This Call Could Go On All Night (A Sort of Fairy Tale 5/14)

Title: A Sort of Fairy Tale
Chapter: Five: This Call Could Go On All Night
Author:
Fandom: SPN RPS
Pairing: Jensen/Misha
Warning/spoilers: None.
Word Count: 1400
Rating: PG
Summary: Misha loves Jensen. Jensen is … getting there.
Chapter five summary: It’s after midnight and Jensen has not called.
Notes: This is more melancholy than I intended. I may have to change the series title. Hm. Thank you to for beta.

day five: Sexuality

Misha lies awake, only his book light on, waiting for the phone to ring. Today was a rough day: they had to film one of those scenes that are draining and exhausting and you had to draw on every reserve of strength and memory to get through it, and there always has to be one more take, just one more. Everyone was punchy and irritable afterwards. He and Jensen had made plans to get supper afterwards but Jensen said he was just too tired tonight and Misha agreed. A few hours to unwind were the cure for what ailed them.

Jensen calls Misha nearly every night. They have spent the night together twice, but both times were fully clothed and basically platonic. (Except for the way Jensen clung to Misha in his sleep, and the way they kissed each other Good night and Good morning and even I’m awake and your mouth is right here.) Instead of sleeping together, there are long (hours-long) talks on the phone, and every call ends with Misha telling Jensen a story before they bid each other good night.

Misha considers this only right: he is pursuing Jensen, yes, but only as far as Jensen is willing to be caught. If Jensen had never kissed him back, had never called him that night and asked for a story, then Misha would have let his fascination with Jensen dwindle away. Instead, they are engaged in a series of cautious steps toward and around each other, like taming a skittish colt.

*

Jensen is the last person Misha was to talk to at night, and the first person he wants to see in the morning, and if they don’t have working hours together he fills them with other things — poetry, novels, scripts, entertaining and abusing the minions, trying to put a little more good out into the world; and if not something good, something creative and hopefully beautiful — and waits for the phone call or the knock on his door that means he can be with Jensen for a while. Then they watch DVDs on Misha’s couch or play with Jared’s dogs, or sit on the floor, bare foot caressing bare foot, while they pass the bottle or joint back and forth and talk.

Or they sit in companionable silence, Jensen’s head on Misha’s shoulder, and Misha strokes his hair and watches him. He can’t help staring. Jensen is just too beautiful. It’s like the time he went to Art Institute in Chicago and found the Impressionist gallery, and right inside the doorway was a self portrait of Vincent van Gogh, stark blue eyes staring out from the canvas like an invitation. Misha had sat on one of the benches and stared right back, and when he finally got up to go — the museum was closing, he easily could have stayed another day — he felt like he’d just unburdened his life story to someone who understood and would keep his secrets.

Jensen’s eyes don’t have that same wisdom as Vincent’s but they do have the same sadness, and Misha keeps trying, carefully and gently, to find ways to drive it away.

*

It’s a sort of method acting, he reflects. Castiel wants to take care of Dean, too. Keep him safe, keep him whole, protect him from the dark and malevolent forces in the world. Jensen was cut open long before Misha came into his life, but Misha hopes he can seal those wounds shut again, one day at a time.

*

There is passion, too, of course. They’re both grown men, healthy, aware of their mutual attraction and the chemistry that made the crew fall silent in awe the first time they rehearsed a scene together.  Someone with Jensen’s mouth could only be a fantastic kisser — not just fantastic, earth-shattering. Jensen’s kisses leave Misha delirious and trembling with want, and he has been on the verge of asking, Please, please, tonight, many times.

He lets the words die on his lips. It will be Jensen’s choice. He’s promised Jensen that. But it is getting harder to leave him at night, even if he knows the phone will ring when Jensen gets home or when Jensen knows Misha is getting ready for bed and they can say goodnight one more time.

*

It’s after midnight and Jensen has not called. Misha supposes Jensen could have fallen asleep as soon as he got home and they’d just have to talk in the morning, but he is hooked on Jensen’s voice and needs his nightly dose to sleep. Besides, he has a perfect story tonight: it’s about a frog who falls in love with another frog who lives on the other side of his lily pad, but every time he jumps in to find his lover, she disappears, and so the frog croaks its melancholy song, “Where? Where?” every night. Or if that one is too sad, he has one about the man in the moon and how he is allowed to come to Earth every century and find someone to come back to the moon with him so he won’t be lonely, and wouldn’t you know that this time around he finds a young man who really needs a long vacation? And when his lovers die, which even the most beloved people do, the man in the moon makes them into stars and hangs them in the sky …

His phone rings. Misha pounces on it. “Jensen.”

“Hey, Misha. Sorry this is late. I fell asleep and just woke up a second ago. I had one of those dreams, you know, where you’re looking for something and you can’t find it and you’re not even sure what you’re looking for? It woke me up. I figure my brain was telling me to call you. So … hi.”

“Hi,” Misha says, smiling. “What do you want to hear about tonight? I’ve got a sad one and a happy one.”

Jensen pauses. Jensen pauses long enough that Misha says, “Jen?”

“I’m here. Could we skip the story tonight?”

“Sure.” Misha rolls onto his back and lays his arm over his eyes. “We can keep it short, since you’re tired.”

“It’s not that.”

“Something’s wrong,” Misha says, frowning.

“No. Maybe. Look. I have to say this. I keep meaning to say it and not saying it — I mean, you’re so hot and you’re so awesome and I should — but –”

“Tell me,” Misha says quietly, though the sudden coldness in his stomach says it all.

“Misha,” Jensen says, “I like you so much. And I want you, God, I want you, Misha. But I’m not in love with you.”

Misha knows how this story goes. It ends the same way every time. “I see.”

“It’s not fair to you, to lead you on.”

“You don’t have to be in love every time you have sex,” says Misha, though honestly? He usually has been, however briefly. There was a time he fell in love once a day — with a pair of careworn hands, with a head of dark curls and a witty mouth, with a boy who recited a Walt Whitman poem while standing on a bench and other students stopped and stared.

(For the entirety of their relationship, Misha wasn’t sure if what he actually loved was the boy or the poem.)

“If you just wanted sex you would have just fucked me,” Jensen says. “You wouldn’t have romanced me like this. You want me to love you, and God, I should. The more I know you the more I think you’re the best person I’ve ever met. Maybe who ever was.”

“You’re not making this any easier,” Misha says.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” says Jensen. “Just — darlin’ — can you be patient with me a while longer?”

Misha closes his eyes at the darlin’ softly growled in Jensen’s drawl, and thinks of how the first time Jensen called he wanted Jensen to ask him for something impossible. This is what he was asking for — and like most answered prayers, it is entirely not what he expected.

“Yes,” he says and rubs his temples. “Yes. I can be patient a while longer.”

“Okay,” says Jensen. “Misha. It’s not good bye. It’s just good night.”

“Good night,” Misha says, and hears Jensen’s soft, “Good night, Misha,” as he takes the phone away from his ear. He clicks it off and lets it drop to the carpet.

And Darlin’ if you’re wondering
here’s your answer
yes I like you
I don’t love you
I can’t love you
yet
♪ “Darlin'”—Between the Trees