It was Jared's bright idea to go hiking that weekend, so if either of them were going to pitch headfirst down a really steep fucking hill, it was only right that it was him.

That wasn't to say that he enjoyed the experience. There were only so many times you could charge sidelong into bigass rocks before the novelty wore off.

He hit one that was shaped like a dude mooning someone, bounced off, rolled over, and continued to slide down the muddy incline at a rate that would have made tobogganists cringe and hide behind their hands.

He briefly caught Jensen cursing like a drunken matlow before the little chirping birdies and his best friend's yelling gave way to the wooshthwackcrashbangowjesus! of imminent pain and discomfort.

He dropped his shiny red flask when his sternum met a loitering tree stump, his own curse leaving him with a loud and painful hiccup of air as he continued to skid down the incline.

Figured. He'd met enough obstacles to slow down a crack SWAT team, but not a single goddamn one of them put a kibosh on his rapid decent towards the sharp nasty rock like thingies waiting for him a hundred feet or so further down. There the earth gave way to a really fucking big drop, and Jared had no desire to find out if he was that lucky.

Glancing off another big rock, his arm caught between a slim crack in the surface. His body didn't intend to speed down none, and the jerk of bone bending in a way mother nature had never really intended brought Jared crashing out of his spinning world of green and brown, and dumped him ass up in the Land of Pain.

His elbow jerked, and he stopped, half his body dangling over a whole lot of nothing, the other half twisted like a pretzel and pinned between rocks.

Somewhere between the ow, the cursing, and the tears of pain that he's had never given permission to see the light of day, Jared found his voice.

"JENSEN!"

*****

It was like one of those cartoons from the nineties. That one with Wile E. Coyote and that sadistic bird with the long neck. Jared hovered over thin air, his arms windmilling wildly, then bang, he was shooting off down the hill so fast there might well have been an ice cream truck waiting for him at the other end.

Jensen wasn't a big curser, not really, not like Jared, who could get away with saying the most outrageously rude things, because they somehow always sounded funny, or Jeff, who got away with it because he was Jeff. Jensen wasn't a curser at all, but when Jared took a nose dive down down down, he called on his inner Dean and let lose a string of curses that would have made him momma recoil and his pop reach for the soap and brilo pad.

He watched, teetering on the edge, heard a few grunts, groans and godawful crashes, before silence.

Then,

"JENSEN!"

Logic thought took a vacation, and Jensen tore down the incline. He used the trees to slow his decent, aiming for them as his heels skidded in the mud, his palms hitting bark and bouncing once, twice, again and again, until he threw himself face down next to the spot where Jared swung over nothing like a broken pendulum.

"Oh Christ. Oh Jesus. Oh Christ."

"Hi." Jared whimpered, white faced, with eyes that sparkles with more than just tears. His pupils were huge black pits in his eyes. Demonic eyes. Jensen reached out and patted his cheek, mud caking his skin. "Mah arm hurts." Jared explained pitifully.

"I think we got more of a problem than that, big guy." Jensen said shakily, pawing at the bloody side of Jared's jacket.

Jared's frown was dazed and suitably pitiful. "I broke mah sunnies?" He whimpered. Jensen looked around for Jared's sunglasses and found the orange and yellow Oakleys broken in two a few meters away.

"We'll buy you more." Jensen promised. He tried to assess the damage, but with Jared still hanging half over the edge, Jensen's more pressing engagement was to bring them both back to a more stable environment. "Okay man, hang on. We're gonna have to get you back on solid earth."

"Did the M&Ms get squished?" Jared asked, not quite in the realm of coherency.

"Yeah Jay. You squashed the candy." Jensen grunted, fastening his fingers in the belt loops of Jared's cargo pants

Jared actually sniffed, more tears winding down his cheeks. "M'sorry." He whispered, and Jensen felt ludicrously bad for being such an asshole.

"Deep breath." He instructed. Then heaved.

Jared went white, then green, then flopped like a dazed fish with a hook down his throat.

Jensen cursed again and dumped Jared sideways, his arm still pinned.

"Read this thing once." Jared said absently, blinking at his maimed arm. "This dude got his arm trapped in this big ice thing and he had to cut it off and I don't want to cut my arm off, Jen, I like my arm, please don't cut it off."

Jensen patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "No cutting off arms, gottcha." He said, trying to stay in the land of the cheerful when he really wanted to start screaming for his momma, his publicist, and a shitload of rangers to come a running.

He tried his cell. This service is currently unavailable.

"Fucking cock!"

"S'wah cocks do." Jared nodded slowly. "And pee. I think I pissed my pants, Jen."

Christ, Jared was the practical one of the dream team, and he had checked out on impact. Jensen started worrying about concussion and head injuries, and Jared's brain trickling out of his ears like Maple Syrup. Fuck. Hospital.

Jared tried to shuffle over when Jensen shoved a hand into his pocket, searching for his cell. Jared's eyelids sagged lethargically. "Somethink ya wanna tell meh?" He mumbled, patting Jensen's leg with his uninjured hand.

Jared's cell phone was as fucked as his arm.

Jensen cursed a blue streak. "I gotta go get help, Jared." He said softly, brushing muddy hair from Jared's eyes. His fingers were pinned under Jared's flailing arm. Goddamn that Sammy look. "Man, I can't move you like this." He looked back at Jared's arm, sandwiched between two rocks, and felt vaguely ill.

"No no. Staay." Jared whined, tears in his eyes. Either pain made him spacey, or revert back to a five year old, but the effect was one and the same. Jared talked a whole load of nonsense.

"Just…I dunno, sing or something." Jensen suggested, trying to be encouraging and ending up sounding more desperate than confident.

"Sing," Jared repeated, his voice slurring on the word. "Kay, I can sing…" He really couldn't, but that wasn't the point.

"Atta boy." Jensen patted his shoulder.

Jared started to sing 'I am Henry the Eighth', getting the words in the wrong order, and missing some altogether.

"I'll be right back." He said softly, fear uncoiling in his chest as Jared started to shiver. Shock. Just what they needed. Jared's eyes were closed as he sung to himself, and Jensen dared lay a gentle kiss on his cheek before setting off at a sprint.

****

"Third verse as the first, Henry I am the eighth, I am. Eighth Henry, eighth Henry, eighth Henry I am." Jared mumbled to himself, his head pillowed on a very comfy rock, fluffy pink clouds floating above. Jensen was somewhere that wasn't there, and Jared missed him. He smelled like apples and cinnamon and Halloween, and had lips like strawberry and cream candy canes. His stomach rumbled. It had been forever and a day since his double chocolate and marshmallow cookies and he wanted food.

He was a growing boy and there was a monster in his belly that was going to rip him open and claw out. Jensen would come back to find intestines strewn about the mud, and everyone knew that the sight of blood made Jensen toss his cookies.

Cookies.

God, he was hungry.

"I married Sandy and the widow next door…"

He was going to die here and his momma would be right about the dangers of lions and tigers and bears in the Canadian wilds.

"She's been married to Elvis before and eighth I am Henry, 'Enry eighth I am."

He finished his verse and blinked mud out of his eyes. The woods were silent and still around him. "'Ensen?" He coughed, the fingers of his good hand combing through the mud in search of Jensen. "Where mah 'Ensen?"

A nearby bug crawled over his numb and bloody arm. "Shoo." Jared glared at it, trying to blow it away with great huffs of air that made the monster in his belly growl, and his head spin around in twirly circles."Bad bug."

The bug looked at him with sparkly eyes and they were green. Jensen had green eyes. Jared giggled. The bug had Jensen eyes.

Jensen.

God, he wanted his Jensen.

He started singing again, and pretended Jensen was there to laugh at him.

****

Jensen was not panicking. He had gone past panic and currently resided somewhere around a meltdown of epic proportions.

In the two hours it had taken to get back in signal range, wait for help, and lead said help back, Jared had taken a turn for the worse.

He wasn't a medic, and he kept second guessing himself. What if he should have stabilised his head, or splinted his fingers or supported his back or…

"Hey buddy?" One of the park rangers, a guy named Bobby -the irony went straight over Jensen's head in the midst of his panic- patted Jared on the shoulder. Jared rolled his head drunkenly, his pupils uneven and his smile lopsided.

"His name's Jared." Jensen reminded moodily.

"Ensen!" Jared reached for him. "Jenny, Jen, Jen, Jen Jen."

"Hey dude." Jensen patted Jared's muddy fingers. "How you holding up?"

"Hungry." Jared pouted. "Broke the M&Ms."

Jensen cursed and fished around in his pocket for a stray candy bar, but Bobby the ranger shook his head. "Not a good idea."

Jared whimpered and Jensen threw macho caution out the window. He twined their fingers together.

"Jenny I want my arm back."

Jensen rounded on the rangers. "Can't you give him something?" He hissed, stroking Jared's hair without noticing his own actions.

"Whiskey." Jared suggested helpfully.

"Morphine?" Jensen amended.

"Tequila?"

Bobby and his ranger friends shared a look. "We need to get him to a hospital. They might need to operate. He could have internal injuries."

Yeah, that did it. Jared whimpered and blacked out. Jensen stood, walked over to the edge, and lost his breakfast.

****

Eric threw his teddies out of the pram.

"What do you mean he broke his arm?" he shrieked down the line. Jensen stood outside the city hospital, cellphone in one hand, coffee in the other.

"I mean his radius bone looks like parts of a jigsaw puzzle." Jensen explained. Trust Jared to be too dosed to break the news to their neurotic boss. "They're putting pins in or something."

Eric swore violently.

"Three bust ribs, a concussion, and apparently he is really, really hungry."

Eric swore again."I am putting you on babysitting duty! Don't let him out of your sight! Understand me?"

"I-" Jensen stammered. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck with an injured, doped up Jared. He might...take advantage or something.

"I mean it Jensen. That boy is accident prone enough when he has use of all working limbs."

"But-"

"I don't care if you have to tie him to the bed. You don't let him piss by himself."

"That's just-"

"I mean it."

And then Eric just hung up.

****

Jared was still fucking hungry when Jensen came into his hospital room, armed with Gummy Bears.

"Love you." He said, his voice rough and low. He made grabby fingers with his uninjured hand. "Bringer of candy."

"Man, you scared me shitless." Jensen admitted, opening the plastic bag for Jared, who was encased in plaster from his elbow to his wrist.

"Sorry." He sounded it. "Thought I was gonna die." Jared said. "But I figured Eric woulda dragged my ass back from the dead to finish the season.

Jensen shook his head. "Probably." He admitted, not brave enough to take Jared's hand now he wasn't as high as a kite.

Jared smiled sleepily. "Next time you can pick what we do on our days off."

"Damn straight." Jensen agreed. Something safe. Fishing maybe. He put his palm on Jared's face, and used his fingers to gently close Jared's eyes. "Get some sleep." He whispered.

"You be here?"

"Sure I will."

Jared was snoring a minute later. Jensen waited. And waited some more.

Then he took a sharpie and wrote rude words all over Jared's cast.

Fucker deserved it.