FIC: Harder and Harder to Breathe | Jared/Jensen | NC-17 (2/2)
--
Jensen follows the signs down a gravel road surrounded by empty fields and old country fences. Miles later, he’s wondering if the place even exists, when seemingly out of nowhere, Shangri-La comes into view. It’s a fairly modern looking resort, situated in the middle of a golf course that overlooks Grand Lake.
He does a quick walkthrough of the main building before bringing Jared inside. The place doesn’t have electricity. No people either, at least not on the first floor. The elevators are out of commission, and Jensen blocks the doors to the stairwells in case anyone’s lurking upstairs.
Once everything is checked out, he walks Jared in from the truck and back to the large professional kitchen. He plops Jared down on a chair by the sink and goes looking for a better First Aid kit than the one they have with them. It doesn’t take long to find it, along with some clean towels from a storage room and a bottle of tequila from the lounge.
Back in the kitchen, Jared’s managed to get his shirt off. A thin sheen of sweat covers his skin and he’s leaned back at an awkward angle, holding a couple of paper towels over the gun shot. He’s singing softly to himself through puffs of pained breath. It takes Jensen a minute to make out words.
“Is there anyone out there, ‘cause it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.”
There’s a whole song that goes with that lyric, but Jared must not know it. He sings the same line over and over. “Is there anyone out there, ‘cause it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.”
Jensen pulls up a chair and prepares to clean the wound.
“Hey, man,” Jared says. “Not feeling too good.”
Jensen hands him the bottle of tequila. “Drink up.”
Jared takes a swig, sputtering and coughing as expected, while Jensen peels away the paper towels and gets his first good look at the injured shoulder.
Thankfully, Jared was right. It’s a superficial wound, a jagged deep groove in the meat of Jared’s shoulder. It’ll leave a scar, but the bullet didn’t lodge. Jensen feels almost lightheaded with relief even as Jared gets his first look at it and sways in the chair.
“Ever tell you I can’t stand the sight of my own blood?”
“No.”
Jared laughs. “Never knew until now.”
Jensen soaks a clean rag in some water from the cooler and dabs the wound while Jared makes pained faces and takes big, ugly gulps of tequila, his Adam’s Apple bobbing.
“This is going to hurt.” Jensen douses gauze in rubbing alcohol and presses it to the wound.
Jared hisses. “Man, the world sure does suck these days, doesn’t it?” he grits out.
Focused on the task at hand, Jensen only nods in agreement. Jared starts to tremble, still breathing hard through the pain.
He’s going to be fine. Jensen knows that. He’s survived worse injuries himself. But it’s Jared. The kid he met eight years back was pure sunshine. The horny fifteen-year old he knew before he got hauled off to prison was awkward and intense.
And the last couple of days, on the run together. Well that’s something else. Jared’s it right now. The only thing in front of him that makes any sense at all. Still awkward. Still sunshine. And all too necessary.
All Jensen wants is to extinguish the fear in Jared’s eyes, the pained tremors that course through his body even as he starts to go slack with alcohol and spent adrenaline.
“Hey, Jared. Stick with me, okay?”
Jared hums a little breath and slides down in the chair.
“So, uh, remember when you asked me about prison?”
He asks the question in desperation, to snap Jared back to attention. Jared answers with a garbled, “Huh - what?”, and a twitch that seems to travel his whole spine, all fifteen feet of it.
“You wanted to know, right?”
“Only if you wanted to tell me.” Jared sits up straighter, but his voice is still tight with pain.
“I guess people really only want to know one thing when they ask about prison.” Jensen pulls Jared’s left hand over to hold the gauze to his shoulder while he looks through the kit for the right bandage. “So, you know, I haven’t done anything I didn’t want to in four years.”
He doesn’t mention those first two months behind bars. Jared is perfectly still and perfectly quiet.
“Also.” Jensen decides to go with gauze and medical tape instead of an oversized Band-Aid. “Oz is bullshit.”
“Beecher and Keller, though?”
Jensen runs his fingers over Jared’s bicep, up his arm to the injury. Jared’s sick-hot with fever. The skin around the wound is fire red and puffy, but it’s only oozing a little blood now.
“Yeah, even Beecher and Keller.”
“You shouldn’t have ended up in a place like that.” Jared still seems unsteady, but the tremors are gone. “You didn’t deserve it.”
“Yes, I did.” Jensen places the gauze over Jared’s injury and holds it in place with medical tape.
“It’s not like you killed anybody.”
“Not until today.” Jensen feels compelled to point that out, but he can’t find it himself to feel remorse over shooting the man who shot Jared.
“Fuck that guy,” Jared says. “You never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it.”
“No, I didn’t. But I held my gun on some people while I was robbing them blind, robbing the bank blind, whoever.”
“You wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on them.”
“The people on the other end of my gun didn’t know that.” Jensen shifts his focus to meet Jared’s gaze. “I saw their lives flashing before their eyes. Hell, one time I laughed at some guy who wet himself he was so scared.”
“I thought you were cool.” Jared’s laser focused on Jensen, and he smiles at the memory. “I mean, I didn’t know all that until later, about the armed robberies. But you had fucking swagger for miles.”
“That I did. I’ll tell you a secret.” Jensen leans in even closer, impossibly close, so close their eyelashes almost touch, and watches Jared’s eyes go wide when he whispers. “Maybe I feel bad for the people I hurt, but I’d do it all again.”
Jared blinks. “It’s almost like the great state of Texas didn’t rehabilitate you at all.”
“Not even a little bit.”
“That’s the most I’ve heard you say since.” Jared casts his gaze upward to the ceiling like he’s mulling it over. “Well, ever.”
“That’s because you talk enough for both of us and everybody else who’s still topside.”
Jared moves to punch Jensen in the shoulder but it ends in a weak slap and a pained grunt. “Thanks,” he says. “For telling me all that, I mean. I know you were trying to distract me. It worked.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll be better in the morning.” Jared’s words are slurred with alcohol and blood loss. “We can get back out on the road.”
“No, you need some time. We’re going to stay put for a while.”
--
They move into one of the resort’s small cabins down on the lake. It has its own kitchen and outdoor grill. There’s only one bedroom with one king size bed. They share it and don’t say a word about it.
Jensen intends to keep an eye on Jared anyway. Redress his wound a couple of times a day, make sure nobody comes at him with a gun again. The sleeping arrangement is a simple matter of convenience.
Jared gets over the shock after a day or so and starts talking, even more than usual. He talks like he wants to tell Jensen everything, dump his short life story into the nearest living human and receive that human’s story in return. Maybe it’s the only way to live on when there’s nobody else around to remember.
With that in mind, Jensen tells his story, too, with less prose and a lot of dark corners left unexamined. Among other things, he talks about his father, how he always resented him for leaving Jensen with a neglectful, inconstant mother and a series of stepfathers. Between both his wandering parents, Jensen doesn’t know how many stepbrothers and sisters he’s had over the years. Jared’s the only one he can remember liking back then, the only one who matters now.
They fall into a routine. During the day, they sit out on the porch, they walk down to the dock and catch fish they grill for lunch and dinner. Every now and then, they’ll see a boat passing by in the distance, but in every way that matters, it’s just the two of them.
By their third night at Shangri-La, sleeping in the bed next to a stronger, healthier Jared starts to feel too much like temptation. On the fourth day, Jensen takes the truck into a nearby town to get the lay of the land and check for supplies.
Jared stays behind, keeping the gun with him for safety, and doesn’t question Jensen’s sudden need to put a little distance between them. He asks Jensen to bring back another radio and whatever books he can find, preferably about war and strategy.
There’s a small lake town nearby called Grove that has a Wal-Mart and a pawn shop. The Wal-Mart has some guns and ammo in the back and the pawn shop has shortwave and CB radios. Jensen snags one of each and breaks into the library for Jared’s books.
He sees a couple of people in the parking lot but they don’t come up to him and Jensen returns the favor.
--
‘Keep moving. All will be revealed just a little further on down the road.’
That’s what the voice says through the shortwave radio the very next day. The CB still just crackles static.
Keep moving. Jensen thinks he’d be pretty content to stay put.
At night, he listens to Jared breathe, feels his heavy warmth next him, and he wants. He could roll over and start something. Jared would say yes. But Jared’s young and dependent on him and somewhere along the line, Jensen seems to have developed a conscience where Jared’s concerned.
In the following days, there are more solo trips into nearby towns. Jensen trades the old truck for a slightly less old Range Rover. He keeps his eyes open for trouble, but he doesn’t find any.
There’s no hum of electricity in the air, nothing mechanical even. Back in prison, it was noisy all the time. Until he got used to it, it nearly drove Jensen crazy. In the cabin with Jared, there’s the static of the radios and the sound of Jared’s voice (he talks about strategy now, and resistance, instead of family trips and high school pranks). Out in the world, by himself, the quiet is eerie.
The enormity of what’s happened, to the country, to the world, is too much for Jensen to comprehend. But his senses are sharp. He feels that old buzz of danger lurking around every corner and as crazy-horrible as it is, there’s a part of him that kind of likes it.
--
On their eighth night, they sit on the dock, watching the sun set over the low water, and pass a joint between them. Jared found it in a baggy in one of the cabins. They take their time with slow, leisurely puffs, fingers touching with each pass. Jensen doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so sweet and buzzed in his life.
This might be their last sunset. Each sunrise and each sunset could be the last. That was always true, but it feels more true now.
“I thought about you a lot while you were in prison,” Jared says.
The truth is, Jensen didn’t think about Jared at all, not until the letter came. And he’s glad he didn’t. Glad he didn’t take Jared into that place with him.
He can feel Jared watching him, but Jensen steadfastly refuses to turn his head and meet his gaze. He inhales a shallow puff and stares out at the muddy lake for a good long while before passing the joint back to Jared.
“Is that so, baby brother?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
Suddenly, Jared’s touching him, a light trace of long fingers underneath Jensen’s chin, and turning his head to force eye contact. Jared takes a long drag and tilts his head to the side. He stares at Jensen like it’s a dare and Jensen can’t resist it.
Jared parts his lips to push a cloud of smoke into Jensen’s open mouth. And Jensen drags it into himself on a shaky inhale, like he can keep it there, tasting Jared on the edge of the smoke forever.
Every part of Jared, the way he holds himself, the way he looks at Jensen’s lips, makes obvious his intention to follow that smoke with a kiss. And it would be so easy, far easier than pulling away. But Jensen does pull away. He doesn’t know where he gets the strength to turn his head and exhale the smoke into the air, but he does. He looks out again over the water as it swallows down the sun.
Jared passes the joint to Jensen and leans back in his chair. “You know why.”
--
Jared’s got a gnarly scar on his shoulder. Jensen catches him moving his collar aside to look at it sometimes. He seems pleased with it. Stupid kid.
Stupid, beautiful kid.
Jared’s sharp and bright. Even though the world’s gone to shit, he still laughs a lot, and loudly. He throws back his head and exposes the long arch of his throat. He’s tan from their time outdoors in the too-warm December sun. And there’s just so much of him. All long, lean muscle and awkward grace.
He’s in desperate need of a haircut, but the messy hair suits him. Jared’s kind of an all around glorious mess, anyway, with his shaggy hair and his perpetually sweaty skin. But he’s sort of beautiful too, with his bedroom eyes, his deep dimples, and a firm jaw still smooth with youth.
And teeth, he probably shows his teeth-all sharp edges and straight, hard lines-more than anybody Jensen’s ever met. Big toothy grins, shy lip-biting smiles.
Jensen wants to be the thing that bites those lips. He wishes Jared’s hands, big and graceful, always in motion, were on him.
He tells himself the reasons are obvious. It’s been a long time. For all intents and purposes, Jared’s the only other living person on earth. Or might as well be.
But it’s not as simple as that.
Jared’s not the type who can hide his emotions. He wants Jensen, too. Hell, he’s practically panting with it. But Jensen made a promise to himself that he intends to keep: protect Jared. If that means protecting Jared from Jensen first, then so be it.
--
Jared’s been furiously scribbling notes in the margins of history books for days. Two weeks in, he looks up from a book about guerilla warfare.
“We need to move on,” he says.
Jensen’s not surprised. Jared talks a lot about what to do next. He knows it’s crazy to rush into Chicago and look for their parents without a plan. Jensen has thought so all along, and Jared’s come around on that point. But he’s not giving up on them.
They need to find allies, Jared’s decided. There could be millions of people out there, people with resources who could help. People who are ready to fight.
If it was up to Jensen, they’d stay. He cares more for Jared’s safety than for finding his father or fighting some enemy he doesn’t know or understand. He hasn’t seen anyone but Jared in days, or heard the man on the radio. Maybe that’s a sign they should stay put and count their lucky stars they’re still alive.
He tells Jared all of this, knowing full well it won’t change his mind.
“It’s time.” There’s a tone of command in Jared’s voice that both annoys Jensen and makes his cock twitch. “We’ll pack up our stuff and leave tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow. I want to pick up some more ammo first, make sure the car’s loaded down with everything we need.”
“All right,” Jared allows. “We’ll get ready tomorrow. But we’re leaving the day after, first thing.”
Jensen needs a cigarette and a minute to himself. He walks out of the room with an attitude, throwing, “Yes, sir, little General,” over his shoulder.
--
They lay in bed that night, side by side, but not together. Jensen can tell by Jared’s breathing that he’s awake, too. He knows what he could take and how he wants to take it. He sees it in his mind, Jared laid out beneath him, body bare, cock hard and leaking, miles of smooth, tanned skin, needy and responsive. He can hear the moans, feel the rumble of his own voice vibrating along Jared’s skin, more, baby brother.
After a while, he thinks maybe he should just give in, give Jared what he’s been begging for with every coy, sideways glance, but by then, Jared’s snoring, low and steady.
--
Jared goes on the supply run with Jensen the next morning. There’s not much in the neighboring towns to loot that Jensen hasn’t already taken, but he wants to do another sweep of the area for bullets and batteries.
They’re tense and quiet in the car. Jensen’s still angry they’ll be leaving the cabin the next day on Jared’s command, but he doesn’t say it. He probably doesn’t have to. Jared reads him pretty well.
But Jensen’s anger doesn’t matter because Jared knows by now that if he runs headlong into trouble, Jensen will be right behind him, watching his back and protecting him at all costs. It’s the one thing he can take for granted and Jensen resents him for knowing it.
Maybe Jared is right that it’s time to leave. Standing still may not be the answer. But when Jensen thinks of it, all he sees, again and again, is Jared taking that shot to his shoulder and spinning with the impact. It could have ended right then and there.
Jensen spends the morning worrying and fuming while they pick through stores and abandoned lake houses. They end up with more supplies than they can possibly take with them.
Jared stands at the front door of some rich asshole’s summer home, and calls back to Jensen. “That’s enough. Let’s head back and start packing the truck.”
More orders, high-handed and fucking imperious. The fact that Jared’s right just pisses Jensen off more. He stalks toward Jared, not knowing himself if he’s going to punch him or pass through the doorway and stomp off to the car in a huff. It could go either way.
Jared’s holding the door open and staring down at his feet. “I’m sorry, Jensen.” He mumbles the words low enough that Jensen barely hears them.
Sorry for what? He wants to ask. For pissing me off, for ordering me around like a fucking soldier, or for running headlong into the abyss and taking me with you?
But as he passes through the door, Jared looks up and Jensen sees that he’s not all business. There’s a pleading there, a glimpse of the boy who’s barely holding it together.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” Jared says.
And with that, Jensen finally breaks. He can’t stop himself from stepping in close, hand on Jared’s hip, spinning him and pushing him against the door. Not a punch then, and not just passing him by.
Jared watches, wide-eyed with panic, but not in a bad way. Jensen knows what he can take right now. But instead of lunging for the hard, bloody, wild kiss a part of him craves, he puts his arms around Jared and pulls him into a tight embrace, the kind that doesn’t leave any air between them.
Jared slumps into it, his pulse beating so fast and hard Jensen feels it like a vibration. He’s warm. It feels nice, right, to be standing together like this. Like they’re saying goodbye to this little life of theirs on the lake but they’re saying hello to something, too.
He turns his face into Jared’s long neck and inhales the clean smell of him. Jared exhales a breath that heats Jensen’s skin. They stand like that long enough that Jensen feels all his anger and resentment slip away. The fear he holds onto. He needs it to stay sharp.
He raises a hand to cradle the back of Jared’s head and keep him in place even though it’s not necessary. Jared’s not going anywhere. Jared’s arms squeeze him tight, holding him impossibly closer. Jared’s cock is hard against Jensen’s stomach and they both breathe hard.
Jensen pulls back to rub his cheek against Jared’s. He needs that touch. He presses their foreheads together and looks into Jared’s eyes, standing up on his tip-toes while Jared slides down the wall to meet him. Jared’s watchful and waiting and Jensen kisses him then, soft and slow.
He licks a line across Jared’s lips but doesn’t open them, nips at him with his teeth, but not hard. And when Jared opens his mouth, Jensen doesn’t plunder it. He takes it nice and slow.
Pulling back with an effort, Jensen looks at Jared’s plump, moist lips. He can’t help pushing his index finger into Jared’s mouth. A tremor passes between them when Jared closes his lips around it and sucks it in, licks it with his tongue. He opens his mouth for more and Jensen fucks his middle finger in as well, watching while Jared takes and takes.
Jensen’s tongue is going to be in that mouth again. His cock, too. He knows that now. He’s going to feel that tongue on every part of his body before this whole godforsaken world comes to an end.
--
They’re about two miles from Shangri-La, Jared’s hand resting on Jensen’s leg, when they hear the first explosion. It’s far enough away that it could be anything and strong enough that the car shakes with the aftershock.
Jared cranes his neck to look out the windows while Jensen lays on the gas.
“Where did that come from?” Jared asks as another loud boom sounds in the distance.
“No telling. Doesn’t sound close.”
There are three more loud booms before they make it to the cabin and step out of the car. They listen for more, but it’s quiet. Out in the distance, on the other side of the lake, they see black smoke rising.
“Let’s get inside,” Jensen says.
They spend a tense hour listening for more explosions and being met by silence when the voice comes over the shortwave radio in the kitchen.
‘Wherever you are, settle in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’
“Do you ever think he might be one of them?” Jared asks. “With the HDA, like a plant to lure us in?”
Jensen thinks that he’s getting all too used to the world as it is. He thinks of flickering lights on the highway and car fires, and empty towns.
“I don’t know if it matters either way.”
“It used to be easy to reach people and now all we have is this one voice out of nowhere,” Jared says. “The world is so much bigger than it used to be.”
--
It’s dusk before they hear another explosion. It seems closer this time, like a rolling earthquake under their feet. Then another.
They go to the porch and see the next one blazing across the horizon, a big ball of fire crashing to earth. It’s distant enough that they don’t see its landing but they hear distant sirens go off. They could be from anywhere, could be an echo from miles away.
There’s nothing to say. Nothing to do but wait it out. They could leave and fall right into the path of one of those things or stay and face the same fate.
It’s not as if there’s a bomb shelter nearby. They consider going to the basement of the main building, but if a bomb hits there, they’d just be trapped beneath the rubble. So they stay in their little cabin on the lake.
Sitting in the kitchen, forcing down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, they hear the man’s voice again, out of breath and talking fast through bad radio reception.
‘Intelligence reports from the front lines, compatriots. The bombs are just getting started. Tonight’s the night.’
“Great,” Jensen mutters.
‘Are you ready for your last night on earth?’
Jared leans against the counter and rolls his eyes. “How about no, cryptic radio guy.”
--
Bombs sound off in the distance, and sirens, and bombs again.
Jensen and Jared take turns in the bathroom and meet to stand on either side of the bed. They strip down bare before climbing under the covers, face to face on their sides, all under the rave-blue glow of the camping lantern, all in comfortable silence.
It’s Jared who reaches out first, tentatively. Jensen’s hand is resting on the mattress between them and Jared traces his fingers over it, then up Jensen’s arm, tracking the line of Celtic tribal tattoos. Jensen got the design when he was about Jared’s age. He doesn’t know what the symbols represent, if anything.
He didn’t put much thought into his tatts back then, but he still likes the sharp lines and the curves of the ink that winds its way up his forearm to his bicep. He likes the way Jared’s gaze always flickers there. And he especially likes the way his flesh warms at Jared’s touch as he traces the lines.
Jared’s fingers travel to Jensen’s shoulder, across Jensen’s neck and chest, where black ink ravens take flight from the image of a gnarled, barren tree that takes up a lot of real estate on Jensen’s right side, from his hip to his chest.
The press of Jared’s fingers over his body is soft then firm and soft again. He traces a circle around Jensen’s nipple and licks his lips. His breath is loud in the room and Jensen feels it against his face. Jensen closes his eyes and rolls onto his back.
Jared presses his palm, flat and firm, on Jensen’s belly. He spreads out his long fingers and rakes his smooth, short fingernails through Jensen’s coarse pubic hair, stopping short of wrapping them around Jensen’s cock like Jensen wants to beg him to do.
Instead Jared presses a quick kiss to Jensen’s one prison tat, a simple compass a couple of inches above his heart. He slides his hand back up Jensen’s chest to trace the ink his lips just left, north-south-east and west.
“You know it’s not the age thing, right?” Jared murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“The reason you hold back. It’s not because I’m younger than you.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, that’s so.” Jared kisses him quick, with open lips. Then again. “You’d hook up with any other random nineteen-year old twink and not think twice about it.”
He has a point.
“And it’s not because we’re stepbrothers.” Jared moves his hand lower, over Jensen’s stomach again, and this time he does graze Jensen’s cock with his fingers, but he still doesn’t take him in hand the way Jensen wants.
“Really?”
“Really.” Jared nuzzles his nose into Jensen’s neck, just under his jawline. “We weren’t even raised together.”
“All right. What is it then?”
“For a while, I thought you just weren’t into me.”
That’s one opinion that Jensen can’t let stand. He brings his hands up to hold Jared’s face between them and kisses him. He slides his tongue into Jared’s mouth and takes and takes and takes until he’s dizzy with it and Jared’s panting, his big cock pressing into Jensen’s hip.
“Guess that’s not the problem.” Jared’s smiling and breathless.
In a quick, decisive motion, Jensen rolls Jared onto his back, and presses down on him. He kisses him again, hard and demanding.
Jared’s kisses must be truth serum because Jensen doesn’t intend to, but he breathes out, into Jared’s open mouth, “I’m not good enough for you.”
Jared looks up at Jensen, eyes wide with surprise. He shakes his head and runs his hands down Jensen’s back.
“Jensen, that’s ridiculous.”
“It’s true and I don’t want to get into it,” Jensen says. “I’ve done very bad things.”
“And I’m Saint Jared.”
Jensen shifts and grinds down, pressing their cocks together. “Definitely not a saint.”
With that, Jensen pushes Jared’s legs wide and slides down that long body, relishing in the hard friction of his skin on Jared’s skin. He places a pillow under Jared’s hips and pushes his knees up and Jared’s laughing, but he’s not stopping Jensen from arranging his body however he wants.
Jensen kisses Jared’s cock, just the tip, and feels the moisture of Jared’s pre-come on his lips. He licks a stripe down Jared and hums against his balls. When he drops his head to lick a wet circle around Jared’s hole, testing and loosening it, he feels Jared shift to look down at him. Jared’s muscles clench and shake beneath him. When he works his tongue out into a point and pushes into Jared, so warm and earthy, Jared practically jumps off the bed.
Then Jared’s hands are in his hair, petting and scratching. “Jensen,” he breathes. “Jensen. Wait.”
Jensen pulls himself away long enough to look up.
“Please. Please.” Jared growls and throws his head back on the pillow.
“What? Tell me.”
“God, Jensen.” And he grabs Jensen by the head, by the shoulder, scratches a line across his shoulders. “Just fuck me already.”
Jensen doesn’t need to be told twice.
He presses his mouth to Jared’s cock in a quick, aimless motion as he rises to his knees and makes his way up the mattress, over Jared’s long, lean body. Jared, hardly subtle, placed a bottle of lube right on the nightstand days before. Jensen grabs it now and flips open the cap, pouring a good amount into his hand even as he falls over Jared, bodies aligned, Jared’s legs still splayed open and waiting.
Jensen reaches down and circles Jared’s still spit-slicked hole. Watches Jared watching him while he slides his finger in, nice and slow and smooth.
Jared’s blissed out, warm and slow and lazy with it. There’s a heaviness in his voice. “Always had a crush on you.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Jensen teases him.
He pushes in a second finger and works Jared open with more patience than the situation should allow. And he can’t resist a sweet, quick kiss, the lingering of his cheek against Jared’s, breathing him in and nipping at his chin, licking a line up Jared’s long, graceful neck. He reaches for a condom and Jared helps him roll it on with shaky hands, his smile wide and reckless.
Then Jensen is back at Jared’s mouth for the kind of deep, wet kiss that he’s hardly got the patience for but somehow can’t resist. Jensen adjusts himself downward and angles Jared’s hips, all with shaky intensity.
Sirens sound in the distance, and there’s noise coming from outside their little cabin that could be a train or a tornado or bombs falling, but none of it matters. All they have is each other. All Jensen can see or feel is Jared. The only thing he fears is losing him. Somewhere in the insanity, the world has burned away clean, purging everything but Jared, giving Jensen a clarity he never imagined.
Jared said the world is bigger now, and that may be so. For Jared. Jensen’s world is small, it’s focused, and it’s elemental.
Only Jared.
And if the world ends tonight, that’s all it’ll ever be and more than he thought to ask for.
Only Jared, he thinks as he pushes into him, slowly and gently, barely holding himself up on shaky arms. He looks into Jared’s eyes, dark and big in the low light, feels Jared’s sweat on his skin, he listens to the sounds of Jared urging him on, pulling Jensen in with desperate little scratches to his back.
Jensen pushes in and holds himself there. He feels Jared’s body tense as he adjusts to all of Jensen inside of him, then relax and surge again when Jensen works a hand up to stroke Jared’s cock.
“Yes, yes, oh, God,” Jared cries out.
Jensen’s finding it hard to breathe. He takes Jared in long, slow strokes, then fast, rough ones. He watches Jared lose control and come with jolts that rock his whole body and thinks again, only Jared.
--
They finish in silence, lying on their backs next to one another, catching their breath, only their hands touching. The explosions have stopped, but the sirens still wail in the distance.
“Talk about going out with a bang,” Jared says. Because of course that’s what Jared says.
“As far as I can tell, we’re still here.”
Jared laughs and rolls toward Jensen, kissing his chest and laying his head against it, throwing his long arms across Jensen’s body. Jensen pulls him in close because cuddling is apparently a thing he does now.
Jared props his chin on Jensen’s chest and looks up at him. “You know you’re mine, right?”
It’s the only thing Jensen does know.
“Yeah.”
--
By morning, the sirens have stopped and the world has returned to its new natural quiet. No cell phones, no TVs, no buzz of electricity. They stay in bed for a while, curled up together. Jared’s a bony, muscly, leggy heating blanket turned up to ten and Jensen’s going to have to get used to it.
At noon, they pack up the car and take one last walk down to the dock before heading to Saint Louis. It’s the next stop on the map. Jared wants to try out the shortwave radio there, see if they can find anyone who is willing to talk, willing to fight.
There’s a fog of smoke rolling out low over the lake, and the smell of fire in the air, but Jensen feels better about his chances than he has in years. They survived the night. And now they’ll survive today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. They’ll survive until they don’t. Life and death seem to matter so much more than they used to.
They make their way back to the car, hand in hand, as a light rain begins to fall.
~The End~