three

P.S. If y'all have a minute and are interested in seeing a fic awards comm, Please check Ten Commandments Post

And if you could take the POLL, would make us squee.

Comments

[tru-faith-lost.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Chad did just lose his best friend, after all. Poor dear. *pets him*

[oc-pixie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah...that wasn't the funny situation at all...just the whole me seeing Chad in the Whoopi outfit, ya know..that purple moumou thing....this situation...more realistic...well, as much as it can be...and it's just as tragic.

[tru-faith-lost.livejournal.com]

Heheh, I knew what you meant. I'm just a dork.

[oc-pixie.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with you darlin'