The Academy of Absent Fathers - Jensen/Misha, NC-17 - Chapter Eight - 2/2
Title: The Academy of Absent Fathers - Chapter Eight - 2/2
Pairing: Jensen/Misha
Authors: qthelights & kriari
Rating: Eventual NC-17
Warnings & Notes See Chapter One for full warnings, disclaimers and notes. WIP.
Summary: As one of the premiere boarding schools on the east coast, Ellis Academy plays host to the preeminent financiers, businessmen, and politicians of tomorrow. The very dirt stinks of privilege and as a long-time foster child, Misha Collins has no idea how he ended up here. To make matters worse, he's stuck rooming with the equivalent of Ellis royalty. Jensen Ackles is a lifer - captain of the lacrosse team, do-gooder and textbook overachiever. And they hate each other. Mostly. But as they move from hate to something more, secrets from their unknown yet inextricably linked pasts threaten to destroy everything they've built. And the worst part? They have no idea what's coming...
Previous chapters
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight - Part One
Misha
Misha would be quite happy to stay inside their room, holed up in the pocket of warmth away from the snow and cold and general unreasonableness of the weather outside. At least in New York, winter was doable; jackets were fashionable and the subway was always warm. There was really no need to go above ground for more than a quick dash across a street. The fact that somewhere this far south can get this damn cold is a ridiculous fact no one has ever talked about before; one he wouldn’t believe but for the evidence piling up against the window-sill.
But when it comes to holing up in the warmth and hiding in Jensen, apparently, Ellis has other ideas.
Rob hand-delivers two cream-colored envelopes with fancy calligraphy on them just days into their supposed ‘free time’ - invitations from the Dean to Christmas Eve dinner. It’s a tradition, that the boys who are unlucky enough to be forced to spend their vacation at school are ‘gifted’ a dinner in the dean’s personal quarters. Naturally.
The look of horror on Jensen’s face when Misha actually suggests playing hooky, curling up in bed to explore each other - instead of looking for quarters in puddings - puts an end to such a fantasy before it even begins to form.
Jensen is going, and so Misha is too.
It’s not like Misha dislikes the dean, he really doesn’t, but seriously. They’re expected to play happy families and pretend like it’s a normal way to spend an evening?
Despite his grumblings, Sunday comes around like it always does, and with it, dinner.
“You absolutely cannot wear that.”
Misha looks up at Jensen’s dismayed disapproval, then down at his ‘Reagan for President’ t-shirt. “Why the hell not? It’s politics, that’s educational.”
Jensen rolls his eyes. “No.”
“If you tell me we have to wear uniform, Jen, I will not leave this fucking room.”
Jensen sighs, and despite having caused it, Misha has the uncontrollable urge to kiss away his frustration. “Of course not, the dean isn’t a martyr. But you gotta look presentable; a shirt at least.”
Misha considers this new bit of unwelcome information. “Can I wear my sweater around my neck and iron a crease in my chinos?”
“If that’s what floats your boat, man,” Jensen replies, rifling through his wardrobe and pulling out an offensively plain white button-down.
Misha pouts. “You’re no fun anymore, you know me too well.”
Jensen just thrusts the shirt at him. “And here I was thinking you liked me ‘knowing’ you well.”
“Did you just euphamize ‘knowing’ me with sex in order to distract me?”
“I don’t think euphamize is a word.”
“Whatever,” Misha sniffs. ‘I’ll euphamize you if you’re not careful.”
This night is going to be a fucking drag.
And it is. There are a handful of younger-year boys, all combed side-parts and polished shoes. Rob is there, and another guy Misha recognizes from one of his classes, but couldn’t name for the life of him. The food is decent enough. By which he means it’s pretty amazing, but he isn’t about to compliment it and have Jensen smugly grin at him the rest of the night.
The conversation starts out torturous, but Morgan puts them all at ease by telling them stories about the school and it’s checkered past of secret societies and ghost sightings. Misha’s pretty sure it’s all bullshit, but the younger kids seem rapt and it loosens them up enough that they talk and snigger and start kicking each other under the table instead of sitting in petrified silence.
The dean’s quarters are nice, if old. They’re in a sectioned-off part of the main building, so they’re cramped and small, made for people at least a foot shorter than today’s average. But the furnishings are lavish, all oak and oriental rugs. Shiny silver appliances gleam from the kitchen Misha spies as the cook and helpers bring out the food. The table has napkin holders.
They retire to a comfy den, complete with crackling fire and flat screen television on the wall. All Misha wants to do is curl up next to Jensen and doze, stomach stuffed full of rich food and a real nap right around the corner.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, given the circumstances and need for propriety, Rob flops down on the two-seater next to Jensen, and Misha is left to fold himself into an over-stuffed armchair to the side. Some of the younger kids lounge on the floor near the fire playing checkers like they’ve been lifted out of a Fitzgerald novel or something. It’s pretentious as all hell, and if Misha weren’t quite so sleepy from dessert he’d absolutely be making snarky comments about it.
As it is, he’s apparently telegraphing more than he thinks as the dean hones in on him and sits down in the armchair’s twin with a chuckle.
“One of those ‘is this my life?’ moments, Misha?” he smiles, and despite Misha wanting to mock, Morgan’s eyes twinkle with humor and he can’t help but be somewhat mollified.
“First-world problems, sir,” Misha replies in what he hopes isn’t too inflammatory a tone. “There’s a hashtag.”
“Yes,” Morgan agrees, which makes Misha look at him in mild surprise. The dean laughs, “What, I'm too old to tweet?”
Misha throws caution to the wind. “I imagine it’s hard to tweet on a typewriter is all.”
Morgan laughs loudly at that, a dark chuckling sound of amusement that makes Jensen look over curiously from his conversation with Rob.
“You’re one to talk, Mister Collins. I happen to know Ms Ferris has been trying to get you into her chess club since day one.”
Misha shrugs. “Ms Ferris is as full of stories as you are.” A beat. “Sir.”
The twinkle is still present, dancing merrily in the dean’s eyes along with the fire’s flames. “Yes. How about we keep that one between you and me, eh? She’d hang both of us out to dry before we could blink.”
Misha nods. He’s not suicidal. Even if it would be a hell of a way to die.
Morgan sits back in his chair, looking over at Misha contemplatively. There’s no malice to it, but it makes Misha’s skin crawl nonetheless. He likes to be the one watching people, not the other way around.
“So, Misha. What are your plans once you turn eighteen next month? Will you be staying with us and our first-world problems?”
Misha shifts uncomfortably and lies. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
The dean hums noncommittally and says nothing, though that in itself says volumes. “You could stay,” the dean says eventually, tone neutral.
“Like I said -” Misha begins, but Morgan cuts him off.
“I’m not the Peterson’s, Misha. And unlike a lot of those around here, I’m well aware how the ‘real’ world works. It doesn’t take a genius to realize you plan to run the second the clock strikes twelve o’one.”
For once, Misha finds himself without words. He knows the dean isn’t stupid, but the fact that he’s calling him on it, here, is somewhat gobsmacking. He was under the impression people simply didn’t speak something so dangerous as the truth.
Instead of answering, Misha picks at a stray thread on his pants. He’s aware of the dean’s eyes still on him, but for once in his life, he doesn’t want to falsify an answer.
“I actually have a proposal for you, if you’re interested,” Morgan says, and his voice is kind.
Misha looks up. “A proposal?”
Morgan nods. “Up to you, of course. But if you’re willing to wait the year out, finish your high school education, I’m willing to make a few calls on your behalf. Tee up an internship for you once you finish. Or, if you’d rather, to pull some strings in college admission offices.”
Misha blinks, aware he probably looks like an owl. He understands the individual words that come out of the dean’s mouth, but he can’t for the life of him parse the sentences into anything resembling sense.
“Well?” Morgan asks. “Would that be something you’d be interested in, Misha?
Misha manages to find his voice. “Why the... why would you do that?”
He leaves the “for me” unsaid.
This time Morgan shrugs, a casual gesture that smacks of the young man he is, rather than the old seat he holds. “Why not?”
Because I'm not worth it, because I'm an orphan, because I'm one of many, because I haven’t done anything to deserve it, because of my parents, because you’ve had a rough life, because I want to make you my humanitarian project, because, because, because. The litany of reasons that have been given to him over the years run through his head, an unstoppable, hyperactive-tickertape.
“Despite what you might think, Misha,” Morgan continues, “this place isn’t as bad as it might seem. People don’t send their children here because they have money to spend, or rights to uphold... well, most of them don’t. They send them here to prepare them for the best possible future they might have.”
Misha stays silent, and Morgan smiles slightly before continuing. “You have smarts many of these kids won’t get without a great deal of strategy. You have more life experience than many of them will ever have or want. You could do amazing things, Collins. Of that I have no doubt. But what you don’t have is a history to live up to, parents who inspire you. From what I've seen, there’s not many people climbing over themselves to help you for your sake, rather than theirs. And if I were to let that be the status quo, then I wouldn’t be doing my job and preparing you for that possible future, now would I?”
Misha shakes his head, tries to navigate himself out of the quagmire in his mind. “I appreciate it, sir, but I don’t think -”
Again, the dean cuts him off. “The most important reason, though, is that I want to. I think you’re worth it. I also think that others would benefit from having you stick around, no?”
The dean looks pointedly at Jensen, and for a horrible second Misha thinks this has all been some great cosmic joke, buttering him up before yanking the wool from over his eyes and expelling the two of them without further ado. But Morgan looks only fond as he looks over at Jensen, who is trying, mostly in vain, not to look bored at whatever animated story Rob is chattering at him.
And just as quickly as the dean brings Jensen into the conversation, he moves him out, focusing exclusively on Misha again.
“As I said, it’s up to you. I just wanted you to know that it was an option you might not have considered.”
And with that, dean Jeffrey Morgan pats Misha on the knee and rises from his chair, shuffling over to sit on the floor with the younger kids.
Jensen is looking over at Misha again, a question painted across his raised eyebrows. For the life of him, Misha wouldn’t even know where to begin.
* * *
Jensen
Normal kids look forward to Christmas Day. No matter how hard he tries, Jensen hasn’t been normal in a very long time. That belief other kids suspended for Santa died for him when he was eight, when Dad was stuck in Morocco and there’d been no presents around his plastic tree when he woke Christmas morning. He’d known then what he knows now - adults lie. Sometimes they do it to save themselves, sometimes to save you. Neither reason changes the fact that Jensen hasn’t slept restlessly on Christmas Eve for years.
Until now.
Even then, it’s not so much that he’s on edge, but that Misha is.
Whatever it was that put Misha off at the dean’s dinner has festered and rooted, his typically sharp wit so dulled by distraction that he provided straight answers to nearly all of Jensen’s questions. All except the ones that matter. Jensen still has no clue what he discussed with Jeff, and whether or not that conversation had caused the change. At this point, the answer to the latter at least seems a given.
Once they hit the door, some unknown switch had flipped and Jensen lost the chance to ask again, caught as he was by the cut of teeth against his collarbone and the slim fingers fumbling at his belt. After, Misha hadn’t lingered, rolling away and into his own bed with a dramatic yawn Jensen knew was mostly for show. They’d both been up past two every night since break started, and this morning had begun much closer to noon than nine.
In spite of everything, his natural inclination towards paranoia begins to get the better of him. After Misha gets up a fourth time and slips silently from their room, Jensen sincerely believes that at some point he won’t be coming back. Misha always does, but every time the mattress springs squeak on the other side of the room, Jensen’s instantly awake. For what, he couldn’t say. It’s not as if he could drag Misha back forcibly if he chose to leave, but he’d sure as hell try.
Exhaustion eventually wins out, and when Jensen blinks himself awake the sun has risen far enough to paint the sky gold and pink. Through the fog of waking he remembers, cursing the fact that he fell asleep and hoping that when he turns over, Misha’s still there. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, where the blankets end and Misha begins. He has a disturbing tendency to cocoon himself overnight, but the wild shock of hair ruffed out against what looks suspiciously like Jensen’s Panthers jersey is unmistakable.
He thinks he should be ashamed of how bright the flare of relief burns in his gut. Caring this much about anyone has only ever gotten him in trouble, Jared notwithstanding. There are days Jensen wishes he could stop. For as deep in as he is, he knows, like he knows the Pythagorean Theorem, someday Misha will leave. They always do. For now at least, he’s here.
Luck keeps the bed quiet when Jensen leaves it, the carpet muffling his footsteps as he creeps to his wardrobe to liberate the gifts hidden there. In the stillness, the crinkle of paper sounds a thousand times louder and Jensen sneaks a glance over his shoulder to make sure Misha’s still asleep. The mound spread across him rises and falls with his breath, but aside from that doesn’t move. Boxes in hand, Jensen shuffles back between their beds and sets his bundle down. He has to kick Misha’s oxfords out of the way to do it, the hard heels striking the leg of the bed with a thump when he does.
Misha stirs, and that’s okay, because the next order of business was to wake him up anyway. But beyond kicking a foot free of the blankets when he turns over and throwing an arm across his eyes to block out the light filtering in through the window, all Misha does is grunt before his breathing evens out again.
Jensen accepts it as invitation and a chance, hoping desperately there’s nothing in Misha’s past to spook him. This time, the bed does creak as it takes his weight, and he wavers for a moment, trying to get the angle right, perched as he is, his thighs bridged carefully across Misha’s but not touching, not yet. He feels the pull in his back, in his stomach, as he bends and braces against the headboard to keep from falling too far.
“I can feel you breathing,” Misha slurs, voice slow with sleep and his lips are too close to be denied.
So Jensen doesn’t.
Kissing Misha is always a very good thing. Sometimes careful, sometimes consuming, sometimes it’s a war for when they run out of words. This is different. It sneaks up on him in the way Misha’s lips part with a sigh, the soft slip of his tongue contented rather than restrained or directed and pushing. For once, he simply lies there and lets Jensen kiss him and that, of all things, is what ends it too fast. Because Jensen smiles into it and Misha nips at his lip.
“Something funny?” he mumbles, eyes still squeezed shut beneath the band of his arm.
Jensen rocks back to sit on his heels and feels the muscles in Misha’s thighs bulge as he stretches.
“Not funny,” Jensen deadpans. “Funny-looking, maybe.”
It’s hard to keep a straight face when he says it. Every hair on Misha’s head seems oriented in a different direction. The crumpled jersey currently sliding into the crease between pillow and headboard left a smooth place on Misha’s cheek shaped like a “C.” The Ellis creed is inexplicably scrawled and smudged across the back of his forearm in what appears to be black eyeliner. He looks ridiculous, but somehow that’s part of his ineffable charm.
“I have the leverage here,” Misha says, finally shifting into something that resembles wakefulness. “Don’t test me or you’ll end up on the floor.”
“And destroy the pile of presents Santa brought you?” Jensen grins wider when Misha’s brow furrows. “Why on earth would you want that?”
Misha snorts.
“One, if there were really a pile of presents beside my bed, I wouldn’t want that. And two, Santa’s a myth. Or, more like folklore that’s been misappropriated several times over so that parents can pretend someone else has bequeathed an obscene volume of toys upon their offspring.”
Looking at the sad stack of boxes, Jensen’s inexplicably nervous. He’d thought wrapping everything in the funny pages was a good idea at the time, an irony only Misha might appreciate. Now, though, it seems like the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas.
He plucks the top package from the heap and drops it on Misha’s chest anyway, then waits.
Misha opens his eyes slowly, each lid peeling back out of sync, the whites behind them bloodshot with sleeplessness. It takes a minute for him to process, chin tucked tight to his chest, but eventually he gets there.
“That’s a box,” Misha says, matter-of-fact. “Why is there a box on me?”
“I told you, Santa came.”
“Jensen.”
“Humor me.”
The paper rips, Misha’s fingertips smudged blue and yellow and green until it runs together into a weird brown black. It had taken a couple weeks to track down everything he needed, the last of the packages arriving just before break. Sneaking the stuff into their room without Misha noticing had been the bigger challenge, but somehow Jensen managed.
“It would help if I could move, you know.” Misha grouses, but his fingers never pause in their process and when he breaks the tape on the box, Jensen’s glad he didn’t move away to give Misha room. While it definitely would have been more comfortable for both of them, it also would have meant missing Misha’s face when the threadbare scrap of cotton tumbles out and he shakes it open.
“Fuck you, Jensen.”
“Santa.”
“Fine, fuck Santa.”
“Is Santa really your type? I thought you liked lean and lanky. Should I be jealous?”
Misha barks a sharp little laugh and shoves at him, eyes shining bright, and Jensen’s skin itches with the look. He expects Misha to twist his words, turn them into an escape from the awkward crawling feeling in his gut. Contrary as ever, Misha doesn’t.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he says instead, tracing the cracked, peeling letters emblazoned across the front of the shirt.
“Of course I did.”
It’s only here, in this room, that this could happen.
Two pairs of jeans, four authentic band shirts from the 80s, and a pair of well-worn black motorcycle boots will never mean to anyone what they mean to Misha. Jensen still isn’t sure about the hat, will probably never be sure about it. If everything else goes over, he’ll break it out, but only then.
For all his other virtues, Misha has always been fairly impatient, so his careful handling of the t-shirt makes Jensen grin. Before long, though, he leans up on an elbow to peer over the side of the bed and shakes his head at the pile.
“No, you didn’t,” he says softly. “Jen, I don’t know what to say.”
“I think the traditional response is thanks.”
“You aren’t nearly naked enough to receive my gratitude, and I apparently have a shitload of presents to open, so that’s just gonna have to wait.”
Each box Misha unwraps rubs down another layer of whatever the fuck was bothering him last night until he’s just the him behind the armor - a smart-ass, streetwise kid with a brain the size of a fucking moon colony, and a libido to match. And in that second, just for a second, Jensen thinks maybe Misha belongs to him. Or could someday.
Holidays always turn him into a girl.
Thankfully, the sentiment fades into something more manageable when Misha squirms, insistent, and Jensen realizes why. The boots. They’re nothing special, really. Just a black harness boot with steel toes, scuffed by the long use of some dude in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Misha swings out of bed like his ass is on fire once Jensen lets him, stepping into them as easy as breathing.
“I never say this to… well, anyone.” Misha beams at him in nothing but his boxers and boots and the Sex Pistols t-shirt slung around his neck. “You, Jensen Ackles, are a fucking perfect human being.”
Damn if he doesn’t mean it too. Jensen palms the back of his neck and chews on his lip, lost for words like he sometimes gets in the face of praise. Under any other circumstance, he’d deflect, but this means too much to Misha, to him, for him to cheapen it by pretending it’s nothing. So, for the moment at least, he holds his tongue, curling himself to kneel on the floor until he can reach the box that’s tucked in the far corner under his bed.
“The hell,” Misha mutters, the boots beside him shuffling against the burnished carpet. By now the sun has crept up over the curve of the horizon in the east, and even though their room faces west, the rays are catching on the snow-laden branches of the tree outside and making them sparkle.
Considering the reception of the rest of his gifts, Jensen figures the hat’s probably a safe bet. He’d found it not on eBay, but through a website that acts as a clearinghouse for estate sales. It’s not what Jensen typically considers Misha, but he’d been unable to forget it once he saw it. After staring at it for three days straight, he’d spent the sixty bucks and had them ship it overnight. He didn’t get a chance to wrap it.
Jensen hands the box to Misha with as little fanfare as he can manage, and says as much.
It’s soft, that he knows, with a gentle texture woven into the fabric. It’s a deep blue-grey with a sort of green undertone, the exact color of the ocean before a storm sweeps through and froths it into whitecaps and foam. But he can’t watch Misha open it. Instead, he levers himself up, busies himself collecting the discarded scraps of newspaper and wadding them up to throw away.
Misha says his name, but Jensen pretends not to hear because now that he’s done all this, he feels like the ground is tipping further and further away from him, and nothing he does will bring it back to rights. It is too much, and even though he gave every bit of it from a desire to do so, he knows he went too far, pushed too hard. He’d done that with Jared at first, too, and should have learned his lesson.
“Jensen,” Misha says again, firm, and Jensen looks up because he refuses to let this scare him. It’s not who he is. No matter how completely fucked things get, he survives, even thrives.
The hat fits. Not in size, though it does sit right atop Misha’s unruly mop, but it fits Misha. With the brim tipped forward, Jensen can hear the scrape of his eyelashes against the wool each time he blinks. It shouldn’t stir him the way it does, given the rest of Misha’s hodgepodge getup, but there’s a part of him that wants things. More so when Misha thumbs the brim and licks his lips, his gaze suddenly, inescapably heated.
“Yeah,” Jensen croaks. How his mouth ended up so dry, he can’t figure.
“I’m gonna fuck you in this later,” Misha says, so certain that Jensen doesn’t even think to question or even ask what that means, and he’s too focused on the fact that Misha’s not backing him down to freak about which parts might end up where. “But for now,” he continues, “Fuck. Here.”
Misha thrusts a package at him, small enough it fits completely inside his fist. Once upon a time, it had been wrapped perfectly in bright blue and silver stripes, but the paper’s crinkled now, the ribbon smashed and a little lopsided.
“I didn’t expect…” Jensen starts.
“Just open it, okay. And you’re welcome.”
The ribbon slides off easy and there’s a gap in the corner just large enough to accommodate the tip of his pinkie finger. Beneath the paper, there’s only the flocked black velvet of a jewelry box and he frowns at Misha, who makes an exasperated gesture and plants a hand on his hip. Nestled atop the padding inside sits a medal, Saint Christopher, identical to the one his mother wore.
She’d never been without it and when she… when she was gone, it went to Jensen. He’d kept it close, sacred, been as careful with it as any small boy can be with anything. It had disappeared along with most of their luggage on fateful trip to Hawaii in his early teens. He doesn’t remember much of the vacation beyond the fact that he was inconsolable. After the loss of it dulled, Jensen had grown to appreciate the irony that the patron saint of travelling could get lost in transit.
It’s not until Misha clears his throat and says, “I can return it,” that Jensen realizes he’s been staring in silence for too long.
“Not unless you’re willing to break my arms.” The chain slithers free of the packing, and although it doesn’t sit the same place it used to when he fastens the clasp, he wouldn’t have expected it to. “How did you…?”
Misha smiles and resettles his hat, leaning to pluck a picture frame off Jensen’s own desk. “She’s wearing one,” he says. “In every picture. When I found it, I obviously didn’t know what happened. I’ll admit the choice was a gamble, but you always seemed like you wished you could be closer to her, so I thought it was a fairly safe one.”
The medal isn’t hers, couldn’t possibly be. Jensen doesn’t give a shit. The fact that Misha cared enough to notice means everything and he moves without thinking, Misha’s chin sharp on his shoulder, the brim of his hat scratching at Jensen’s ear. For all the other things they do, hugs aren’t typically part of the repertoire. Misha melts into it all the same, his arms wrapped as tight as Jensen’s when Jensen squeezes and whispers, “Thanks,” into Misha’s hair.
* * *
Misha
After Christmas, the holidays pass in a blur.
If it weren’t for the fact that it would look decidedly suspicious, they’d have spent the entire remaining week huddled in their room with Jensen’s desk chair wedged up against the doorknob. Really, it’s not even that it would look suspicious that stops them, so much as it is they keep getting interrupted while making out by Rob or the dean or junior kids on dares.
It doesn’t really bother Misha, he’s used to having to get his rocks off fast and with a potential audience. Jensen, however, isn’t quite so immune. As fun as Jensen’s startled deer-in-headlights look is, and Misha finds it pretty damn amusing, the point-blank refusal to keep making out after the coitus interruptus is over wears off fast.
They end up being more imaginative because of it, so Misha figures there are mixed blessings in this much as there have been in most of his fucked up life. They spend an afternoon in the barn, tucked safely in the hayloft, straw prickling somewhat painfully through Misha’s shirt as Jensen pants and squirms on top of him. He doesn’t even mind when Jensen lords it over him that, if it weren’t for horses, they wouldn’t be able to make out there. Misha’s pretty sure that’s some faulty logic right there, but he lets the argument go as Jensen’s breath hitches and his cock twitches against Misha’s thigh.
Chris comes by, all furtive whistling and hiding-behind-trees, and Jensen yanks Misha right out the window with him and into the evening light. They spend a pretty enjoyable night down at the bar where Misha had first decided Jensen might not be as awful as he seemed. More enjoyable in some respects for the absence of Dave. Jensen goes loose and pliable with drink in him, and Chris’, hollerin’, and ribbing when Jensen slings an arm around Misha’s shoulders only makes Jensen grin wider than the Mississippi in spring. Misha wants to jump him right there and then, but has to make do with waiting until they make it back to the dorm and Jensen’s bed. He covers Jensen’s mouth with his palm to muffle the moans and sighs that also apparently amplify with Jensen’s alcohol intake.
Sam corrals them into the library every time she sees them wandering the halls, and every time they let her see them. The re-shelving project never seems to end, but somehow it doesn’t matter. Jensen’s annoyance at Misha’s inability to not fondle every book he picks up is more than enough to keep Misha doing it. The small smile that Jensen thinks he hides when he turns away with a huff of annoyance is something Misha knows he’ll treasure forever. So he reads him premises on particle physics and chapters of Harry Potter, random pages of Gatsby and the bits of Brideshead with the bear (upon which Jensen points out Misha’s similarity to Sebastian, and Misha proclaims that to be the nicest compliment anyone has ever given him). Sam drifts around the stacks, occasionally giving them a reproving look or smile she also thinks is hidden.
He thinks about the offer the dean made him. The potential for a job he’d never even have considered prior to the Petersons and their meddling ways. Misha had always been pretty sure he was destined to be a hot-dog vendor or municipal worker or, if he was very lucky, maybe own an alternative book store down in the Village, the kind that had bowls of water outside for customer’s dogs and a big orange cat that sat on the counter disinterestedly. All versions had him eking out a fairly meager living. The possibility of college at a good school, or an internship somewhere where Misha would be bored but obscenely rich, able to buy things new and shiny and not second-hand, things like comfort and privacy and safety that he’d only up ‘till this point dreamed about...
He almost doesn’t want to think about it, for fear of it all being a sick fantasy that disintegrates and slips through his fingers. But he knows it won’t. It’s a real possibility. If he doesn’t leave. It sits heavy on his shoulders and it’s uncomfortable, so he pushes the decision to the back of his brain and distracts himself in sucking the inside of Jensen’s elbow, biting at the ridges of his ribs, burying his nose into the crease of his groin. Anything to dull the ache of possibility that threatens to imprison him, in a way all his actual prisons have failed to achieve.
For now, he has Jensen, and that’s more than enough.
* * *
Chapter 9
Pairing: Jensen/Misha
Authors: qthelights & kriari
Rating: Eventual NC-17
Warnings & Notes See Chapter One for full warnings, disclaimers and notes. WIP.
Summary: As one of the premiere boarding schools on the east coast, Ellis Academy plays host to the preeminent financiers, businessmen, and politicians of tomorrow. The very dirt stinks of privilege and as a long-time foster child, Misha Collins has no idea how he ended up here. To make matters worse, he's stuck rooming with the equivalent of Ellis royalty. Jensen Ackles is a lifer - captain of the lacrosse team, do-gooder and textbook overachiever. And they hate each other. Mostly. But as they move from hate to something more, secrets from their unknown yet inextricably linked pasts threaten to destroy everything they've built. And the worst part? They have no idea what's coming...
Previous chapters
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight - Part One
Misha
Misha would be quite happy to stay inside their room, holed up in the pocket of warmth away from the snow and cold and general unreasonableness of the weather outside. At least in New York, winter was doable; jackets were fashionable and the subway was always warm. There was really no need to go above ground for more than a quick dash across a street. The fact that somewhere this far south can get this damn cold is a ridiculous fact no one has ever talked about before; one he wouldn’t believe but for the evidence piling up against the window-sill.
But when it comes to holing up in the warmth and hiding in Jensen, apparently, Ellis has other ideas.
Rob hand-delivers two cream-colored envelopes with fancy calligraphy on them just days into their supposed ‘free time’ - invitations from the Dean to Christmas Eve dinner. It’s a tradition, that the boys who are unlucky enough to be forced to spend their vacation at school are ‘gifted’ a dinner in the dean’s personal quarters. Naturally.
The look of horror on Jensen’s face when Misha actually suggests playing hooky, curling up in bed to explore each other - instead of looking for quarters in puddings - puts an end to such a fantasy before it even begins to form.
Jensen is going, and so Misha is too.
It’s not like Misha dislikes the dean, he really doesn’t, but seriously. They’re expected to play happy families and pretend like it’s a normal way to spend an evening?
Despite his grumblings, Sunday comes around like it always does, and with it, dinner.
“You absolutely cannot wear that.”
Misha looks up at Jensen’s dismayed disapproval, then down at his ‘Reagan for President’ t-shirt. “Why the hell not? It’s politics, that’s educational.”
Jensen rolls his eyes. “No.”
“If you tell me we have to wear uniform, Jen, I will not leave this fucking room.”
Jensen sighs, and despite having caused it, Misha has the uncontrollable urge to kiss away his frustration. “Of course not, the dean isn’t a martyr. But you gotta look presentable; a shirt at least.”
Misha considers this new bit of unwelcome information. “Can I wear my sweater around my neck and iron a crease in my chinos?”
“If that’s what floats your boat, man,” Jensen replies, rifling through his wardrobe and pulling out an offensively plain white button-down.
Misha pouts. “You’re no fun anymore, you know me too well.”
Jensen just thrusts the shirt at him. “And here I was thinking you liked me ‘knowing’ you well.”
“Did you just euphamize ‘knowing’ me with sex in order to distract me?”
“I don’t think euphamize is a word.”
“Whatever,” Misha sniffs. ‘I’ll euphamize you if you’re not careful.”
This night is going to be a fucking drag.
And it is. There are a handful of younger-year boys, all combed side-parts and polished shoes. Rob is there, and another guy Misha recognizes from one of his classes, but couldn’t name for the life of him. The food is decent enough. By which he means it’s pretty amazing, but he isn’t about to compliment it and have Jensen smugly grin at him the rest of the night.
The conversation starts out torturous, but Morgan puts them all at ease by telling them stories about the school and it’s checkered past of secret societies and ghost sightings. Misha’s pretty sure it’s all bullshit, but the younger kids seem rapt and it loosens them up enough that they talk and snigger and start kicking each other under the table instead of sitting in petrified silence.
The dean’s quarters are nice, if old. They’re in a sectioned-off part of the main building, so they’re cramped and small, made for people at least a foot shorter than today’s average. But the furnishings are lavish, all oak and oriental rugs. Shiny silver appliances gleam from the kitchen Misha spies as the cook and helpers bring out the food. The table has napkin holders.
They retire to a comfy den, complete with crackling fire and flat screen television on the wall. All Misha wants to do is curl up next to Jensen and doze, stomach stuffed full of rich food and a real nap right around the corner.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, given the circumstances and need for propriety, Rob flops down on the two-seater next to Jensen, and Misha is left to fold himself into an over-stuffed armchair to the side. Some of the younger kids lounge on the floor near the fire playing checkers like they’ve been lifted out of a Fitzgerald novel or something. It’s pretentious as all hell, and if Misha weren’t quite so sleepy from dessert he’d absolutely be making snarky comments about it.
As it is, he’s apparently telegraphing more than he thinks as the dean hones in on him and sits down in the armchair’s twin with a chuckle.
“One of those ‘is this my life?’ moments, Misha?” he smiles, and despite Misha wanting to mock, Morgan’s eyes twinkle with humor and he can’t help but be somewhat mollified.
“First-world problems, sir,” Misha replies in what he hopes isn’t too inflammatory a tone. “There’s a hashtag.”
“Yes,” Morgan agrees, which makes Misha look at him in mild surprise. The dean laughs, “What, I'm too old to tweet?”
Misha throws caution to the wind. “I imagine it’s hard to tweet on a typewriter is all.”
Morgan laughs loudly at that, a dark chuckling sound of amusement that makes Jensen look over curiously from his conversation with Rob.
“You’re one to talk, Mister Collins. I happen to know Ms Ferris has been trying to get you into her chess club since day one.”
Misha shrugs. “Ms Ferris is as full of stories as you are.” A beat. “Sir.”
The twinkle is still present, dancing merrily in the dean’s eyes along with the fire’s flames. “Yes. How about we keep that one between you and me, eh? She’d hang both of us out to dry before we could blink.”
Misha nods. He’s not suicidal. Even if it would be a hell of a way to die.
Morgan sits back in his chair, looking over at Misha contemplatively. There’s no malice to it, but it makes Misha’s skin crawl nonetheless. He likes to be the one watching people, not the other way around.
“So, Misha. What are your plans once you turn eighteen next month? Will you be staying with us and our first-world problems?”
Misha shifts uncomfortably and lies. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
The dean hums noncommittally and says nothing, though that in itself says volumes. “You could stay,” the dean says eventually, tone neutral.
“Like I said -” Misha begins, but Morgan cuts him off.
“I’m not the Peterson’s, Misha. And unlike a lot of those around here, I’m well aware how the ‘real’ world works. It doesn’t take a genius to realize you plan to run the second the clock strikes twelve o’one.”
For once, Misha finds himself without words. He knows the dean isn’t stupid, but the fact that he’s calling him on it, here, is somewhat gobsmacking. He was under the impression people simply didn’t speak something so dangerous as the truth.
Instead of answering, Misha picks at a stray thread on his pants. He’s aware of the dean’s eyes still on him, but for once in his life, he doesn’t want to falsify an answer.
“I actually have a proposal for you, if you’re interested,” Morgan says, and his voice is kind.
Misha looks up. “A proposal?”
Morgan nods. “Up to you, of course. But if you’re willing to wait the year out, finish your high school education, I’m willing to make a few calls on your behalf. Tee up an internship for you once you finish. Or, if you’d rather, to pull some strings in college admission offices.”
Misha blinks, aware he probably looks like an owl. He understands the individual words that come out of the dean’s mouth, but he can’t for the life of him parse the sentences into anything resembling sense.
“Well?” Morgan asks. “Would that be something you’d be interested in, Misha?
Misha manages to find his voice. “Why the... why would you do that?”
He leaves the “for me” unsaid.
This time Morgan shrugs, a casual gesture that smacks of the young man he is, rather than the old seat he holds. “Why not?”
Because I'm not worth it, because I'm an orphan, because I'm one of many, because I haven’t done anything to deserve it, because of my parents, because you’ve had a rough life, because I want to make you my humanitarian project, because, because, because. The litany of reasons that have been given to him over the years run through his head, an unstoppable, hyperactive-tickertape.
“Despite what you might think, Misha,” Morgan continues, “this place isn’t as bad as it might seem. People don’t send their children here because they have money to spend, or rights to uphold... well, most of them don’t. They send them here to prepare them for the best possible future they might have.”
Misha stays silent, and Morgan smiles slightly before continuing. “You have smarts many of these kids won’t get without a great deal of strategy. You have more life experience than many of them will ever have or want. You could do amazing things, Collins. Of that I have no doubt. But what you don’t have is a history to live up to, parents who inspire you. From what I've seen, there’s not many people climbing over themselves to help you for your sake, rather than theirs. And if I were to let that be the status quo, then I wouldn’t be doing my job and preparing you for that possible future, now would I?”
Misha shakes his head, tries to navigate himself out of the quagmire in his mind. “I appreciate it, sir, but I don’t think -”
Again, the dean cuts him off. “The most important reason, though, is that I want to. I think you’re worth it. I also think that others would benefit from having you stick around, no?”
The dean looks pointedly at Jensen, and for a horrible second Misha thinks this has all been some great cosmic joke, buttering him up before yanking the wool from over his eyes and expelling the two of them without further ado. But Morgan looks only fond as he looks over at Jensen, who is trying, mostly in vain, not to look bored at whatever animated story Rob is chattering at him.
And just as quickly as the dean brings Jensen into the conversation, he moves him out, focusing exclusively on Misha again.
“As I said, it’s up to you. I just wanted you to know that it was an option you might not have considered.”
And with that, dean Jeffrey Morgan pats Misha on the knee and rises from his chair, shuffling over to sit on the floor with the younger kids.
Jensen is looking over at Misha again, a question painted across his raised eyebrows. For the life of him, Misha wouldn’t even know where to begin.
* * *
Jensen
Normal kids look forward to Christmas Day. No matter how hard he tries, Jensen hasn’t been normal in a very long time. That belief other kids suspended for Santa died for him when he was eight, when Dad was stuck in Morocco and there’d been no presents around his plastic tree when he woke Christmas morning. He’d known then what he knows now - adults lie. Sometimes they do it to save themselves, sometimes to save you. Neither reason changes the fact that Jensen hasn’t slept restlessly on Christmas Eve for years.
Until now.
Even then, it’s not so much that he’s on edge, but that Misha is.
Whatever it was that put Misha off at the dean’s dinner has festered and rooted, his typically sharp wit so dulled by distraction that he provided straight answers to nearly all of Jensen’s questions. All except the ones that matter. Jensen still has no clue what he discussed with Jeff, and whether or not that conversation had caused the change. At this point, the answer to the latter at least seems a given.
Once they hit the door, some unknown switch had flipped and Jensen lost the chance to ask again, caught as he was by the cut of teeth against his collarbone and the slim fingers fumbling at his belt. After, Misha hadn’t lingered, rolling away and into his own bed with a dramatic yawn Jensen knew was mostly for show. They’d both been up past two every night since break started, and this morning had begun much closer to noon than nine.
In spite of everything, his natural inclination towards paranoia begins to get the better of him. After Misha gets up a fourth time and slips silently from their room, Jensen sincerely believes that at some point he won’t be coming back. Misha always does, but every time the mattress springs squeak on the other side of the room, Jensen’s instantly awake. For what, he couldn’t say. It’s not as if he could drag Misha back forcibly if he chose to leave, but he’d sure as hell try.
Exhaustion eventually wins out, and when Jensen blinks himself awake the sun has risen far enough to paint the sky gold and pink. Through the fog of waking he remembers, cursing the fact that he fell asleep and hoping that when he turns over, Misha’s still there. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, where the blankets end and Misha begins. He has a disturbing tendency to cocoon himself overnight, but the wild shock of hair ruffed out against what looks suspiciously like Jensen’s Panthers jersey is unmistakable.
He thinks he should be ashamed of how bright the flare of relief burns in his gut. Caring this much about anyone has only ever gotten him in trouble, Jared notwithstanding. There are days Jensen wishes he could stop. For as deep in as he is, he knows, like he knows the Pythagorean Theorem, someday Misha will leave. They always do. For now at least, he’s here.
Luck keeps the bed quiet when Jensen leaves it, the carpet muffling his footsteps as he creeps to his wardrobe to liberate the gifts hidden there. In the stillness, the crinkle of paper sounds a thousand times louder and Jensen sneaks a glance over his shoulder to make sure Misha’s still asleep. The mound spread across him rises and falls with his breath, but aside from that doesn’t move. Boxes in hand, Jensen shuffles back between their beds and sets his bundle down. He has to kick Misha’s oxfords out of the way to do it, the hard heels striking the leg of the bed with a thump when he does.
Misha stirs, and that’s okay, because the next order of business was to wake him up anyway. But beyond kicking a foot free of the blankets when he turns over and throwing an arm across his eyes to block out the light filtering in through the window, all Misha does is grunt before his breathing evens out again.
Jensen accepts it as invitation and a chance, hoping desperately there’s nothing in Misha’s past to spook him. This time, the bed does creak as it takes his weight, and he wavers for a moment, trying to get the angle right, perched as he is, his thighs bridged carefully across Misha’s but not touching, not yet. He feels the pull in his back, in his stomach, as he bends and braces against the headboard to keep from falling too far.
“I can feel you breathing,” Misha slurs, voice slow with sleep and his lips are too close to be denied.
So Jensen doesn’t.
Kissing Misha is always a very good thing. Sometimes careful, sometimes consuming, sometimes it’s a war for when they run out of words. This is different. It sneaks up on him in the way Misha’s lips part with a sigh, the soft slip of his tongue contented rather than restrained or directed and pushing. For once, he simply lies there and lets Jensen kiss him and that, of all things, is what ends it too fast. Because Jensen smiles into it and Misha nips at his lip.
“Something funny?” he mumbles, eyes still squeezed shut beneath the band of his arm.
Jensen rocks back to sit on his heels and feels the muscles in Misha’s thighs bulge as he stretches.
“Not funny,” Jensen deadpans. “Funny-looking, maybe.”
It’s hard to keep a straight face when he says it. Every hair on Misha’s head seems oriented in a different direction. The crumpled jersey currently sliding into the crease between pillow and headboard left a smooth place on Misha’s cheek shaped like a “C.” The Ellis creed is inexplicably scrawled and smudged across the back of his forearm in what appears to be black eyeliner. He looks ridiculous, but somehow that’s part of his ineffable charm.
“I have the leverage here,” Misha says, finally shifting into something that resembles wakefulness. “Don’t test me or you’ll end up on the floor.”
“And destroy the pile of presents Santa brought you?” Jensen grins wider when Misha’s brow furrows. “Why on earth would you want that?”
Misha snorts.
“One, if there were really a pile of presents beside my bed, I wouldn’t want that. And two, Santa’s a myth. Or, more like folklore that’s been misappropriated several times over so that parents can pretend someone else has bequeathed an obscene volume of toys upon their offspring.”
Looking at the sad stack of boxes, Jensen’s inexplicably nervous. He’d thought wrapping everything in the funny pages was a good idea at the time, an irony only Misha might appreciate. Now, though, it seems like the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas.
He plucks the top package from the heap and drops it on Misha’s chest anyway, then waits.
Misha opens his eyes slowly, each lid peeling back out of sync, the whites behind them bloodshot with sleeplessness. It takes a minute for him to process, chin tucked tight to his chest, but eventually he gets there.
“That’s a box,” Misha says, matter-of-fact. “Why is there a box on me?”
“I told you, Santa came.”
“Jensen.”
“Humor me.”
The paper rips, Misha’s fingertips smudged blue and yellow and green until it runs together into a weird brown black. It had taken a couple weeks to track down everything he needed, the last of the packages arriving just before break. Sneaking the stuff into their room without Misha noticing had been the bigger challenge, but somehow Jensen managed.
“It would help if I could move, you know.” Misha grouses, but his fingers never pause in their process and when he breaks the tape on the box, Jensen’s glad he didn’t move away to give Misha room. While it definitely would have been more comfortable for both of them, it also would have meant missing Misha’s face when the threadbare scrap of cotton tumbles out and he shakes it open.
“Fuck you, Jensen.”
“Santa.”
“Fine, fuck Santa.”
“Is Santa really your type? I thought you liked lean and lanky. Should I be jealous?”
Misha barks a sharp little laugh and shoves at him, eyes shining bright, and Jensen’s skin itches with the look. He expects Misha to twist his words, turn them into an escape from the awkward crawling feeling in his gut. Contrary as ever, Misha doesn’t.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he says instead, tracing the cracked, peeling letters emblazoned across the front of the shirt.
“Of course I did.”
It’s only here, in this room, that this could happen.
Two pairs of jeans, four authentic band shirts from the 80s, and a pair of well-worn black motorcycle boots will never mean to anyone what they mean to Misha. Jensen still isn’t sure about the hat, will probably never be sure about it. If everything else goes over, he’ll break it out, but only then.
For all his other virtues, Misha has always been fairly impatient, so his careful handling of the t-shirt makes Jensen grin. Before long, though, he leans up on an elbow to peer over the side of the bed and shakes his head at the pile.
“No, you didn’t,” he says softly. “Jen, I don’t know what to say.”
“I think the traditional response is thanks.”
“You aren’t nearly naked enough to receive my gratitude, and I apparently have a shitload of presents to open, so that’s just gonna have to wait.”
Each box Misha unwraps rubs down another layer of whatever the fuck was bothering him last night until he’s just the him behind the armor - a smart-ass, streetwise kid with a brain the size of a fucking moon colony, and a libido to match. And in that second, just for a second, Jensen thinks maybe Misha belongs to him. Or could someday.
Holidays always turn him into a girl.
Thankfully, the sentiment fades into something more manageable when Misha squirms, insistent, and Jensen realizes why. The boots. They’re nothing special, really. Just a black harness boot with steel toes, scuffed by the long use of some dude in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Misha swings out of bed like his ass is on fire once Jensen lets him, stepping into them as easy as breathing.
“I never say this to… well, anyone.” Misha beams at him in nothing but his boxers and boots and the Sex Pistols t-shirt slung around his neck. “You, Jensen Ackles, are a fucking perfect human being.”
Damn if he doesn’t mean it too. Jensen palms the back of his neck and chews on his lip, lost for words like he sometimes gets in the face of praise. Under any other circumstance, he’d deflect, but this means too much to Misha, to him, for him to cheapen it by pretending it’s nothing. So, for the moment at least, he holds his tongue, curling himself to kneel on the floor until he can reach the box that’s tucked in the far corner under his bed.
“The hell,” Misha mutters, the boots beside him shuffling against the burnished carpet. By now the sun has crept up over the curve of the horizon in the east, and even though their room faces west, the rays are catching on the snow-laden branches of the tree outside and making them sparkle.
Considering the reception of the rest of his gifts, Jensen figures the hat’s probably a safe bet. He’d found it not on eBay, but through a website that acts as a clearinghouse for estate sales. It’s not what Jensen typically considers Misha, but he’d been unable to forget it once he saw it. After staring at it for three days straight, he’d spent the sixty bucks and had them ship it overnight. He didn’t get a chance to wrap it.
Jensen hands the box to Misha with as little fanfare as he can manage, and says as much.
It’s soft, that he knows, with a gentle texture woven into the fabric. It’s a deep blue-grey with a sort of green undertone, the exact color of the ocean before a storm sweeps through and froths it into whitecaps and foam. But he can’t watch Misha open it. Instead, he levers himself up, busies himself collecting the discarded scraps of newspaper and wadding them up to throw away.
Misha says his name, but Jensen pretends not to hear because now that he’s done all this, he feels like the ground is tipping further and further away from him, and nothing he does will bring it back to rights. It is too much, and even though he gave every bit of it from a desire to do so, he knows he went too far, pushed too hard. He’d done that with Jared at first, too, and should have learned his lesson.
“Jensen,” Misha says again, firm, and Jensen looks up because he refuses to let this scare him. It’s not who he is. No matter how completely fucked things get, he survives, even thrives.
The hat fits. Not in size, though it does sit right atop Misha’s unruly mop, but it fits Misha. With the brim tipped forward, Jensen can hear the scrape of his eyelashes against the wool each time he blinks. It shouldn’t stir him the way it does, given the rest of Misha’s hodgepodge getup, but there’s a part of him that wants things. More so when Misha thumbs the brim and licks his lips, his gaze suddenly, inescapably heated.
“Yeah,” Jensen croaks. How his mouth ended up so dry, he can’t figure.
“I’m gonna fuck you in this later,” Misha says, so certain that Jensen doesn’t even think to question or even ask what that means, and he’s too focused on the fact that Misha’s not backing him down to freak about which parts might end up where. “But for now,” he continues, “Fuck. Here.”
Misha thrusts a package at him, small enough it fits completely inside his fist. Once upon a time, it had been wrapped perfectly in bright blue and silver stripes, but the paper’s crinkled now, the ribbon smashed and a little lopsided.
“I didn’t expect…” Jensen starts.
“Just open it, okay. And you’re welcome.”
The ribbon slides off easy and there’s a gap in the corner just large enough to accommodate the tip of his pinkie finger. Beneath the paper, there’s only the flocked black velvet of a jewelry box and he frowns at Misha, who makes an exasperated gesture and plants a hand on his hip. Nestled atop the padding inside sits a medal, Saint Christopher, identical to the one his mother wore.
She’d never been without it and when she… when she was gone, it went to Jensen. He’d kept it close, sacred, been as careful with it as any small boy can be with anything. It had disappeared along with most of their luggage on fateful trip to Hawaii in his early teens. He doesn’t remember much of the vacation beyond the fact that he was inconsolable. After the loss of it dulled, Jensen had grown to appreciate the irony that the patron saint of travelling could get lost in transit.
It’s not until Misha clears his throat and says, “I can return it,” that Jensen realizes he’s been staring in silence for too long.
“Not unless you’re willing to break my arms.” The chain slithers free of the packing, and although it doesn’t sit the same place it used to when he fastens the clasp, he wouldn’t have expected it to. “How did you…?”
Misha smiles and resettles his hat, leaning to pluck a picture frame off Jensen’s own desk. “She’s wearing one,” he says. “In every picture. When I found it, I obviously didn’t know what happened. I’ll admit the choice was a gamble, but you always seemed like you wished you could be closer to her, so I thought it was a fairly safe one.”
The medal isn’t hers, couldn’t possibly be. Jensen doesn’t give a shit. The fact that Misha cared enough to notice means everything and he moves without thinking, Misha’s chin sharp on his shoulder, the brim of his hat scratching at Jensen’s ear. For all the other things they do, hugs aren’t typically part of the repertoire. Misha melts into it all the same, his arms wrapped as tight as Jensen’s when Jensen squeezes and whispers, “Thanks,” into Misha’s hair.
* * *
Misha
After Christmas, the holidays pass in a blur.
If it weren’t for the fact that it would look decidedly suspicious, they’d have spent the entire remaining week huddled in their room with Jensen’s desk chair wedged up against the doorknob. Really, it’s not even that it would look suspicious that stops them, so much as it is they keep getting interrupted while making out by Rob or the dean or junior kids on dares.
It doesn’t really bother Misha, he’s used to having to get his rocks off fast and with a potential audience. Jensen, however, isn’t quite so immune. As fun as Jensen’s startled deer-in-headlights look is, and Misha finds it pretty damn amusing, the point-blank refusal to keep making out after the coitus interruptus is over wears off fast.
They end up being more imaginative because of it, so Misha figures there are mixed blessings in this much as there have been in most of his fucked up life. They spend an afternoon in the barn, tucked safely in the hayloft, straw prickling somewhat painfully through Misha’s shirt as Jensen pants and squirms on top of him. He doesn’t even mind when Jensen lords it over him that, if it weren’t for horses, they wouldn’t be able to make out there. Misha’s pretty sure that’s some faulty logic right there, but he lets the argument go as Jensen’s breath hitches and his cock twitches against Misha’s thigh.
Chris comes by, all furtive whistling and hiding-behind-trees, and Jensen yanks Misha right out the window with him and into the evening light. They spend a pretty enjoyable night down at the bar where Misha had first decided Jensen might not be as awful as he seemed. More enjoyable in some respects for the absence of Dave. Jensen goes loose and pliable with drink in him, and Chris’, hollerin’, and ribbing when Jensen slings an arm around Misha’s shoulders only makes Jensen grin wider than the Mississippi in spring. Misha wants to jump him right there and then, but has to make do with waiting until they make it back to the dorm and Jensen’s bed. He covers Jensen’s mouth with his palm to muffle the moans and sighs that also apparently amplify with Jensen’s alcohol intake.
Sam corrals them into the library every time she sees them wandering the halls, and every time they let her see them. The re-shelving project never seems to end, but somehow it doesn’t matter. Jensen’s annoyance at Misha’s inability to not fondle every book he picks up is more than enough to keep Misha doing it. The small smile that Jensen thinks he hides when he turns away with a huff of annoyance is something Misha knows he’ll treasure forever. So he reads him premises on particle physics and chapters of Harry Potter, random pages of Gatsby and the bits of Brideshead with the bear (upon which Jensen points out Misha’s similarity to Sebastian, and Misha proclaims that to be the nicest compliment anyone has ever given him). Sam drifts around the stacks, occasionally giving them a reproving look or smile she also thinks is hidden.
He thinks about the offer the dean made him. The potential for a job he’d never even have considered prior to the Petersons and their meddling ways. Misha had always been pretty sure he was destined to be a hot-dog vendor or municipal worker or, if he was very lucky, maybe own an alternative book store down in the Village, the kind that had bowls of water outside for customer’s dogs and a big orange cat that sat on the counter disinterestedly. All versions had him eking out a fairly meager living. The possibility of college at a good school, or an internship somewhere where Misha would be bored but obscenely rich, able to buy things new and shiny and not second-hand, things like comfort and privacy and safety that he’d only up ‘till this point dreamed about...
He almost doesn’t want to think about it, for fear of it all being a sick fantasy that disintegrates and slips through his fingers. But he knows it won’t. It’s a real possibility. If he doesn’t leave. It sits heavy on his shoulders and it’s uncomfortable, so he pushes the decision to the back of his brain and distracts himself in sucking the inside of Jensen’s elbow, biting at the ridges of his ribs, burying his nose into the crease of his groin. Anything to dull the ache of possibility that threatens to imprison him, in a way all his actual prisons have failed to achieve.
For now, he has Jensen, and that’s more than enough.
* * *
Chapter 9