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apocalypsosFic: If It Wasn’t For You Meddling Kids
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trollprincess
Artist credit:kshapiro [Link to art]
Genre: RPS AU
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 21,000 words
Warnings: Graphic m/m sex and Chad. But not together! *thumbs up*
Pairing: Jared/Jensen, some Jared/Sandy
Summary: Jared is one of the leads of the new TV show "Supernatural", but under cover of darkness he is Shadow, a costumed superhero in dark blue spandex who prowls the streets fighting crime and saving people. The move to Vancouver means dealing with an entirely new city to patrol, Mike and Tom's ridiculous excuse for a two-man superhero team, and the mysterious man in black on a motorcycle who's following "Shadow" on his patrols and keeping Jared up nights. In other words, Jared’s a tall friendly Texan who walks through walls, Jensen’s his reserved new co-star -- together, THEY FIGHT CRIME! \o/
Author’s note: Extreme amounts of thanks go out tounperfectwolf for being a faaaaabulous beta, to kshapiro for doing the artwork, to poisontaster and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
txtequilanights for cheerleading and spurring me on and spazz-wrangling when I was all, “Here, read this and tell me it doesn’t suck,” and also to keepaofthecheez for spazz-wrangling me THIS week when she needed porn and I was like, "Er, I have some," and shoved this at her. Heh.
If It Wasn’t For You Meddling Kids
*
Sirens in Los Angeles scare your average criminal about as much as a sudden rain of teddy bears.
Take the guy currently ducking around crowds of kids and between shocked couples, pounding the pavement quicker than a jackrabbit. He gets as much distance as he can between himself and Lamarr Diamonds, the building’s alarm still audible from this far away. He ignores the ringing in his ears, too busy trying to escape someone far more dangerous than the cops or the police or even a goddamn armed Marine.
The thief races through the streets as fast as his feet will carry him, splashing through puddles and swiping rainwater from his eyes as he ducks into an alleyway.
There’s a doorway in the depths of the alley and he presses himself against it, backing up until nothing will give him away. He holds his breath as a police car speeds past on the street, its siren blaring and lights flashing. His hand pats the jacket pocket where the diamonds are and he exhales with relief at the slight weight of them. At least he hasn’t lost them in the chase.
His gaze darts up and down the entire length of the alleyway, searching for movement. There are eyes in the shadows, and every criminal in L.A. knows it.
A strong hand clutches at his shoulder from behind, grabs on hard and tight.
He yelps loudly.
Hot breath suddenly rushes past his ear as a dark rough voice says, “You really thought you were going to get away it? That’s cute.”
A moment later the velvet bag of diamonds dangles from glove-covered fingertips in his line of sight. The thief shudders. He didn’t even feel them being lifted from his damn pocket and he doesn‘t want to think about how that‘s possible. Some things in this world, you just didn‘t question.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks in a shaky voice.
“I’m Shadow,” the man behind him growls, and hauls the thief through the door as if it doesn’t even exist.
*
Jared decides right from the start of his night job that he is going to be just as serious about his extracurricular activities as he is about his acting. He spends weeks working on the design of his costume, he takes up all of his free time reading through old newspaper and magazine articles online like he‘s researching a damn college report, and he plans on meeting as many of his peers as he can with the intention of setting up a solid network of reliable contacts.
Jared Padalecki is going to be a goddamn professional.
And then he meets Chad and fucks the whole thing right up.
“Hey, dude, watch this,” Chad says during filming one day.
He grins and snaps his fingers, and when every candle in the room lights up -- and there’s a lot, they’re filming some Rory-and-Tristin-as-Romeo-and-Juliet thing and there’s tapers and tea lights on every available surface -- Chad nearly keels over when the entire crew spazzes right the hell out.
Jared scowls and punches Chad in the shoulder.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hisses, even though nobody seems to know what the hell happened and the director’s yelling at everyone to get rid of the damn things just in case.
Nobody suspects it’s Chad’s doing. After all, it’s Chad Michael Murray, the same guy who hits on every hot young blonde extra that crosses his path and has no other purpose for a good book than to steady an uneven table. Chad’s known to be a flailing drunken idiot and that’s when you’re giving him a polite assessment.
Plus, he’s an actor, for crying out loud. Theoretically, the only thing about him that should be the least bit dangerous is his fashion sense.
That’s just the way things work.
It’s one more lesson Jared’s got to learn now that he’s a professional.
When he goes over to Chad’s new place one day to trounce his sorry ass at Playstation and Chad’s showing him around, pointing out his huge-ass flatscreen and enormous bed and pinball machine, and Jared says, “So can I see your game room?”
Chad chokes on his own laughter.
Jared’s ears go bright red at the look on Chad’s face, this ‘Oh, you big dumb idiot’ expression that makes Jared stuff his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans and focus on the worn toes of his sneakers.
“’Game room‘?” Chad asks, then claps Jared on the back. “Dude, you are like the worst superhero ever.”
*
Chad’s lair is just this fake wall in the back of his bedroom closet that pops open when you crack it just right with your fist. It’s not like Jared’s expecting the damn thing to be the Batcave or anything. After all, Chad’s got a kickin’ condo but it’s still not a mansion or anything.
Then again Jared’s not exactly one to critique a guy’s lair when he’s still working out of an old foot locker with Spurs stickers all over it.
Jared probably wouldn’t laugh if the door didn’t swing open with a soundtrack.
“’Great Balls Of Fire’?” Jared manages to say once he catches his breath.
Chad smirks as he pushes aside a bunch of hangers holding up a dozen black costumes with red and orange flames sewn up the legs. “Biggest you’ve ever seen, motherfucker.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet.”
It turns out that Chad’s not exactly the worst superhero in the world. He’s sure as hell not the best, what with signing autographs as his alter ego at crime scenes and lighting girls’ cigarettes on fire with his mind in bars as a conversation starter. That’s not even mentioning the time Jared boosts Chad’s spare utility belt to borrow one of his tracking devices and only finds strawberry lube, condoms and fake IDs in the pockets.
But Jared could do worse when it comes to meeting experienced superheroes in Hollywood. After all, there are certainly enough of them.
“You’re kiddin’ me,” Jared says one day while they‘re killing time at Jared’s playing video games.
“No shit,” Chad says, taking another long pull off his Corona. “He doesn’t even wear a mask or anything. He just goes out into the city in a suit and tie and turns muggers to stone.”
“Jon Stewart is not a fucking superhero.”
“Yeah, says you. You still don‘t believe George Clooney‘s the Stunner.”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
Chad just grins and runs over a prostitute on the TV screen, making Jared wince. Chad always kicks his ass at Grand Theft Auto and usually ends the night by making a crack about Jared’s inherent nobility and heroism meaning that he can’t even beat up fictional criminals and pimp out nonexistent prostitutes.
Except in Chad-speak, which translates to, “You know, you’d probably beat me at this more often if you weren’t such a fucking pussy.”
Jared narrows his eyes and smacks him on the arm, increasing his density and putting a little more “oomph” into the hit than he normally would.
“Aw, come on, Jay,” Chad says, dropping his controller and rubbing at his arm. “That’s going to leave a hell of a bruise, you know that?”
Chad’s off making movies now (albeit Disney crap with Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan, which means they can‘t even show their tits so it‘s not like it‘s worth it) while Jared’s still getting toyed with by Rory Gilmore on a weekly basis. Chad’s still cracking jokes about how Jared can break down brick walls but can’t seem to knock over the combined weight of Milo and Alexis.
“I bet when they make out it looks like the most obscene game of Pick-Up Stix ever,” Chad once said.
Jared had laughed so hard at that he’d fallen forward and forgotten to shift out of the way and hit his eye off the corner of Chad’s cheap-ass coffee table, so he‘d ended up with a black eye that makeup had bitched about for days.
So, yeah. If Chad’s going to whine about a big old bruise on his arm, Jared can’t bring himself to be all that concerned.
*
The thing about fighting crime and saving people in Los Angeles is that you’re not alone.
It’s kind of nice, actually, because it takes most of the guilt away. When Jared moved out here he was positive he’d spend all of his free time running around beating up muggers and criminals and hauling them into police stations, but it turned out there was enough crime to go around and enough superheroes running around to make a hell of a dent. Really, a guy could only do so much, but the great thing was that there was always somebody to pick up the slack.
It also didn’t hurt that most of the actors and singers in Hollywood were superheroes.
After all, that couldn’t possibly be Orlando Bloom pulling you out of that burning building. He’s filming something in the Bahamas right now, isn’t he? And wouldn’t everybody know if he had superstrength? Really, it couldn’t possibly have been him. He’s too famous.
Which, you know, was kind of the point.
And as for the other more superpowered side of the whole thing, just when you thought the job was getting to you, you’d fly over some back alley and spot Angelina Jolie in skintight black vinyl and a mask kicking some drug dealer’s ass.
Really, that made up for a lot.
Jared practices a hell of a lot, changing his molecular density so often he’s almost scared he’ll end up going too far in the wrong direction and float off on a breeze or something. He figures out how to fly, how to make himself hard enough to break through solid steel and how to walk through walls as if they‘re simple mirages he can just ignore. He figures out just how light he’s got to be to withstand fire and just how heavy he’s got to make himself to fend off bullets.
He also learns how to walk around in public in spandex without blushing.
No, really. That’s the shit you have to really practice.
*
When they go to Australia to film House of Wax Jared uses it as a vacation from crime fighting. He’s not exactly gunning to make the front pages in the newspapers over here, unlike Chad. He’s been spending every moment off the set either playing video games with Jared and drinking Foster’s (because he’s just the kind of tool who will do that in Australia) or bounding across rooftops and setting things on fire.
Jared would ask if Chad has more fun burning stuff than he does hanging out with Jared, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know the answer to that one.
The shoot’s boring as hell, though, unless you count how many times he and Elisha roll their eyes behind Paris’s back at her sorry attempts to act. He’s almost afraid she’s going to turn out to be a superhero too and then he’ll have to talk to her, and there’s only so much he’s about to allow himself to suffer for his art. You know, if you can call a script with this many writers “art.”
The only time it gets more interesting is when they start pouring wax on his skin for a scene, and … well.
“Are you telling me you called me all the way from Australia to whine about hot wax on your skin?”
Jared sighs as he runs his fingers through his hair and looks out at the ocean view from his hotel room. Sandy’s an awesome girlfriend, yeah, but he could stand for a little sympathy here.
“I’ve got sensitive skin,” he says.
“Yeah, several thousand miles of it.”
He frowns. “I just don’t like hot wax on my skin, is all. Makes it all red and itchy.”
There’s this bark of laughter from the other end of the line, like something a seal would say right before you tossed it a fish. “Oh, baby,” she says, “now I have to chalk one more thing off the list of kinky things I’m allowed to do to you.”
“Sandy!”
She’s got a point behind all of the teasing, but still.
“What? Go rub yourself down with lotion. Or would you rather I did it for you?”
He opens his mouth to protest but when he turns around she’s already standing there behind him in some game-show-hostess pose all, ‘Here I am, you big stud.’ She flashes him a bright happy smile and wiggles her hips a little, and … okay, he’d really like to argue her coming all the way here but he wouldn‘t win that argument with someone who can teleport. Mostly he’s just a little disappointed she obviously left her costume all the way back in America.
Sometimes what a guy really needs is just to see his girlfriend in a teeny little skirt and completely impractical fuck-me-quickly boots.
And a cape. Oh, man, that damn cape.
For some reason the cape always does wonders for making his dick sit up and beg, which is a big reason why he refuses to patrol with her. An erection the size of the Washington Monument isn’t exactly the kind of intimidation technique he wants to use.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Sandy says, grabbing onto his sides, pulling him close.
He tosses the phone to the side and says, “I don’t know. It’s not like it was out of your way or anything, right? And my skin really does still hurt from that wax …”
She stops tugging at his shirt to cock a delicate eyebrow. “Okay, if you don’t stop complaining, I’m just going to go home and trash some thugs instead of blowing you.”
Jared nods solemnly.
“That’s fair,” he says, and strips off his shirt.
*
Not long after Jared gets back to L.A., he finds out he landed Supernatural.
Chad comes back from North Carolina for the weekend and drags him out to celebrate. This time he even waits for Jared to put on the stupid ankle weights he had to have specially made that don‘t phase when he does but stay on. When Jared drinks he loses control and has a really bad habit of losing density in the wrong places and floating towards the ceiling. And really, there’s only so much shit you can blame on everybody else being wasted and a six-and-a-half-foot tall guy defying gravity is kind of pushing it.
“So what do you know about this Jensen Ackles guy anyway?” Jared asks once they get to the bar, before Chad‘s too drunk to start a fight and after Jared‘s crossed the line from sober to uncensored.
Chad frowns as he drags his gaze away from the gyrating ass of the hot redhead dancing ten feet away from them. Jared’s tempted to bring up Sophia at home waiting for her sweet adorable boyfriend but strangely enough he’s not all anxious for some third-degree burns in his future.
“I thought you met the guy,” Chad says.
Jared shifts awkwardly as he leans against the bar because, yeah, he met Jensen. He seems cool and all, and when they read together there was definite friendly chemistry in the room which sort of cemented the deal on hiring them. And Jensen is kinda quiet in his own way, all to himself. Jared always likes guys like that. Makes it feel like he’s opening them up to people when they interview together instead of like he’s hanging off them with a big goofy smile like some braindead idiot.
But … well. “I meant, you know.” Jared waves his hand in circles in midair, trying to come up with what he‘s getting at. A steady intake of Coronas and Jager bombs for the past few hours hasn’t done wonders for his vocabulary.
Chad’s lips tug into a teasing grin. “You mean does he swat at invisible birds in the air or something?”
“You know what I mean,” Jared says.
“Oh,” Chad says, “you mean is he a card-carrying member of Spandex Addicts Anonymous.”
Jared picks at the label of his bottle. “I wasn’t going to put it that way, but, yeah, okay.”
Chad shrugs. “Beats me, dude. I don’t exactly call roll at the meetings.”
“I just.” Jared waves to the bartender to indicate he could use a refresher on his drink, anything to distract himself from being drunk enough to ask about this stuff in a freakin’ bar. “It’s just going to be me and Jensen up there in Vancouver.”
“What are you talking about, man? Mike and Tommy are up there.”
Jared makes a face at that, picturing the last time he hung out with Mike and Tom for more than ten minutes outside of a press function for the network. They’d run into one another one night while the three of them were patrolling -- though not literally, Mike might have superspeed but the dumbass did know how to steer while going hundreds of miles per hour -- and Jared could swear that he’d had fewer nights since becoming a superhero that were more embarrassing than that particular patrol.
“Yeah, as much as I might like someone to hang out with, I think I’d rather someone other than Mike.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“He was patrolling naked, man.”
“Why are you complaining? He moves so fast it’s not like anybody can see it.”
“They can when he stops,” Jared mutters. “I just don’t want to have one more jackass to have to deal with. It’d be nice if I could patrol with someone who’d take the job seriously for once, you know what I mean?”
“Not a clue,” Chad says, staring at the redhead’s ass all over again.
Jared shakes his head and chugs half of his new bottle of beer in one go.
*
“You’re not really gonna eat all of that, are you?”
Jared grins across the picnic table at Jensen, who’s staring at the mound of food crammed into the Styrofoam container Jared had carried over from craft services the same way mountain climbers stare at Everest. Jared’s more than used to the response.
“Was plannin’ on it,” he says, cramming a mouthful of pasta into his mouth.
Jensen just shakes his head. “Jesus, Jay, how many tapeworms are in there?”
“What? I’m still a growing boy.”
“That right there is a terrifying thought,” Jensen says, poking at his potatoes.
Jared can’t help but grin at the teasing. It’s only the first week of filming but already the two of them are getting along like gangbusters. It’s brilliant, is what it is. They click like crazy, scraping across one another in that good way that sparks and feels like it’ll set things on fire. Jensen makes fun of Jared’s taste in shirts and Jared cracks jokes about Jensen’s apparent fixation with blondes with big tits. It’s a lot like hanging out with Chad, if you ignore the lack of a spandex bodysuit under Jensen’s clothes and the fact that Jensen can carry on a conversation about subjects more complicated than whether the half-dressed waitress at the bar will blow him in the bathroom.
“So, hey,” Jared says, all perky and happy, “I was thinking. My place on Sunday? My hotel room’s got a decent TV and it should pick up the Rangers game if we’re lucky.”
Jensen grins at that, like the shy kid picked to sit with the popular crowd or something, and Jared feels warmth spread through his chest at the sight.
“Yeah, sure,” Jensen says. “We could hit the bars on Saturday night, too, while we’re at it.”
Guilt washes over Jared in a heartbeat, but he quickly brushes it aside. Focusing intently on his lunch, Jared says, “Well, I kinda have plans for Saturday night already, but, you know. Sunday, yeah?”
Jensen doesn’t seem to be bothered, just shrugs and says, “Okay, man, not a problem.”
*
Jared’s first patrol of the streets of Vancouver on Saturday night starts out boring and goes downhill fast. Not that it’s not anything he’s not already used to, of course. The dizzying number of people he spots out of the corner of his eye darting into shadows or flying overheard is a little staggering but the place doesn’t look like it’s half as crowded as Los Angeles is.
But most of a superhero’s work is standing around waiting for something to happen. In that way it’s not much different than acting. After an hour and a half he kinda wishes he’d brought a magazine or a PS2 or something and the leg he’s been resting his weight on is falling asleep and the spandex is starting to ride up in some seriously uncomfortable places.
He desperately resists the urge to tug his uniform into place, picturing the batty old seamstress Chad had said was worth every penny when he’d first moved to Los Angeles.
She’d tilted her head back to look up at him and sighed. “I’m going to need more fabric,” she’d said.
A week later he’d had a much nicer version of the costume his mom had made at the kitchen table one weekend. It was this dark shade of midnight blue, textured just right to make him look twice as ripped as he already was, and a cowl he could tug over his hair. She’d even made him matching boots.
It is fucking awesome.
Of course, the downside is the sweat.
“Okay, that’s not gross,” he mutters, shifting in his position on the rooftop overlooking one of the more crime-ridden areas of town. Under his cowl his hair’s already soaked through. He doesn’t even want to think about what Batman’s hair smells like after a night out.
“Well, well, look who’s using our favorite rooftop as a hangout spot,” a familiar voice says from behind him.
“Aw, man,” Jared mutters.
Mike laughs at that like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
It’s hard enough to take Rosenbaum seriously even without the ridiculous costume. Jared had seen it more than a few times back home speeding past him, but then again it was hard not to miss a Barbie-pink costume with a cape and sparkly gold boots and wings on the heels and this weird pointy hat. Hell, it doesn’t even make sense, except for the part where Mike’s wearing it and so it totally does.
“Jay, my man,” he’d said once when Jared had asked about the costume, “I move so fucking fast no one’s going to see the damn thing anyway. Besides, they’re supposed to be tacky.”
“Yeah, don’t come crying to me when the fashion police come to arrest you,” Jared had said.
Mike had just slapped him on the back and said, “Hey, I’ve seen the shirts you wear to press junkets, buddy-boy.”
Jared really hadn’t been prepared to argue that.
Getting to his feet, Jared tries to shake the numbness from his left leg -- oh, yeah, it’s definitely gone to sleep -- and finally resorts to altering the density of his lower body just enough to settle down the nerves in his calves. The upside was that the pins and needles went away in an instant. The downside was sinking an inch or two into the surface of the rooftop until he pulled himself together.
“I didn’t know, honest,” he says, but it’s never been a big deal with anyone else and Mike just waves it off. “I can move if you want.”
“Don’t worry about it. I mean, Shadow, on my own rooftop. Can I, like, have your autograph?”
Mike clasps his hands in front of his disturbingly attired midsection -- there was a reason Jared had insisted on not having the underwear on the outside of his costume and seeing Mike’s glittery gold crotch was it -- and bats his eyelashes playfully at Jared. As goofy as he could be out of the costume, he’s twice the idiot he normally is when he’s in it. Somehow the pink managed to enhance his occasional ability to act like a lovestruck thirteen-year-old girl.
“Oh, shut it,” Jared says. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, the Streak.”
“What’s wrong with the Streak?”
“There are so many ways I could answer that question,” Tom drawls from beside Jared, appearing out of the shadows as if he’s always just been there. Then again maybe he had. “Didn’t expect to see you working your first weekend up here.”
Jared shrugs and yeah, okay, maybe even his shoulders have gotten a little stiff. “Figured I’d scope out the area, see what’s up.” He takes in Tom’s jeans, sneakers and T-shirt with a complete lack of a surprise. Tom‘s never been big on living the cliché but when you can make people see what you want you don‘t really have to. “Nice costume.”
“You say that like I really need one with my powers,” Tom says.
“With your powers? Oh, please,” Mike drawls. He throws an arm around Tom’s shoulders and rumples his hair, making it stick up in a dozen different directions.
Tom shoots him a dirty look and elbows him in the side, which Mike ignores.
“This numbnuts doesn’t even have to bother with his stupid powers to disguise himself,” Mike declares proudly. “We saved some old lady from a mugger a few months back and she went on the news and said how she was saved by a nice young man wearing a Superman mask.”
Jared can’t help but chuckle at that, and even Tommy just smiles and swipes at Mike’s stupid hat.
Seriously, no logical reason for that ugly thing whatsoever.
“Knock it off,” Tom says. “I don’t know why I teamed up with you in the first place.”
“Because somebody’s got to keep him from getting himself arrested wearing that outfit?” Jared offers.
Mike doesn’t even act offended by that, just pretends to swoon toward Jared’s chest all over again.
“Brawn and brains? Oh, baby. I’m going to write ’Shadow’ all over the back of my Trapper Keeper and draw little pink hearts all around it.”
Off in the distance an alarm sounds out, loud and shrill.
All three of them perk up like hunting dogs hearing a rabbit in the underbrush, but Mike’s the first to say anything.
“Bank robbery! I call dibs!” he says, smacking Tom on the chest.
A second later he’s gone, a stiff breeze in his wake as he races off.
Jared moves to follow, to leap off the roof and land on the ground below so he can make chase through the streets (and walls and buildings and cars), but Tom’s hand on his arm stops him cold.
“He’s probably already got the thieves in the back of a police car by now, man,” Tom says, a silent apology in the wake of his words.
Jared sighs and crosses his arms, not all that surprised. Mike’s never been exactly one to wait up for anybody else. He’s patrolled with them a few times before and the one thing he’s learned about Mike -- aside from the fact that he possesses a complete and total lack of shame -- is that Mike’s got no problem getting to a crime scene first and tying up the criminals before everybody else even gets halfway there.
“That doesn’t make me feel useless at all,” he mutters.
Tom just grins and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking down to the streets below. Off in the direction of the alarm flashing lights give the surrounding buildings an eerie but familiar glow.
“It’s your first week here,” he says to Jared. “Nobody said you have to show up bright and early the first chance you get, you fucking apple-polisher.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jared says.
Tom vanishes before Jared can ask him what comes next, the weight and presence of his body disappearing in an instant, and Jared wonders briefly if he was even ever there to begin with. He’s tempted to scope out the nearby rooftops, skim the doorways in the shops and apartment buildings below to see if he can spot Tom hanging out in one of them. It’d be just the kind of move Tom would use.
On the other hand, how else is he going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching up with his dumbass partner?
If there’s one thing Jared’s thankful for, it’s that he never fell into the teammate trap. That’s the easiest way in the world to end up dangling by a chain over a smoking lava pit with some indignant idiot threatening to feed you to sharks before taking over the world.
Not that he’s ever known anybody who’s gotten themselves into that particular mess.
Unless you counted Chad, but Sophia so owed him for that one.
Also, it was piranhas, not sharks. But still.
Jared takes up position at the edge of the roof, nervous energy thrumming through his veins as he takes in the city below him. From here the sounds of a busy Saturday night can be heard, the excited conversations of club goers and bar hoppers, the competing bass beats from a dozen different parties nearby.
A motorcycle engine revs at the nearest street corner, drawing Jared’s gaze.
A figure in black leather sits on a jerry-rigged motorcycle that looks like nothing Jared’s ever seen, like some gothic art project in auto shop, sleek and black and beautiful. It’s hard to tell anything about the biker from this distance except that he isn’t one, not really, not the kind with shitkicker boots and brass knuckles tucked into his back pocket. There’s something about the bike and the outfit that’s not about adornments, that’s all about blending into the darkness if necessary.
And his helmet tilts upward at just the right angle.
Before he drives off with a roar of his engine, Jared could swear that the biker sees him.
*
“Twins, man. Blonde blue-eyed gorgeous stacked twins.”
Jensen makes a curving gesture with his hands at chest level, not bothering to put down the beer in his hand to do it. Jared just grins and picks at the label of his own drink, settling more comfortable into the couch cushions. Jensen’s been telling the tale of just what exactly he’d gotten up to the night before, and somewhere in between the midget wrestling, the giant pool of Jell-O, and the dancing camels, Jared‘s sides hurt from laughing so much he‘s starting to think he‘s pulled a muscle.
Once you got Jensen alone and loosened him up, the guy’s actually pretty funny.
They’ve got alcohol and sports, pizza and wings, and even though Jared could really stand a few more precious hours of sleep it’s great.
Hell, better than great. Awesome. It’s like hanging with Chad, but without the need for bail.
The Rangers are losing, although the dogs seem to care more than they do. Well, mostly Harley, to be honest. He sits up close to the screen, watching the ball get tossed from one mitt to another. Sometimes he whines a little and looks back at Jared like he doesn’t understand why they’re not throwing it to him.
Sadie, on the other hand, is in love with Jensen. She rests her head on his knee, dark eyes wide and quietly pleading, perfectly content with the occasional caress of Jensen’s palm over her head.
“You don’t have to rub it in, you know,” Jared says, trying not to get too comfortable. The last thing he needs is fall asleep while Jensen’s still here and do something embarrassing like … he doesn’t know. Tip over into Jensen’s lap and drool all over his jeans or something.
Jensen grabs a nacho from the bowl on the coffee table and grins. “Course I do, Jay,” he says, taking a bite out of a chip. “When you skip out on barhopping to do … whatever it was you were doing last night --”
“I thought we decided I was learning how to train elephants to juggle or some shit,” Jared says.
Jensen’s other guesses had been stripping in a gay bar. Jared had made a grab for Jensen’s bottle of beer so he wouldn’t notice Jared’s ears turning red.
“-- and two beautiful women with very creative ideas of what to do with their hands throw themselves at me,” Jensen continues, “I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have to stop rubbing it in. Ever.”
“Like you wouldn’t know what to do with two hot dates.”
“Surprisingly enough, those rumors on the internet aren’t true, man.”
Jared just grins wide and says, “Whatever, jackass.”
Jensen shakes his head at that, getting nacho crumbs all over the couch. He absently swipes them onto the floor -- hell, it’s not his hotel room and that’s what housekeeping is for. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
Maybe it’s too much time around Chad and Mike and Tommy but Jared finds himself saying, “No, but I kiss everybody else.”
Funny. Jared could swear that those awkward pauses where everything just suddenly goes silent and you say the wrong thing and you get to feel like a great big goober only happen at parties.
He glances over at Jensen, all ready to say that he was just cracking wise, but … well. Jensen’s got those fucking weird eyelashes, man, girly and dark and thick, and when he looks past them with his eyes narrowed just so it makes Jared feel … uh, heavy. Or something. Warm and dark and wild and heavy.
He once narrowed his concentration to increase the hell out of his density, focusing until he thought he could put a diamond on an anvil and bring his fist down and smash the gem to its. Then he’d plummeted from where he’d been floating hundreds of feet above the earth, crashed through the roof of a steel mill about to explode and hit a foundry full of molten iron.
This feels kind of like that.
Well, except his clothes haven’t melted off yet.
Jensen‘s thumb circles the lip of his bottle unconsciously, and he says, “I’ll just bet,” in a way that makes Jared’s stomach flop over.
“Sandy came in for the night,” he blurts out.
Oh, man. Sandy’s going to kill him.
Jensen tilts his head at that, this tug of his lips like he knows something Jared doesn‘t. “Just one night?”
Jared slouches and focuses on the game. Now the Rangers are five runs behind and even Harley‘s decided maybe it‘d be more fun to flop down on the floor in front of the TV and snore at the ceiling. “It was all she could squeeze in between jobs,” he says.
“You could have just said so,” Jensen points out.
“I just.” Jared shrugs and his muscles twitch in defiance. His skin feels too damn small like he shrunk it in the wash, and he can’t figure it out if it’s from not stretching before patrol or the playful look in Jensen’s eyes. “You know.”
“Okay, whatever,” Jensen says. “It’s not like it’s that big a deal, man.”
The Rangers watch a home run fly right over their heads. Jared wonder if Jensen wants to throw his beer at the screen half as much as Jared does.
Jensen sighs, shifting his weight on the couch cushions. “I miss football.”
“Fuck that,” Jared says. “Basketball, man.”
Jensen shoots him a mischievous glance.
“I’ll bet the Mavs do better than your pansy-ass Spurs next season.”
“Oh, you are so on.”
*
Ten minutes after Jensen leaves Jared’s just put the empty pizza boxes into the kitchen area of the hotel room when Sandy appears out of thin air in front of him and scares the crap out of him.
“Okay,” she says, shoving him towards the bedroom before he can protest -- yeah, like he’d even think of it -- and tugging at her shirt with her free hand. “I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to get back because my roommate’s parents are in town and they’re starting to think I’m popping diuretics or something, I’ve ducked into the bathroom so many times --”
“Jensen thinks you were here last night,” he blurts out.
She stops walking and spins him around. “What?”
“I had to tell him something,” he says, palms spread. “I went out on patrol and he wanted to go hang out.”
“And there is no one else on the planet you could have used as an alibi?”
“I panicked,” he says.
She frowns and makes like she’s going to kick him in the ankles, which would probably be threatening if she weren’t so damn cute. It’s kind of like being attacked by a disgruntled kitten. Jared’s half-tempted sometimes to see if dangling yarn over her head would stop arguments, but he’s pretty sure she’d just teleport him to Siberia and leave him there.
But, yeah, it’s common courtesy not to use another hero as an alibi. Of course, tell that to Jared’s stupid uncontrollable mouth.
And people wondered why he stuffed so much food into it all the damn time.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Sandy groans.
“When have I ever been able to tell a cover story worth a damn?”
She narrows her eyes then, silently assessing him. “Good point,” she says, then steps back and flashing him a brilliant smile. “You know, if we already had sex last night, then we don’t have to do it right now.”
What the --
“Sandy!”
But she’s already gone, vanishing into thin air.
“Aw, man,” he mutters.
He nearly jumps a foot in the air when someone taps him on the shoulder, spinning on his heels and nearly thwacking Sandy in the head with his hand.
“Baby, you are so gullible,” she says in between giggles, then catches a glimpse at the clock with a groan. “Seventeen minutes?”
She yanks off her shirt and tugs off her skirt, revealing the fantastically expensive dark green underwear Jared bought her for his last birthday.
What? That does count as a present for him, after all.
“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” he asks.
“You’re an idiot,” Sandy declares, rolling her eyes before she pushes him onto the bed and pounces.
*
Jared wakes up halfway through the night to his cell phone announcing a new text message with the sound of the Super Mario theme trilling from his nightstand.
When he flips it open and brings up the message, he sees, Next time it will be redheaded triplets. Just you see.
Jared grins at that before he spots “3:14 a.m.” in the corner of the screen. They have to be on the set at six, so it’s a little hard to tell whether this is Jensen who stayed up late from the night before or Jensen who woke up an hour and a half earlier than he needed to. Neither of them sounds like any Jensen Jared’s ever met.
what r u doing up?, he sends back.
A minute later, Jensen responds with, Stripping at a gay bar.
And Jared completely loses it, even though he probably shouldn‘t.
*
It’s a late-model Mercedes, shiny and silver and clean with the exception of the huge dent in the rear bumper. The car teeters on the edge of the bridge, precarious and dangerous and Jared would definitely not be doing this if he had any common sense whatsoever and if there was much of a chance he’d go with it.
He lands on the bridge right behind it, ignoring the slowly gathering crowd of terrified bystanders, and walks right through the trunk.
The driver isn’t even paying attention to him, too busy staring at the drop ahead of him and clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles. He’s middle-aged and wearing a suit more expensive than everything in Jared’s closet put together.
Jared can already see trouble coming on the near horizon, although at least this time it doesn’t appear sporting glittery gold underwear.
He taps the driver on the shoulder to get his attention. The guy flinches and turns, and the sudden movement makes the car shake ominously.
“Grab my hand!” Jared says.
The driver doesn’t listen, but that’s nothing new. He looks down at Jared’s long legs, disappearing into his back seat as if Jared’s some do-gooding ghost, and mutters, “How the hell --”
“Do you really want to waste time asking me that question right now?”
“Good point,” the driver says, and takes hold of Jared’s hand.
It only takes a second for the driver to reach the same level of cellular density as Jared -- he’d practiced for years to get to the point where he could do the same thing to others that he could do to his own body -- and it’s just enough shifting of the weight inside the vehicle for the damn thing to go tumbling over the side with a resounding crash of metal and glass.
Jared’s feeling proud for all of four seconds, another life saved, another wrong righted, when the man rushes over to the side of the bridge, groans in disgust, and scowls over his shoulder at Jared.
“Oh, come on,” he snaps. “You couldn’t have saved the car?”
Jared sighs. This isn’t really all that new, either.
“You’re welcome,” he says, trying not to sound a little disappointed and failing spectacularly.
The guy shakes his head before reaching into his coat for his cell phone, muttering to himself about smug super powered idiots who can go out in public dressed like that but can’t be bothered to keep a hugely expensive luxury car from the type of mass destruction that makes insurance agents wince.
Okay, so Jared can’t hear exactly what the guy’s bitching to himself about. He’s had years to get the gist of it.
Flickering lights dance across the pavement as the police arrive and Jared doesn’t even pause before lessening his density and dropping through the bridge’s surface. Technically, being a superhero’s pretty damn illegal -- not that anybody ever tries to prosecute, but still -- and Jared’s not about to deal with the police right now. As Chad’s more than fond of pointing out, wearing spandex on a regular basis is one thing, but add handcuffs to the mix and you’re starting to lean dangerously into gay porn territory.
The stunned murmurings of the crowd on the bridge fall to his ears as he lands not far from the wreckage of the Mercedes. He takes a step back into the shadows underneath the bridge and whistles in awe of the damage. Okay, yeah, if that were his car he’d probably want to choke a bitch right now.
Granted, he’d be a little more grateful about being alive to engage in the choking of said bitch, but … honestly, holy shit, dude.
They can be real assholes sometimes, can’t they?
Jared practically jumps a foot off the ground at the voice in his head, gaze darting quickly around the shadowed road below the bridge before spotting the man on the motorcycle parked a good fifty feet or so behind him. Or at least he thinks it’s a man -- it’s hard to tell in all the black leather and with the helmet.
The voice in the his head could be anyone, devoid of accent, not too deep and not too high. Jared gets the impression that he practiced the identifiers right out of his mental voice in an effort to better stay anonymous.
“Tell me about it,” Jared says, giving the remains of the Mercedes a dirty look. “You know, I once had some bank manager try to sue me for shattering the door to his safe after a bunch of bank robbers locked him in there. He could barely breathe when I hauled his sorry ass out of there but he sure had enough energy to dial his damn lawyer.”
The man on the motorcycle tilts his head. Jared can almost picture the smile behind the visor. How‘d you get out of that one?
“Running really fast,” Jared says.
Yeah, that’ll do it.
Jared grins in spite of his mood and stands up a little straighter. “I’m Shadow,” he says.
The man on the motorcycle nods, slow and deliberate, and when he speaks Jared could swear he can hear the smile in the man’s words. I know.
“What about you? You got a name?”
Not really, the voice in Jared’s head says.
Before Jared can ask him anything else the engine of the motorcycle roars to life, fierce and strong, and a split second later the stranger spins the bike around and heads off into the night.
“Hey!” Jared yells.
There’s no answer, inside of his head or out of it.
Part Two
Author:
trollprincessArtist credit:
kshapiro [Link to art]Genre: RPS AU
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 21,000 words
Warnings: Graphic m/m sex and Chad. But not together! *thumbs up*
Pairing: Jared/Jensen, some Jared/Sandy
Summary: Jared is one of the leads of the new TV show "Supernatural", but under cover of darkness he is Shadow, a costumed superhero in dark blue spandex who prowls the streets fighting crime and saving people. The move to Vancouver means dealing with an entirely new city to patrol, Mike and Tom's ridiculous excuse for a two-man superhero team, and the mysterious man in black on a motorcycle who's following "Shadow" on his patrols and keeping Jared up nights. In other words, Jared’s a tall friendly Texan who walks through walls, Jensen’s his reserved new co-star -- together, THEY FIGHT CRIME! \o/
Author’s note: Extreme amounts of thanks go out to
unperfectwolf for being a faaaaabulous beta, to kshapiro for doing the artwork, to poisontaster and txtequilanights for cheerleading and spurring me on and spazz-wrangling when I was all, “Here, read this and tell me it doesn’t suck,” and also to keepaofthecheez for spazz-wrangling me THIS week when she needed porn and I was like, "Er, I have some," and shoved this at her. Heh. Sirens in Los Angeles scare your average criminal about as much as a sudden rain of teddy bears.
Take the guy currently ducking around crowds of kids and between shocked couples, pounding the pavement quicker than a jackrabbit. He gets as much distance as he can between himself and Lamarr Diamonds, the building’s alarm still audible from this far away. He ignores the ringing in his ears, too busy trying to escape someone far more dangerous than the cops or the police or even a goddamn armed Marine.
The thief races through the streets as fast as his feet will carry him, splashing through puddles and swiping rainwater from his eyes as he ducks into an alleyway.
There’s a doorway in the depths of the alley and he presses himself against it, backing up until nothing will give him away. He holds his breath as a police car speeds past on the street, its siren blaring and lights flashing. His hand pats the jacket pocket where the diamonds are and he exhales with relief at the slight weight of them. At least he hasn’t lost them in the chase.
His gaze darts up and down the entire length of the alleyway, searching for movement. There are eyes in the shadows, and every criminal in L.A. knows it.
A strong hand clutches at his shoulder from behind, grabs on hard and tight.
He yelps loudly.
Hot breath suddenly rushes past his ear as a dark rough voice says, “You really thought you were going to get away it? That’s cute.”
A moment later the velvet bag of diamonds dangles from glove-covered fingertips in his line of sight. The thief shudders. He didn’t even feel them being lifted from his damn pocket and he doesn‘t want to think about how that‘s possible. Some things in this world, you just didn‘t question.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks in a shaky voice.
“I’m Shadow,” the man behind him growls, and hauls the thief through the door as if it doesn’t even exist.
Jared decides right from the start of his night job that he is going to be just as serious about his extracurricular activities as he is about his acting. He spends weeks working on the design of his costume, he takes up all of his free time reading through old newspaper and magazine articles online like he‘s researching a damn college report, and he plans on meeting as many of his peers as he can with the intention of setting up a solid network of reliable contacts.
Jared Padalecki is going to be a goddamn professional.
And then he meets Chad and fucks the whole thing right up.
“Hey, dude, watch this,” Chad says during filming one day.
He grins and snaps his fingers, and when every candle in the room lights up -- and there’s a lot, they’re filming some Rory-and-Tristin-as-Romeo-and-Juliet thing and there’s tapers and tea lights on every available surface -- Chad nearly keels over when the entire crew spazzes right the hell out.
Jared scowls and punches Chad in the shoulder.
“Are you out of your mind?” he hisses, even though nobody seems to know what the hell happened and the director’s yelling at everyone to get rid of the damn things just in case.
Nobody suspects it’s Chad’s doing. After all, it’s Chad Michael Murray, the same guy who hits on every hot young blonde extra that crosses his path and has no other purpose for a good book than to steady an uneven table. Chad’s known to be a flailing drunken idiot and that’s when you’re giving him a polite assessment.
Plus, he’s an actor, for crying out loud. Theoretically, the only thing about him that should be the least bit dangerous is his fashion sense.
That’s just the way things work.
It’s one more lesson Jared’s got to learn now that he’s a professional.
When he goes over to Chad’s new place one day to trounce his sorry ass at Playstation and Chad’s showing him around, pointing out his huge-ass flatscreen and enormous bed and pinball machine, and Jared says, “So can I see your game room?”
Chad chokes on his own laughter.
Jared’s ears go bright red at the look on Chad’s face, this ‘Oh, you big dumb idiot’ expression that makes Jared stuff his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans and focus on the worn toes of his sneakers.
“’Game room‘?” Chad asks, then claps Jared on the back. “Dude, you are like the worst superhero ever.”
Chad’s lair is just this fake wall in the back of his bedroom closet that pops open when you crack it just right with your fist. It’s not like Jared’s expecting the damn thing to be the Batcave or anything. After all, Chad’s got a kickin’ condo but it’s still not a mansion or anything.
Then again Jared’s not exactly one to critique a guy’s lair when he’s still working out of an old foot locker with Spurs stickers all over it.
Jared probably wouldn’t laugh if the door didn’t swing open with a soundtrack.
“’Great Balls Of Fire’?” Jared manages to say once he catches his breath.
Chad smirks as he pushes aside a bunch of hangers holding up a dozen black costumes with red and orange flames sewn up the legs. “Biggest you’ve ever seen, motherfucker.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet.”
It turns out that Chad’s not exactly the worst superhero in the world. He’s sure as hell not the best, what with signing autographs as his alter ego at crime scenes and lighting girls’ cigarettes on fire with his mind in bars as a conversation starter. That’s not even mentioning the time Jared boosts Chad’s spare utility belt to borrow one of his tracking devices and only finds strawberry lube, condoms and fake IDs in the pockets.
But Jared could do worse when it comes to meeting experienced superheroes in Hollywood. After all, there are certainly enough of them.
“You’re kiddin’ me,” Jared says one day while they‘re killing time at Jared’s playing video games.
“No shit,” Chad says, taking another long pull off his Corona. “He doesn’t even wear a mask or anything. He just goes out into the city in a suit and tie and turns muggers to stone.”
“Jon Stewart is not a fucking superhero.”
“Yeah, says you. You still don‘t believe George Clooney‘s the Stunner.”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
Chad just grins and runs over a prostitute on the TV screen, making Jared wince. Chad always kicks his ass at Grand Theft Auto and usually ends the night by making a crack about Jared’s inherent nobility and heroism meaning that he can’t even beat up fictional criminals and pimp out nonexistent prostitutes.
Except in Chad-speak, which translates to, “You know, you’d probably beat me at this more often if you weren’t such a fucking pussy.”
Jared narrows his eyes and smacks him on the arm, increasing his density and putting a little more “oomph” into the hit than he normally would.
“Aw, come on, Jay,” Chad says, dropping his controller and rubbing at his arm. “That’s going to leave a hell of a bruise, you know that?”
Chad’s off making movies now (albeit Disney crap with Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan, which means they can‘t even show their tits so it‘s not like it‘s worth it) while Jared’s still getting toyed with by Rory Gilmore on a weekly basis. Chad’s still cracking jokes about how Jared can break down brick walls but can’t seem to knock over the combined weight of Milo and Alexis.
“I bet when they make out it looks like the most obscene game of Pick-Up Stix ever,” Chad once said.
Jared had laughed so hard at that he’d fallen forward and forgotten to shift out of the way and hit his eye off the corner of Chad’s cheap-ass coffee table, so he‘d ended up with a black eye that makeup had bitched about for days.
So, yeah. If Chad’s going to whine about a big old bruise on his arm, Jared can’t bring himself to be all that concerned.
The thing about fighting crime and saving people in Los Angeles is that you’re not alone.
It’s kind of nice, actually, because it takes most of the guilt away. When Jared moved out here he was positive he’d spend all of his free time running around beating up muggers and criminals and hauling them into police stations, but it turned out there was enough crime to go around and enough superheroes running around to make a hell of a dent. Really, a guy could only do so much, but the great thing was that there was always somebody to pick up the slack.
It also didn’t hurt that most of the actors and singers in Hollywood were superheroes.
After all, that couldn’t possibly be Orlando Bloom pulling you out of that burning building. He’s filming something in the Bahamas right now, isn’t he? And wouldn’t everybody know if he had superstrength? Really, it couldn’t possibly have been him. He’s too famous.
Which, you know, was kind of the point.
And as for the other more superpowered side of the whole thing, just when you thought the job was getting to you, you’d fly over some back alley and spot Angelina Jolie in skintight black vinyl and a mask kicking some drug dealer’s ass.
Really, that made up for a lot.
Jared practices a hell of a lot, changing his molecular density so often he’s almost scared he’ll end up going too far in the wrong direction and float off on a breeze or something. He figures out how to fly, how to make himself hard enough to break through solid steel and how to walk through walls as if they‘re simple mirages he can just ignore. He figures out just how light he’s got to be to withstand fire and just how heavy he’s got to make himself to fend off bullets.
He also learns how to walk around in public in spandex without blushing.
No, really. That’s the shit you have to really practice.
When they go to Australia to film House of Wax Jared uses it as a vacation from crime fighting. He’s not exactly gunning to make the front pages in the newspapers over here, unlike Chad. He’s been spending every moment off the set either playing video games with Jared and drinking Foster’s (because he’s just the kind of tool who will do that in Australia) or bounding across rooftops and setting things on fire.
Jared would ask if Chad has more fun burning stuff than he does hanging out with Jared, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know the answer to that one.
The shoot’s boring as hell, though, unless you count how many times he and Elisha roll their eyes behind Paris’s back at her sorry attempts to act. He’s almost afraid she’s going to turn out to be a superhero too and then he’ll have to talk to her, and there’s only so much he’s about to allow himself to suffer for his art. You know, if you can call a script with this many writers “art.”
The only time it gets more interesting is when they start pouring wax on his skin for a scene, and … well.
“Are you telling me you called me all the way from Australia to whine about hot wax on your skin?”
Jared sighs as he runs his fingers through his hair and looks out at the ocean view from his hotel room. Sandy’s an awesome girlfriend, yeah, but he could stand for a little sympathy here.
“I’ve got sensitive skin,” he says.
“Yeah, several thousand miles of it.”
He frowns. “I just don’t like hot wax on my skin, is all. Makes it all red and itchy.”
There’s this bark of laughter from the other end of the line, like something a seal would say right before you tossed it a fish. “Oh, baby,” she says, “now I have to chalk one more thing off the list of kinky things I’m allowed to do to you.”
“Sandy!”
She’s got a point behind all of the teasing, but still.
“What? Go rub yourself down with lotion. Or would you rather I did it for you?”
He opens his mouth to protest but when he turns around she’s already standing there behind him in some game-show-hostess pose all, ‘Here I am, you big stud.’ She flashes him a bright happy smile and wiggles her hips a little, and … okay, he’d really like to argue her coming all the way here but he wouldn‘t win that argument with someone who can teleport. Mostly he’s just a little disappointed she obviously left her costume all the way back in America.
Sometimes what a guy really needs is just to see his girlfriend in a teeny little skirt and completely impractical fuck-me-quickly boots.
And a cape. Oh, man, that damn cape.
For some reason the cape always does wonders for making his dick sit up and beg, which is a big reason why he refuses to patrol with her. An erection the size of the Washington Monument isn’t exactly the kind of intimidation technique he wants to use.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Sandy says, grabbing onto his sides, pulling him close.
He tosses the phone to the side and says, “I don’t know. It’s not like it was out of your way or anything, right? And my skin really does still hurt from that wax …”
She stops tugging at his shirt to cock a delicate eyebrow. “Okay, if you don’t stop complaining, I’m just going to go home and trash some thugs instead of blowing you.”
Jared nods solemnly.
“That’s fair,” he says, and strips off his shirt.
Not long after Jared gets back to L.A., he finds out he landed Supernatural.
Chad comes back from North Carolina for the weekend and drags him out to celebrate. This time he even waits for Jared to put on the stupid ankle weights he had to have specially made that don‘t phase when he does but stay on. When Jared drinks he loses control and has a really bad habit of losing density in the wrong places and floating towards the ceiling. And really, there’s only so much shit you can blame on everybody else being wasted and a six-and-a-half-foot tall guy defying gravity is kind of pushing it.
“So what do you know about this Jensen Ackles guy anyway?” Jared asks once they get to the bar, before Chad‘s too drunk to start a fight and after Jared‘s crossed the line from sober to uncensored.
Chad frowns as he drags his gaze away from the gyrating ass of the hot redhead dancing ten feet away from them. Jared’s tempted to bring up Sophia at home waiting for her sweet adorable boyfriend but strangely enough he’s not all anxious for some third-degree burns in his future.
“I thought you met the guy,” Chad says.
Jared shifts awkwardly as he leans against the bar because, yeah, he met Jensen. He seems cool and all, and when they read together there was definite friendly chemistry in the room which sort of cemented the deal on hiring them. And Jensen is kinda quiet in his own way, all to himself. Jared always likes guys like that. Makes it feel like he’s opening them up to people when they interview together instead of like he’s hanging off them with a big goofy smile like some braindead idiot.
But … well. “I meant, you know.” Jared waves his hand in circles in midair, trying to come up with what he‘s getting at. A steady intake of Coronas and Jager bombs for the past few hours hasn’t done wonders for his vocabulary.
Chad’s lips tug into a teasing grin. “You mean does he swat at invisible birds in the air or something?”
“You know what I mean,” Jared says.
“Oh,” Chad says, “you mean is he a card-carrying member of Spandex Addicts Anonymous.”
Jared picks at the label of his bottle. “I wasn’t going to put it that way, but, yeah, okay.”
Chad shrugs. “Beats me, dude. I don’t exactly call roll at the meetings.”
“I just.” Jared waves to the bartender to indicate he could use a refresher on his drink, anything to distract himself from being drunk enough to ask about this stuff in a freakin’ bar. “It’s just going to be me and Jensen up there in Vancouver.”
“What are you talking about, man? Mike and Tommy are up there.”
Jared makes a face at that, picturing the last time he hung out with Mike and Tom for more than ten minutes outside of a press function for the network. They’d run into one another one night while the three of them were patrolling -- though not literally, Mike might have superspeed but the dumbass did know how to steer while going hundreds of miles per hour -- and Jared could swear that he’d had fewer nights since becoming a superhero that were more embarrassing than that particular patrol.
“Yeah, as much as I might like someone to hang out with, I think I’d rather someone other than Mike.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“He was patrolling naked, man.”
“Why are you complaining? He moves so fast it’s not like anybody can see it.”
“They can when he stops,” Jared mutters. “I just don’t want to have one more jackass to have to deal with. It’d be nice if I could patrol with someone who’d take the job seriously for once, you know what I mean?”
“Not a clue,” Chad says, staring at the redhead’s ass all over again.
Jared shakes his head and chugs half of his new bottle of beer in one go.
“You’re not really gonna eat all of that, are you?”
Jared grins across the picnic table at Jensen, who’s staring at the mound of food crammed into the Styrofoam container Jared had carried over from craft services the same way mountain climbers stare at Everest. Jared’s more than used to the response.
“Was plannin’ on it,” he says, cramming a mouthful of pasta into his mouth.
Jensen just shakes his head. “Jesus, Jay, how many tapeworms are in there?”
“What? I’m still a growing boy.”
“That right there is a terrifying thought,” Jensen says, poking at his potatoes.
Jared can’t help but grin at the teasing. It’s only the first week of filming but already the two of them are getting along like gangbusters. It’s brilliant, is what it is. They click like crazy, scraping across one another in that good way that sparks and feels like it’ll set things on fire. Jensen makes fun of Jared’s taste in shirts and Jared cracks jokes about Jensen’s apparent fixation with blondes with big tits. It’s a lot like hanging out with Chad, if you ignore the lack of a spandex bodysuit under Jensen’s clothes and the fact that Jensen can carry on a conversation about subjects more complicated than whether the half-dressed waitress at the bar will blow him in the bathroom.
“So, hey,” Jared says, all perky and happy, “I was thinking. My place on Sunday? My hotel room’s got a decent TV and it should pick up the Rangers game if we’re lucky.”
Jensen grins at that, like the shy kid picked to sit with the popular crowd or something, and Jared feels warmth spread through his chest at the sight.
“Yeah, sure,” Jensen says. “We could hit the bars on Saturday night, too, while we’re at it.”
Guilt washes over Jared in a heartbeat, but he quickly brushes it aside. Focusing intently on his lunch, Jared says, “Well, I kinda have plans for Saturday night already, but, you know. Sunday, yeah?”
Jensen doesn’t seem to be bothered, just shrugs and says, “Okay, man, not a problem.”
Jared’s first patrol of the streets of Vancouver on Saturday night starts out boring and goes downhill fast. Not that it’s not anything he’s not already used to, of course. The dizzying number of people he spots out of the corner of his eye darting into shadows or flying overheard is a little staggering but the place doesn’t look like it’s half as crowded as Los Angeles is.
But most of a superhero’s work is standing around waiting for something to happen. In that way it’s not much different than acting. After an hour and a half he kinda wishes he’d brought a magazine or a PS2 or something and the leg he’s been resting his weight on is falling asleep and the spandex is starting to ride up in some seriously uncomfortable places.
He desperately resists the urge to tug his uniform into place, picturing the batty old seamstress Chad had said was worth every penny when he’d first moved to Los Angeles.
She’d tilted her head back to look up at him and sighed. “I’m going to need more fabric,” she’d said.
A week later he’d had a much nicer version of the costume his mom had made at the kitchen table one weekend. It was this dark shade of midnight blue, textured just right to make him look twice as ripped as he already was, and a cowl he could tug over his hair. She’d even made him matching boots.
It is fucking awesome.
Of course, the downside is the sweat.
“Okay, that’s not gross,” he mutters, shifting in his position on the rooftop overlooking one of the more crime-ridden areas of town. Under his cowl his hair’s already soaked through. He doesn’t even want to think about what Batman’s hair smells like after a night out.
“Well, well, look who’s using our favorite rooftop as a hangout spot,” a familiar voice says from behind him.
“Aw, man,” Jared mutters.
Mike laughs at that like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
It’s hard enough to take Rosenbaum seriously even without the ridiculous costume. Jared had seen it more than a few times back home speeding past him, but then again it was hard not to miss a Barbie-pink costume with a cape and sparkly gold boots and wings on the heels and this weird pointy hat. Hell, it doesn’t even make sense, except for the part where Mike’s wearing it and so it totally does.
“Jay, my man,” he’d said once when Jared had asked about the costume, “I move so fucking fast no one’s going to see the damn thing anyway. Besides, they’re supposed to be tacky.”
“Yeah, don’t come crying to me when the fashion police come to arrest you,” Jared had said.
Mike had just slapped him on the back and said, “Hey, I’ve seen the shirts you wear to press junkets, buddy-boy.”
Jared really hadn’t been prepared to argue that.
Getting to his feet, Jared tries to shake the numbness from his left leg -- oh, yeah, it’s definitely gone to sleep -- and finally resorts to altering the density of his lower body just enough to settle down the nerves in his calves. The upside was that the pins and needles went away in an instant. The downside was sinking an inch or two into the surface of the rooftop until he pulled himself together.
“I didn’t know, honest,” he says, but it’s never been a big deal with anyone else and Mike just waves it off. “I can move if you want.”
“Don’t worry about it. I mean, Shadow, on my own rooftop. Can I, like, have your autograph?”
Mike clasps his hands in front of his disturbingly attired midsection -- there was a reason Jared had insisted on not having the underwear on the outside of his costume and seeing Mike’s glittery gold crotch was it -- and bats his eyelashes playfully at Jared. As goofy as he could be out of the costume, he’s twice the idiot he normally is when he’s in it. Somehow the pink managed to enhance his occasional ability to act like a lovestruck thirteen-year-old girl.
“Oh, shut it,” Jared says. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, the Streak.”
“What’s wrong with the Streak?”
“There are so many ways I could answer that question,” Tom drawls from beside Jared, appearing out of the shadows as if he’s always just been there. Then again maybe he had. “Didn’t expect to see you working your first weekend up here.”
Jared shrugs and yeah, okay, maybe even his shoulders have gotten a little stiff. “Figured I’d scope out the area, see what’s up.” He takes in Tom’s jeans, sneakers and T-shirt with a complete lack of a surprise. Tom‘s never been big on living the cliché but when you can make people see what you want you don‘t really have to. “Nice costume.”
“You say that like I really need one with my powers,” Tom says.
“With your powers? Oh, please,” Mike drawls. He throws an arm around Tom’s shoulders and rumples his hair, making it stick up in a dozen different directions.
Tom shoots him a dirty look and elbows him in the side, which Mike ignores.
“This numbnuts doesn’t even have to bother with his stupid powers to disguise himself,” Mike declares proudly. “We saved some old lady from a mugger a few months back and she went on the news and said how she was saved by a nice young man wearing a Superman mask.”
Jared can’t help but chuckle at that, and even Tommy just smiles and swipes at Mike’s stupid hat.
Seriously, no logical reason for that ugly thing whatsoever.
“Knock it off,” Tom says. “I don’t know why I teamed up with you in the first place.”
“Because somebody’s got to keep him from getting himself arrested wearing that outfit?” Jared offers.
Mike doesn’t even act offended by that, just pretends to swoon toward Jared’s chest all over again.
“Brawn and brains? Oh, baby. I’m going to write ’Shadow’ all over the back of my Trapper Keeper and draw little pink hearts all around it.”
Off in the distance an alarm sounds out, loud and shrill.
All three of them perk up like hunting dogs hearing a rabbit in the underbrush, but Mike’s the first to say anything.
“Bank robbery! I call dibs!” he says, smacking Tom on the chest.
A second later he’s gone, a stiff breeze in his wake as he races off.
Jared moves to follow, to leap off the roof and land on the ground below so he can make chase through the streets (and walls and buildings and cars), but Tom’s hand on his arm stops him cold.
“He’s probably already got the thieves in the back of a police car by now, man,” Tom says, a silent apology in the wake of his words.
Jared sighs and crosses his arms, not all that surprised. Mike’s never been exactly one to wait up for anybody else. He’s patrolled with them a few times before and the one thing he’s learned about Mike -- aside from the fact that he possesses a complete and total lack of shame -- is that Mike’s got no problem getting to a crime scene first and tying up the criminals before everybody else even gets halfway there.
“That doesn’t make me feel useless at all,” he mutters.
Tom just grins and stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking down to the streets below. Off in the direction of the alarm flashing lights give the surrounding buildings an eerie but familiar glow.
“It’s your first week here,” he says to Jared. “Nobody said you have to show up bright and early the first chance you get, you fucking apple-polisher.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jared says.
Tom vanishes before Jared can ask him what comes next, the weight and presence of his body disappearing in an instant, and Jared wonders briefly if he was even ever there to begin with. He’s tempted to scope out the nearby rooftops, skim the doorways in the shops and apartment buildings below to see if he can spot Tom hanging out in one of them. It’d be just the kind of move Tom would use.
On the other hand, how else is he going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching up with his dumbass partner?
If there’s one thing Jared’s thankful for, it’s that he never fell into the teammate trap. That’s the easiest way in the world to end up dangling by a chain over a smoking lava pit with some indignant idiot threatening to feed you to sharks before taking over the world.
Not that he’s ever known anybody who’s gotten themselves into that particular mess.
Unless you counted Chad, but Sophia so owed him for that one.
Also, it was piranhas, not sharks. But still.
Jared takes up position at the edge of the roof, nervous energy thrumming through his veins as he takes in the city below him. From here the sounds of a busy Saturday night can be heard, the excited conversations of club goers and bar hoppers, the competing bass beats from a dozen different parties nearby.
A motorcycle engine revs at the nearest street corner, drawing Jared’s gaze.
A figure in black leather sits on a jerry-rigged motorcycle that looks like nothing Jared’s ever seen, like some gothic art project in auto shop, sleek and black and beautiful. It’s hard to tell anything about the biker from this distance except that he isn’t one, not really, not the kind with shitkicker boots and brass knuckles tucked into his back pocket. There’s something about the bike and the outfit that’s not about adornments, that’s all about blending into the darkness if necessary.
And his helmet tilts upward at just the right angle.
Before he drives off with a roar of his engine, Jared could swear that the biker sees him.
“Twins, man. Blonde blue-eyed gorgeous stacked twins.”
Jensen makes a curving gesture with his hands at chest level, not bothering to put down the beer in his hand to do it. Jared just grins and picks at the label of his own drink, settling more comfortable into the couch cushions. Jensen’s been telling the tale of just what exactly he’d gotten up to the night before, and somewhere in between the midget wrestling, the giant pool of Jell-O, and the dancing camels, Jared‘s sides hurt from laughing so much he‘s starting to think he‘s pulled a muscle.
Once you got Jensen alone and loosened him up, the guy’s actually pretty funny.
They’ve got alcohol and sports, pizza and wings, and even though Jared could really stand a few more precious hours of sleep it’s great.
Hell, better than great. Awesome. It’s like hanging with Chad, but without the need for bail.
The Rangers are losing, although the dogs seem to care more than they do. Well, mostly Harley, to be honest. He sits up close to the screen, watching the ball get tossed from one mitt to another. Sometimes he whines a little and looks back at Jared like he doesn’t understand why they’re not throwing it to him.
Sadie, on the other hand, is in love with Jensen. She rests her head on his knee, dark eyes wide and quietly pleading, perfectly content with the occasional caress of Jensen’s palm over her head.
“You don’t have to rub it in, you know,” Jared says, trying not to get too comfortable. The last thing he needs is fall asleep while Jensen’s still here and do something embarrassing like … he doesn’t know. Tip over into Jensen’s lap and drool all over his jeans or something.
Jensen grabs a nacho from the bowl on the coffee table and grins. “Course I do, Jay,” he says, taking a bite out of a chip. “When you skip out on barhopping to do … whatever it was you were doing last night --”
“I thought we decided I was learning how to train elephants to juggle or some shit,” Jared says.
Jensen’s other guesses had been stripping in a gay bar. Jared had made a grab for Jensen’s bottle of beer so he wouldn’t notice Jared’s ears turning red.
“-- and two beautiful women with very creative ideas of what to do with their hands throw themselves at me,” Jensen continues, “I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have to stop rubbing it in. Ever.”
“Like you wouldn’t know what to do with two hot dates.”
“Surprisingly enough, those rumors on the internet aren’t true, man.”
Jared just grins wide and says, “Whatever, jackass.”
Jensen shakes his head at that, getting nacho crumbs all over the couch. He absently swipes them onto the floor -- hell, it’s not his hotel room and that’s what housekeeping is for. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
Maybe it’s too much time around Chad and Mike and Tommy but Jared finds himself saying, “No, but I kiss everybody else.”
Funny. Jared could swear that those awkward pauses where everything just suddenly goes silent and you say the wrong thing and you get to feel like a great big goober only happen at parties.
He glances over at Jensen, all ready to say that he was just cracking wise, but … well. Jensen’s got those fucking weird eyelashes, man, girly and dark and thick, and when he looks past them with his eyes narrowed just so it makes Jared feel … uh, heavy. Or something. Warm and dark and wild and heavy.
He once narrowed his concentration to increase the hell out of his density, focusing until he thought he could put a diamond on an anvil and bring his fist down and smash the gem to its. Then he’d plummeted from where he’d been floating hundreds of feet above the earth, crashed through the roof of a steel mill about to explode and hit a foundry full of molten iron.
This feels kind of like that.
Well, except his clothes haven’t melted off yet.
Jensen‘s thumb circles the lip of his bottle unconsciously, and he says, “I’ll just bet,” in a way that makes Jared’s stomach flop over.
“Sandy came in for the night,” he blurts out.
Oh, man. Sandy’s going to kill him.
Jensen tilts his head at that, this tug of his lips like he knows something Jared doesn‘t. “Just one night?”
Jared slouches and focuses on the game. Now the Rangers are five runs behind and even Harley‘s decided maybe it‘d be more fun to flop down on the floor in front of the TV and snore at the ceiling. “It was all she could squeeze in between jobs,” he says.
“You could have just said so,” Jensen points out.
“I just.” Jared shrugs and his muscles twitch in defiance. His skin feels too damn small like he shrunk it in the wash, and he can’t figure it out if it’s from not stretching before patrol or the playful look in Jensen’s eyes. “You know.”
“Okay, whatever,” Jensen says. “It’s not like it’s that big a deal, man.”
The Rangers watch a home run fly right over their heads. Jared wonder if Jensen wants to throw his beer at the screen half as much as Jared does.
Jensen sighs, shifting his weight on the couch cushions. “I miss football.”
“Fuck that,” Jared says. “Basketball, man.”
Jensen shoots him a mischievous glance.
“I’ll bet the Mavs do better than your pansy-ass Spurs next season.”
“Oh, you are so on.”
Ten minutes after Jensen leaves Jared’s just put the empty pizza boxes into the kitchen area of the hotel room when Sandy appears out of thin air in front of him and scares the crap out of him.
“Okay,” she says, shoving him towards the bedroom before he can protest -- yeah, like he’d even think of it -- and tugging at her shirt with her free hand. “I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to get back because my roommate’s parents are in town and they’re starting to think I’m popping diuretics or something, I’ve ducked into the bathroom so many times --”
“Jensen thinks you were here last night,” he blurts out.
She stops walking and spins him around. “What?”
“I had to tell him something,” he says, palms spread. “I went out on patrol and he wanted to go hang out.”
“And there is no one else on the planet you could have used as an alibi?”
“I panicked,” he says.
She frowns and makes like she’s going to kick him in the ankles, which would probably be threatening if she weren’t so damn cute. It’s kind of like being attacked by a disgruntled kitten. Jared’s half-tempted sometimes to see if dangling yarn over her head would stop arguments, but he’s pretty sure she’d just teleport him to Siberia and leave him there.
But, yeah, it’s common courtesy not to use another hero as an alibi. Of course, tell that to Jared’s stupid uncontrollable mouth.
And people wondered why he stuffed so much food into it all the damn time.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Sandy groans.
“When have I ever been able to tell a cover story worth a damn?”
She narrows her eyes then, silently assessing him. “Good point,” she says, then steps back and flashing him a brilliant smile. “You know, if we already had sex last night, then we don’t have to do it right now.”
What the --
“Sandy!”
But she’s already gone, vanishing into thin air.
“Aw, man,” he mutters.
He nearly jumps a foot in the air when someone taps him on the shoulder, spinning on his heels and nearly thwacking Sandy in the head with his hand.
“Baby, you are so gullible,” she says in between giggles, then catches a glimpse at the clock with a groan. “Seventeen minutes?”
She yanks off her shirt and tugs off her skirt, revealing the fantastically expensive dark green underwear Jared bought her for his last birthday.
What? That does count as a present for him, after all.
“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” he asks.
“You’re an idiot,” Sandy declares, rolling her eyes before she pushes him onto the bed and pounces.
Jared wakes up halfway through the night to his cell phone announcing a new text message with the sound of the Super Mario theme trilling from his nightstand.
When he flips it open and brings up the message, he sees, Next time it will be redheaded triplets. Just you see.
Jared grins at that before he spots “3:14 a.m.” in the corner of the screen. They have to be on the set at six, so it’s a little hard to tell whether this is Jensen who stayed up late from the night before or Jensen who woke up an hour and a half earlier than he needed to. Neither of them sounds like any Jensen Jared’s ever met.
what r u doing up?, he sends back.
A minute later, Jensen responds with, Stripping at a gay bar.
And Jared completely loses it, even though he probably shouldn‘t.
It’s a late-model Mercedes, shiny and silver and clean with the exception of the huge dent in the rear bumper. The car teeters on the edge of the bridge, precarious and dangerous and Jared would definitely not be doing this if he had any common sense whatsoever and if there was much of a chance he’d go with it.
He lands on the bridge right behind it, ignoring the slowly gathering crowd of terrified bystanders, and walks right through the trunk.
The driver isn’t even paying attention to him, too busy staring at the drop ahead of him and clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles. He’s middle-aged and wearing a suit more expensive than everything in Jared’s closet put together.
Jared can already see trouble coming on the near horizon, although at least this time it doesn’t appear sporting glittery gold underwear.
He taps the driver on the shoulder to get his attention. The guy flinches and turns, and the sudden movement makes the car shake ominously.
“Grab my hand!” Jared says.
The driver doesn’t listen, but that’s nothing new. He looks down at Jared’s long legs, disappearing into his back seat as if Jared’s some do-gooding ghost, and mutters, “How the hell --”
“Do you really want to waste time asking me that question right now?”
“Good point,” the driver says, and takes hold of Jared’s hand.
It only takes a second for the driver to reach the same level of cellular density as Jared -- he’d practiced for years to get to the point where he could do the same thing to others that he could do to his own body -- and it’s just enough shifting of the weight inside the vehicle for the damn thing to go tumbling over the side with a resounding crash of metal and glass.
Jared’s feeling proud for all of four seconds, another life saved, another wrong righted, when the man rushes over to the side of the bridge, groans in disgust, and scowls over his shoulder at Jared.
“Oh, come on,” he snaps. “You couldn’t have saved the car?”
Jared sighs. This isn’t really all that new, either.
“You’re welcome,” he says, trying not to sound a little disappointed and failing spectacularly.
The guy shakes his head before reaching into his coat for his cell phone, muttering to himself about smug super powered idiots who can go out in public dressed like that but can’t be bothered to keep a hugely expensive luxury car from the type of mass destruction that makes insurance agents wince.
Okay, so Jared can’t hear exactly what the guy’s bitching to himself about. He’s had years to get the gist of it.
Flickering lights dance across the pavement as the police arrive and Jared doesn’t even pause before lessening his density and dropping through the bridge’s surface. Technically, being a superhero’s pretty damn illegal -- not that anybody ever tries to prosecute, but still -- and Jared’s not about to deal with the police right now. As Chad’s more than fond of pointing out, wearing spandex on a regular basis is one thing, but add handcuffs to the mix and you’re starting to lean dangerously into gay porn territory.
The stunned murmurings of the crowd on the bridge fall to his ears as he lands not far from the wreckage of the Mercedes. He takes a step back into the shadows underneath the bridge and whistles in awe of the damage. Okay, yeah, if that were his car he’d probably want to choke a bitch right now.
Granted, he’d be a little more grateful about being alive to engage in the choking of said bitch, but … honestly, holy shit, dude.
They can be real assholes sometimes, can’t they?
Jared practically jumps a foot off the ground at the voice in his head, gaze darting quickly around the shadowed road below the bridge before spotting the man on the motorcycle parked a good fifty feet or so behind him. Or at least he thinks it’s a man -- it’s hard to tell in all the black leather and with the helmet.
The voice in the his head could be anyone, devoid of accent, not too deep and not too high. Jared gets the impression that he practiced the identifiers right out of his mental voice in an effort to better stay anonymous.
“Tell me about it,” Jared says, giving the remains of the Mercedes a dirty look. “You know, I once had some bank manager try to sue me for shattering the door to his safe after a bunch of bank robbers locked him in there. He could barely breathe when I hauled his sorry ass out of there but he sure had enough energy to dial his damn lawyer.”
The man on the motorcycle tilts his head. Jared can almost picture the smile behind the visor. How‘d you get out of that one?
“Running really fast,” Jared says.
Yeah, that’ll do it.
Jared grins in spite of his mood and stands up a little straighter. “I’m Shadow,” he says.
The man on the motorcycle nods, slow and deliberate, and when he speaks Jared could swear he can hear the smile in the man’s words. I know.
“What about you? You got a name?”
Not really, the voice in Jared’s head says.
Before Jared can ask him anything else the engine of the motorcycle roars to life, fierce and strong, and a split second later the stranger spins the bike around and heads off into the night.
“Hey!” Jared yells.
There’s no answer, inside of his head or out of it.
Part Two
