snrps:/the crying game
Jul. 22nd, 2007 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eighth_horizonJ2 fic, 1707 words, PG-13. For Sephy! Thank you for the prompt, doll.
Can't help but think this needs a slash version.
The Crying Game
(c)2007 b stearns
For Sephy, by request!
Summary: Nothing to do with the movie of the same name, sadly. Jared and Jensen each have their own way of dealing with the emotional ups and downs of their job. Haha I wrote real-person-fic.
Rating: PG-13 for language with a side of n’aww for excessively mushy J2 h/c.
Disclaimer: Didn’t happen exactly this way, as far as I know. Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, who pretty much belongs to his fans. Jared and Jensen are not mine, either, except from 10:36:19 - 10:38:02pm PST every second Saturday after the full moon, according to the deed I have. It’s the same kind of deal that people get when they ‘buy’ land on the moon. It was in the back of a comic book, don’t judge me.
______________
-|-
He was not allowed to talk to him.
Jared hung mostly out of sight behind a bank of lights and watched Jensen leave his trailer and cut across the lot with a hurried, clipped stride. He looked kind of grim, even for Jensen. He was way too good at being serious.
He took the opportunity to watch him unseen for once, careful not to do anything to get his attention. That was hard to do; Jared was not a guy who hung back and let people pass him without saying hi. They only had a few hours left, and then he could go back to hassling him, maybe more than usual. They’d go out for a drink, first thing, just be Texas boys, talk about nothing and everything and put the day behind them.
They were doing a lot more heavy acting in the second season than in the first, which was fine. But watching Jen get all wound up to do a tough scene was hard.
And he really, really hated seeing him cry even if it was just supposed to be acting.
-|-
Kim had been very, very clear.
“Stay away from Jensen today. No eye contact, no texting, no post-its on the door of his trailer. No coded messages given to anybody who passes by. I know you, J.”
Jared had shrugged and tried to look innocent, which wasn’t all that hard.
“During the scene where Sam and Dean are in the car and then sitting on it, you don’t make eye contact with him for more than a second at a time. I don’t wanna make him shoot this scene over and over, okay?”
Jared nodded. “I gotcha.”
“Afterwards, when we cut, you do anything you like. But we’re gonna have limited light and we don’t want to keep the road closed after nine. Now tell me why I have to go over this with you.”
“‘Cause me and Jen are friends,” Jared said. “And I’ll make a face, or something, and – “
“No,” Kim said, cutting him off, something he very rarely did. “Because you’re a huge comfort to him. Just the sight of you makes him happy. Sometimes the only time that guy relaxes is when you’re in the room. I want this real, meaning he’s gotta spend some time winding up and then stay there. It’s hard for him to do this. Don’t make it harder by cheering him up.”
Jared just stared at him.
Kim was kind of scary, sometimes, the way he got them. But, it was part of why he thought Eric was so amazing.
So he stayed away until they shot the scene in the car, and when Dean pulled over, Sam was confused and worried like he should have been. He leaned against the hood and let Dean say his piece, glanced at his face when he had to, never made eye contact even when Dean turned his face to him.
“So tell me. What can you possibly say to make that all right?”
Then there was eye contact, and that single tear spilled down Dean’s face, and Jared had a bad time keeping his Sam face on, so he looked away like he was supposed to.
When Kim yelled cut and called it a wrap for the night, Jensen shoved himself away from the car and bolted, hands up to swipe roughly at the tears on his face.
Jared stayed where he was, shoulders slumping in sympathy, and held up a hand toward the crew to silently ask them to let him go. By then, most of them (or anybody who’d been on set with the guys for more than one shooting schedule) knew enough to let Jared get first crack at handling a nervous or emotional Jensen. Jensen wasn’t some hothouse flower that had to be coddled or wrangled. It was just that he had to be approached a certain way, and he took acting very seriously. He didn’t take himself very seriously, thank God. But Jared had a knack for doing or saying just the right thing and lightening a situation without making fun of anyone.
He straightened from the Impala’s hood and watched Jensen take off further down the road, shoulders hunched and hands in jacket pockets. The rising sun put a faintly surreal glow on everything. The light was equal across the valley below, the slanting asphalt, and the filming equipment still spread out to his right.
When Jensen crossed the road and ducked into a stand of evergreens, Jared took off after him. He didn’t run. He just sauntered along like he was enjoying the evening. By the time he left the road, Jensen was leaning against a tree with his back to him and was rubbing one eye. He already had Dean’s jacket off and had shrugged Dean off with it. Jared didn’t say anything, just ran a hand through Jensen’s hair before looping an arm around his neck and patting him on the chest.
“I’m okay,” Jensen said.
“Lying bitch,” Jared said, and when Jensen turned around he got a bearhug whether he wanted one or not.
-|-
Jared’s not a guy who cries. He gets upset sometimes; everybody does. He just tries to shake things off rather than let himself get to a place where it all built up until he had to punch somebody or start yelling or get verklempt.
That was what they still called it when they had to do these scenes, the ones where Sam or Dean cried. It was from an old SNL character; Jared didn’t remember which one and Jensen wasn’t going to tell him yet again. Jared let Jensen handle the trivia portion of their inside jokes.
So Jensen was allowed to hang out with him, but he wasn’t allowed to see his dogs for the day when they started shooting that scene in Heart. Jared was so damn happy as a matter of course that it was harder to find things to really bring him down.
The call came to Jared’s trailer to warn them it was five minutes until they had to take a run at filming Sam shooting Madison. The guys were playing Black on Jared’s PS2.
“You want some help?” Jensen said. “You’ve done it before, I know. Just think of something really sad. It’s like the opposite of Peter Pan.”
Jared started laughing. He threw his head back and howled with it. “What? Are you serious? Peter Pan is the analogy you come up with for this?”
Jensen’s growl of annoyance and his half-hearted way of announcing that Jared was an asshole just made Jared laugh harder.
“Okay,” Jared said. “Look, we’ll do what we did at the beginning of the season. You say something mean to me, and I’ll get in the mood to cry.”
“That’s not what happened,” Jensen said with a startling lack of defensiveness. “All I did was say ‘pretend it’s really Jeff’ while Sam and Dean were looking at the prop. It’s what I did.”
“I miss Jeff,” Jared said suddenly, perking up even further. “Dude, let’s make him come up here for something. We’ll make something up if we have to. Eric won’t tell me if there’s like John-as-a-ghost coming up or anything.”
‘Don’t get off track,” Jensen said. “You gotta come up with some way to break down.”
“It’s a pretty sad story,” Jared said. “It really is. I just don’t feel like getting emotional over it, though. There’s a lot of sad stuff in the world, too, things that really deserve getting upset about. I’m just not in that place right now. I tried thinking about something really bad happening and how I’d handle it in real life, like my parents dying or another 9-11 or something and it’s kind of bringing me down, but I’m not getting there. So say something totally mean to me.”
Jensen was shaking his head. He hated stuff like this. It was the worst part of the job. It was hard to get a guy like Jared to come down so far that he could cry on demand. It took an actual emotional toll, so he was glad it didn’t happen often.
He leaned over with a sigh and went for the heavy guns. He had to do it before he thought better of it. He grabbed a photo of Harley and Sadie down from the window by the table and nudged Jared. “Look.”
Jared raised his eyebrows.
“Sadie gets kidney disease and goes into total renal failure, and you have to have her put to sleep. Harley misses her so much that he runs away soon after and gets hit by a car, and you don’t get there in time, so animal control takes him away and releases him to a rendering plant where he ends up as the ‘animal byproducts’ in canned dog food.”
Jared got very pale. His eyes widened.
“You failed your babies, Jared,” Jensen said. The hand holding the picture wasn’t trembling too hard.
They only had to film the last scene once, and no one had ever seen Jared cry so hard or look so miserable.
The fact that Jensen began to cry unprompted just because Jared was so unhappy made Eric bang his forehead on every hard surface he could find for ten solid minutes. Why Jensen was apologizing to Jared nonstop was a mystery he decided he didn’t want solved.
He loved those guys, really, but what was he going to do with them?
-|-
Months later when they filmed the first part of the second season finale, Jared asked Jensen what he was thinking about when Dean went to pieces over Sam’s death.
“I thought about having to have you put to sleep,” he said, letting his face crumple in mock agony.
Jared laughed and smacked him in the back of the head. He knew immediately what Jensen really used as inspiration and it caused him the weirdest combination of regret and affection.
Sooner or later the show would run its course or be cancelled, and he hated that idea because he wouldn’t be working with Jensen every day. But it didn’t really matter: they were friends for life.
-|- -|- -|-
Next up: BUaBS aftermath fic for sharonmarais.
Can't help but think this needs a slash version.
The Crying Game
(c)2007 b stearns
For Sephy, by request!
Summary: Nothing to do with the movie of the same name, sadly. Jared and Jensen each have their own way of dealing with the emotional ups and downs of their job. Haha I wrote real-person-fic.
Rating: PG-13 for language with a side of n’aww for excessively mushy J2 h/c.
Disclaimer: Didn’t happen exactly this way, as far as I know. Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke, who pretty much belongs to his fans. Jared and Jensen are not mine, either, except from 10:36:19 - 10:38:02pm PST every second Saturday after the full moon, according to the deed I have. It’s the same kind of deal that people get when they ‘buy’ land on the moon. It was in the back of a comic book, don’t judge me.
______________
-|-
He was not allowed to talk to him.
Jared hung mostly out of sight behind a bank of lights and watched Jensen leave his trailer and cut across the lot with a hurried, clipped stride. He looked kind of grim, even for Jensen. He was way too good at being serious.
He took the opportunity to watch him unseen for once, careful not to do anything to get his attention. That was hard to do; Jared was not a guy who hung back and let people pass him without saying hi. They only had a few hours left, and then he could go back to hassling him, maybe more than usual. They’d go out for a drink, first thing, just be Texas boys, talk about nothing and everything and put the day behind them.
They were doing a lot more heavy acting in the second season than in the first, which was fine. But watching Jen get all wound up to do a tough scene was hard.
And he really, really hated seeing him cry even if it was just supposed to be acting.
-|-
Kim had been very, very clear.
“Stay away from Jensen today. No eye contact, no texting, no post-its on the door of his trailer. No coded messages given to anybody who passes by. I know you, J.”
Jared had shrugged and tried to look innocent, which wasn’t all that hard.
“During the scene where Sam and Dean are in the car and then sitting on it, you don’t make eye contact with him for more than a second at a time. I don’t wanna make him shoot this scene over and over, okay?”
Jared nodded. “I gotcha.”
“Afterwards, when we cut, you do anything you like. But we’re gonna have limited light and we don’t want to keep the road closed after nine. Now tell me why I have to go over this with you.”
“‘Cause me and Jen are friends,” Jared said. “And I’ll make a face, or something, and – “
“No,” Kim said, cutting him off, something he very rarely did. “Because you’re a huge comfort to him. Just the sight of you makes him happy. Sometimes the only time that guy relaxes is when you’re in the room. I want this real, meaning he’s gotta spend some time winding up and then stay there. It’s hard for him to do this. Don’t make it harder by cheering him up.”
Jared just stared at him.
Kim was kind of scary, sometimes, the way he got them. But, it was part of why he thought Eric was so amazing.
So he stayed away until they shot the scene in the car, and when Dean pulled over, Sam was confused and worried like he should have been. He leaned against the hood and let Dean say his piece, glanced at his face when he had to, never made eye contact even when Dean turned his face to him.
“So tell me. What can you possibly say to make that all right?”
Then there was eye contact, and that single tear spilled down Dean’s face, and Jared had a bad time keeping his Sam face on, so he looked away like he was supposed to.
When Kim yelled cut and called it a wrap for the night, Jensen shoved himself away from the car and bolted, hands up to swipe roughly at the tears on his face.
Jared stayed where he was, shoulders slumping in sympathy, and held up a hand toward the crew to silently ask them to let him go. By then, most of them (or anybody who’d been on set with the guys for more than one shooting schedule) knew enough to let Jared get first crack at handling a nervous or emotional Jensen. Jensen wasn’t some hothouse flower that had to be coddled or wrangled. It was just that he had to be approached a certain way, and he took acting very seriously. He didn’t take himself very seriously, thank God. But Jared had a knack for doing or saying just the right thing and lightening a situation without making fun of anyone.
He straightened from the Impala’s hood and watched Jensen take off further down the road, shoulders hunched and hands in jacket pockets. The rising sun put a faintly surreal glow on everything. The light was equal across the valley below, the slanting asphalt, and the filming equipment still spread out to his right.
When Jensen crossed the road and ducked into a stand of evergreens, Jared took off after him. He didn’t run. He just sauntered along like he was enjoying the evening. By the time he left the road, Jensen was leaning against a tree with his back to him and was rubbing one eye. He already had Dean’s jacket off and had shrugged Dean off with it. Jared didn’t say anything, just ran a hand through Jensen’s hair before looping an arm around his neck and patting him on the chest.
“I’m okay,” Jensen said.
“Lying bitch,” Jared said, and when Jensen turned around he got a bearhug whether he wanted one or not.
-|-
Jared’s not a guy who cries. He gets upset sometimes; everybody does. He just tries to shake things off rather than let himself get to a place where it all built up until he had to punch somebody or start yelling or get verklempt.
That was what they still called it when they had to do these scenes, the ones where Sam or Dean cried. It was from an old SNL character; Jared didn’t remember which one and Jensen wasn’t going to tell him yet again. Jared let Jensen handle the trivia portion of their inside jokes.
So Jensen was allowed to hang out with him, but he wasn’t allowed to see his dogs for the day when they started shooting that scene in Heart. Jared was so damn happy as a matter of course that it was harder to find things to really bring him down.
The call came to Jared’s trailer to warn them it was five minutes until they had to take a run at filming Sam shooting Madison. The guys were playing Black on Jared’s PS2.
“You want some help?” Jensen said. “You’ve done it before, I know. Just think of something really sad. It’s like the opposite of Peter Pan.”
Jared started laughing. He threw his head back and howled with it. “What? Are you serious? Peter Pan is the analogy you come up with for this?”
Jensen’s growl of annoyance and his half-hearted way of announcing that Jared was an asshole just made Jared laugh harder.
“Okay,” Jared said. “Look, we’ll do what we did at the beginning of the season. You say something mean to me, and I’ll get in the mood to cry.”
“That’s not what happened,” Jensen said with a startling lack of defensiveness. “All I did was say ‘pretend it’s really Jeff’ while Sam and Dean were looking at the prop. It’s what I did.”
“I miss Jeff,” Jared said suddenly, perking up even further. “Dude, let’s make him come up here for something. We’ll make something up if we have to. Eric won’t tell me if there’s like John-as-a-ghost coming up or anything.”
‘Don’t get off track,” Jensen said. “You gotta come up with some way to break down.”
“It’s a pretty sad story,” Jared said. “It really is. I just don’t feel like getting emotional over it, though. There’s a lot of sad stuff in the world, too, things that really deserve getting upset about. I’m just not in that place right now. I tried thinking about something really bad happening and how I’d handle it in real life, like my parents dying or another 9-11 or something and it’s kind of bringing me down, but I’m not getting there. So say something totally mean to me.”
Jensen was shaking his head. He hated stuff like this. It was the worst part of the job. It was hard to get a guy like Jared to come down so far that he could cry on demand. It took an actual emotional toll, so he was glad it didn’t happen often.
He leaned over with a sigh and went for the heavy guns. He had to do it before he thought better of it. He grabbed a photo of Harley and Sadie down from the window by the table and nudged Jared. “Look.”
Jared raised his eyebrows.
“Sadie gets kidney disease and goes into total renal failure, and you have to have her put to sleep. Harley misses her so much that he runs away soon after and gets hit by a car, and you don’t get there in time, so animal control takes him away and releases him to a rendering plant where he ends up as the ‘animal byproducts’ in canned dog food.”
Jared got very pale. His eyes widened.
“You failed your babies, Jared,” Jensen said. The hand holding the picture wasn’t trembling too hard.
They only had to film the last scene once, and no one had ever seen Jared cry so hard or look so miserable.
The fact that Jensen began to cry unprompted just because Jared was so unhappy made Eric bang his forehead on every hard surface he could find for ten solid minutes. Why Jensen was apologizing to Jared nonstop was a mystery he decided he didn’t want solved.
He loved those guys, really, but what was he going to do with them?
-|-
Months later when they filmed the first part of the second season finale, Jared asked Jensen what he was thinking about when Dean went to pieces over Sam’s death.
“I thought about having to have you put to sleep,” he said, letting his face crumple in mock agony.
Jared laughed and smacked him in the back of the head. He knew immediately what Jensen really used as inspiration and it caused him the weirdest combination of regret and affection.
Sooner or later the show would run its course or be cancelled, and he hated that idea because he wouldn’t be working with Jensen every day. But it didn’t really matter: they were friends for life.
-|- -|- -|-
Next up: BUaBS aftermath fic for sharonmarais.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:31 am (UTC)In short, SMISHY LOVES! Also, BUaBS aftermath fic, YES!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 07:01 am (UTC)It so *is* slashy, though of course not actually slash. But it is just as omgtheyloveeachother as possible without going over the top.
I'm going to end up re-reading it whenever mean Sam hate makes the baby Dean-sus cry.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 11:03 am (UTC):::claps hands:::
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 01:29 pm (UTC)Loved it to bits, darling!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 01:24 pm (UTC)The fact that Jensen began to cry unprompted just because Jared was so unhappy made Eric bang his forehead on every hard surface he could find for ten solid minutes. Why Jensen was apologizing to Jared nonstop was a mystery he decided he didn’t want solved.
Hee! That just says so much right there. THANK YOU again!! I'm off to print this out and frame it...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:54 pm (UTC);)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 04:53 pm (UTC)*heart clench*
this is all so true!
*gives you five-tier cake*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 04:57 pm (UTC)Oh, god! It's wrong of me to laugh so hard at this line. Eric and Kim shake their heads sadly at me.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:50 pm (UTC)also i giggled at "The fact that Jensen began to cry unprompted just because Jared was so unhappy made Eric bang his forehead on every hard surface he could find for ten solid minutes" because, again, perfect. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 10:34 pm (UTC)This is absolutely wonderful. You fleshed out the little tid-bits we get so well!
Thank you for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 12:54 am (UTC)This just makes me all tingly and sad and happy and Oh my god.
Great job, you. I have no words to express my joy!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 03:34 am (UTC)