Enfolded Midair Chapter 3
I'm back. You didn't really think it would be that easy to get rid of me, did you? It's been shamefully long since I've updated this one, so I've included links to the previous chapters if you've never read it, or want to refresh your memory. I'm rather fond of this story. I hope it will still be of some interest to a few readers.
P.S. I can't 'splain why I'm using this icon except to say I love me some Jean Paul Belmundo. What a sexy, sexy man. Yum!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
manip by digitalwave/drawing by the generous and lovely candygramme
Chapter 3
Jared plopped the soup into a sauce pan he’d found in the cupboard. “You don’t eat enough,” he complained, glancing at Jensen sitting shaky-legged in a kitchen chair near the open window. “No wonder you get like this.”
A shiver ran up and down the bare flesh of Jared’s back, the icy breeze covering him with goose bumps. Jensen had had another one of his panic attacks. They came at unexpected intervals, the pressure of the closed up studio building until Jensen broke apart. Startled when a chisel hit the wall above his head, Jared jumped to his feet, catching the wild-eyed man in his arms, straining to contain Jensen’s flailing body.
“Calm down. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not,” Jensen shouted back.
Jared led him down the narrow staircase to the livable part of the house. Jensen’s face was bleached white, the Morse Code of his freckles telegraphing his deep distress.
“How’d you get like this-such a big fucking mess?” Jared carefully poured the warmed soup into a bowl, plucked a spoon from the silverware drawer, and carried them both to the table.
“It’s...,” Jensen floundered, a hand scritching through the porcupine mess of his hair, making it stand up even more. “...a long story. Not interesting.”
He took the offered spoon, hand still trembling a little, and tried to scoop up some of the steaming broth. It splashed onto the table and his fingers, pulling a pained “Owww,” from him.
“You’re pitiful,” Jared grumped. “Just pitiful.”
Green eyes lifted. Shadowed by long, sooty lashes, they blinked, and Jared felt his stomach flip over in resignation. He spent way too much time here in this house, with this man. He was drowning, not waving, and he was going to get his heart broken.
Pulling up the opposite chair, Jared sat, snatching the spoon out of Jensen’s hand.
“You know you’re an opera, right,” he commented mournfully as Jensen opened his mouth, waiting for Jared to feed him. “Madame Butterfly. Only I’m Butterfly and you’re Pinkerton, that heel who drove her to suicide.”
The bizarreness of Jared’s wandering mind was beginning to pull Jensen back to reality and away from the sensation of being enclosed in a small box, lid coffin-like barely inches from his nose.
He blew out a small breath, swallowing the soup. It warmed his throat, but in a good way. “You’re going to kill yourself?” he asked, barely suppressing a smile. “Because I spilled the soup?”
“No! Christ. You’d drive a saint to drink.” Jared shook his head dismally. “Stop looking at me that way, Jensen.”
“What way? Sheesh. You’re nuts. You know that?”
Jensen’s look of utter bewilderment pulled a spasm of reluctant laughter from Jared’s chest. “Never mind. Here. Just eat your soup.”
It might have been a trick of the light, but Jared thought he saw a flicker of disappointment on his face when Jared shoved the spoon back into Jensen’s hand, though the only verbal reaction he got was a mild, “Okay.”
“Greetings, earth men!”
The outside door banged open, letting a gust of icy air in with the new arrival. Tom, his cheeks bright pink from the cold, stomped snow off his boots and took in the tableau in front of him as he unwound the long red scarf from around his neck.
“Dude! You’ve got to stop making these Superman entrances. You are not Superman. Do you have to knock down a wall every damned time you come in?”
Tom chuckled, shrugging his shoulders, but he wasn’t about to be distracted by Jensen’s covering remark. The white face turned his way told its own story, as did Jared’s strained expression. And the bowl of soup. Since when did Jensen eat soup? He mostly existed on a few gobbled crests of pizza that Tom forced down him at intervals barely able to sustain life. Jensen was little more than skin and bones.
“He have another attack?” Tom asked Jared directly, knowing Jensen would lie.
Feeling somehow disloyal, Jared nodded, sneaking a glance in Jensen’s direction only to encounter the Glare of Death for his trouble. Fuck. Jared wasn’t up for another quarrel about butting in where he didn’t belong. Besides, Tom was a good guy and he’d been taking care of Jensen for a lot longer than Jared had been around.
It was pretty obvious Jensen wasn’t capable of taking care of himself on a day to day basis. There was the crazy artist thing and on top of that, he would more than likely just lay down at some point and wither away, his claustrophobia snagging him in its claws and holding him prisoner until he starved to death. Jared had never seen anyone so disabled by a phobia.
Jared opened his mouth to answer, but he hesitated, torn between wanting to protect Jensen, yet overwhelmed by the responsibility. Tom saved him from his dilemma by not waiting for Jared’s reply.
“Yeah. No need to say anything. I can see for myself.”
“I’m here, guys.” Jensen’s color was returning, a hectic flush warming the angle of his cheeks. “Quit talking about me like I’m in a coma or retarded.”
He shoved aside the bowl of soup, spilling some on the table as he pushed out of his seat and stood. Wavering a bit, he clutched the back of his chair, shooing off Jared’s efforts to help.
“I’m not a fucking invalid. And I don’t need a nurse maid.” He made for the stairs in stiff, angry steps, glaring back at Jared. “You coming? You’re on the clock, you know. I’m not paying you to sit on your ass and play patty cakes.”
“Who said...” Jared’s own face took on the color of an overripe tomato. “No. That’s it. I’m outta here. You can turn off the fucking clock and shove it up your ass for all I care.”
He slammed the door hard on his way out.
Jensen blinked comically. “Okay. I don’t know what just happened here, but it’s all your fault, Tom. So you go get him back right now.”
“Jesus, Jensen. What happened here is you treated Jared like shit and he called you on it for once. Go get him yourself. It’d do you good to get outside and breathe some fresh air. Take a look at something outside your little world of marble. And occasionally paint. And we won’t talk about the Father picture right now, but I want it! Now, go on. Go fetch Jared.”
Tom took off his overcoat and cap, shoving them at Jensen, who suddenly found himself standing on the snowy steps outside his building, looking around in bewilderment. Far down the block, Jared’s tall figure was still discernable moving at a fast pace through the fat fall of snowflakes. He was coatless-and shirtless.
Jensen, forgetting everything in the sudden fear of Jared catching pneumonia and dying in a hospital bed at County General, alone and unloved, drown by fluid-filled lungs, took off down the steps at a fast run, adrenalin shooting sparks of alarm through his stomach. He ignored the passers by turning to stare at him in favor of yelling at the top of his lungs. He never cared much what other people thought anyway.
“Jared! Jared! Stop. Wait up.”
The air was so cold it made his throat ache. As he neared his target, Jensen knew Jared could hear him, not just from his tensed shoulders, but from the averted angle of his face.
“Come on. I’m suppose to be the crazy one. Nobody sane runs around in the snow half naked.”
Jared stopped so abruptly, Jensen ran into his back. The flesh under his cheek held some residual warmth, thank God, and for a moment they stood there pressed together. It was the closest they’d ever been before.
Jared’s voice broke the spell. “Go away, Jensen. Ima...,”
Fumbling to get Tom’s coat off, Jensen tipped back his head to stare at Jared, mouth as he rounded to glare at Jensen. His words came out in small, huffed clouds, floating on the frosted air.
“You want me to go away? I can’t do that, Jared. Look at you! You’ll die!”
“I won’t die. Get a grip, man.”
Jared’s teeth were chattering audibly, his lips slightly blue, and Jensen felt a wave of fondness surge up in his gut at the man’s stubbornness. Rejection glittered in Jared’s hazel eyes-Jared, who was always so malleable under Jensen’s slightest touch. He was the perfect model. Jensen had never had a better one, and he couldn’t stand to have Jared look at him that way-like he didn’t want to see Jensen or be around him ever again.
“Oh for Christ sake. You’re gonna freeze to death. Put this on.”
Jensen surged up onto the balls of his feet, meaning to sling the coat around the moron’s shoulders. Instead, he was suddenly kissing him, a fervent press of his mouth to the cold thin line of Jared’s lips. He wrapped his hands over the swell of Jared’s biceps to steady himself on the icy sidewalk. A person could fall. Really.
The only other point of contact between them, aside from that, was the wet, sweet suction of lips and tongues. It went on in slow, slow motion. The snow and the passing cars faded away. Jensen’s head was swamped with excitement. He hadn’t known he wanted this, but now that he did, he was over-eager for it, his dick swollen hot and stiff in his jeans. Sex wasn’t a thing he bothered about much. Couldn’t really remember the last time he’d fucked anybody.
“Come back with me,” he breathed into Jared’s mouth, sure of the other man’s acquiescence. “I’m sorry. I’ll be nicer.”
A sound broke from Jared’s throat. He clutched Jensen tightly around the waist, pulling their lips apart, but only far enough to roll their foreheads together.
“So now you’re gonna bribe me with sex?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m not that crude. I just thought you’d prefer going back to the loft to a hospital. You know, genius, breathing tubes and crash carts?”
Jared choked back an intelligible sound. “Jensen, you scare me. I don’t think I can do this anymore. I know it means a lot to you, the modeling and all, but being around you all the time is giving me ulcers.”
That was an erection killer right there. Jensen could feel himself wilt. Not model any more? The half-finished sculpture rose up in his mind, forcing everything else aside. He took a step back, thrusting the coat at Jared.
“Okaaaay. Here you go. Do what you want.”
He started to turn away. Jared caught the back of his tee shirt, wrapping a fist in the worn material.
“I’m not the only one who’s pneumonia bound if we don’t get out of this.” He spread Tom’s coat half-assed over both their shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go back. I can get my things and you can take a handful of cold medicine and get into bed. I’ll even make you some tea before I leave.”
“But you’re going to leave?” The “me” was implicit. It hung awkwardly in the air between them before Jared finally spoke.
“Christ, Jensen. Not you. I’m not leaving you. Just this whole fucked up situation. You must know I’ve got a thing for you. You can’t be that dense.”
“You do?”
Snowflakes were beginning to cling to Jensen’s eyelashes, making it difficult to see clearly. Or that could have been the moisture welling at the corners of his eyes. He blinked it back in cartoon brightness, not ready for Jared to see him act like a pussy. He waved his hands in distracted circles.
“Forget it. I can take care of myself, and I don’t need you pandering to my insecurities. If you want to act like a child, be my guest. Pardon me if I don’t watch. See you around”
Jensen swallowed past the lump in his throat, not sure how things had gone so wrong in a few frantic minutes. He stumbled off down the slippery cement, boots plowing through small drifts of solidifying ice, vaguely aware that Jared was following in his wake.
Reaching the front steps of his building, he skidded and went down on one knee. Jared scooped him up, hands under Jensen’s armpits and bundled him inside with a few choice curses.
“Fucking jerk!”
“Bitch,” Jensen spat right back at him, thoroughly incensed.
As they stumbled into the kitchen, a soggy mess, melting snow dripping everywhere, Tom looked up comfortably from his seat at the table, a mug of tea wrapped in his big palms.
“Ah, good. Everything patched up?”
Ignoring Tom’s placid optimism, Jensen brushed by him, refusing to look at Jared’s traitorous face. He stomped up the studio stairs, another panic attack wanting to wash over him. A dribble of snow oozed down his spine. He shivered bleakly. If he never finished his masterpiece, it would be completely Jared’s fault. Jensen wouldn’t forgive him, not if he got on his hands and knees and crawled.
For once, the studio temperature felt good, not too warm after traipsing around in the hellacious weather outside, trying to save someone who didn’t deserve it. Jensen even went so far as to pull his hoodie back on. He tried to ignore the way his hands were trembling. The hair at the crown of his head and the nape of his neck was soaked through. He snatched an old paint rag from a shelf and started toweling vigorously at the wet mess.
Turning around, Jensen found Jared glowering at him from the doorway near the stairs.
“Come to torment me some more? My turn to say go away, then. Moron.”
Jared ground his teeth, starting across the bare inner circle of the studio, where everything else had been pushed back against the walls in favor of the current work. The marble appeared warm and life-life, the shape emerging from its sheltering stone; face proud, a first hint of wings visible in the few chisel strokes tapped along their raised expanse. It hit Jared in the belly with the force of a sucker punch. This was more than the sum of its parts, more than the artist-model collaboration between himself and Jensen. He could see it now, when he couldn’t before because he’s been too concentrated on other things. This was a work of genius.
Some of Jared’s anger drained away. How could he hold Jensen to the standards of polite society when it was Jensen’s uncivilized nature that made him what he was?
“I.. Umm. I’ll pose.” Jensen’s head snapped up, his eyes filling with a mesmerizing light, sea-green with flashes of gold. “For the statue, Jensen. Not for you. You’re still a bastard. But this,” Jared waved a hand at the crouching man, “This deserves to live.”
P.S. I can't 'splain why I'm using this icon except to say I love me some Jean Paul Belmundo. What a sexy, sexy man. Yum!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
manip by digitalwave/drawing by the generous and lovely candygramme
Chapter 3
Jared plopped the soup into a sauce pan he’d found in the cupboard. “You don’t eat enough,” he complained, glancing at Jensen sitting shaky-legged in a kitchen chair near the open window. “No wonder you get like this.”
A shiver ran up and down the bare flesh of Jared’s back, the icy breeze covering him with goose bumps. Jensen had had another one of his panic attacks. They came at unexpected intervals, the pressure of the closed up studio building until Jensen broke apart. Startled when a chisel hit the wall above his head, Jared jumped to his feet, catching the wild-eyed man in his arms, straining to contain Jensen’s flailing body.
“Calm down. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not,” Jensen shouted back.
Jared led him down the narrow staircase to the livable part of the house. Jensen’s face was bleached white, the Morse Code of his freckles telegraphing his deep distress.
“How’d you get like this-such a big fucking mess?” Jared carefully poured the warmed soup into a bowl, plucked a spoon from the silverware drawer, and carried them both to the table.
“It’s...,” Jensen floundered, a hand scritching through the porcupine mess of his hair, making it stand up even more. “...a long story. Not interesting.”
He took the offered spoon, hand still trembling a little, and tried to scoop up some of the steaming broth. It splashed onto the table and his fingers, pulling a pained “Owww,” from him.
“You’re pitiful,” Jared grumped. “Just pitiful.”
Green eyes lifted. Shadowed by long, sooty lashes, they blinked, and Jared felt his stomach flip over in resignation. He spent way too much time here in this house, with this man. He was drowning, not waving, and he was going to get his heart broken.
Pulling up the opposite chair, Jared sat, snatching the spoon out of Jensen’s hand.
“You know you’re an opera, right,” he commented mournfully as Jensen opened his mouth, waiting for Jared to feed him. “Madame Butterfly. Only I’m Butterfly and you’re Pinkerton, that heel who drove her to suicide.”
The bizarreness of Jared’s wandering mind was beginning to pull Jensen back to reality and away from the sensation of being enclosed in a small box, lid coffin-like barely inches from his nose.
He blew out a small breath, swallowing the soup. It warmed his throat, but in a good way. “You’re going to kill yourself?” he asked, barely suppressing a smile. “Because I spilled the soup?”
“No! Christ. You’d drive a saint to drink.” Jared shook his head dismally. “Stop looking at me that way, Jensen.”
“What way? Sheesh. You’re nuts. You know that?”
Jensen’s look of utter bewilderment pulled a spasm of reluctant laughter from Jared’s chest. “Never mind. Here. Just eat your soup.”
It might have been a trick of the light, but Jared thought he saw a flicker of disappointment on his face when Jared shoved the spoon back into Jensen’s hand, though the only verbal reaction he got was a mild, “Okay.”
“Greetings, earth men!”
The outside door banged open, letting a gust of icy air in with the new arrival. Tom, his cheeks bright pink from the cold, stomped snow off his boots and took in the tableau in front of him as he unwound the long red scarf from around his neck.
“Dude! You’ve got to stop making these Superman entrances. You are not Superman. Do you have to knock down a wall every damned time you come in?”
Tom chuckled, shrugging his shoulders, but he wasn’t about to be distracted by Jensen’s covering remark. The white face turned his way told its own story, as did Jared’s strained expression. And the bowl of soup. Since when did Jensen eat soup? He mostly existed on a few gobbled crests of pizza that Tom forced down him at intervals barely able to sustain life. Jensen was little more than skin and bones.
“He have another attack?” Tom asked Jared directly, knowing Jensen would lie.
Feeling somehow disloyal, Jared nodded, sneaking a glance in Jensen’s direction only to encounter the Glare of Death for his trouble. Fuck. Jared wasn’t up for another quarrel about butting in where he didn’t belong. Besides, Tom was a good guy and he’d been taking care of Jensen for a lot longer than Jared had been around.
It was pretty obvious Jensen wasn’t capable of taking care of himself on a day to day basis. There was the crazy artist thing and on top of that, he would more than likely just lay down at some point and wither away, his claustrophobia snagging him in its claws and holding him prisoner until he starved to death. Jared had never seen anyone so disabled by a phobia.
Jared opened his mouth to answer, but he hesitated, torn between wanting to protect Jensen, yet overwhelmed by the responsibility. Tom saved him from his dilemma by not waiting for Jared’s reply.
“Yeah. No need to say anything. I can see for myself.”
“I’m here, guys.” Jensen’s color was returning, a hectic flush warming the angle of his cheeks. “Quit talking about me like I’m in a coma or retarded.”
He shoved aside the bowl of soup, spilling some on the table as he pushed out of his seat and stood. Wavering a bit, he clutched the back of his chair, shooing off Jared’s efforts to help.
“I’m not a fucking invalid. And I don’t need a nurse maid.” He made for the stairs in stiff, angry steps, glaring back at Jared. “You coming? You’re on the clock, you know. I’m not paying you to sit on your ass and play patty cakes.”
“Who said...” Jared’s own face took on the color of an overripe tomato. “No. That’s it. I’m outta here. You can turn off the fucking clock and shove it up your ass for all I care.”
He slammed the door hard on his way out.
Jensen blinked comically. “Okay. I don’t know what just happened here, but it’s all your fault, Tom. So you go get him back right now.”
“Jesus, Jensen. What happened here is you treated Jared like shit and he called you on it for once. Go get him yourself. It’d do you good to get outside and breathe some fresh air. Take a look at something outside your little world of marble. And occasionally paint. And we won’t talk about the Father picture right now, but I want it! Now, go on. Go fetch Jared.”
Tom took off his overcoat and cap, shoving them at Jensen, who suddenly found himself standing on the snowy steps outside his building, looking around in bewilderment. Far down the block, Jared’s tall figure was still discernable moving at a fast pace through the fat fall of snowflakes. He was coatless-and shirtless.
Jensen, forgetting everything in the sudden fear of Jared catching pneumonia and dying in a hospital bed at County General, alone and unloved, drown by fluid-filled lungs, took off down the steps at a fast run, adrenalin shooting sparks of alarm through his stomach. He ignored the passers by turning to stare at him in favor of yelling at the top of his lungs. He never cared much what other people thought anyway.
“Jared! Jared! Stop. Wait up.”
The air was so cold it made his throat ache. As he neared his target, Jensen knew Jared could hear him, not just from his tensed shoulders, but from the averted angle of his face.
“Come on. I’m suppose to be the crazy one. Nobody sane runs around in the snow half naked.”
Jared stopped so abruptly, Jensen ran into his back. The flesh under his cheek held some residual warmth, thank God, and for a moment they stood there pressed together. It was the closest they’d ever been before.
Jared’s voice broke the spell. “Go away, Jensen. Ima...,”
Fumbling to get Tom’s coat off, Jensen tipped back his head to stare at Jared, mouth as he rounded to glare at Jensen. His words came out in small, huffed clouds, floating on the frosted air.
“You want me to go away? I can’t do that, Jared. Look at you! You’ll die!”
“I won’t die. Get a grip, man.”
Jared’s teeth were chattering audibly, his lips slightly blue, and Jensen felt a wave of fondness surge up in his gut at the man’s stubbornness. Rejection glittered in Jared’s hazel eyes-Jared, who was always so malleable under Jensen’s slightest touch. He was the perfect model. Jensen had never had a better one, and he couldn’t stand to have Jared look at him that way-like he didn’t want to see Jensen or be around him ever again.
“Oh for Christ sake. You’re gonna freeze to death. Put this on.”
Jensen surged up onto the balls of his feet, meaning to sling the coat around the moron’s shoulders. Instead, he was suddenly kissing him, a fervent press of his mouth to the cold thin line of Jared’s lips. He wrapped his hands over the swell of Jared’s biceps to steady himself on the icy sidewalk. A person could fall. Really.
The only other point of contact between them, aside from that, was the wet, sweet suction of lips and tongues. It went on in slow, slow motion. The snow and the passing cars faded away. Jensen’s head was swamped with excitement. He hadn’t known he wanted this, but now that he did, he was over-eager for it, his dick swollen hot and stiff in his jeans. Sex wasn’t a thing he bothered about much. Couldn’t really remember the last time he’d fucked anybody.
“Come back with me,” he breathed into Jared’s mouth, sure of the other man’s acquiescence. “I’m sorry. I’ll be nicer.”
A sound broke from Jared’s throat. He clutched Jensen tightly around the waist, pulling their lips apart, but only far enough to roll their foreheads together.
“So now you’re gonna bribe me with sex?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m not that crude. I just thought you’d prefer going back to the loft to a hospital. You know, genius, breathing tubes and crash carts?”
Jared choked back an intelligible sound. “Jensen, you scare me. I don’t think I can do this anymore. I know it means a lot to you, the modeling and all, but being around you all the time is giving me ulcers.”
That was an erection killer right there. Jensen could feel himself wilt. Not model any more? The half-finished sculpture rose up in his mind, forcing everything else aside. He took a step back, thrusting the coat at Jared.
“Okaaaay. Here you go. Do what you want.”
He started to turn away. Jared caught the back of his tee shirt, wrapping a fist in the worn material.
“I’m not the only one who’s pneumonia bound if we don’t get out of this.” He spread Tom’s coat half-assed over both their shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go back. I can get my things and you can take a handful of cold medicine and get into bed. I’ll even make you some tea before I leave.”
“But you’re going to leave?” The “me” was implicit. It hung awkwardly in the air between them before Jared finally spoke.
“Christ, Jensen. Not you. I’m not leaving you. Just this whole fucked up situation. You must know I’ve got a thing for you. You can’t be that dense.”
“You do?”
Snowflakes were beginning to cling to Jensen’s eyelashes, making it difficult to see clearly. Or that could have been the moisture welling at the corners of his eyes. He blinked it back in cartoon brightness, not ready for Jared to see him act like a pussy. He waved his hands in distracted circles.
“Forget it. I can take care of myself, and I don’t need you pandering to my insecurities. If you want to act like a child, be my guest. Pardon me if I don’t watch. See you around”
Jensen swallowed past the lump in his throat, not sure how things had gone so wrong in a few frantic minutes. He stumbled off down the slippery cement, boots plowing through small drifts of solidifying ice, vaguely aware that Jared was following in his wake.
Reaching the front steps of his building, he skidded and went down on one knee. Jared scooped him up, hands under Jensen’s armpits and bundled him inside with a few choice curses.
“Fucking jerk!”
“Bitch,” Jensen spat right back at him, thoroughly incensed.
As they stumbled into the kitchen, a soggy mess, melting snow dripping everywhere, Tom looked up comfortably from his seat at the table, a mug of tea wrapped in his big palms.
“Ah, good. Everything patched up?”
Ignoring Tom’s placid optimism, Jensen brushed by him, refusing to look at Jared’s traitorous face. He stomped up the studio stairs, another panic attack wanting to wash over him. A dribble of snow oozed down his spine. He shivered bleakly. If he never finished his masterpiece, it would be completely Jared’s fault. Jensen wouldn’t forgive him, not if he got on his hands and knees and crawled.
For once, the studio temperature felt good, not too warm after traipsing around in the hellacious weather outside, trying to save someone who didn’t deserve it. Jensen even went so far as to pull his hoodie back on. He tried to ignore the way his hands were trembling. The hair at the crown of his head and the nape of his neck was soaked through. He snatched an old paint rag from a shelf and started toweling vigorously at the wet mess.
Turning around, Jensen found Jared glowering at him from the doorway near the stairs.
“Come to torment me some more? My turn to say go away, then. Moron.”
Jared ground his teeth, starting across the bare inner circle of the studio, where everything else had been pushed back against the walls in favor of the current work. The marble appeared warm and life-life, the shape emerging from its sheltering stone; face proud, a first hint of wings visible in the few chisel strokes tapped along their raised expanse. It hit Jared in the belly with the force of a sucker punch. This was more than the sum of its parts, more than the artist-model collaboration between himself and Jensen. He could see it now, when he couldn’t before because he’s been too concentrated on other things. This was a work of genius.
Some of Jared’s anger drained away. How could he hold Jensen to the standards of polite society when it was Jensen’s uncivilized nature that made him what he was?
“I.. Umm. I’ll pose.” Jensen’s head snapped up, his eyes filling with a mesmerizing light, sea-green with flashes of gold. “For the statue, Jensen. Not for you. You’re still a bastard. But this,” Jared waved a hand at the crouching man, “This deserves to live.”