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The airport, Jensen had decided, made people crazy.
He'd been a sane, normal human being when he'd gone through check-in four hours earlier, but after hours of sitting in Sbarro's and staring at his pizza while they cleared snow off the runway or built a robot-pilot or dug gremlins out of the engines or whatever the fuck they were doing, he could feel the crazyness beginning to settle in.
Around him, the restaurant filled up around him with travelers who were equally disgruntled by their flights running late. He was pretty sure that the old lady who'd been here before him had given up and was now trying to get to Kentucky via submarine on the grounds that it would be faster.
Rubbing his eyes, Jensen stared blankly at his half-eaten pizza slice. It looked like an unpleasant combination of a children's cartoon character and Satan, and Jensen let his mind go off on a tangent as he made up a theme song for this hypothetical children's show in which kids would learn their ABCs and some nifty demonic rituals. (A, b, c, d, e, f, g, let's start with some basic blasphemy...)
He was in the middle of trying to find something that rhymed with 'goat sacrifice' when a long shadow suddenly fell over him and his devil-pizza.
Jensen's fleeting fear that the shadow was God getting ready to smite him was quickly assuaged when he looked up to see that the shadow was not in fact caused by a displeased deity but by a really tall guy with dark hair and a friendly smile.
Tall-Dark-and-Smiley didn't look like he hated his life anywhere near as much as Jensen did at that moment and so Jensen disliked him on principle.
"Hey, man, d'you mind if I sit here?" the guy asked. Jensen looked around, surprised to see that every other table in the place was filled with unhappy passengers, but the guy kept talking before he could answer, "I don't wanna intrude or anything but this place is pretty packed after all the delays and no-one really wants to see me crouching on the floor and trying to stuff a whole slice of pizza in my mouth."
He flashed Jensen another cheerful smile and Jensen absolutely, totally did not think about how attractive the guy was or how he'd look with Jensen's dick stuffed in his mouth rather than some mildly greasy pizza.
"Sure," he said awkwardly, shifting his laptop bag off the seat opposite to let the guy sit down. "Did your flight get delayed too?"
"Yeah," the guy said, not sounding as despondent as Jensen felt. "They keep saying they're fixing the engine or doing repairs or something which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, y'know? I mean, I'd really like them to not be sticking the plane together with duct tape before I get locked inside it and launched into the air."
Jensen bit back a smile. "You a nervous flyer?"
"I don't exactly fly much," the guy admitted, pushing his hair back out of his face. "The concept of it kind of freaks me out. I'm a big guy - I'm used to gravity working against me." He stuck out his hand as he said, "I'm Jared, by the way. Just so you don't remember me as the tall dude who was scared of planes."
Jensen shook his hand and found himself relaxing now that he wasn't lost in his own deranged thoughts of singing Hellish overlords. "Jensen. It's shorter than 'the weird loser who was staring at his pizza'."
Jared laughed and Jensen tried to ignore the flare of heat in his belly as he watched him. "Communing with pizza is a valid lifestyle choice," Jared said with a nod. "Do you do this professionally or have you got a less exciting job the rest of the time?"
"Marketing manager," Jensen said. "I make people want to buy stuff."
"You're doing an awesome job," Jared said with a wink. "For the record, I would totally buy whatever you're selling."
The implication wasn't particularly subtle but Jensen leaned forward in his chair, pleased by the prospect that his stay at the airport might not be a complete waste of time after all.
"What about you?" he asked, trying to stay friendly and not drag Jared to the bathroom to discuss possible transactions in more details. "What do you do?"
Jared chomped down a mouthful of pizza and said easily, "I'm a stripper."
Jensen's eyes went wide as his mind was filled with a very pleasant selection of images, and Jared kept talking, apparently unashamed of his vocation, "I guess some people call it 'exotic dancer' or 'adult entertainer' or whatever but 'stripper' is just easier, y'know? Plus it avoids all those awkward questions about whether I do porn or sell my ass on the side - 'stripper' is pretty self-explanatory, right?"
Jensen swallowed hard. All the questions that instantly came to mind revolved around outfits and dance moves, and he pushed down the thought of Jared in a cowboy hat, boots, and little else as he asked, "Are you in school or anything?"
"Nope," Jared said with a shrug. "I'm mostly still figuring out what I want to do with my life. I work in a coffee place during the day and then I do nights at the club." His grin crept back into place. "I take my clothes off, people applaud and give me money. It's pretty much the best job ever."
Jensen shook his head and smiled. "Glad you found your calling." He rubbed the back of his neck and tried not to sound too obvious when he asked, "Do you, uh- Do you work around here?"
"Sorry, man," Jared said. "I work down in Dallas - I was just in town for my buddy's wedding this weekend."
Apparently devil cartoons weren't a big deal because God had evidently decided to smile on Jensen today. Meeting a hot, gay stripper who just so happened to work in his hometown while he was at an airport hundreds of miles away was definitely suitable compensation for his plane getting delayed.
"I'm from Dallas too," he said with a grin. "I'm waiting for a flight back there right now."
"No shit?" Jared said in disbelief. "Man, that's awesome!" His bright grin turned into something more suggestive as he asked, "Were you supposed to be on the 15:25?"
Jensen nodded but before he could make a very subtle and tasteful hint about joining the mile-high club, a voice came over the tannoy, "Attention all passengers. United Airlines flight 702 to Dallas, due to depart at 15:25, has been cancelled."
The announcer continued talking as Jensen slumped in his seat with a groan, more annoyed about being denied flight-time with Jared than about having to wait even longer for a flight. "Man, that sucks."
"I don't know," Jared said with a smile and held up his hand for Jensen to be quiet as the announcer read out the details of more and more flights that had been cancelled. "Looks like there are gonna be a lot of people stuck here overnight."
Jensen frowned. "How is that a good thing?"
Jared's smile turned mischievous. "There are only so many hotel rooms, right? And there are a lot of people waiting for flights..."
Jensen caught on. "Y'know, it would be kinda rude of us to take two separate hotel rooms when we could just share." He grinned and teased, "I mean, it's not like anything inappropriate is gonna happen, right?"
"Right! We will just share a room and go to sleep and stay on our own sides of the bed and-" Jared failed to hold back a snort of laughter which Jensen found sort of endearing. "Sorry, man, have you looked in a mirror lately? There is no way I'm going to turn down the chance to be inappropriate in a hotel room with you."
"I am completely okay with that," Jensen said, now thoroughly cheered up at the prospect of not being able to fly. He looked down at his creepy, misshapen devil-pizza and then back up at Jared with a grin. "Let's go get room service."