raeschae

Title: Just Skate (A Disclaimer Verse OneShot)
Author:

raeschae
Pairing: Brief J2 (Mostly just Jensen in this one, though)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1550

Summary: Jensen loves Jared, Brayden, their friends, and Ollie. But he lives for skating.
A Jensen character study, of sorts, in the Disclaimer Verse.

A/N: For iniq, who loves skater!Jensen more than anyone I know. ;)

Also, for those who might be interested, I posted a Chris/Danneel/Steve threesome fic yesterday, but I wasn't sure where to pimp it, since it contains no J2. So if you wanna check it out, it's here: Trifecta.

“Time is it?”

Mike's eyes dart from his table to the clock over Jensen's head and then back. “Three forty-five.”

“Fuck!”

Pushing back, Jensen runs his hand over his face and squeezes his eyes shut. They have to e-mail these designs to the manufacturer by five and he's close to something, but not close enough. It's a nagging feeling at the back of his brain, the right element is within reach, but it's not jumping out at him. He can't touch it. There's one piece of the puzzle that just isn't fitting.

He pushes back in his chair, grabs the bill of the hat sitting on his desk, and drops it onto his head while he stands. “Come on,” he nods over his shoulder. By the time his hand closes over the tail of his board, Mike's doing the same and they're on their way out the door without another word.

They don't have to talk about it. Words don't help. Only motion. This motion. The only one that's calmed, inspired, comforted, and encouraged him since he was twelve.

The park is crowded, kids everywhere, because school just let out and there's nowhere else they wanna be, either. It's okay, Jensen likes it better when there's people around. Makes it more real. Carving pavement alone always feels like some surreal dream. Like he's been abandoned or some shit. This has never been a solitary sport for him.

Mike kicks off at the same time, heads in the opposite direction, and they bypass the pipe in favor of the stairs and hand rails. When he's stressed to the limit, when he's ready to pull his hair out and scream at the top of his lungs, Jensen grabs a helmet and hits the pipe. Today is not one of those days.

The feeling of the rail sliding beneath his board, the way it vibrates under his feet when he grinds off a side wall, and the sensation of floating for just a second when he kick flips make him feel so much more grounded than sitting in that chair, staring at a piece of paper ever does. He loves his work, art is love for him, but skating? Skating is pure, undiluted, one hundred proof passion.

He doesn't think about it, never has really. Someone told him long ago that feeling was so much more important on a board. That he'd never get it right if he bothered trying to remember the rules and mechanics. You watch the people who do it well, you mimic, and you get it. Eventually, it's natural as breathing. For Jensen, it is breathing. He crouches low to increase his speed before a pop. He adjusts his center of gravity on a landing. He relaxes into his turns. There's no 'think' out here. There's just 'do.'

When he was working at Element, the job was cool, but it was just a job. He had just met Jared, and the kid was so fucking alive with this joy because of the work that he did. Like he had a calling and just couldn't do anything else. Jensen was happy, but it wasn't enough. He needed something else.

He remembers Jared asking him one night what he wanted to do. “If you could do any one thing for the rest of your life and actually get paid for it, what would it be?”

Simple. “Skate.”

When he opened Ollie, that's what it was about. Sure, design is something that pays the bills, but it's not why he opened the park. It was so he'd have a place to chill with his friends, to try new tricks and hang out until he felt like he was going to drop. Until he couldn't stand up anymore. Nobody to tell him to go home. Nobody to stop him from doing exactly what he wanted.

When the kids started showing up, hanging out until their parents dragged them home, he was a little bit surprised. He shouldn't have been – it's the kind of park he wishes they'd had back in Dallas when he was younger – but it caught him off guard. But the first time he was out there, shredding every rail he could find, and then stopped to see a little audience of awe-struck, thirteen-year-old faces? It threw him. Twenty years ago, that was him, standing around while the older guys seemed to float around the park, putting on a clinic. Now he's the one they watch. It's a little mind-blowing.

And then Brayden came along. Jared has never been anything less than supportive of Jensen's passion in life, but Brayden was unexpected, to say the least. Because he hung out, even after he left their house and went back to his dad. He would show up after school and stay until Jensen closed up and drove him home. He would ask questions and study Jensen's form until Jensen thought his legs would give out. And then Brayden would try. And try. And try again.

It was here that he finally saw Brayden as his kid. He was fourteen, and he was on a board for the first time after the accident. Jensen sat on the hand rail and watched, breath stuck in his throat, as Brayden inhaled deep and pushed off. It was awkward and slow-going at first, but much like riding a bike, he fell back into the rhythm. Then he looked at Jensen through that shaggy hair of his and held out his hands.

“I'm back,” he declared triumphantly.

Jensen didn't need an explanation. He knew exactly what the kid meant. Until he got back on that board, until he proved to himself that he could do it again? He wasn't going to accept that he had healed. That he was home.

Every skater knows that you're gonna wipe the fuck out from time to time. That you're going to leave more flesh on the pavement than you do on your forearms and shins. That you're gonna split a lip or an eyebrow, and probably break a few bones. You just get back up, get back on the board, and when you can do that? You know nothing else can touch you.

Jared is essential, like air and water. And Jensen would fucking die for Brayden. The store and his friends and the name that his company is establishing for itself in the business? All important.

But there is nothing – abso-fucking-lutely nothing – in the world that compares to skating. It is his best friend, the place where he finds answers to questions he can't voice. It made him different, and then offered him solace when he had nowhere else to fit. Ollie is the temple he built to worship this religion that consumes him, to the god that saved him from a life of boredom and monotony. It's everything to him.

“That ride was sick, Jen,” one of the kids says, holding out a hand when Jensen finishes up and pulls his hat off to wipe his forehead with the sleeve of his tee shirt. He bumps fists with him and continues on to the pro shop, fully relaxed and ready to get back to work.

He's about to open the door when he catches sight of someone rounding the corner of the building. “Break?”

Jared nods, pushes his sunglasses up onto his head, and bends to catch Jensen's lips before Jensen pulls the door open and gulps a lung full of conditioned air. “Deadline?” With a nod, Jensen grabs the ice cold water bottle Danneel set on the counter for him while he was outside and continues on to his office. “Shoulda called me.”

Jensen rolls his eyes and tosses his hat onto the desk. “Your obsession with watching me skate is kinda fuckin' freaky,” he accuses.

Jared's hands find his hips and he presses his chest to Jensen's, paying no mind to the fact that Mike is lowering himself to the table directly across from them. “Cause it's like fuckin' art, man,” he defends himself. “And you know how much I love art.” The glint in his eye is not nearly as innocent as the one he gets when he's looking at art.

Jensen just shakes his head and looks at the clock. “I've got thirty-five minutes to finish this design and get it off to Kevin, then I'm done for the day. You gonna hang?”

With a shrug, Jared lowers himself to the top of Jensen's desk and grabs a pencil and a piece of paper. He'll busy himself with doodling until Jensen is ready to leave and then they'll head back to Slinging Ink until Jared's done, grab some dinner, and head home to Brayden. It's a routine as practiced as the one he just finished outside.

It doesn't even take him fifteen to complete the design, the missing piece of the puzzle so apparent. He fills in the oblong white space with the most obvious element, and Jensen shakes his head at how simple it all is now that he's taken a minute to step back and recenter himself.

All it needed was a board.