![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A long time ago people gave me requests for fic. One of them was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deirdre_c asking for J2 banter.
Title: the sound of one assassin changing his career path
Category: RPS AU
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2,300
"Ow."
Jensen startles awake to the sound of something large and heavy falling through his bedchamber window. He sits up and rubs his eyes and for a moment he thinks maybe he just imagined it but then he catches movement in the deep shadows of the corner furthest from his bed and the dying light of the fire in the hearth.
"Show yourself," Jensen demands, trying to sound authoritative but his voice is sleep-rough and sounds tremulous at best to his own ears. He's thinking it's one of his younger siblings snuck into his room to do something mean to him while he slumbered but he has to let go of that best case scenario when a shadow detaches itself finally from the rest of the gloom and is taller than even his older brother, Andrew.
"You don't think you could...um, go back to sleep and forget I was here do you?" the shadow asks, still only a maddening shape in the darkness. Jensen wants to kick his legs free of his bed clothes because he's starting to get a Very Bad Feeling about all of this but he'd had a little too much to drink the night before, his first night home from school no less, and he's pretty sure he passed out without pants.
"Who are you?" Jensen snaps, wishing desperately for a weapon because a stranger's presence in his bed chamber can only mean that something a little worse than waking up with butter rubbed through his hair was on the cards.
Like not waking up at all.
"If I told you that, I'd have to kill you," the shadow says with a shaky laugh and Jensen glares, still trying to parse some kind of detail that he can tell the guards to look out for.
"Are you... was that a joke?" Jensen finally asks. Bare ass or not, he's starting to think that maybe he should get out of bed.
"Yes?" the shadow says, but doesn't sound sure. He lets go another shaky, nervous-sounding laugh and then sighs and slumps, dropping into the heavy chair by Jensen's desk. "This is a disaster."
"Look, I'm not sure what you're doing here but-"
"I was supposed to kill you," the stranger says and Jensen swallows.
"Oh, that's... oh," Jensen finally manages through a throat gone dry.
The thing is, eventually he knew this was going to happen. He's not a bad guy but unfortunately most of his family is. Bad to the core if the rumours and stories told in taverns across the city of Soloi are anything to go by. Jensen is kind of a... light sheep in a family of black ones, never really having grasped the idea of being, well, evil.
The Ackles are tyrants, one and all, except for him.
His problem is, he's also the second-born son, due to inherit everything if his brother Andrew meets an untimely end. While he's no particular threat to Andrew, he has eight other younger brothers and sisters who would like to see him out of their way. He could try telling them he's not interested in either the money or the lands but he knows they'd think it was some kind of trick. He thought maybe taking himself away to school would help them see that he was different but...
Obviously it didn't work.
"Who was it?" Jensen asks glumly, trying to mentally shuffle through his siblings for a likely candidate. He discards Penny, all of twelve and still only generally mean rather than outright evil but the others...
"Do you really want to know?" the stranger asks and Jensen wonders about that. Would it be easier to know or would it just make him concentrate on one of his family members in particular, only to be taken out by another who noticed his distraction.
It wasn't like he was capable of killing them first. He just didn't have it in him.
"I guess not," Jensen says. He casts about but his pants aren't in easy reach and he's just resigning himself to having to run for his life with everything hanging in the breeze when the stranger stands and moves back towards the window. "Wait, where are you going?" Jensen asks.
"Well, I can't kill you now," the stranger huffs. "You're all polite and... sad."
"Oh, well um, thanks?" Jensen says slowly, having to wonder if the moment he relaxes the stranger is going to charge him and do him in anyway.
"It's okay. I'm not really sure I was up to this anyway," the stranger says, almost low enough for Jensen to think that maybe he wasn't supposed to hear that last part and then he's gone, the flicker of the dying fire and the chair he'd sat on pulled sideways the only evidence he was ever in the room.
***
"This is highly irregular." Jensen is glowering at the Guildmaster before him who is shuffling papers and looking flustered. "I mean, we've had complaints before but never from the... intended target."
"I have to be home for the whole summer and I don't want to be kept up at night waiting for another one of your goons to come tumbling through my window," Jensen snaps, smacking a hand down on the table in front of the Guildmaster's nose and the man jumps. He has the decency to look contrite while still madly sorting through the numerous kill orders on his desk before he comes up with one and squints at it.
"Ah yes. Oh, I see. I mean, it was Jared's first assignment so-"
"Jared?" Jensen asks, finally able to put a name to the disembodied voice from his room the night before. Now if only he could put a face to it.
"Not important, not important," the Guildmaster says quickly, flushing and flustered. "Look, usually we offer our clients a guaranteed kill. If we fail in a first attempt we try again for free but since you're here and quite inconvenienced..." the Guildmaster eyes Jensen like he still can't believe Jensen just waltzed into the Assassin's Guild to complain. "We can probably waive our normal policy and refuse the next order."
"You mean, no one's going to try to kill me?"
"Not from the Guild, no," the man confirms but before Jensen can relax he's quick to say, "That doesn't rule out the client sourcing an assassin from another city. I mean, I'd feel an obligation to at least give the client some references as a professional courtesy."
"Of course," Jensen says.
"But that could take days, maybe even a week. I'm sure you won't have anything to worry about."
"No, right," Jensen agrees and is about to turn around when the Guildmaster clears his throat.
"Of course, the client could just decide to kill you themselves," the Guildmaster allows with a sigh that speaks of how poor form that would be. "I mean, it happens."
"Thanks for your help," Jensen says, tone a little strangled.
***
Jensen is starting to feel a little ridiculous and a lot paranoid going to bed with a loaded crossbow when someone comes through his window again, a lot more quietly this time. Jensen sits up and swings his legs out of bed, pointing the crossbow and watching the intruder look at the roaring fire in the hearth and then towards Jensen's bed in confusion.
With the benefit of the better light, this time Jensen is able to see his would-be attacker. He's definitely tall, that much Jensen could make out in last night's gloom, but he's also broad with shaggy brown hair. Jensen still can't exactly see the man's face because he's now looking at his shoes and apparently finding them fascinating. "You're awake," the man who Jensen can only assume is Jared says.
"After the attempted assassination last night? Yes, you could say I had some trouble dropping off," Jensen says, rolling his eyes.
"I'm sorry about that, honestly," Jared says and he sounds so genuinely upset that Jensen almost lowers the crossbow.
Almost.
"I thought I'd lucked out, you know?" Jared continues, still looking at his feet and Jensen watches the restless way he hops from foot to foot, the way the guy is chewing on his lip from what Jensen can see under his hair and Jensen suddenly realizes that Jared is young, possibly too young to be stealing into people's bedchambers and murdering them in their sleep. "I mean, an Ackles as my first assignment. Easy, right?"
"Thanks a lot," Jensen grumbles and now he does lower the crossbow although he doesn't actually put it aside. He is actually starting to believe that Jared isn't here to kill him but it doesn't mean that Jared isn't serving as a distraction for someone who might be.
"That's not what I... I just thought it might not be so bad if there person was, you know, a bad guy," Jared amends and finally, finally looks up. From what Jensen can see he has a nice face, will probably be full-blown handsome when he grows into his features more because at the moment his ears a little goofily big, his teeth too. Jensen wants to slap himself thinking that Jared's eyes are a pretty shade of something that can't be defined in the firelight and they have an almost exotic tilt to them.
Jared was here to kill him only the previous night.
It's definitely a bad idea to think he's adorable.
"Wait, you think I'm a bad guy?" Jensen asks, what Jared has just said registering to his distracted brain on delay.
"Not you specifically but I've heard the stories. Ackles is a name they use to make the kids I grew up with brush their teeth and go to bed and that's saying something. Most of them ended up in theAssassin's Guild like me."
"Yeah, alright," Jensen allows because it's true, his family has a pretty colorful reputation and the most dominant color is red. Jensen's ancestors conquered and pillaged their way into their position of power and even though most of the wealth and reputation these days is inherited rather than earned, he knows there has to be something up with his bloodline still when it doesn't come as a surprise that one of them hired a guy to kill him.
"I asked around though," Jared says and when Jensen blinks he steps forward, hands out. "Thieves Guild and most of the taverns nearby. I'd mention the name Ackles and people would quake in their boots but as soon as I said Jensen they all got this speculative look. Some hadn't heard about you at all but the ones that did had some pretty wild stories."
"Like what?" Jensen asks, intrigued despite himself. He's not sure what stories about him specifically could be doing the rounds.
"Like you make your kitchens put out the scraps for the beggars at Festival and you visit little old ladies and take them soup when they're feeling poorly."
"I did that once and I'm never going to hear the end of it, am I?" Jensen complains. It was true. One of the kitchen ladies that had served their family well for more years than Jensen had been alive had succumbed to a creeping sickness that didn't allow her to work any longer. Jensen heard about her plight and took blankets and food to her home. The reason he hadn't been back was because with most families, charitable work was seen as a good thing.
With his it was a sign of weakness and he didn't want to give his siblings yet another excuse.
"So, let me get this straight. You came to apologise to someone you were going to kill because they maybe didn't deserve it?" Jensen asks incredulously.
"Yes," Jared says in a small voice.
"I'm pretty sure the Assassin's Guild isn't that discerning. Hate to be the one to tell you this but probably most of the people you're hired to do away with won't exactly deserve it."
"I know that," Jared says, sounding glum. "I thought maybe I would get used to the idea and it all seemed so glamorous at the beginning. Plus, it's a pretty decent living and they booted me out of theThieves Guild."
"Is the only reason you came here to apologise?" Jensen asks, setting the crossbow aside at last.
"I wanted to make sure no one else was going to carry out the orders. I couldn't find the Kill order to destroy it and I got worried."
"Apparently in reparation to my inconvenience the guild is going to outsource to another city," Jensen says.
"Oh, well, then you should be okay for a few days," Jared says.
"That's what the Guildmaster said," Jensen nods and then pulls a face. "It doesn't stop whatever loving family member of mine that hired you doing it themselves though," Jensen adds and is confused when Jared brightens at this news.
"So you're still in danger?"
"I would assume so, yes," Jensen says, more puzzled because Jared is now practically bouncing on his feet.
"It's just that, I was thinking since this assassin thing wasn't working out for me maybe I could branch out into protection."
"You want to be my bodyguard?"
"It's the least I can do," Jared says, nodding vigorously.
"Well," Jensen hedges and thinks about his very generous allowance which is more than enough to maintain a staff and how he can't exactly sleep with a loaded crossbow every night because he's more likely to shoot himself somewhere soft and sensitive than wound any intruder.
Plus, Jared is very nice to look at which makes a change from the thugs his father and Andrew have surrounded themselves with.
"Okay then," Jensen agrees but before Jared can get too excited he says, "But I pay on a sliding scale. I get injured and your pay slides into nothing."
"Deal!" Jared says.
deirdre_c asking for J2 banter. Title: the sound of one assassin changing his career path
Category: RPS AU
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2,300
"Ow."
Jensen startles awake to the sound of something large and heavy falling through his bedchamber window. He sits up and rubs his eyes and for a moment he thinks maybe he just imagined it but then he catches movement in the deep shadows of the corner furthest from his bed and the dying light of the fire in the hearth.
"Show yourself," Jensen demands, trying to sound authoritative but his voice is sleep-rough and sounds tremulous at best to his own ears. He's thinking it's one of his younger siblings snuck into his room to do something mean to him while he slumbered but he has to let go of that best case scenario when a shadow detaches itself finally from the rest of the gloom and is taller than even his older brother, Andrew.
"You don't think you could...um, go back to sleep and forget I was here do you?" the shadow asks, still only a maddening shape in the darkness. Jensen wants to kick his legs free of his bed clothes because he's starting to get a Very Bad Feeling about all of this but he'd had a little too much to drink the night before, his first night home from school no less, and he's pretty sure he passed out without pants.
"Who are you?" Jensen snaps, wishing desperately for a weapon because a stranger's presence in his bed chamber can only mean that something a little worse than waking up with butter rubbed through his hair was on the cards.
Like not waking up at all.
"If I told you that, I'd have to kill you," the shadow says with a shaky laugh and Jensen glares, still trying to parse some kind of detail that he can tell the guards to look out for.
"Are you... was that a joke?" Jensen finally asks. Bare ass or not, he's starting to think that maybe he should get out of bed.
"Yes?" the shadow says, but doesn't sound sure. He lets go another shaky, nervous-sounding laugh and then sighs and slumps, dropping into the heavy chair by Jensen's desk. "This is a disaster."
"Look, I'm not sure what you're doing here but-"
"I was supposed to kill you," the stranger says and Jensen swallows.
"Oh, that's... oh," Jensen finally manages through a throat gone dry.
The thing is, eventually he knew this was going to happen. He's not a bad guy but unfortunately most of his family is. Bad to the core if the rumours and stories told in taverns across the city of Soloi are anything to go by. Jensen is kind of a... light sheep in a family of black ones, never really having grasped the idea of being, well, evil.
The Ackles are tyrants, one and all, except for him.
His problem is, he's also the second-born son, due to inherit everything if his brother Andrew meets an untimely end. While he's no particular threat to Andrew, he has eight other younger brothers and sisters who would like to see him out of their way. He could try telling them he's not interested in either the money or the lands but he knows they'd think it was some kind of trick. He thought maybe taking himself away to school would help them see that he was different but...
Obviously it didn't work.
"Who was it?" Jensen asks glumly, trying to mentally shuffle through his siblings for a likely candidate. He discards Penny, all of twelve and still only generally mean rather than outright evil but the others...
"Do you really want to know?" the stranger asks and Jensen wonders about that. Would it be easier to know or would it just make him concentrate on one of his family members in particular, only to be taken out by another who noticed his distraction.
It wasn't like he was capable of killing them first. He just didn't have it in him.
"I guess not," Jensen says. He casts about but his pants aren't in easy reach and he's just resigning himself to having to run for his life with everything hanging in the breeze when the stranger stands and moves back towards the window. "Wait, where are you going?" Jensen asks.
"Well, I can't kill you now," the stranger huffs. "You're all polite and... sad."
"Oh, well um, thanks?" Jensen says slowly, having to wonder if the moment he relaxes the stranger is going to charge him and do him in anyway.
"It's okay. I'm not really sure I was up to this anyway," the stranger says, almost low enough for Jensen to think that maybe he wasn't supposed to hear that last part and then he's gone, the flicker of the dying fire and the chair he'd sat on pulled sideways the only evidence he was ever in the room.
"This is highly irregular." Jensen is glowering at the Guildmaster before him who is shuffling papers and looking flustered. "I mean, we've had complaints before but never from the... intended target."
"I have to be home for the whole summer and I don't want to be kept up at night waiting for another one of your goons to come tumbling through my window," Jensen snaps, smacking a hand down on the table in front of the Guildmaster's nose and the man jumps. He has the decency to look contrite while still madly sorting through the numerous kill orders on his desk before he comes up with one and squints at it.
"Ah yes. Oh, I see. I mean, it was Jared's first assignment so-"
"Jared?" Jensen asks, finally able to put a name to the disembodied voice from his room the night before. Now if only he could put a face to it.
"Not important, not important," the Guildmaster says quickly, flushing and flustered. "Look, usually we offer our clients a guaranteed kill. If we fail in a first attempt we try again for free but since you're here and quite inconvenienced..." the Guildmaster eyes Jensen like he still can't believe Jensen just waltzed into the Assassin's Guild to complain. "We can probably waive our normal policy and refuse the next order."
"You mean, no one's going to try to kill me?"
"Not from the Guild, no," the man confirms but before Jensen can relax he's quick to say, "That doesn't rule out the client sourcing an assassin from another city. I mean, I'd feel an obligation to at least give the client some references as a professional courtesy."
"Of course," Jensen says.
"But that could take days, maybe even a week. I'm sure you won't have anything to worry about."
"No, right," Jensen agrees and is about to turn around when the Guildmaster clears his throat.
"Of course, the client could just decide to kill you themselves," the Guildmaster allows with a sigh that speaks of how poor form that would be. "I mean, it happens."
"Thanks for your help," Jensen says, tone a little strangled.
Jensen is starting to feel a little ridiculous and a lot paranoid going to bed with a loaded crossbow when someone comes through his window again, a lot more quietly this time. Jensen sits up and swings his legs out of bed, pointing the crossbow and watching the intruder look at the roaring fire in the hearth and then towards Jensen's bed in confusion.
With the benefit of the better light, this time Jensen is able to see his would-be attacker. He's definitely tall, that much Jensen could make out in last night's gloom, but he's also broad with shaggy brown hair. Jensen still can't exactly see the man's face because he's now looking at his shoes and apparently finding them fascinating. "You're awake," the man who Jensen can only assume is Jared says.
"After the attempted assassination last night? Yes, you could say I had some trouble dropping off," Jensen says, rolling his eyes.
"I'm sorry about that, honestly," Jared says and he sounds so genuinely upset that Jensen almost lowers the crossbow.
Almost.
"I thought I'd lucked out, you know?" Jared continues, still looking at his feet and Jensen watches the restless way he hops from foot to foot, the way the guy is chewing on his lip from what Jensen can see under his hair and Jensen suddenly realizes that Jared is young, possibly too young to be stealing into people's bedchambers and murdering them in their sleep. "I mean, an Ackles as my first assignment. Easy, right?"
"Thanks a lot," Jensen grumbles and now he does lower the crossbow although he doesn't actually put it aside. He is actually starting to believe that Jared isn't here to kill him but it doesn't mean that Jared isn't serving as a distraction for someone who might be.
"That's not what I... I just thought it might not be so bad if there person was, you know, a bad guy," Jared amends and finally, finally looks up. From what Jensen can see he has a nice face, will probably be full-blown handsome when he grows into his features more because at the moment his ears a little goofily big, his teeth too. Jensen wants to slap himself thinking that Jared's eyes are a pretty shade of something that can't be defined in the firelight and they have an almost exotic tilt to them.
Jared was here to kill him only the previous night.
It's definitely a bad idea to think he's adorable.
"Wait, you think I'm a bad guy?" Jensen asks, what Jared has just said registering to his distracted brain on delay.
"Not you specifically but I've heard the stories. Ackles is a name they use to make the kids I grew up with brush their teeth and go to bed and that's saying something. Most of them ended up in theAssassin's Guild like me."
"Yeah, alright," Jensen allows because it's true, his family has a pretty colorful reputation and the most dominant color is red. Jensen's ancestors conquered and pillaged their way into their position of power and even though most of the wealth and reputation these days is inherited rather than earned, he knows there has to be something up with his bloodline still when it doesn't come as a surprise that one of them hired a guy to kill him.
"I asked around though," Jared says and when Jensen blinks he steps forward, hands out. "Thieves Guild and most of the taverns nearby. I'd mention the name Ackles and people would quake in their boots but as soon as I said Jensen they all got this speculative look. Some hadn't heard about you at all but the ones that did had some pretty wild stories."
"Like what?" Jensen asks, intrigued despite himself. He's not sure what stories about him specifically could be doing the rounds.
"Like you make your kitchens put out the scraps for the beggars at Festival and you visit little old ladies and take them soup when they're feeling poorly."
"I did that once and I'm never going to hear the end of it, am I?" Jensen complains. It was true. One of the kitchen ladies that had served their family well for more years than Jensen had been alive had succumbed to a creeping sickness that didn't allow her to work any longer. Jensen heard about her plight and took blankets and food to her home. The reason he hadn't been back was because with most families, charitable work was seen as a good thing.
With his it was a sign of weakness and he didn't want to give his siblings yet another excuse.
"So, let me get this straight. You came to apologise to someone you were going to kill because they maybe didn't deserve it?" Jensen asks incredulously.
"Yes," Jared says in a small voice.
"I'm pretty sure the Assassin's Guild isn't that discerning. Hate to be the one to tell you this but probably most of the people you're hired to do away with won't exactly deserve it."
"I know that," Jared says, sounding glum. "I thought maybe I would get used to the idea and it all seemed so glamorous at the beginning. Plus, it's a pretty decent living and they booted me out of theThieves Guild."
"Is the only reason you came here to apologise?" Jensen asks, setting the crossbow aside at last.
"I wanted to make sure no one else was going to carry out the orders. I couldn't find the Kill order to destroy it and I got worried."
"Apparently in reparation to my inconvenience the guild is going to outsource to another city," Jensen says.
"Oh, well, then you should be okay for a few days," Jared says.
"That's what the Guildmaster said," Jensen nods and then pulls a face. "It doesn't stop whatever loving family member of mine that hired you doing it themselves though," Jensen adds and is confused when Jared brightens at this news.
"So you're still in danger?"
"I would assume so, yes," Jensen says, more puzzled because Jared is now practically bouncing on his feet.
"It's just that, I was thinking since this assassin thing wasn't working out for me maybe I could branch out into protection."
"You want to be my bodyguard?"
"It's the least I can do," Jared says, nodding vigorously.
"Well," Jensen hedges and thinks about his very generous allowance which is more than enough to maintain a staff and how he can't exactly sleep with a loaded crossbow every night because he's more likely to shoot himself somewhere soft and sensitive than wound any intruder.
Plus, Jared is very nice to look at which makes a change from the thugs his father and Andrew have surrounded themselves with.
"Okay then," Jensen agrees but before Jared can get too excited he says, "But I pay on a sliding scale. I get injured and your pay slides into nothing."
"Deal!" Jared says.
Tags: