A Thousand Kisses Deep Chapter 5
A new chapter of A Thousand Kisses Deep. I hope you enjoy it. The spirit is low today so I'm not sure if I should be posting this. It may very well be crap. :( Okay. Here goes.
Chapter 5
Somehow in making his hastily assisted exit from the cottage, Jensen’s glasses have gone missing. It’s no use trying to find them in the mass of crushed flowers that spread out under his feet, so he just stands there and watches the blur of Father Ambrose’s battered sedan rumble away down the uneven track, rubbing idly at his abused backside while he does.
Considering the discomfort of rosebushes and being throw out of his own home, Jensen can’t help but wonder if he’s taken on more than he can handle here. The scratches along his arms sting, and he can feel the cool wet trickle of blood on the swell of his cheek. Well actually, both cheeks. The one you can see and the one you can’t. Buggering ouch!
Maybe he should give up. Sell the cottage and go back to London. The Captain apparently doesn’t like being called a pillow biter or threatened with exorcism. Not that he hasn’t brung it on himself with his peeping Tom routine and the Battle of the Windows. Jensen thinks of that one in capital letters for its epic proportions and his summary trouncing.
He heaves a put-upon sigh, wiping idly at the cut near his eye. It doesn’t seem, at the moment, that things are going to get much better. Jared has gotten far angrier than Jensen supposed he would. The peaceful retreat that was meant to be Jensen’s ultimate sanctuary is turning into a war zone. It’s just not right.
Thinking about it though, the cloud of Jensen’s own anger gradually begins to fill his head, rousing him from the shocked state that’s left him motionless and more than a little dumb struck. The ghost may have won this round, but damn it, Jensen’s not ready to concede defeat yet.
Peering myopically at the garden around him for a sword to do battle with Lucifer, Jensen edges forward, careful steps. It’s all just blobs of color. He squints and promptly falls over the shovel he’d spotted earlier and gets a painful whack on the shin.
A mouthful of choice epithets rumble onto his tongue while he hops around, generally looking like an berserk Indian doing a war dance. Jensen bites them all back. The Captain is a damned bad influence. Jensen blames the swearing on him too. He’s used more curse words over the past few weeks than he has in the entire rest of his damned life put together. Damn it!
Snatching up the shovel, Jensen stalks towards the cottage. The glass of the kitchen window feels cool against his forehead. He cups his hands around his face and peers inside, then gives the frame a push, but it’s locked just like all the others are. Quite suddenly, Jensen finds himself nose to nose with Jared’s impassive face. Jumping back with a startled exclamation, he brandishes the shovel.
“I’m going to smash the window if you don’t let me in.”
The shout was possibly a tad louder than Jensen meant it to be. Jared blinks out leaving Jensen even more frustrated and furious. Jared’s thousand yard stare proclaiming him non-existent, a particularly uninteresting specimen of bug, was better than no Jared at all. An inner twinge of misgiving skitters through the confines of Jensen’s stomach.
“Fine,” he says, this time in a voice not so liable to break windows on its own. “It’s on your head.”
When he swings it, the shovel makes a more than satisfactory report, glass and leading exploding inward to shatter on the kitchen tiles. For a moment, in the sudden quiet aftermath, Jensen feels nothing but sharp regret, as though he’s desecrated something more than the cottage’s mere physical essence.
Flinging the shovel aside, he climbs carefully over the jagged windowsill and drops onto the floor. He’s full to the brim of frustrated fury at being forced to break into his own home. When Jared winks back into existence, a lean giant with watchful eyes only a few yards away, Jensen wants to smash him too. See him splinter and break. Without thinking about the impossibility of thrashing a ghost, he storms forward, fists raised.
The shock of actual physical contact flushes through every inch of Jensen’s body, reverberating into his bones. His knuckles flatten on Jared’s chin. The man staggers backward, catching himself on the edge of the pine breakfast table behind him, nearly upending it. He rubs the point of impact tenderly, then wiggles the hinge of his jaw, all the while staring at Jensen with something like admiration.
“Imagine that. The little rooster fights back. Pretty solid punch, too. Maybe you’re not the pitiful landlubber I took you for.”
Jensen is only vaguely aware of Jared’s insulting goad. He’s too busy staring at his bruised fist.
“What the... That can’t be. Last time I tried to hit you, I ended up nearly breaking my hand on the cupboard. I can...touch you?”
“More than that.”
Jensen’s gaze flashes up to meet the feline slant of predatory eyes. The surface of his face goes bright and hot. He takes a step forward, and then they’re both moving, the space between abruptly gone.
Hands close around Jensen’s shoulders, fingers digging into the curve of muscle and sinew, and Jensen feels it as far down as the electric flush of blood suddenly surging through the veins of his prick. His foreskin pulses, twitches, drawing back in its eagerness to expose the soft crown beneath the taut hood. Jensen’s legs shake.
The triangular wedge of Jared’s face, surrounded by its lion’s mane of hair, dips and tilts. The fervent touch of their lips meeting for the first time becomes a hotly contested, open-mouthed brawl. Jensen knows he has dreamt of this in the secrecy of the deepest night-Jared coming to him, touching him in ways not decent and so wanton he’s startled to wakefulness, stickily awash in his own spend.
Jensen’s fingers curl on the memory. Beneath them, the very real lapels of a peacoat, wool smooth and soft, are the only things preventing him from losing his feet. He struggles for frightened moments in dismay, not believing. Then the lap of Jared’s tongue on his own, sly and persistent, makes it all too real. Jensen surrenders with a choked moan, muffled and backing up in his throat. He presses his body flush to the man ravaging his mouth.
The kiss ebbs and flows in a tidal wave that floods every inch of Jensen’s body. He’s vaguely aware of the room around him, the pressure of the counter top that gouges into the small of his back. He feels trapped in the best possible way. His mouth moves sloppily on Jared’s, hungry to quell a desire he hadn’t known was there. Their tongue tips shove with purpose, tasting each other.
Jared is so firm and real beneath Jensen’s hands that his head reels. He pushes a palm against the massive chest bending him backwards, needing room to breathe, to bend and not to break. Powerful muscles flex under his grip, not giving an inch. A wedge of panic drives itself down the length of Jensen’s spine.
In his thirty years, Jensen has led a circumspect life. His sexual encounters with Margaret, the only ones he’s ever known, were polite and brief. Something they both felt necessary to validate their marriage, if slightly embarrassing in its intimacy. They were nothing, nothing like this ferocious madness.
Fingers dig into Jensen’s scalp, the pressure edging close to painful. Why that should make his cock jump, he has no idea, but his erection stiffens further as the sharp bite tearing at his hair tightens his balls against his thighs.
When Jared reaches down to touch him there, squeeze and press of long fingers causing a short circuit of pleasure, the shock has Jensen jerking back from the precipice of total surrender. If this makes him a hypocrite or delusional, he doesn’t care. Self-preservation is an instinct that brooks no denial.
“You’re not real. You can’t be,” he gasps against the wet, panting curve of Jared’s lips.
“I’m real if you make me real.” Jared kisses the bob of Jensen’s Adam’s apple, greedy tongue lapping flat along the taut line of his throat. “Tell me I’m not real.”
Ducking under the cage of Jared’s arms, Jensen stumbles a few feet away, rounding on him with frantic denial. His chest heaves, the sound of his breathing too loud, betraying his arousal.
“This is fucking crazy. I’m...I’m not this person. This insane person I turn into when I’m around you.” Gazing down at the mess of his once neatly pressed shirt speckled with dots of blood from his encounter with the rosebush and deeply wrinkled from Jared’s love making, he holds up a hand to ward off his determined pursuer. “I can’t even see without my glasses.”
The plea is a whisper of despair and brings Jared up short. He frowns, looking as though he’s lost his bearings. Jensen can’t stand seeing that expression on the lean, beautiful face. He looks away. And when he looks back, Jared is gone, the kitchen empty, but still echoing with all the words the Captain hadn’t said.
Later that afternoon, Father Ambrose calls. “You have only to say the word, my son. I’ve spoken with the Bishop. I can be there tomorrow.”
“That was fast,” Jensen slurs, on his second Scotch and planning a third as soon as it’s finished. He jolts down the last mouthful and clears his throat. “I thought it took longer getting through all the red tape.”
“Not when there’s bodily harm and a soul in peril,” the priest intones solemnly.
A small giggle escapes before Jensen can cut it off. “Yes. Something’s definitely in peril, though I’m not sure its my soul.”
“What do you mean?”
The priest’s apparent confusion clears some of the fog from Jensen’s head. He runs a hand through his hair, setting aside the empty glass. “It’s not important. I appreciate your concern, Father. I really do. But for the time being, I’d like to put the exorcism on hold. If..if you can do that sort of thing?”
There’s a moment of complete silence that buzzes like a physical entity down the phone line into Jensen’s ear before the churchman speaks again.
“I urge you not to take this lightly, Jensen. Satan has many guises. He’s a trickster. Please don’t allow yourself to be deterred from doing the right thing.”
This is a little too close to home. Jensen feels sobriety sneaking up on him. He doesn’t want to be sober. If he’s sober, he’ll have to think about what happened, about what could have happened and what still might happen.
“I promise you, I’m not taking it lightly. But it’s a serious step. You’ll have to allow me a bit of time to be sure I’m not making a mistake.”
“I don’t understand how you can imagine sending Evil back to Hell can be a mistake.” The priest’s astonishment is clear as his voice rises. “You’re in great danger.”
The Seth Thomas clock on the mantel takes that moment to boom out the hour in a tone too big for its small case, three resonant dongs. Jensen eases the phone back into its cradle without saying goodbye, listening as the cottage settles around him complacently. He reaches for the Scotch again, pouring the clear amber liquid with a generous hand.
“Great danger? You have no idea,” he intones and gulps the shot down in one long, convulsive swallow.
Jensen is flat on his arse drunk by bedtime. That’s the way he wants it. If the Captain comes calling for a rematch of their kitchen tussle, he’ll claim incapacity. A man can’t be expected to get it up with a belly full of booze, can he? And what Jared wants requires a hard cock. Of course, Jensen knows without exerting the effort that he’s not incapable. The warm sensation tugging at his balls makes that perfectly clear.
Jensen staggers up the stairs, clinging fast to the banister. Loneliness steals over him. The cottage hasn’t ever felt so empty before. He regrets it all: the fights, the call for the priest, his over the top reaction to Jared touching him intimately. Somewhere along the line, Jensen has gotten used to his ghostly companion. The thought that Jared might be gone for good causes something in the vicinity of Jensen’s heart to contract unpleasantly. With a drunken huff, he pushes the bedroom door open on a silent room.
The usual feeling of being watched is absent as Jensen’s undresses, tossing aside first his shirt, then his pants. He climbs under the cool, clean sheets naked and snuggles down, doing his best to get comfortable. Despite the fresh sea air riffling past the curtains, a presence he’s come to enjoy, though he’ll be damned if he admits that to...anyone, sleep refuses to come.
He turns over. Splays out on his belly. Switches to his side, knees pulled up to his chest. Flips back and lays flat, staring at the ceiling. A worm couldn’t wiggle more on a hook. Remembrance of Jared’s hand firm between his thighs slips past his defenses and lifts a response. Jensen touches himself, fingers around the overheated thickness of his prick. It feel so good. He shuffles the filling flesh up and down a few times, the passage slicker as he leaks heavily, squeezes, pumps harder. It doesn’t take much more than that. He digs in his heels and spills messily all over himself-breath caught, a spike in his throat, fireworks behind his eyes.
When he comes down, all he can think is: fuck and Jared and where are you, over and over until his eyes flutter closed and he tumbles into oblivion.
The taste of camel droppings and the harsh glare of late afternoon sun on his face wakes Jensen. His head is two sizes too big. There is a hatchet buried in his right temple. One eye twitches spastically and the roll of nausea in the pit of his stomach has him on his feet, crying out in agony as he runs for the upstairs bathroom. He barely makes it. Flinging himself on his knees, he braces on the cold porcelain, the contents of his belly surging into his throat with a bitter tang.
After what seems like hours, but is probably more in the neighborhood of minutes, he drags himself up, swallows a handful of aspirin from the medicine cabinet and manages to limp back to bed. From outside the open windows, agonizingly loud avian shrieks lance into his eardrums like ice picks. Jensen pulls a pillow over his head and wishes for death.
Jensen sleeps right through until the following morning. The rising sun bathes the bedroom in shades of brightening shades of gold. Sitting up carefully, he notes his headache has pretty much gone, leaving him feeling human again, but somewhat fragile.
Groping for the night stand out of habit, Jensen’s fingers encounter his glasses. A quick perusal identifies them as his emergency pair; the ones he keeps in his bedside drawer in case of unexpected disaster. He really is a blind mole without them. Slipping the frames on, Jensen glances around cautiously.
The telescope, framed in the east facing windows, gleams along its barrel, shooting reflected pools of gold over the portrait on the mantel. Jensen regards the painting with a mixture of regret and despair. The oriental slant of eyes watching him can only be described as hostile, though he can’t be sure they ever looked any friendlier.
For the first time, Jensen notices a pipe propped against the edge of the picture’s frame. It’s made of burl wood, polished to a warm glow by decades of being held and smoked. Jensen has no doubt whom it belongs to. The wide curved bowl and long stem speak of sea voyages and nights spent contemplating a hundred different starry skies while waves lap against the bow of a ship, and the wind fills big-bellied sails.
Jensen has to chuckle at his own romanticizing. God knows where it comes from. He’s a practical sort, not given to fantasy. Maybe it’s something Jared has slyly slipped into his head. That combine with the glasses tells Jensen his ghost is still present in the cottage, even though Jensen can’t sense him anymore.
He’s given Jensen’s back his sight and left a pipe to mark his place in the scheme of things. But Jared’s retreated from the field for the time being. It’s a peace offering of sorts, but an impersonal one, since he hasn’t stuck around for Jensen’s reaction. The aura of the cottage continues to feel abandoned.
“Thank you,” Jensen’s says to the empty room, toeing on his pants. “You don’t have to answer. I get that you’re upset with me Yesterday was a buggered up mess. I didn’t mean to insult you, Jared. Well... I did, but that’s the way I react sometimes. When I’m pissed off, scared. You made me both.”
Jensen pulls a baggy tee shirt over his ears. It’s a comfortable old friend, a few paint stains on the thin cotton, but he can’t bear to think of throwing it away. It’s meant for days like this one.
“I’m going to have some coffee,” he narrates to a ghost that isn’t there. “Then I’ll see what I can do to fix the rosebushes you broke. Not to mention the havoc you wrecked on my abused backside.”
There is no answer to Jensen’s challenge. He’d half hoped the provocation would gain him a reply, but it’s not to be. Clomping down the staircase in disappointment, Jensen heads for the kitchen. He’s taken aback to see glass shards splattered across the floor. He sidesteps carefully as he heads for the aga to get the coffee started.
“I suppose I’d better call the glazer. I forgot about this part.”
He kicks a few triangles of broken glass into a pile, watching his foot move, searching for the right words to draw Jared back from wherever he’s gone.
“If it takes my desire to make you real,” he begins hesitantly, “...then I’ll admit I desire you. Surely, you know that without my saying the words. Don’t think that means I’m going to act on it. I can’t. I’ve lead a peaceful life.” Jensen drags out a chair to sit at the kitchen table. Pulling the sugar bowl across the scarred pine, he twists it round and round between his fingers. “I married for peace. I came here for the same reason. I’m afraid of violent emotions, Jared. I’m afraid of passion. Everything about you is bigger than life. Please. Don’t force me out of my safe little corner.”
The coffee pot burbles to itself. The shadow of sun and cloud pass across the destroyed window. Outside, the garden’s beautiful tangle is full of insect hum and trilling birdsong. The ghost of Gull Cottage doesn’t answer.
Chapter 5
Somehow in making his hastily assisted exit from the cottage, Jensen’s glasses have gone missing. It’s no use trying to find them in the mass of crushed flowers that spread out under his feet, so he just stands there and watches the blur of Father Ambrose’s battered sedan rumble away down the uneven track, rubbing idly at his abused backside while he does.
Considering the discomfort of rosebushes and being throw out of his own home, Jensen can’t help but wonder if he’s taken on more than he can handle here. The scratches along his arms sting, and he can feel the cool wet trickle of blood on the swell of his cheek. Well actually, both cheeks. The one you can see and the one you can’t. Buggering ouch!
Maybe he should give up. Sell the cottage and go back to London. The Captain apparently doesn’t like being called a pillow biter or threatened with exorcism. Not that he hasn’t brung it on himself with his peeping Tom routine and the Battle of the Windows. Jensen thinks of that one in capital letters for its epic proportions and his summary trouncing.
He heaves a put-upon sigh, wiping idly at the cut near his eye. It doesn’t seem, at the moment, that things are going to get much better. Jared has gotten far angrier than Jensen supposed he would. The peaceful retreat that was meant to be Jensen’s ultimate sanctuary is turning into a war zone. It’s just not right.
Thinking about it though, the cloud of Jensen’s own anger gradually begins to fill his head, rousing him from the shocked state that’s left him motionless and more than a little dumb struck. The ghost may have won this round, but damn it, Jensen’s not ready to concede defeat yet.
Peering myopically at the garden around him for a sword to do battle with Lucifer, Jensen edges forward, careful steps. It’s all just blobs of color. He squints and promptly falls over the shovel he’d spotted earlier and gets a painful whack on the shin.
A mouthful of choice epithets rumble onto his tongue while he hops around, generally looking like an berserk Indian doing a war dance. Jensen bites them all back. The Captain is a damned bad influence. Jensen blames the swearing on him too. He’s used more curse words over the past few weeks than he has in the entire rest of his damned life put together. Damn it!
Snatching up the shovel, Jensen stalks towards the cottage. The glass of the kitchen window feels cool against his forehead. He cups his hands around his face and peers inside, then gives the frame a push, but it’s locked just like all the others are. Quite suddenly, Jensen finds himself nose to nose with Jared’s impassive face. Jumping back with a startled exclamation, he brandishes the shovel.
“I’m going to smash the window if you don’t let me in.”
The shout was possibly a tad louder than Jensen meant it to be. Jared blinks out leaving Jensen even more frustrated and furious. Jared’s thousand yard stare proclaiming him non-existent, a particularly uninteresting specimen of bug, was better than no Jared at all. An inner twinge of misgiving skitters through the confines of Jensen’s stomach.
“Fine,” he says, this time in a voice not so liable to break windows on its own. “It’s on your head.”
When he swings it, the shovel makes a more than satisfactory report, glass and leading exploding inward to shatter on the kitchen tiles. For a moment, in the sudden quiet aftermath, Jensen feels nothing but sharp regret, as though he’s desecrated something more than the cottage’s mere physical essence.
Flinging the shovel aside, he climbs carefully over the jagged windowsill and drops onto the floor. He’s full to the brim of frustrated fury at being forced to break into his own home. When Jared winks back into existence, a lean giant with watchful eyes only a few yards away, Jensen wants to smash him too. See him splinter and break. Without thinking about the impossibility of thrashing a ghost, he storms forward, fists raised.
The shock of actual physical contact flushes through every inch of Jensen’s body, reverberating into his bones. His knuckles flatten on Jared’s chin. The man staggers backward, catching himself on the edge of the pine breakfast table behind him, nearly upending it. He rubs the point of impact tenderly, then wiggles the hinge of his jaw, all the while staring at Jensen with something like admiration.
“Imagine that. The little rooster fights back. Pretty solid punch, too. Maybe you’re not the pitiful landlubber I took you for.”
Jensen is only vaguely aware of Jared’s insulting goad. He’s too busy staring at his bruised fist.
“What the... That can’t be. Last time I tried to hit you, I ended up nearly breaking my hand on the cupboard. I can...touch you?”
“More than that.”
Jensen’s gaze flashes up to meet the feline slant of predatory eyes. The surface of his face goes bright and hot. He takes a step forward, and then they’re both moving, the space between abruptly gone.
Hands close around Jensen’s shoulders, fingers digging into the curve of muscle and sinew, and Jensen feels it as far down as the electric flush of blood suddenly surging through the veins of his prick. His foreskin pulses, twitches, drawing back in its eagerness to expose the soft crown beneath the taut hood. Jensen’s legs shake.
The triangular wedge of Jared’s face, surrounded by its lion’s mane of hair, dips and tilts. The fervent touch of their lips meeting for the first time becomes a hotly contested, open-mouthed brawl. Jensen knows he has dreamt of this in the secrecy of the deepest night-Jared coming to him, touching him in ways not decent and so wanton he’s startled to wakefulness, stickily awash in his own spend.
Jensen’s fingers curl on the memory. Beneath them, the very real lapels of a peacoat, wool smooth and soft, are the only things preventing him from losing his feet. He struggles for frightened moments in dismay, not believing. Then the lap of Jared’s tongue on his own, sly and persistent, makes it all too real. Jensen surrenders with a choked moan, muffled and backing up in his throat. He presses his body flush to the man ravaging his mouth.
The kiss ebbs and flows in a tidal wave that floods every inch of Jensen’s body. He’s vaguely aware of the room around him, the pressure of the counter top that gouges into the small of his back. He feels trapped in the best possible way. His mouth moves sloppily on Jared’s, hungry to quell a desire he hadn’t known was there. Their tongue tips shove with purpose, tasting each other.
Jared is so firm and real beneath Jensen’s hands that his head reels. He pushes a palm against the massive chest bending him backwards, needing room to breathe, to bend and not to break. Powerful muscles flex under his grip, not giving an inch. A wedge of panic drives itself down the length of Jensen’s spine.
In his thirty years, Jensen has led a circumspect life. His sexual encounters with Margaret, the only ones he’s ever known, were polite and brief. Something they both felt necessary to validate their marriage, if slightly embarrassing in its intimacy. They were nothing, nothing like this ferocious madness.
Fingers dig into Jensen’s scalp, the pressure edging close to painful. Why that should make his cock jump, he has no idea, but his erection stiffens further as the sharp bite tearing at his hair tightens his balls against his thighs.
When Jared reaches down to touch him there, squeeze and press of long fingers causing a short circuit of pleasure, the shock has Jensen jerking back from the precipice of total surrender. If this makes him a hypocrite or delusional, he doesn’t care. Self-preservation is an instinct that brooks no denial.
“You’re not real. You can’t be,” he gasps against the wet, panting curve of Jared’s lips.
“I’m real if you make me real.” Jared kisses the bob of Jensen’s Adam’s apple, greedy tongue lapping flat along the taut line of his throat. “Tell me I’m not real.”
Ducking under the cage of Jared’s arms, Jensen stumbles a few feet away, rounding on him with frantic denial. His chest heaves, the sound of his breathing too loud, betraying his arousal.
“This is fucking crazy. I’m...I’m not this person. This insane person I turn into when I’m around you.” Gazing down at the mess of his once neatly pressed shirt speckled with dots of blood from his encounter with the rosebush and deeply wrinkled from Jared’s love making, he holds up a hand to ward off his determined pursuer. “I can’t even see without my glasses.”
The plea is a whisper of despair and brings Jared up short. He frowns, looking as though he’s lost his bearings. Jensen can’t stand seeing that expression on the lean, beautiful face. He looks away. And when he looks back, Jared is gone, the kitchen empty, but still echoing with all the words the Captain hadn’t said.
Later that afternoon, Father Ambrose calls. “You have only to say the word, my son. I’ve spoken with the Bishop. I can be there tomorrow.”
“That was fast,” Jensen slurs, on his second Scotch and planning a third as soon as it’s finished. He jolts down the last mouthful and clears his throat. “I thought it took longer getting through all the red tape.”
“Not when there’s bodily harm and a soul in peril,” the priest intones solemnly.
A small giggle escapes before Jensen can cut it off. “Yes. Something’s definitely in peril, though I’m not sure its my soul.”
“What do you mean?”
The priest’s apparent confusion clears some of the fog from Jensen’s head. He runs a hand through his hair, setting aside the empty glass. “It’s not important. I appreciate your concern, Father. I really do. But for the time being, I’d like to put the exorcism on hold. If..if you can do that sort of thing?”
There’s a moment of complete silence that buzzes like a physical entity down the phone line into Jensen’s ear before the churchman speaks again.
“I urge you not to take this lightly, Jensen. Satan has many guises. He’s a trickster. Please don’t allow yourself to be deterred from doing the right thing.”
This is a little too close to home. Jensen feels sobriety sneaking up on him. He doesn’t want to be sober. If he’s sober, he’ll have to think about what happened, about what could have happened and what still might happen.
“I promise you, I’m not taking it lightly. But it’s a serious step. You’ll have to allow me a bit of time to be sure I’m not making a mistake.”
“I don’t understand how you can imagine sending Evil back to Hell can be a mistake.” The priest’s astonishment is clear as his voice rises. “You’re in great danger.”
The Seth Thomas clock on the mantel takes that moment to boom out the hour in a tone too big for its small case, three resonant dongs. Jensen eases the phone back into its cradle without saying goodbye, listening as the cottage settles around him complacently. He reaches for the Scotch again, pouring the clear amber liquid with a generous hand.
“Great danger? You have no idea,” he intones and gulps the shot down in one long, convulsive swallow.
Jensen is flat on his arse drunk by bedtime. That’s the way he wants it. If the Captain comes calling for a rematch of their kitchen tussle, he’ll claim incapacity. A man can’t be expected to get it up with a belly full of booze, can he? And what Jared wants requires a hard cock. Of course, Jensen knows without exerting the effort that he’s not incapable. The warm sensation tugging at his balls makes that perfectly clear.
Jensen staggers up the stairs, clinging fast to the banister. Loneliness steals over him. The cottage hasn’t ever felt so empty before. He regrets it all: the fights, the call for the priest, his over the top reaction to Jared touching him intimately. Somewhere along the line, Jensen has gotten used to his ghostly companion. The thought that Jared might be gone for good causes something in the vicinity of Jensen’s heart to contract unpleasantly. With a drunken huff, he pushes the bedroom door open on a silent room.
The usual feeling of being watched is absent as Jensen’s undresses, tossing aside first his shirt, then his pants. He climbs under the cool, clean sheets naked and snuggles down, doing his best to get comfortable. Despite the fresh sea air riffling past the curtains, a presence he’s come to enjoy, though he’ll be damned if he admits that to...anyone, sleep refuses to come.
He turns over. Splays out on his belly. Switches to his side, knees pulled up to his chest. Flips back and lays flat, staring at the ceiling. A worm couldn’t wiggle more on a hook. Remembrance of Jared’s hand firm between his thighs slips past his defenses and lifts a response. Jensen touches himself, fingers around the overheated thickness of his prick. It feel so good. He shuffles the filling flesh up and down a few times, the passage slicker as he leaks heavily, squeezes, pumps harder. It doesn’t take much more than that. He digs in his heels and spills messily all over himself-breath caught, a spike in his throat, fireworks behind his eyes.
When he comes down, all he can think is: fuck and Jared and where are you, over and over until his eyes flutter closed and he tumbles into oblivion.
The taste of camel droppings and the harsh glare of late afternoon sun on his face wakes Jensen. His head is two sizes too big. There is a hatchet buried in his right temple. One eye twitches spastically and the roll of nausea in the pit of his stomach has him on his feet, crying out in agony as he runs for the upstairs bathroom. He barely makes it. Flinging himself on his knees, he braces on the cold porcelain, the contents of his belly surging into his throat with a bitter tang.
After what seems like hours, but is probably more in the neighborhood of minutes, he drags himself up, swallows a handful of aspirin from the medicine cabinet and manages to limp back to bed. From outside the open windows, agonizingly loud avian shrieks lance into his eardrums like ice picks. Jensen pulls a pillow over his head and wishes for death.
Jensen sleeps right through until the following morning. The rising sun bathes the bedroom in shades of brightening shades of gold. Sitting up carefully, he notes his headache has pretty much gone, leaving him feeling human again, but somewhat fragile.
Groping for the night stand out of habit, Jensen’s fingers encounter his glasses. A quick perusal identifies them as his emergency pair; the ones he keeps in his bedside drawer in case of unexpected disaster. He really is a blind mole without them. Slipping the frames on, Jensen glances around cautiously.
The telescope, framed in the east facing windows, gleams along its barrel, shooting reflected pools of gold over the portrait on the mantel. Jensen regards the painting with a mixture of regret and despair. The oriental slant of eyes watching him can only be described as hostile, though he can’t be sure they ever looked any friendlier.
For the first time, Jensen notices a pipe propped against the edge of the picture’s frame. It’s made of burl wood, polished to a warm glow by decades of being held and smoked. Jensen has no doubt whom it belongs to. The wide curved bowl and long stem speak of sea voyages and nights spent contemplating a hundred different starry skies while waves lap against the bow of a ship, and the wind fills big-bellied sails.
Jensen has to chuckle at his own romanticizing. God knows where it comes from. He’s a practical sort, not given to fantasy. Maybe it’s something Jared has slyly slipped into his head. That combine with the glasses tells Jensen his ghost is still present in the cottage, even though Jensen can’t sense him anymore.
He’s given Jensen’s back his sight and left a pipe to mark his place in the scheme of things. But Jared’s retreated from the field for the time being. It’s a peace offering of sorts, but an impersonal one, since he hasn’t stuck around for Jensen’s reaction. The aura of the cottage continues to feel abandoned.
“Thank you,” Jensen’s says to the empty room, toeing on his pants. “You don’t have to answer. I get that you’re upset with me Yesterday was a buggered up mess. I didn’t mean to insult you, Jared. Well... I did, but that’s the way I react sometimes. When I’m pissed off, scared. You made me both.”
Jensen pulls a baggy tee shirt over his ears. It’s a comfortable old friend, a few paint stains on the thin cotton, but he can’t bear to think of throwing it away. It’s meant for days like this one.
“I’m going to have some coffee,” he narrates to a ghost that isn’t there. “Then I’ll see what I can do to fix the rosebushes you broke. Not to mention the havoc you wrecked on my abused backside.”
There is no answer to Jensen’s challenge. He’d half hoped the provocation would gain him a reply, but it’s not to be. Clomping down the staircase in disappointment, Jensen heads for the kitchen. He’s taken aback to see glass shards splattered across the floor. He sidesteps carefully as he heads for the aga to get the coffee started.
“I suppose I’d better call the glazer. I forgot about this part.”
He kicks a few triangles of broken glass into a pile, watching his foot move, searching for the right words to draw Jared back from wherever he’s gone.
“If it takes my desire to make you real,” he begins hesitantly, “...then I’ll admit I desire you. Surely, you know that without my saying the words. Don’t think that means I’m going to act on it. I can’t. I’ve lead a peaceful life.” Jensen drags out a chair to sit at the kitchen table. Pulling the sugar bowl across the scarred pine, he twists it round and round between his fingers. “I married for peace. I came here for the same reason. I’m afraid of violent emotions, Jared. I’m afraid of passion. Everything about you is bigger than life. Please. Don’t force me out of my safe little corner.”
The coffee pot burbles to itself. The shadow of sun and cloud pass across the destroyed window. Outside, the garden’s beautiful tangle is full of insect hum and trilling birdsong. The ghost of Gull Cottage doesn’t answer.