RPF: Dovetail
Title: Dovetail
Author: kriari
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Jensen/Misha
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 9,600
Summary: AU. Misha Collins is a master craftsman with a corner on the sustainable furnishings market. Jensen Ackles is an ambitious interior designer with an even more ambitious clientele. All he’s after at first is Misha’s signature on an impossible contract. What he gets is so much more.
A/N: For madelf who won my help_japan auction. Hope you like the results! Many thanks to blue_fjords and chicklet25 for their beta/alpha/general cheerleading, it’s much appreciated. Any mistakes left are my own.
There are a thousand ways to say no.
Necessity has taught Jensen a thousand more - how to cajole without having to say the words, how to influence with a well-timed shrug or a forceful handshake. More often than not, it works.
Being forced to navigate the entitlements born of wealth and prestige is an occupational hazard he’ll never get used to, a regrettable side effect of carrying the client list he does. He's perfected the psycho-social wrangling it requires, ready to stroke egos where they need stroking and charm his way around their often appalling idea of good taste with a wink and a smile.
That doesn’t mean he enjoys it. Placating them.
Jensen's good at his job, better every day. And while he sometimes resents the time he spends talking people into (or out of) something when he could be doing real work, he still loves what he does. It's a functional art, one he believes in, and he takes pride in the fact that his work directly affects the quality of his clients’ lives. More so than any painting.
Of all the skills he’s mastered, Jensen considers reading people to be his crowning glory - the ability to assess what each client needs, no matter what they claim to want, and then deliver results. It’s why his phone keeps ringing, why his schedule often drives him to tears and insanity, why his card gets passed around at every high society party thrown in Chicago, and why more than half of those parties are hosted in spaces he's designed.
He makes things happen.
As long as he's allowed.
Unfortunately, Colette Hastings stands immune to his charm. And while, under different circumstances, he might admire her pluck, that hard-headedness is all that stands between him and a pretty substantial paycheck. Art or not, he needs to eat.
Mrs. Hastings isn't the worst, but she is new money with everything to prove - the third wife of an aging estate lawyer who’s meandering his way towards retirement by way of the golf course. Their kids, his by blood and hers by marriage, have fled the nest and so the elder Hastings has traded the sprawling estate in the suburban hills for a condo in Streeterville.
The property itself is a designer’s wet dream - each room a beautifully blank canvas with heart pine hardwoods and floor to ceiling glass. The layout’s fluid, open in a way that begs for the scratch of Jensen’s pen to break it into intimate pockets of functional space. He’s not blind. He can see how well Colette’s demands would fit.
Unfortunately, it also can’t be done.
Were it a simple matter of money, there’d be no call for concern. While he maintains nothing but a healthy contempt for schmoozing, all it would take to squeeze another quarter mill out of Hastings is eighteen holes at Cog Hill and dinner at the club. There are worse fates. But it’s not money. It’s time. Given the seemingly arbitrary delivery date Colette’s set for the project, the order should have gone in six weeks ago. For a normal shop with normal staff and an assembly-line mentality, a seven-room custom order would have been a cake-walk. For a craftsman like Misha Collins and his crew of two, working the hours Jensen’s heard they work, it’s laughable.
Colette has her back turned, staring out the window as she leans against the kitchen island, a silhouette cut by stray shafts of sunlight sneaking between the tall buildings beyond. The pile of hair stacked atop her head is a meticulous, undoubtedly time-consuming study in carelessness. She’s dressed in tailored grey tweed with the curve of horn-rimmed frames shadowed on her cheeks. Instead of smile lines etched around her eyes, the corners of her mouth are mapped with the draw of years spent being disappointed.
Jensen understands her, of course, sympathizes inasmuch as he’s able. Over half a dozen lunch meetings and a two-hour tour of the condo, he’s extracted every last bit of information he needs and come to the unhappy conclusion that she’s right.
This place was made for the work of Misha Collins.
So instead of hinting for the fifth time just how impossible a feat it is, Jensen simply says, “I’ll see what I can do,” and turns on his heel at the distracted wave of her hand.
***
It takes Jensen a full forty-eight hours to admit defeat, a fact that he privately considers both a small miracle and an act of completely pointless prolonging. Because in spite of the largely incestuous framework of the Windy City’s design community, Jensen doesn’t know Misha.
Sure, they’ve rubbed shoulders at events and been showcased at the same SAIC seminars. But they’ve also been introduced on five separate occasions. Each time, Jensen waits for a flash of recognition before he extends his hand. It never comes.
Pride keeps him from calling Jason - a friend of a friend who travels in the right circles and owes him for a connection once exploited. He’s been able to work out the where and when through various industry contacts, so it’s just the how that confounds him. No one he trusts knows Misha well enough to offer even the basest insight into how to get a yes when all sources say the answer should be no.
Try as he might to convince himself otherwise, it pisses him off to be forgotten. And while logically, Jensen knows he’s only hurting himself by dragging his feet, he still does it.
He gets it, really he does. As a matter of simple survival, their profession requires the liberal application of selective memory, and he knows he’s faked his way through a second or third introduction in his time. Just as he knows he shouldn’t take it personally.
Shouldn’t, but he does.
Hunkered down in his home office, there’s no one around to notice, much less care. So instead of calling to weasel Jason’s number out of Kristen, he fucks around on the internet and orders an obscene amount of Thai food for lunch before flipping his way through six back issues of Dwell.
Two hours later, with the dregs of his tom yam cooling at his elbow and a stack of magazines stuffed down the side of the already overloaded recycling bin, Jensen doesn’t feel any better. The fact remains that this isn’t high school. He doesn't need to put out feelers to see if his crush likes him back before he asks her to prom, and he doesn't need clique approval to make a move. He’s a professional, an accomplished one, and the idea of cowering behind Kristen’s skirts or clawing on her coattails makes him nauseous.
If he can handle the handsy matrons at the annual showcase, he can sure as shit handle Misha Collins.
Just - not on the phone.
Getting this done means bringing his A-game and Jensen’s self-actualized enough to understand just how much more he can pull off in person. Especially when he works with intent. Besides, looking earnest and desperate trumps sounding earnest and desperate every time.
The cab ride across town lasts longer than he’d like, the backseat steamy with the oppressive heat of early July. He’d forgotten, stupidly, that it’s the Thursday before a holiday weekend and that, as a result, the city streets surrounding Grant Park will be packed with distracted tourists waving turkey legs. Chicagoland traffic signals are only selectively observed at the best of times. During the Taste of Chicago, they may as well not exist.
It takes half an hour to creep down Congress and make the turn onto Columbus, an excruciating extravaganza of sounds and smells that turns the phat thai into a brick in his gut. In the end, though, he's grateful. Because sometime between minute ten and seventeen, with a pig-tailed girl in pink smearing ice-cream on the window, Jensen realizes that he doesn't have a plan. And fuck if he's not going to have to call Kristen after all. At this point he’s willing to weather her enthusiastic ribbing if it means he’s not going in blind.
As they clear the northern end of the park, he thumbs his phone awake, flipping through until he lands on her picture.
He just hopes she answers.
Two rings later, a smug, "Jenny," drifts down the line.
It means Kristen knows something, maybe not everything, but enough. She wouldn't dare call him that unless she thought he needed her.
"Need I remind you, Bell, how much dirt I have on you?" Jensen laughs and scrubs at his chin, eyes the cross-street through the streak of chocolate. "Wheelbarrows," he continues. "Plural."
"Aw, honey. There's only so long you can bark without biting and still expect me to mind." Her laughter tinkles, tinny, through his headset. "Besides, nobody but you cares about my youthful indiscretions anymore. And you need me."
"How the fuck do you even know that?" he asks, incredulous. "Oh wait, I forgot. You're a witch. A bonafide, burning-is-too-good-for-you, witch."
"As flattering as that is, Ackles, I'm not prescient. I just keep my ears on."
"Meaning?"
The cab stops short at a red light and Jensen has to palm the headrest in front of him to escape a black eye. His hand comes away sticky. Typical.
"Meaning, Hastings brought the job to two other designers before she came to you. Meaning, she released them when they told her - honestly - that it couldn't be done." Kristen sighs into the phone and Jensen's known her long enough he can almost see her expression. It's the one that proclaims him a dumbass with a singular sort of fondness only she can pull off. "Meaning," she says, "You're the only fuckwit masochistic enough to take this on and you're calling to pump me for information."
"And?"
"And you can't charm me, Jensen. I know the way you work. Ask, and maybe I'll find a place in my heart that wants to help."
Jensen smirks, but tries to keep it out of his tone when he says, "So were you one or two?"
"That’s not a question you want to ask," Kristen grouses. "Unless you’re in a hurry to be strike three."
Jensen isn’t. He really, really isn’t. The payout on this job will keep him in Oldham for at least a year and, hell, just the chance to forge a relationship with Collins is worth his weight in gold. Collins is it when it comes to high end custom work and runs the only shop in the city who does it with sustainable materials.
Jensen hears himself say, "Please," before he even gives the go ahead for the word to wind from brain to mouth. "Kristen, really. I want to make this happen."
She snorts, unladylike as ever, then mutters a, “Your funeral,” that’s eclipsed by the shuffle of papers.
Colette, despite her many rumored virtues, is also irresponsibly vicious. With her connections, she couldn’t quite ruin him if he doesn’t deliver. It just might be easier to move.
“Remember when the time comes that I hate carnations,” he says, glancing again at the cross-street as a sign whizzes past. He’s running out of time.
“Such a drama queen,” she spits back on a sigh. “Fine. All I have to offer is this: you might be the only one who can get this job done.”
If he could reach through the phone and strangle her, Jensen swears he would. Since technology still hasn’t caught up with his sometimes violent virtual tendencies, he says, “What does that even mean?” instead, and shifts his phone to the opposite ear.
“You’re a smart puppy. Figure it out.”
The cab driver catches his eye in the rearview and flashes a smile, “Sir, we’re here.”
Kristen laughs again, full-throated and genuine and Jensen wishes, just for a second, that it was always like that. It reminds him of when they were first year grad students - unspoiled, unjaded. Back when she’d slip into one of his t-shirts and drape herself across his back after one too many B-grade horror flicks and six too many shots of tequila.
“You’re sitting outside his workshop, aren’t you?” she says, still Kristen. Still his Kristen.
“No time like the present.”
“What am I going to do with you?”
“Pretty much this, Kit-Kat.” The nickname takes a funny roll off his tongue, stale and heavy from years of disuse. He leans forward to pass a twenty through the glass before adding, “You know you’re not my type.”
“Yeah well, I’m also not that naïve anymore,” she says, all the warmth bled from her voice like the wrong switch somehow got flipped. “Good luck, Jensen. Go put those cocksucker lips to use stealing my commission.”
The line goes dead half a second later, leaving him adrift, fumbling at both phone and door handle and wondering what the hell just happened. So much for strategy.
Later.
Later, he’ll call. He’ll assess the damage done and worry about whether or not she’ll even pick up the phone. Then if she does, he’ll take her to Cibo Matto and get her drunk on three bottles of the best merlot they have. Because no matter how cryptic the advice, he owes her.
For now, there are more pressing concerns.
The workshop sits in the middle of a long block - an olive green oasis amidst a sea of squat, grey, featureless buildings. Each window and door is ringed with rich aubergine, the trim work designed to both accentuate and soften the industrial lines.
It says something, Jensen thinks, as he waves away the cab and strides down the sidewalk. Aesthetics are a choice, a decision he’s trained to make, and this building is Misha Collins’ sanctuary, his life blood and passion. Any other businessman would have picked a utilitarian palette and barred the windows to discourage thieves. Here, even though the workshop isn’t a public space, Collins has chosen personality over practicality. And while the color scheme may not be to Jensen’s taste, it certainly makes a statement.
Like the rest of the building, the front door has character. In place of the standard-issue dented steel, Collins has hung an affair fashioned of reclaimed planks and wrought iron. Jensen can feel the age of it beneath his palm, every pit and gouge with a story not yet told - something he misses in the sleek steel and glass of modern design.
The door swings wide as he raises his hand to knock, and he’s forced to snatch his fist back or risk hitting the someone behind it in the face. That someone turns out to be an elderly woman with wild salt and pepper hair. Her glasses hang on a chain around her neck, swinging with the motion of her body, and her frantically-patterned broomstick skirt carries half a dozen different colors of wood filler and putty. She levels him with a cool, blue gaze and waits.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” Jensen says, stretching the word into his trademark grin. Clearly she’s the gatekeeper.
“Don’t mess with me,” she answers, eyes narrowed and arms folded across her chest. The tail end of her voluminous shawl flaps in the breeze, curling against her knee. “I’ve been around the block a time or two, cherie. I know what that smile means.”
Jensen stares at her for a long second, trying to work out some angle that will get him through the door, but comes up empty. The woman takes a shuffling step back, her hand already on the knob to shut him out, saying, “Well if you’re just going to stand there fish-mouthed. I’ve got work to do. Go back to fondling the door if it pleases you to do so.”
“Wait,” he yelps, taking a chance when he sticks the toe of his shoe in the crack of the door before it closes.
She glares at it balefully and then back up at him.
“Miss…” he begins, realizing belatedly that he’s neither asked for nor offered a name.
“Ma’am works just fine,” she cuts in. “Mind removing your stylishly distressed shoe from my threshold?”
Jensen complies, sheepish, then continues, “Ma’am, my name is Jensen Ackles. I’m here to see Mr. Collins about a very lucrative project.”
“Of course you are. Unfortunately for you, we both know that Misha only meets with designers by appointment. And he does so from his office on Wacker. “
Jensen does know. Knew, in fact, before he got in the cab and gave the address, just as he knew Misha wouldn’t be in that office today. Kristen’s not his only contact, just the one most likely to share actual useful information. Whether the method of his madness has been entirely ethical or not, the amount of professional currency he’s expended just to be here means he has to get inside. So if Misha’s assistant won’t respond to charm and she won’t respond to force, maybe she’ll respond to truth.
“Please,” he says for the second time in an hour, digging through his coat pocket to shake one of his business cards free and hand it over. “I’m desperate.”
She wraps herself inexplicably tighter into her shawl and sighs, plucking the card from between his fingers. “Well, at least you’re honest,” she says. Jensen feels sweat bead on the back of his neck and roll in under his collar as she gives him a cursory once-over, smiling when she steps out of the way and disappears, the door swinging open on her heels. “Come in out of the heat, then,” she tosses back over her shoulder. “I can’t promise anything and wouldn’t even if I could, but apparently you’ve got a pair of big brass balls and he respects a man with guts.”
Once inside, Jensen understands the shawl. A blast of cool air kisses his face, seeping through the linen weave of his pants and coat as well as the thin cotton dress shirt that had felt fused to his back not five seconds before. Not cool, cold when compared to the oppressive furnace of sun and asphalt outside, and dry. The door shuts behind him with a solid thump, perfectly square in its frame and the road noise disappears. All that remains is the nearly subsonic purr of the machine controlling the environmentals and a brassy burst of mariachi music from somewhere in the depths of the workshop. The colors are warm, bold without being offensive and the furniture, furniture undoubtedly of Misha’s own make, is lived in, the lines softer but more whimsical than the work he’s seen in clients’ homes.
And Jensen, not the jaded designer or the professional critic and maestro of living spaces, but the Jensen he rarely if ever lets out in public, that Jensen loves it.
Without ever having said a word to Misha beyond his name and a long-forgotten smattering of small talk, Jensen knows him. At least, the heart of him. This is nothing like the barren structures he’s used to working with, filled with the very best in mass-produced furnishings but zero personality. It won’t take him two weeks or six lunch meetings to figure out who he’s dealing with or how to reflect the uniqueness of them in his design. Misha is an open book.
“Huh,” is all he says aloud, and the gatekeeper laughs, sharp and crackling but no less genuine for it.
“Not what you expected?” she asks and waves him over to an oddly-shaped piece too small to be a loveseat but too big to be an arm chair that sits in a corner by the door.
“I didn’t expect anything,” Jensen answers, honestly. “But my townhouse looks nothing like the spaces I design, so it’d be hypocritical of me to be surprised.”
She eyes him as if she’s working out a particularly difficult math problem before extending her hand.
“I’m Margot,” she says. “Sorry for the theatrics, but Misha guards what privacy he can keep for as long as he can keep it.”
“I understand completely and appreciate the opportunity. I realize I’m not going about this the right way.”
“Au contraire mon frère.” Margot smiles, a secret thing with no obvious meaning, and shoves him towards the chair. “Around here, a chance not taken is la petit mort. Not the pleasurable kind. Now stay,” she adds, “I’ll go see what I’m supposed to do with you.”
Then in a swirl of multi-colored skirt, she turns and descends the half flight of stairs onto the workshop floor, leaving Jensen blissfully unattended to explore the landing. He doesn’t sit, though he knows he should. There’s too much to take in.
The walls are covered, floor to ceiling, with snapshots and postcards. A dizzying array of fabrics, beading, and trimmings tacked up between the detritus of a life fully lived - a napkin from a patisserie in France, the program for a bullfight staged in Madrid, glossy pamphlets for the world’s biggest ball of twine and Rock City next to maps for Machu Picchu and Varanasi. They all seem to have gone yellow around the edges and Jensen can’t tell if they’re aged by time or wear or if it’s just a trick of the light and the ochre color of the wall beneath. Tall barrister book cases flank the door, the typically plain panes of glass replaced with a subtly shaded green. It lends them an earthy look without obscuring the framed pictures and trinkets scattered on the shelves beyond.
It makes Jensen wonder what Misha’s home looks like, or his office on Wacker. This, clearly, is not for public consumption and curious as he is, it feels wrong to have been allowed access to it.
Down in the workshop proper, the music cuts off abruptly. Jensen only notices in its absence and in the raised voices that fill the silence left behind. Margot’s clipped French vies for dominance with what Jensen can only assume is Misha’s baritone, and the words get lost in translation, garbled save one in every twenty. He leans down, ducking under the gentle slope of the ceiling to see and after a quick scan, finds Margot with her hands planted on her hips, a dark head bowed beside her.
She launches into another unintelligible tirade, her neck and chest flushed as she slaps Jensen’s card on the work table, her face softening with some emotion Jensen can’t read when Misha barks, “Enough,” and jerks the pencil out from behind his ear. Jensen watches him scribble and hand the card back, stomach lurching into his throat when Misha’s gaze lands on him, lingering as if he’d known Jensen was there all along. A smile twitches at the corner of Misha’s mouth, so brief Jensen thinks he might have imagined it, and then he looks away.
Margot bends to plant a chaste, almost motherly kiss on Misha’s cheek, and Misha rolls his eyes, shooing her away before he returns to his work, nimble fingers stroking wood-grain like a sculptor seeking to release his art from a slab of stubborn marble. Jensen admires him for it, treating the materials with as much or more respect than he treats his clientele. He wishes he could stay to watch, but if he stands here any longer than he already has, he’ll be busted a second time and Margot seems less forgiving than Misha. Just as her clogs clunk at the bottom step, Jensen falls into the chair he’s supposed to have been stationed in and settles for a second just so she can see him stand.
“Well,” she says, “he’ll be busy the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, but I’ve convinced him to have dinner with you. To at least hear you out.”
And Jensen could kiss her. Does, in fact, one impulsive, joyful peck on each cheek that makes the laughter of a much younger Margot bubble up and fizz on the air.
“I owe you,” he says, jaw aching with the ferocity of his grin because it’s not over yet. He’s still got a shot. “Anything,” Jensen continues, sliding a second card out of his pocket to give her. “Just call.”
Margot smiles that secret smile again and folds the unmarked card back into his hand. The one that Misha scrawled on goes into the pocket of his dress shirt. She pats it as if it’s precious.
“Keep your favors, Mr. Ackles,” she says, “Or if you must, do me the kindness of not being fashionably late tonight. And order a bottle of the 2002 Clos Trimoulet, it’s his favorite.”
“That, I can do, mademoiselle Margot,” Jensen answers, feeling hope bloom bright for the first time in what has been a very long week. “Thank you.”
A gust of steamy summer heat meets him when he opens the door, sticking in his nose and throat. Jensen has a sixth sense for when he’s overstayed his welcome. He hasn’t - yet. But to linger any longer would be tempting fate and he hasn’t climbed the ladders he’s climbed by being foolish. Margot clasps her hands together, answering his nod of farewell as he steps outside. And if Jensen didn’t know better, he’d swear that he hears her whisper, “No, thank you,” as the door shuts behind him. He chalks it up to an overactive imagination and the renewed assault the outside world has launched on his senses.
Anxious, he tugs the card out not five paces from the stoop, the slanted sloppy letters spelling out Drawing Room and 8PM.
Loosely translated, it means time to kill and calls to make.
He thumbs his phone awake to get started.
***
The restaurant itself is a study in clean lines, natural colors and materials, each chair custom made and covered in a cognac-colored velvet that might have been ridiculous if not for the complementary textures. Somehow, it conveys elegance without risking pretension, comfort in spite of the clearly upscale leanings. Fine but not sacrosanct. He heeds Margot’s advice, of course, both in arriving early and ordering up a bottle of the finest, Misha’s favorite. By the time Misha shows, Jensen’s already made himself comfortable, wedged into the corner of yet another oddly-shaped chair he’s pretty sure Misha designed, a bottle of Clos Trimoulet breathing on the table beside him.
Misha’s ten minutes late, but outside of the damp hair curling against his collar, wild and wind-blown and flipping out in odd directions, no one would know. His shirt, a soft blue plaid, is rolled up to the elbows, his black vest perfectly tailored and paired with grey slacks that appear to have been painted on. And yes, now Jensen remembers why he’d taken it so personally.
Because he’d rather not be forgotten by someone who looks like Misha.
Now’s not the time to wallow, though. He’s not here to gape or pine or drag Misha to the men’s room and suck at the sheen of sweat glistening in the sweet, deep V of skin bared by buttons left undone. He’s here for business.
Misha smiles, wide and bright, and all Jensen can offer in response is his name paired with a handshake just a touch too firm. And that does nothing to help matters, the shape of Misha’s hand clasped in Jensen’s own intoxicating, perfection in its imperfection. All slender bones and finely-tuned muscles underneath skin callused by work and scraped rough by sandpaper. They’re musician’s hands transplanted onto a man who composes his symphonies in bamboo and steel, who uncovers the hidden beauty buried beneath countless layers of paint and laquer. And fuck if Jensen’s animal brain doesn’t whimper with wanting to feel them on him.
“I’m late,” Misha says, no hint of an apology. “There’s a story, but it’s long and incredibly tiresome so I’ll spare you.”
Jensen returns the smile, shifting in his seat because his dick has gotten distracted by the curve of Misha’s hand around the chair back. He blinks and sputters a, “Not a problem,” that he means. Even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter much. He’s subject to Misha’s good grace in this and can only thank Margot for fighting, for giving him a chance even though, in retrospect, Jensen can’t figure out why she did.
As Misha slides into the chair opposite, Jensen pours a second glass of wine, probably - no, definitely - so he can spare himself the vision of Misha’s fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle.
He’s only human after all.
Of course, there are plenty of other things for Misha to do with his hands and the reality is so much worse than the possibility. The gentle bend of his thumb beneath his chin, the absent scrape of index finger across stubble and lip and Jesus he needs to get a grip. Jensen gives himself a mental shake and sets the bottle aside.
Misha leans forward, elbows on the table, voice dipping into an impossible register when he says, “So Jensen Ackles, are you going to tell me what I’m doing here? Or is the plan to dine in companionable silence then go our separate ways?”
Jensen laughs at himself and the ridiculousness of the situation, hoping that Margot steered him in the right direction with the Timoulet as he pushes the wine glass across the table.
“I have a proposition,” he says, and it’s easier to focus on work when he’s talking about it so he continues. “A very, very lucrative proposition.”
“So Margot said.”
Misha hums at the lip of the glass, tongue darting out to catch a drop that’s tried to escape, and Jensen would swear he’s being baited. Somewhere in his long and illustrious career of flirtation, he lost the ability to tell the difference between fucking around and the real thing.
In his own defense, most of the people who come on to him mean it, or do by the time they’re done. But this isn’t the place to answer such questions. Instead of asking them, he rattles off what he’s wanted to since he first stepped foot in Misha’s workshop hours ago.
“I’m looking at a complete seven-room build out. Two bedrooms. A den, living room, dining room, kitchen, and lounge. Two baths with custom vanities and storage.” Jensen watches the gears turn in Misha’s head, his brow quirking as the numbers add up. “It’s one of the high-rise condos in Streeterville, sixteenth floor with a lake view and an, as of yet, neutral palette. The client requested you specifically and has graciously extended carte blanche to both of us.”
Silence stretches between them, taut with promise, and Jensen sips at his wine waiting for it to resolve.
“What’s the catch?” Misha asks finally, and Jensen’s been waiting for the question, knew it was coming.
Their waitress earns him a temporary reprieve - her hip pressed to Misha’s arm, hand draped across the back of his neck with an easy familiarity, like maybe she does it every day. And Jensen realizes, perhaps a bit belatedly, that she might. Misha picked the place. It could be his place, a place filled to brimming with loyalists, lovers, and friends. Jensen doesn’t know what, if anything, to feel about that.
“And just who is this tall and tasty morsel,” she says, wide blue eyes hungry and unabashed about it. If he was at all interested in the fairer sex, Jensen could be interested in her. Long, lean lines and confidence wrapped up around a smirk that needs to be registered as a deadly weapon.
Misha smiles again, fleeting, and not with his eyes. There’s an undertow to it, shadows where there shouldn’t be. But they’re not tangible enough for Jensen to decrypt, not yet. So he holds out his hand when Misha says, “Lauren,” and she extends hers when he says, “Jensen,” and they shake awkwardly around the oil lamp between them.
“Jensen,” she echoes, tongue rolling lazily over his name, sultry as the summer outside. Then she pauses, breath hitching and gaze shot skyward with some unknowable recognition, and Jensen watches her watch Misha’s fingers tap-tap-tap the tabletop.
Clearly, there’s something he’s missing. And because nothing makes him quite as childish as being on the outside of an inside joke, Jensen clears his throat and says, “Um. So, the specials?”
Lauren dutifully relays the lengthy list to include a grapefruit-based cocktail and specialty sweetbreads that are way too heavy to be serving this time of year, but all Jensen can focus on is her carefully maintained French tips and the way they rake through the short hairs behind Misha’s ear. He orders a sirloin and salad on auto-pilot, only blinking back to himself when she disappears without further instructions.
“Aren’t you eating?” Jensen asks, fussing with the napkin in his lap to keep from staring.
“It’s Thursday,” Misha says plainly, then tilts the last three swallows of wine down his throat as if such a statement requires no further explanation. The arched brow is a reflex, one Jensen can’t control and off it Misha sighs, and adds, “I may have been here a time or ten. Unofficially, they have shepherd’s pie on Thursday night.”
Jensen throws back the last of his wine too, savoring the underlying burn as he pours a second round. “Good to know,” he says. “In case of, y’know, a shepherd pie emergency.”
“Mock all you want,” Misha deadpans. “You’ll see. Unfortunately for you, I’m currently disinclined to share.”
It catches Jensen off-guard, the easy banter pushing at the boundaries of their barely there professional relationship and dragging with it whatever notions he’d had about the Misha who couldn’t even remember his name. When slotted in alongside the other behavioral oddities he’s been subject to today, it doesn’t make sense necessarily, but it’s beginning to.
“So…” Jensen starts, suddenly awkward.
Misha cuts him a break, steering the conversation back to where they began with a deft hand, saying, “I think you were getting ready to explain why this silk purse you’re dropping in my lap is actually a sow’s ear.”
“Yeah, about that,” he says, steeling himself for the answer he knows will come. “She wants to take delivery on August 1st.”
To his credit, Misha doesn’t react. It isn’t a no, but it also isn’t a yes. Wait staff bustles back and forth, plates clank, a couple two tables over bursts into infectious giggles, but Misha simply stares at the translucent bruise of liquid swirling steadily at the bottom of his glass, complacent. The pause looms, pregnant with Jensen’s expectations and the acid burning up his throat, and he’s this close to turning it into a joke when Misha finally cracks.
“What you’re saying is, your client is insane.”
“Colette is…” The problem lies in finding an honest word for Mrs. Hastings that doesn’t needlessly vilify. There isn’t one, and after scant seconds, Jensen gives up hunting. “Think I’ll just stick with insane,” Jensen says, smiling at the answering quirk of Misha’s mouth. “Driven, maybe. If only she had a noble goal, she’d be a force to reckon with.”
Misha shrugs. “All the best people are a little crazy,” he says, and when he leans back in his chair, the line of his neck changes, sweet and almost touchable. Jensen busies himself confirming the cleanliness of his steak knife.
“In a world of ideals, I’d tend to agree,” Jensen replies, thumbing at the water spots spattered on the blade. “It seems silly to court insanity though, given the cess pool of high society neuroses I’m subjected to without even trying.”
And yes, he did just say that out loud.
Misha squints at him, suddenly restless and picking at a run in the tablecloth. God help him, Jensen finds it endearing. “So why do what you do?” he asks. “Surely there are less artificial lines of work for someone with your skillset.”
“This is what I’m good at,” Jensen answers, stalling with a sip of wine as Misha’s features smooth through neutral on the way to curious, ever watchful. “I’m not pretentious enough to consider it a calling, but design is what I love and I want to do it well. Every profession has drawbacks. If I wasn’t dealing with the lunacy of the entitled jet-set, it’d be something else. So far, one still cancels out the other.”
It’s more candid than he should be with someone he’s just met, not matter how much he feels like he knows them. But Misha has that way about him, a stillness and air of active listening that could be construed as too intense if the attention was unwarranted, unwanted. In Jensen’s case, it isn’t.
Their food arrives, plates placed unobtrusively as his gut flips, the scent of steak turning it noisy. Busy as he’s been, he hadn’t thought to eat and the Thai feast from this afternoon has long ago taken its leave. Propriety dictates he wait for Misha, but good manners don’t stand a chance in the face of a sirloin that smells like this sirloin smells.
“That wasn’t bullshit,” Misha says, finally, and Jensen’s mouthful of meat saves him the indignity of asking. “Impassioned. Possibly a little defeatist. But not bullshit. I’m pleasantly surprised.”
“You expected it to be?”
“I deal with designers every day, Jensen. The vast majority of them are image-conscious snakes who kiss my ass because I add a couple zeros to their commission check. They don’t care about the client. And they sure as hell don’t care about the product.”
“Generalize much?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t? We’ve met before. Three, maybe four times. And yet, you introduced yourself like we’re complete strangers. That’s more than enough evidence to build an assumption around.” Misha pauses, fork suspended over his entrée and expression distant. “I bestow the benefit of my doubt where it’s due.”
“Five,” Jensen says, swallowing thickly around a bite of steak that’s gone chewy and tasteless on his tongue. Irony, it seems, is still a capricious bitch, his misplaced attempts at social grace barking back to bite him right in the ass. At least this means he’s not as forgettable as he’d feared. Small favors.
“Five what?” Misha asks, finally breaking the crust on his shepherd’s pie, sending a fragrant cloud of steam wafting Jensen’s direction that makes his stomach growl anew.
Jensen coughs, chasing the lump in his throat with a gulp of wine.
“Five times. We’ve met five times.” It’s both a futile and juvenile point to make, but he’s carried it long enough he doesn’t care. “Six if you count today.”
The motion of Misha’s jaw slows, then stops as he huffs a breath through his nose and swallows. “Touché,” he says, waving his fork wildly. “Glad neither of us is an asshole.”
The words fall soft and for some inexplicable reason, Jensen relaxes. Whether it’s the wine working in his system or the fact that Misha’s not the pretty but incorrigible dick he’d built up in his head, Jensen couldn’t say for sure. Misha’s interesting and a damn sight more real than half the folks he comes up against in the biz, and Jensen feels like he owes Misha more than a façade.
So he takes a chance, says, “Not so fast,” with a grin that makes his gums ache, and does his best to just be Jensen. “Jury’s still out on you, my man. I’m not convinced.”
Misha laughs like he means it - a dark, playful outburst that twists up Jensen’s spine, makes his hair try to stand on end. Silverware rattles when Misha pounds his fist against the table, and Jensen’s forced to rescue his glass before it overturns.
“Remind me to send Margot a fruit basket,” he says, sucking in a shuddering breath. “Not every day that someone calls me an asshole on the heels of asking me for a favor. Especially not an impossible one.”
Jensen feels heat in his face, crawling up the back of his neck, and he wonders if he’s misjudged, if he’s fucked up whatever tiny chance he’d had at saving his ass and the account.
But Misha continues without waiting for a response. “I’ll give you that, Jensen Ackles, you’re something else,” he says, and for a second there’s heat in his eyes, a guttered longing that wasn’t there before. Or if it was, it was tucked in behind the sarcasm and deflection and humor, hidden beneath the unfamiliar armor of Misha’s slipshod making.
All of a sudden, everything makes sense.
Knowledge flares bright and hot, not in his gut or his head, but in his groin. The subtle shape of Misha’s lips moving as he mouths the rim of his goblet, the curve of his thumb as he swipes absently behind, the fan of kohl-colored lashes against Misha’s cheeks as he reapplies himself to his dinner.
Misha wants him.
Sure, it may be in the abstract. Has to be because they don’t really know each other beyond pleasantries and Jensen’s fumbling attempt at a career-saving Hail Mary. Nevertheless.
Were he a different manner of man, he’d take advantage - wind Misha up with innuendo and promises, touch him with a practiced indifference that loosely translates to affection through the lens of desire. In another life, the life he’d had before he was old enough to know better, he would have. No regrets. No prisoners. Contract serviced. Misha discarded. And he’d have crowed his triumph from the rooftops as he did it.
Age has taught him more than patience, and he’s ashamed to have that reckless, manipulative creature still lurking in his memories, waiting for a chance to pounce. That’s not who he is anymore, and the dangerous reality is that he wants Misha too. More than that, Jensen likes him, even admires the quiet authenticity lurking under his unrepentant eccentricity.
So when Misha says, “Jensen,” like it’s a question, his concern ringing clear in the awkward silence that’s settled between them, Jensen knows.
Misha will make this happen, will in fact work tirelessly to ensure it does, if only because the seal’s been broken. Because he can’t hide behind the shade of pretense and ignorance anymore.Because he’s motivated to keep Jensen in his life. Now that they’ve met, really met, it’s a pointless struggle to pretend otherwise - Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity to no end other than his own suffering, his own stubborn refusal to concede defeat.
And really, there’s no need. Because, like it or not, he’s already defeated. They both are.
The chair leg squeaks when Jensen leans to yank his wallet free, the hundred he peels off warm from the heat of his body as it floats to rest atop his unused bread plate. For his part, Misha simply stares like Jensen’s grown antlers, his throat working around a mouthful of food as he swallows and does his best to appear unmoved.
“Why don’t we get out of here?” Jensen asks, once he trusts himself to speak. There’s a need thrumming, urgent and heady, at the base of his spine. It’s terrifying to be this far off script, but life’s too short to deny either of them this thing they both clearly want. “I’ve got some sketches,” he says, a white lie he’ll forgive himself for tomorrow. “I’d like you to see them before you tell me to fuck off for good.”
Eyes narrowed, Misha presses napkin to mouth, considering. “I never said no,” he protests, the cloth dumped unceremoniously in what remains of his shepherd’s pie an unspoken consent. “But sure. I’ve got a rush order to finish anyway. Had to wait for the filler to set before I could sand and stain. I was headed back to the shop after dinner to finish.”
“Awesome,” Jensen says, pushing his way past Misha and towards the door. The last thing he wants to do is talk himself out of this. And he so easily could. “Did you drive or do we need a cab?”
He can hear the suspicion in Misha’s tone when he says, “My car’s in the side lot,” but it’s tempered with amusement, so Jensen figures he hasn’t freaked the guy out completely.
But oh, Misha’s hands. Misha’s hands. Tugging his vest back into place, fumbling keys out of his pocket, curling over the gearshift and then smoothing across the steering wheel. It’s too much. Too fucking much and Jensen has to slam his eyes shut, nails to palm to keep from doing something really stupid. He spends most of the four minute trip alternately talking himself into and out of molesting Misha as soon as they hit the door. Because knowing, even if it’s just a supposition based on body language, knowing that this wild, untouchable, unfathomable creature wants him apparently short circuits his higher brain functions.
Soon enough, though, they’re rolling in through a bay door in the back, metal shutter clanging closed behind them as the deep dark gives way to the glow of strategically-placed fluorescents.
Jensen doesn’t offer, but eventually Misha asks, “You okay?” a furrow lodged between his brows that pulls a laugh, unwilling, from Jensen’s lungs.
“I’m great,” he answers, levering himself out of the car. Again, cool air hits him like a slap to the face, the lack of humidity sucking all the moisture from his mouth. Down in the shop, it smells of pine and turpentine threaded through with an undercurrent of baked glaze. A fine layer of sawdust coats every horizontal surface, tiny multi-colored drifts gathering in corners and turning his leather-soled shoes into a hazard. Misha flips a bank of switches and more lights sputter to life overhead. Jensen watches him move, catlike, amongst the tables and deconstructed pieces of furniture, touching each unfinished work like he’s greeting an old friend.
If anything, it makes Jensen ache more, each step in Misha’s wake a compulsion. And here, there’s no reason beyond fear for restraint, no weight but the permanence of this moment if he fucks it up. They’re utterly alone, probably for a quarter mile in every direction, save the security guards keeping the crates in surrounding warehouses, and he wants.
Misha tosses a glance back over his shoulder, his face striped in shadow by a hulking 18th century armoire halfway through its restoration. What Jensen can see of him though, is tied up in coy little tics that betray them both. Because when Misha asks, “So about those sketches,” it’s obvious Jensen’s empty-handed. No leather-bound portfolio or scratchpad stuck under his arm. Not even crude shapes scrawled on the back of a napkin he’s shoved in his pocket.
He’s caught. But that’s okay too.
The doors of the armoire clatter when he cages Misha back against them and Misha lets him do it, lips twisting and fingers twining into the back of Jensen’s jacket, his expression entirely too smug for anyone’s good. Jensen has to ask.
“How long?” he says, nosing in under the slope of Misha’s jaw to lay the words to skin.
Restless again, Misha shifts, and Jensen feels him swallow, the bob of Adam’s apple beneath his lips near convulsive, but he doesn’t try to put distance between them. He just squirms silently, back arched to press closer without actually answering the question.
Jensen sighs and he can smell the wine on his own breath mingling with the scent of Misha’s soap, sharp and clean. “How long?” he asks again, pulling back far enough to see the lie if Misha tries to tell it.
He doesn’t, can’t maybe, but he won’t look at Jensen either, his eyes focused on the empty space over Jensen’s shoulder. And Jensen decides it doesn’t matter. Years or weeks or days. Dragging an unwilling admission from Misha won’t repair his wounded pride, and it might actually hurt this thing that’s attempting to spring up between them - new and tender and so uncertain. So he lets it drop.
“I never wanted this,” Misha says, jaw set and eyes suddenly sharp, meeting Jensen’s unwaveringly. “I was content to ignore you, to be ignored by you.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re not a vacuous dick who can’t remember my name,” he says and Jensen feels it like a gut shot. “Even I can’t persist in the face of an illusion shattered so thoroughly.”
Misha’s fists clench, probably ruining the lines of this jacket forever, but Jensen couldn’t care less when the fabric pulls tight across his shoulders, under his arms, and that urgency echoes, reverberates through the graceful bones of Misha’s wrists as he shudders.
“Am I that transparent?” Misha asks, and Jensen can’t help himself, can’t stay his hand when it reaches out, fingers tucked into the hollow behind Misha’s ear, tracing the line of his jaw and down, thumbing the shallow spurs of collarbone he’s wanted to touch, to taste, all night. And then he does taste, lapping at the dip between them, savoring the maleness of Misha, earthy wood and oil and warmth, like he’s starving for it.
Jensen smiles, plucking his way down the buttons of Misha’s vest, determined in his destination even as he lies through his teeth and says, “Only to me,” like he’d known when he hadn’t. And really it’s because he wants to hear that sarcastic snort he knows will come flatten out to gasp when he presses palm to pants, lightweight wool soft and Misha’s cock surging full, twitching back through the fabric.
“Fuck,” is all Misha manages. There’s a harsh, hollow thunk when the back of his head cracks against wood, and then his hands are roving, lighting Jensen up wherever they stray until they settle uneasily on his shoulders.
Jesus, he’s going to enjoy really pulling Misha apart, later, when they have time and space, when there’s nothing to distract him from his purpose. It’s an odd moment to understand at last what Kristen meant, but he does and it’s disappointing to think that all she still sees is that version of him he’d been, ruthless and manipulative enough to bend Misha to his will with sex. So he’ll make the fucking time, make himself forget that he was ever that asshole, because he does care. Maybe a little too much.
Then Misha moves, tugging him back with a rock of his hips and a hissed, “Jensen,” against his ear. Jensen hears it in more places than one, dick pressing at his fly with wanton little jerks, wetness gathering at the tip even as he ruts against Misha’s thigh like an over-eager teenager.
And finally, finally they’re sharing breath, teeth clacking twice before they find the right angle. Misha’s mouth is a furnace, perfect and slick, moans skittering up his ribcage for Jensen to swallow until he can’t take it anymore, the sweep of tongue and playful nips not enough to hold him because he wants, needs more. His knees protest when he drops, and if Jensen were in anything approaching his right mind he’d worry about the linen, the drifting dunes of sawdust, the oblong patches of dried wood stain splashed against the concrete. Luckily, he’s not in his right mind. The suit’s long gone anyway and even if it wasn’t, it’d be worth ruining to hear Misha choke on his tongue like he’s drowning, to see him arch and twist and feel him work those slender, clever fingers into Jensen’s hair.
His “Yes,” and “Please,” go straight to Jensen’s gut and he’s fumbling fast at button and zip, mouth watering before he even gets Misha’s dick out. Misha bucks, unrestrained, and Jensen slaps his forearm across the span of Misha’s hips, the armoire rocking to a dangerous angle with the force of it. It’s still worth it. Even if the piece tips over and shatters, even if he has to pay for its replacement out of his own pocket, it would still be worth it.
Misha tastes bitter and hot, and the groan that spills from his throat is only vaguely human. He’s needy, thrusting hard against Jensen’s weight as he tongues the vein, tugging hair when Jensen closes his lips around the head to suck. The power Misha gives over so willingly is exhilarating and Jensen takes, relishes receiving it, his hand wrapped tight and working in time with tongue and mouth and in no time Misha’s shaking himself up to that precipice, yanking at Jensen’s hair to let him know.
“Oh, fuck,” he mutters, “I’m gonna -“
Jensen hears that too, revels in Misha’s unraveling and the warm splash across his tongue. Misha folds in on himself without Jensen to hold him steady, spent dick slipping free as he crumples and falls, his ass hitting concrete hard enough force a groan up his throat. What’s more important is the blissed-out look on his face, the curve of his back against the armoire, the way he clutches at Jensen’s jacket and his lips make the shape of Jensen’s name without sound, a benediction he doesn’t deserve.
Jensen lets him have the moment, unencumbered by worldly considerations, and he’s just as efficient in putting Misha back together - cock tucked away, zip zipped, and button buttoned - as he was in taking him apart.
For Jensen, the urge is still there, but the fire’s banked and coals glowing. He can wait, will wait until he leads Misha up the stairs to his bedroom, until he can lay Misha back against his sheets and know he’ll stay.
But Misha has other ideas, his eyes glittering bright when Jensen rocks back and settles in, a stack of reclaimed timber at his back. No, Misha says, “Let me,” with a dark chuckle, tongue flashing pink between his lips and those wonderfully wicked fingers already poised to dance across his stomach. Jensen catches him, wraps his wrist up tight and bites the fleshy heel of Misha’s hand just because he can, because Misha will let him and fuck if that isn’t almost enough. He presses a kiss in behind, and closes his eyes to the feel of Misha’s thumb stroking along his cheekbone.
“Fuck you,” Misha says fondly. “Fuck you and your beautiful fucking face.”
Jensen laughs. He can’t help it. “Later,” he says, “I like to be thorough, and I’m not licking you open on the floor of your workshop. Yet.”
Misha smirks, another fleeting flash of white teeth , but there’s still a sadness there, a wall of doubt or suspicion or distrust, there’s no way to know. And Jensen’s forced to acknowledge his other urges, the ones not tied to flesh. He wants to know what happened. Whether all the globe-trotting paraphernalia up front belongs to Misha alone or if there was someone important once, someone who shoved that caution up under Misha’s skin. It’s too much and too soon, he thinks, but that’s better than the not enough he’s been swimming through, drowning in one-night-stands and bar-bathroom blow-jobs.
Misha’s hand against his cheek snaps him back again, a gentle pat that he leans into unconsciously when Misha says, “Promises, promises,” and scoots closer, knees hooked lazily over Jensen’s thighs.
“Ask anyone,” Jensen murmurs, “I’m a man of my word.” He finally gives into the urge he can’t seem to deny, the one that tells him to haul Misha in. And Misha obliges, easy as breathing, until they’re touching everywhere they can be given where they are and the unfortunate lack of nakedness.
Another shudder takes Misha, stem to stern, and Jensen wishes he knew what it meant. He doesn’t, couldn’t possibly, and his only clue comes in the way Misha tucks in, teeth to neck, and sighs.
“Hope you don’t mind if I hold you to it,” he says.
And Jesus, they’re veering dangerously close to the kind of maudlin that’s not fun for anyone, so he smacks the curve of Misha’s ass, says, “C’mon,” and kisses the patch of forehead he can still see. “Apparently I have to defend my honor by fucking you blind.”
“The humanity,” Misha mutters, wry and dry and perfectly petulant, but Jensen can feel the smile.
“You have no idea.”
He’s loathe to turn Misha loose, but the cross-town trip sort of demands it and Misha looks no worse for wear when they break apart - a little flushed and a little disheveled, but that’s something that sparks warmth in Jensen’s chest that sings out along his limbs. Misha lets him lead them back to the car, and Jensen marks out the paces in reverse, flipping the right switches off, drinking in the haphazard jumble of Misha’s art scattered across floor and table alike.
Misha doesn’t ask where they’re going, not even when the car doors slam shut behind them. But when the shutter rolls closed, the night air heavy with humidity off the lake and the baked in heat of the day, he stops, head swiveled sideways as if to check the driver’s side mirror and says, “Two years. Two. And yes, I’ll furnish the Empress Hastings’ condo, but you’ll have to help me get it out”
Jensen grins and responds the only way he can.
“I can do that.”
“And don’t think this means I’m a pushover,” Misha mutters, glance darting briefly across the front seat. “I was distracted by your - everything.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jensen answers. “Now take me home.”
Misha sighs, knuckles flashing white around the steering wheel, and says, “I’m so fucked.”
If Jensen has his way, he’s inclined to agree.
Author: kriari
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Jensen/Misha
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 9,600
Summary: AU. Misha Collins is a master craftsman with a corner on the sustainable furnishings market. Jensen Ackles is an ambitious interior designer with an even more ambitious clientele. All he’s after at first is Misha’s signature on an impossible contract. What he gets is so much more.
A/N: For madelf who won my help_japan auction. Hope you like the results! Many thanks to blue_fjords and chicklet25 for their beta/alpha/general cheerleading, it’s much appreciated. Any mistakes left are my own.
There are a thousand ways to say no.
Necessity has taught Jensen a thousand more - how to cajole without having to say the words, how to influence with a well-timed shrug or a forceful handshake. More often than not, it works.
Being forced to navigate the entitlements born of wealth and prestige is an occupational hazard he’ll never get used to, a regrettable side effect of carrying the client list he does. He's perfected the psycho-social wrangling it requires, ready to stroke egos where they need stroking and charm his way around their often appalling idea of good taste with a wink and a smile.
That doesn’t mean he enjoys it. Placating them.
Jensen's good at his job, better every day. And while he sometimes resents the time he spends talking people into (or out of) something when he could be doing real work, he still loves what he does. It's a functional art, one he believes in, and he takes pride in the fact that his work directly affects the quality of his clients’ lives. More so than any painting.
Of all the skills he’s mastered, Jensen considers reading people to be his crowning glory - the ability to assess what each client needs, no matter what they claim to want, and then deliver results. It’s why his phone keeps ringing, why his schedule often drives him to tears and insanity, why his card gets passed around at every high society party thrown in Chicago, and why more than half of those parties are hosted in spaces he's designed.
He makes things happen.
As long as he's allowed.
Unfortunately, Colette Hastings stands immune to his charm. And while, under different circumstances, he might admire her pluck, that hard-headedness is all that stands between him and a pretty substantial paycheck. Art or not, he needs to eat.
Mrs. Hastings isn't the worst, but she is new money with everything to prove - the third wife of an aging estate lawyer who’s meandering his way towards retirement by way of the golf course. Their kids, his by blood and hers by marriage, have fled the nest and so the elder Hastings has traded the sprawling estate in the suburban hills for a condo in Streeterville.
The property itself is a designer’s wet dream - each room a beautifully blank canvas with heart pine hardwoods and floor to ceiling glass. The layout’s fluid, open in a way that begs for the scratch of Jensen’s pen to break it into intimate pockets of functional space. He’s not blind. He can see how well Colette’s demands would fit.
Unfortunately, it also can’t be done.
Were it a simple matter of money, there’d be no call for concern. While he maintains nothing but a healthy contempt for schmoozing, all it would take to squeeze another quarter mill out of Hastings is eighteen holes at Cog Hill and dinner at the club. There are worse fates. But it’s not money. It’s time. Given the seemingly arbitrary delivery date Colette’s set for the project, the order should have gone in six weeks ago. For a normal shop with normal staff and an assembly-line mentality, a seven-room custom order would have been a cake-walk. For a craftsman like Misha Collins and his crew of two, working the hours Jensen’s heard they work, it’s laughable.
Colette has her back turned, staring out the window as she leans against the kitchen island, a silhouette cut by stray shafts of sunlight sneaking between the tall buildings beyond. The pile of hair stacked atop her head is a meticulous, undoubtedly time-consuming study in carelessness. She’s dressed in tailored grey tweed with the curve of horn-rimmed frames shadowed on her cheeks. Instead of smile lines etched around her eyes, the corners of her mouth are mapped with the draw of years spent being disappointed.
Jensen understands her, of course, sympathizes inasmuch as he’s able. Over half a dozen lunch meetings and a two-hour tour of the condo, he’s extracted every last bit of information he needs and come to the unhappy conclusion that she’s right.
This place was made for the work of Misha Collins.
So instead of hinting for the fifth time just how impossible a feat it is, Jensen simply says, “I’ll see what I can do,” and turns on his heel at the distracted wave of her hand.
***
It takes Jensen a full forty-eight hours to admit defeat, a fact that he privately considers both a small miracle and an act of completely pointless prolonging. Because in spite of the largely incestuous framework of the Windy City’s design community, Jensen doesn’t know Misha.
Sure, they’ve rubbed shoulders at events and been showcased at the same SAIC seminars. But they’ve also been introduced on five separate occasions. Each time, Jensen waits for a flash of recognition before he extends his hand. It never comes.
Pride keeps him from calling Jason - a friend of a friend who travels in the right circles and owes him for a connection once exploited. He’s been able to work out the where and when through various industry contacts, so it’s just the how that confounds him. No one he trusts knows Misha well enough to offer even the basest insight into how to get a yes when all sources say the answer should be no.
Try as he might to convince himself otherwise, it pisses him off to be forgotten. And while logically, Jensen knows he’s only hurting himself by dragging his feet, he still does it.
He gets it, really he does. As a matter of simple survival, their profession requires the liberal application of selective memory, and he knows he’s faked his way through a second or third introduction in his time. Just as he knows he shouldn’t take it personally.
Shouldn’t, but he does.
Hunkered down in his home office, there’s no one around to notice, much less care. So instead of calling to weasel Jason’s number out of Kristen, he fucks around on the internet and orders an obscene amount of Thai food for lunch before flipping his way through six back issues of Dwell.
Two hours later, with the dregs of his tom yam cooling at his elbow and a stack of magazines stuffed down the side of the already overloaded recycling bin, Jensen doesn’t feel any better. The fact remains that this isn’t high school. He doesn't need to put out feelers to see if his crush likes him back before he asks her to prom, and he doesn't need clique approval to make a move. He’s a professional, an accomplished one, and the idea of cowering behind Kristen’s skirts or clawing on her coattails makes him nauseous.
If he can handle the handsy matrons at the annual showcase, he can sure as shit handle Misha Collins.
Just - not on the phone.
Getting this done means bringing his A-game and Jensen’s self-actualized enough to understand just how much more he can pull off in person. Especially when he works with intent. Besides, looking earnest and desperate trumps sounding earnest and desperate every time.
The cab ride across town lasts longer than he’d like, the backseat steamy with the oppressive heat of early July. He’d forgotten, stupidly, that it’s the Thursday before a holiday weekend and that, as a result, the city streets surrounding Grant Park will be packed with distracted tourists waving turkey legs. Chicagoland traffic signals are only selectively observed at the best of times. During the Taste of Chicago, they may as well not exist.
It takes half an hour to creep down Congress and make the turn onto Columbus, an excruciating extravaganza of sounds and smells that turns the phat thai into a brick in his gut. In the end, though, he's grateful. Because sometime between minute ten and seventeen, with a pig-tailed girl in pink smearing ice-cream on the window, Jensen realizes that he doesn't have a plan. And fuck if he's not going to have to call Kristen after all. At this point he’s willing to weather her enthusiastic ribbing if it means he’s not going in blind.
As they clear the northern end of the park, he thumbs his phone awake, flipping through until he lands on her picture.
He just hopes she answers.
Two rings later, a smug, "Jenny," drifts down the line.
It means Kristen knows something, maybe not everything, but enough. She wouldn't dare call him that unless she thought he needed her.
"Need I remind you, Bell, how much dirt I have on you?" Jensen laughs and scrubs at his chin, eyes the cross-street through the streak of chocolate. "Wheelbarrows," he continues. "Plural."
"Aw, honey. There's only so long you can bark without biting and still expect me to mind." Her laughter tinkles, tinny, through his headset. "Besides, nobody but you cares about my youthful indiscretions anymore. And you need me."
"How the fuck do you even know that?" he asks, incredulous. "Oh wait, I forgot. You're a witch. A bonafide, burning-is-too-good-for-you, witch."
"As flattering as that is, Ackles, I'm not prescient. I just keep my ears on."
"Meaning?"
The cab stops short at a red light and Jensen has to palm the headrest in front of him to escape a black eye. His hand comes away sticky. Typical.
"Meaning, Hastings brought the job to two other designers before she came to you. Meaning, she released them when they told her - honestly - that it couldn't be done." Kristen sighs into the phone and Jensen's known her long enough he can almost see her expression. It's the one that proclaims him a dumbass with a singular sort of fondness only she can pull off. "Meaning," she says, "You're the only fuckwit masochistic enough to take this on and you're calling to pump me for information."
"And?"
"And you can't charm me, Jensen. I know the way you work. Ask, and maybe I'll find a place in my heart that wants to help."
Jensen smirks, but tries to keep it out of his tone when he says, "So were you one or two?"
"That’s not a question you want to ask," Kristen grouses. "Unless you’re in a hurry to be strike three."
Jensen isn’t. He really, really isn’t. The payout on this job will keep him in Oldham for at least a year and, hell, just the chance to forge a relationship with Collins is worth his weight in gold. Collins is it when it comes to high end custom work and runs the only shop in the city who does it with sustainable materials.
Jensen hears himself say, "Please," before he even gives the go ahead for the word to wind from brain to mouth. "Kristen, really. I want to make this happen."
She snorts, unladylike as ever, then mutters a, “Your funeral,” that’s eclipsed by the shuffle of papers.
Colette, despite her many rumored virtues, is also irresponsibly vicious. With her connections, she couldn’t quite ruin him if he doesn’t deliver. It just might be easier to move.
“Remember when the time comes that I hate carnations,” he says, glancing again at the cross-street as a sign whizzes past. He’s running out of time.
“Such a drama queen,” she spits back on a sigh. “Fine. All I have to offer is this: you might be the only one who can get this job done.”
If he could reach through the phone and strangle her, Jensen swears he would. Since technology still hasn’t caught up with his sometimes violent virtual tendencies, he says, “What does that even mean?” instead, and shifts his phone to the opposite ear.
“You’re a smart puppy. Figure it out.”
The cab driver catches his eye in the rearview and flashes a smile, “Sir, we’re here.”
Kristen laughs again, full-throated and genuine and Jensen wishes, just for a second, that it was always like that. It reminds him of when they were first year grad students - unspoiled, unjaded. Back when she’d slip into one of his t-shirts and drape herself across his back after one too many B-grade horror flicks and six too many shots of tequila.
“You’re sitting outside his workshop, aren’t you?” she says, still Kristen. Still his Kristen.
“No time like the present.”
“What am I going to do with you?”
“Pretty much this, Kit-Kat.” The nickname takes a funny roll off his tongue, stale and heavy from years of disuse. He leans forward to pass a twenty through the glass before adding, “You know you’re not my type.”
“Yeah well, I’m also not that naïve anymore,” she says, all the warmth bled from her voice like the wrong switch somehow got flipped. “Good luck, Jensen. Go put those cocksucker lips to use stealing my commission.”
The line goes dead half a second later, leaving him adrift, fumbling at both phone and door handle and wondering what the hell just happened. So much for strategy.
Later.
Later, he’ll call. He’ll assess the damage done and worry about whether or not she’ll even pick up the phone. Then if she does, he’ll take her to Cibo Matto and get her drunk on three bottles of the best merlot they have. Because no matter how cryptic the advice, he owes her.
For now, there are more pressing concerns.
The workshop sits in the middle of a long block - an olive green oasis amidst a sea of squat, grey, featureless buildings. Each window and door is ringed with rich aubergine, the trim work designed to both accentuate and soften the industrial lines.
It says something, Jensen thinks, as he waves away the cab and strides down the sidewalk. Aesthetics are a choice, a decision he’s trained to make, and this building is Misha Collins’ sanctuary, his life blood and passion. Any other businessman would have picked a utilitarian palette and barred the windows to discourage thieves. Here, even though the workshop isn’t a public space, Collins has chosen personality over practicality. And while the color scheme may not be to Jensen’s taste, it certainly makes a statement.
Like the rest of the building, the front door has character. In place of the standard-issue dented steel, Collins has hung an affair fashioned of reclaimed planks and wrought iron. Jensen can feel the age of it beneath his palm, every pit and gouge with a story not yet told - something he misses in the sleek steel and glass of modern design.
The door swings wide as he raises his hand to knock, and he’s forced to snatch his fist back or risk hitting the someone behind it in the face. That someone turns out to be an elderly woman with wild salt and pepper hair. Her glasses hang on a chain around her neck, swinging with the motion of her body, and her frantically-patterned broomstick skirt carries half a dozen different colors of wood filler and putty. She levels him with a cool, blue gaze and waits.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” Jensen says, stretching the word into his trademark grin. Clearly she’s the gatekeeper.
“Don’t mess with me,” she answers, eyes narrowed and arms folded across her chest. The tail end of her voluminous shawl flaps in the breeze, curling against her knee. “I’ve been around the block a time or two, cherie. I know what that smile means.”
Jensen stares at her for a long second, trying to work out some angle that will get him through the door, but comes up empty. The woman takes a shuffling step back, her hand already on the knob to shut him out, saying, “Well if you’re just going to stand there fish-mouthed. I’ve got work to do. Go back to fondling the door if it pleases you to do so.”
“Wait,” he yelps, taking a chance when he sticks the toe of his shoe in the crack of the door before it closes.
She glares at it balefully and then back up at him.
“Miss…” he begins, realizing belatedly that he’s neither asked for nor offered a name.
“Ma’am works just fine,” she cuts in. “Mind removing your stylishly distressed shoe from my threshold?”
Jensen complies, sheepish, then continues, “Ma’am, my name is Jensen Ackles. I’m here to see Mr. Collins about a very lucrative project.”
“Of course you are. Unfortunately for you, we both know that Misha only meets with designers by appointment. And he does so from his office on Wacker. “
Jensen does know. Knew, in fact, before he got in the cab and gave the address, just as he knew Misha wouldn’t be in that office today. Kristen’s not his only contact, just the one most likely to share actual useful information. Whether the method of his madness has been entirely ethical or not, the amount of professional currency he’s expended just to be here means he has to get inside. So if Misha’s assistant won’t respond to charm and she won’t respond to force, maybe she’ll respond to truth.
“Please,” he says for the second time in an hour, digging through his coat pocket to shake one of his business cards free and hand it over. “I’m desperate.”
She wraps herself inexplicably tighter into her shawl and sighs, plucking the card from between his fingers. “Well, at least you’re honest,” she says. Jensen feels sweat bead on the back of his neck and roll in under his collar as she gives him a cursory once-over, smiling when she steps out of the way and disappears, the door swinging open on her heels. “Come in out of the heat, then,” she tosses back over her shoulder. “I can’t promise anything and wouldn’t even if I could, but apparently you’ve got a pair of big brass balls and he respects a man with guts.”
Once inside, Jensen understands the shawl. A blast of cool air kisses his face, seeping through the linen weave of his pants and coat as well as the thin cotton dress shirt that had felt fused to his back not five seconds before. Not cool, cold when compared to the oppressive furnace of sun and asphalt outside, and dry. The door shuts behind him with a solid thump, perfectly square in its frame and the road noise disappears. All that remains is the nearly subsonic purr of the machine controlling the environmentals and a brassy burst of mariachi music from somewhere in the depths of the workshop. The colors are warm, bold without being offensive and the furniture, furniture undoubtedly of Misha’s own make, is lived in, the lines softer but more whimsical than the work he’s seen in clients’ homes.
And Jensen, not the jaded designer or the professional critic and maestro of living spaces, but the Jensen he rarely if ever lets out in public, that Jensen loves it.
Without ever having said a word to Misha beyond his name and a long-forgotten smattering of small talk, Jensen knows him. At least, the heart of him. This is nothing like the barren structures he’s used to working with, filled with the very best in mass-produced furnishings but zero personality. It won’t take him two weeks or six lunch meetings to figure out who he’s dealing with or how to reflect the uniqueness of them in his design. Misha is an open book.
“Huh,” is all he says aloud, and the gatekeeper laughs, sharp and crackling but no less genuine for it.
“Not what you expected?” she asks and waves him over to an oddly-shaped piece too small to be a loveseat but too big to be an arm chair that sits in a corner by the door.
“I didn’t expect anything,” Jensen answers, honestly. “But my townhouse looks nothing like the spaces I design, so it’d be hypocritical of me to be surprised.”
She eyes him as if she’s working out a particularly difficult math problem before extending her hand.
“I’m Margot,” she says. “Sorry for the theatrics, but Misha guards what privacy he can keep for as long as he can keep it.”
“I understand completely and appreciate the opportunity. I realize I’m not going about this the right way.”
“Au contraire mon frère.” Margot smiles, a secret thing with no obvious meaning, and shoves him towards the chair. “Around here, a chance not taken is la petit mort. Not the pleasurable kind. Now stay,” she adds, “I’ll go see what I’m supposed to do with you.”
Then in a swirl of multi-colored skirt, she turns and descends the half flight of stairs onto the workshop floor, leaving Jensen blissfully unattended to explore the landing. He doesn’t sit, though he knows he should. There’s too much to take in.
The walls are covered, floor to ceiling, with snapshots and postcards. A dizzying array of fabrics, beading, and trimmings tacked up between the detritus of a life fully lived - a napkin from a patisserie in France, the program for a bullfight staged in Madrid, glossy pamphlets for the world’s biggest ball of twine and Rock City next to maps for Machu Picchu and Varanasi. They all seem to have gone yellow around the edges and Jensen can’t tell if they’re aged by time or wear or if it’s just a trick of the light and the ochre color of the wall beneath. Tall barrister book cases flank the door, the typically plain panes of glass replaced with a subtly shaded green. It lends them an earthy look without obscuring the framed pictures and trinkets scattered on the shelves beyond.
It makes Jensen wonder what Misha’s home looks like, or his office on Wacker. This, clearly, is not for public consumption and curious as he is, it feels wrong to have been allowed access to it.
Down in the workshop proper, the music cuts off abruptly. Jensen only notices in its absence and in the raised voices that fill the silence left behind. Margot’s clipped French vies for dominance with what Jensen can only assume is Misha’s baritone, and the words get lost in translation, garbled save one in every twenty. He leans down, ducking under the gentle slope of the ceiling to see and after a quick scan, finds Margot with her hands planted on her hips, a dark head bowed beside her.
She launches into another unintelligible tirade, her neck and chest flushed as she slaps Jensen’s card on the work table, her face softening with some emotion Jensen can’t read when Misha barks, “Enough,” and jerks the pencil out from behind his ear. Jensen watches him scribble and hand the card back, stomach lurching into his throat when Misha’s gaze lands on him, lingering as if he’d known Jensen was there all along. A smile twitches at the corner of Misha’s mouth, so brief Jensen thinks he might have imagined it, and then he looks away.
Margot bends to plant a chaste, almost motherly kiss on Misha’s cheek, and Misha rolls his eyes, shooing her away before he returns to his work, nimble fingers stroking wood-grain like a sculptor seeking to release his art from a slab of stubborn marble. Jensen admires him for it, treating the materials with as much or more respect than he treats his clientele. He wishes he could stay to watch, but if he stands here any longer than he already has, he’ll be busted a second time and Margot seems less forgiving than Misha. Just as her clogs clunk at the bottom step, Jensen falls into the chair he’s supposed to have been stationed in and settles for a second just so she can see him stand.
“Well,” she says, “he’ll be busy the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, but I’ve convinced him to have dinner with you. To at least hear you out.”
And Jensen could kiss her. Does, in fact, one impulsive, joyful peck on each cheek that makes the laughter of a much younger Margot bubble up and fizz on the air.
“I owe you,” he says, jaw aching with the ferocity of his grin because it’s not over yet. He’s still got a shot. “Anything,” Jensen continues, sliding a second card out of his pocket to give her. “Just call.”
Margot smiles that secret smile again and folds the unmarked card back into his hand. The one that Misha scrawled on goes into the pocket of his dress shirt. She pats it as if it’s precious.
“Keep your favors, Mr. Ackles,” she says, “Or if you must, do me the kindness of not being fashionably late tonight. And order a bottle of the 2002 Clos Trimoulet, it’s his favorite.”
“That, I can do, mademoiselle Margot,” Jensen answers, feeling hope bloom bright for the first time in what has been a very long week. “Thank you.”
A gust of steamy summer heat meets him when he opens the door, sticking in his nose and throat. Jensen has a sixth sense for when he’s overstayed his welcome. He hasn’t - yet. But to linger any longer would be tempting fate and he hasn’t climbed the ladders he’s climbed by being foolish. Margot clasps her hands together, answering his nod of farewell as he steps outside. And if Jensen didn’t know better, he’d swear that he hears her whisper, “No, thank you,” as the door shuts behind him. He chalks it up to an overactive imagination and the renewed assault the outside world has launched on his senses.
Anxious, he tugs the card out not five paces from the stoop, the slanted sloppy letters spelling out Drawing Room and 8PM.
Loosely translated, it means time to kill and calls to make.
He thumbs his phone awake to get started.
***
The restaurant itself is a study in clean lines, natural colors and materials, each chair custom made and covered in a cognac-colored velvet that might have been ridiculous if not for the complementary textures. Somehow, it conveys elegance without risking pretension, comfort in spite of the clearly upscale leanings. Fine but not sacrosanct. He heeds Margot’s advice, of course, both in arriving early and ordering up a bottle of the finest, Misha’s favorite. By the time Misha shows, Jensen’s already made himself comfortable, wedged into the corner of yet another oddly-shaped chair he’s pretty sure Misha designed, a bottle of Clos Trimoulet breathing on the table beside him.
Misha’s ten minutes late, but outside of the damp hair curling against his collar, wild and wind-blown and flipping out in odd directions, no one would know. His shirt, a soft blue plaid, is rolled up to the elbows, his black vest perfectly tailored and paired with grey slacks that appear to have been painted on. And yes, now Jensen remembers why he’d taken it so personally.
Because he’d rather not be forgotten by someone who looks like Misha.
Now’s not the time to wallow, though. He’s not here to gape or pine or drag Misha to the men’s room and suck at the sheen of sweat glistening in the sweet, deep V of skin bared by buttons left undone. He’s here for business.
Misha smiles, wide and bright, and all Jensen can offer in response is his name paired with a handshake just a touch too firm. And that does nothing to help matters, the shape of Misha’s hand clasped in Jensen’s own intoxicating, perfection in its imperfection. All slender bones and finely-tuned muscles underneath skin callused by work and scraped rough by sandpaper. They’re musician’s hands transplanted onto a man who composes his symphonies in bamboo and steel, who uncovers the hidden beauty buried beneath countless layers of paint and laquer. And fuck if Jensen’s animal brain doesn’t whimper with wanting to feel them on him.
“I’m late,” Misha says, no hint of an apology. “There’s a story, but it’s long and incredibly tiresome so I’ll spare you.”
Jensen returns the smile, shifting in his seat because his dick has gotten distracted by the curve of Misha’s hand around the chair back. He blinks and sputters a, “Not a problem,” that he means. Even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter much. He’s subject to Misha’s good grace in this and can only thank Margot for fighting, for giving him a chance even though, in retrospect, Jensen can’t figure out why she did.
As Misha slides into the chair opposite, Jensen pours a second glass of wine, probably - no, definitely - so he can spare himself the vision of Misha’s fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle.
He’s only human after all.
Of course, there are plenty of other things for Misha to do with his hands and the reality is so much worse than the possibility. The gentle bend of his thumb beneath his chin, the absent scrape of index finger across stubble and lip and Jesus he needs to get a grip. Jensen gives himself a mental shake and sets the bottle aside.
Misha leans forward, elbows on the table, voice dipping into an impossible register when he says, “So Jensen Ackles, are you going to tell me what I’m doing here? Or is the plan to dine in companionable silence then go our separate ways?”
Jensen laughs at himself and the ridiculousness of the situation, hoping that Margot steered him in the right direction with the Timoulet as he pushes the wine glass across the table.
“I have a proposition,” he says, and it’s easier to focus on work when he’s talking about it so he continues. “A very, very lucrative proposition.”
“So Margot said.”
Misha hums at the lip of the glass, tongue darting out to catch a drop that’s tried to escape, and Jensen would swear he’s being baited. Somewhere in his long and illustrious career of flirtation, he lost the ability to tell the difference between fucking around and the real thing.
In his own defense, most of the people who come on to him mean it, or do by the time they’re done. But this isn’t the place to answer such questions. Instead of asking them, he rattles off what he’s wanted to since he first stepped foot in Misha’s workshop hours ago.
“I’m looking at a complete seven-room build out. Two bedrooms. A den, living room, dining room, kitchen, and lounge. Two baths with custom vanities and storage.” Jensen watches the gears turn in Misha’s head, his brow quirking as the numbers add up. “It’s one of the high-rise condos in Streeterville, sixteenth floor with a lake view and an, as of yet, neutral palette. The client requested you specifically and has graciously extended carte blanche to both of us.”
Silence stretches between them, taut with promise, and Jensen sips at his wine waiting for it to resolve.
“What’s the catch?” Misha asks finally, and Jensen’s been waiting for the question, knew it was coming.
Their waitress earns him a temporary reprieve - her hip pressed to Misha’s arm, hand draped across the back of his neck with an easy familiarity, like maybe she does it every day. And Jensen realizes, perhaps a bit belatedly, that she might. Misha picked the place. It could be his place, a place filled to brimming with loyalists, lovers, and friends. Jensen doesn’t know what, if anything, to feel about that.
“And just who is this tall and tasty morsel,” she says, wide blue eyes hungry and unabashed about it. If he was at all interested in the fairer sex, Jensen could be interested in her. Long, lean lines and confidence wrapped up around a smirk that needs to be registered as a deadly weapon.
Misha smiles again, fleeting, and not with his eyes. There’s an undertow to it, shadows where there shouldn’t be. But they’re not tangible enough for Jensen to decrypt, not yet. So he holds out his hand when Misha says, “Lauren,” and she extends hers when he says, “Jensen,” and they shake awkwardly around the oil lamp between them.
“Jensen,” she echoes, tongue rolling lazily over his name, sultry as the summer outside. Then she pauses, breath hitching and gaze shot skyward with some unknowable recognition, and Jensen watches her watch Misha’s fingers tap-tap-tap the tabletop.
Clearly, there’s something he’s missing. And because nothing makes him quite as childish as being on the outside of an inside joke, Jensen clears his throat and says, “Um. So, the specials?”
Lauren dutifully relays the lengthy list to include a grapefruit-based cocktail and specialty sweetbreads that are way too heavy to be serving this time of year, but all Jensen can focus on is her carefully maintained French tips and the way they rake through the short hairs behind Misha’s ear. He orders a sirloin and salad on auto-pilot, only blinking back to himself when she disappears without further instructions.
“Aren’t you eating?” Jensen asks, fussing with the napkin in his lap to keep from staring.
“It’s Thursday,” Misha says plainly, then tilts the last three swallows of wine down his throat as if such a statement requires no further explanation. The arched brow is a reflex, one Jensen can’t control and off it Misha sighs, and adds, “I may have been here a time or ten. Unofficially, they have shepherd’s pie on Thursday night.”
Jensen throws back the last of his wine too, savoring the underlying burn as he pours a second round. “Good to know,” he says. “In case of, y’know, a shepherd pie emergency.”
“Mock all you want,” Misha deadpans. “You’ll see. Unfortunately for you, I’m currently disinclined to share.”
It catches Jensen off-guard, the easy banter pushing at the boundaries of their barely there professional relationship and dragging with it whatever notions he’d had about the Misha who couldn’t even remember his name. When slotted in alongside the other behavioral oddities he’s been subject to today, it doesn’t make sense necessarily, but it’s beginning to.
“So…” Jensen starts, suddenly awkward.
Misha cuts him a break, steering the conversation back to where they began with a deft hand, saying, “I think you were getting ready to explain why this silk purse you’re dropping in my lap is actually a sow’s ear.”
“Yeah, about that,” he says, steeling himself for the answer he knows will come. “She wants to take delivery on August 1st.”
To his credit, Misha doesn’t react. It isn’t a no, but it also isn’t a yes. Wait staff bustles back and forth, plates clank, a couple two tables over bursts into infectious giggles, but Misha simply stares at the translucent bruise of liquid swirling steadily at the bottom of his glass, complacent. The pause looms, pregnant with Jensen’s expectations and the acid burning up his throat, and he’s this close to turning it into a joke when Misha finally cracks.
“What you’re saying is, your client is insane.”
“Colette is…” The problem lies in finding an honest word for Mrs. Hastings that doesn’t needlessly vilify. There isn’t one, and after scant seconds, Jensen gives up hunting. “Think I’ll just stick with insane,” Jensen says, smiling at the answering quirk of Misha’s mouth. “Driven, maybe. If only she had a noble goal, she’d be a force to reckon with.”
Misha shrugs. “All the best people are a little crazy,” he says, and when he leans back in his chair, the line of his neck changes, sweet and almost touchable. Jensen busies himself confirming the cleanliness of his steak knife.
“In a world of ideals, I’d tend to agree,” Jensen replies, thumbing at the water spots spattered on the blade. “It seems silly to court insanity though, given the cess pool of high society neuroses I’m subjected to without even trying.”
And yes, he did just say that out loud.
Misha squints at him, suddenly restless and picking at a run in the tablecloth. God help him, Jensen finds it endearing. “So why do what you do?” he asks. “Surely there are less artificial lines of work for someone with your skillset.”
“This is what I’m good at,” Jensen answers, stalling with a sip of wine as Misha’s features smooth through neutral on the way to curious, ever watchful. “I’m not pretentious enough to consider it a calling, but design is what I love and I want to do it well. Every profession has drawbacks. If I wasn’t dealing with the lunacy of the entitled jet-set, it’d be something else. So far, one still cancels out the other.”
It’s more candid than he should be with someone he’s just met, not matter how much he feels like he knows them. But Misha has that way about him, a stillness and air of active listening that could be construed as too intense if the attention was unwarranted, unwanted. In Jensen’s case, it isn’t.
Their food arrives, plates placed unobtrusively as his gut flips, the scent of steak turning it noisy. Busy as he’s been, he hadn’t thought to eat and the Thai feast from this afternoon has long ago taken its leave. Propriety dictates he wait for Misha, but good manners don’t stand a chance in the face of a sirloin that smells like this sirloin smells.
“That wasn’t bullshit,” Misha says, finally, and Jensen’s mouthful of meat saves him the indignity of asking. “Impassioned. Possibly a little defeatist. But not bullshit. I’m pleasantly surprised.”
“You expected it to be?”
“I deal with designers every day, Jensen. The vast majority of them are image-conscious snakes who kiss my ass because I add a couple zeros to their commission check. They don’t care about the client. And they sure as hell don’t care about the product.”
“Generalize much?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t? We’ve met before. Three, maybe four times. And yet, you introduced yourself like we’re complete strangers. That’s more than enough evidence to build an assumption around.” Misha pauses, fork suspended over his entrée and expression distant. “I bestow the benefit of my doubt where it’s due.”
“Five,” Jensen says, swallowing thickly around a bite of steak that’s gone chewy and tasteless on his tongue. Irony, it seems, is still a capricious bitch, his misplaced attempts at social grace barking back to bite him right in the ass. At least this means he’s not as forgettable as he’d feared. Small favors.
“Five what?” Misha asks, finally breaking the crust on his shepherd’s pie, sending a fragrant cloud of steam wafting Jensen’s direction that makes his stomach growl anew.
Jensen coughs, chasing the lump in his throat with a gulp of wine.
“Five times. We’ve met five times.” It’s both a futile and juvenile point to make, but he’s carried it long enough he doesn’t care. “Six if you count today.”
The motion of Misha’s jaw slows, then stops as he huffs a breath through his nose and swallows. “Touché,” he says, waving his fork wildly. “Glad neither of us is an asshole.”
The words fall soft and for some inexplicable reason, Jensen relaxes. Whether it’s the wine working in his system or the fact that Misha’s not the pretty but incorrigible dick he’d built up in his head, Jensen couldn’t say for sure. Misha’s interesting and a damn sight more real than half the folks he comes up against in the biz, and Jensen feels like he owes Misha more than a façade.
So he takes a chance, says, “Not so fast,” with a grin that makes his gums ache, and does his best to just be Jensen. “Jury’s still out on you, my man. I’m not convinced.”
Misha laughs like he means it - a dark, playful outburst that twists up Jensen’s spine, makes his hair try to stand on end. Silverware rattles when Misha pounds his fist against the table, and Jensen’s forced to rescue his glass before it overturns.
“Remind me to send Margot a fruit basket,” he says, sucking in a shuddering breath. “Not every day that someone calls me an asshole on the heels of asking me for a favor. Especially not an impossible one.”
Jensen feels heat in his face, crawling up the back of his neck, and he wonders if he’s misjudged, if he’s fucked up whatever tiny chance he’d had at saving his ass and the account.
But Misha continues without waiting for a response. “I’ll give you that, Jensen Ackles, you’re something else,” he says, and for a second there’s heat in his eyes, a guttered longing that wasn’t there before. Or if it was, it was tucked in behind the sarcasm and deflection and humor, hidden beneath the unfamiliar armor of Misha’s slipshod making.
All of a sudden, everything makes sense.
Knowledge flares bright and hot, not in his gut or his head, but in his groin. The subtle shape of Misha’s lips moving as he mouths the rim of his goblet, the curve of his thumb as he swipes absently behind, the fan of kohl-colored lashes against Misha’s cheeks as he reapplies himself to his dinner.
Misha wants him.
Sure, it may be in the abstract. Has to be because they don’t really know each other beyond pleasantries and Jensen’s fumbling attempt at a career-saving Hail Mary. Nevertheless.
Were he a different manner of man, he’d take advantage - wind Misha up with innuendo and promises, touch him with a practiced indifference that loosely translates to affection through the lens of desire. In another life, the life he’d had before he was old enough to know better, he would have. No regrets. No prisoners. Contract serviced. Misha discarded. And he’d have crowed his triumph from the rooftops as he did it.
Age has taught him more than patience, and he’s ashamed to have that reckless, manipulative creature still lurking in his memories, waiting for a chance to pounce. That’s not who he is anymore, and the dangerous reality is that he wants Misha too. More than that, Jensen likes him, even admires the quiet authenticity lurking under his unrepentant eccentricity.
So when Misha says, “Jensen,” like it’s a question, his concern ringing clear in the awkward silence that’s settled between them, Jensen knows.
Misha will make this happen, will in fact work tirelessly to ensure it does, if only because the seal’s been broken. Because he can’t hide behind the shade of pretense and ignorance anymore.Because he’s motivated to keep Jensen in his life. Now that they’ve met, really met, it’s a pointless struggle to pretend otherwise - Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity to no end other than his own suffering, his own stubborn refusal to concede defeat.
And really, there’s no need. Because, like it or not, he’s already defeated. They both are.
The chair leg squeaks when Jensen leans to yank his wallet free, the hundred he peels off warm from the heat of his body as it floats to rest atop his unused bread plate. For his part, Misha simply stares like Jensen’s grown antlers, his throat working around a mouthful of food as he swallows and does his best to appear unmoved.
“Why don’t we get out of here?” Jensen asks, once he trusts himself to speak. There’s a need thrumming, urgent and heady, at the base of his spine. It’s terrifying to be this far off script, but life’s too short to deny either of them this thing they both clearly want. “I’ve got some sketches,” he says, a white lie he’ll forgive himself for tomorrow. “I’d like you to see them before you tell me to fuck off for good.”
Eyes narrowed, Misha presses napkin to mouth, considering. “I never said no,” he protests, the cloth dumped unceremoniously in what remains of his shepherd’s pie an unspoken consent. “But sure. I’ve got a rush order to finish anyway. Had to wait for the filler to set before I could sand and stain. I was headed back to the shop after dinner to finish.”
“Awesome,” Jensen says, pushing his way past Misha and towards the door. The last thing he wants to do is talk himself out of this. And he so easily could. “Did you drive or do we need a cab?”
He can hear the suspicion in Misha’s tone when he says, “My car’s in the side lot,” but it’s tempered with amusement, so Jensen figures he hasn’t freaked the guy out completely.
But oh, Misha’s hands. Misha’s hands. Tugging his vest back into place, fumbling keys out of his pocket, curling over the gearshift and then smoothing across the steering wheel. It’s too much. Too fucking much and Jensen has to slam his eyes shut, nails to palm to keep from doing something really stupid. He spends most of the four minute trip alternately talking himself into and out of molesting Misha as soon as they hit the door. Because knowing, even if it’s just a supposition based on body language, knowing that this wild, untouchable, unfathomable creature wants him apparently short circuits his higher brain functions.
Soon enough, though, they’re rolling in through a bay door in the back, metal shutter clanging closed behind them as the deep dark gives way to the glow of strategically-placed fluorescents.
Jensen doesn’t offer, but eventually Misha asks, “You okay?” a furrow lodged between his brows that pulls a laugh, unwilling, from Jensen’s lungs.
“I’m great,” he answers, levering himself out of the car. Again, cool air hits him like a slap to the face, the lack of humidity sucking all the moisture from his mouth. Down in the shop, it smells of pine and turpentine threaded through with an undercurrent of baked glaze. A fine layer of sawdust coats every horizontal surface, tiny multi-colored drifts gathering in corners and turning his leather-soled shoes into a hazard. Misha flips a bank of switches and more lights sputter to life overhead. Jensen watches him move, catlike, amongst the tables and deconstructed pieces of furniture, touching each unfinished work like he’s greeting an old friend.
If anything, it makes Jensen ache more, each step in Misha’s wake a compulsion. And here, there’s no reason beyond fear for restraint, no weight but the permanence of this moment if he fucks it up. They’re utterly alone, probably for a quarter mile in every direction, save the security guards keeping the crates in surrounding warehouses, and he wants.
Misha tosses a glance back over his shoulder, his face striped in shadow by a hulking 18th century armoire halfway through its restoration. What Jensen can see of him though, is tied up in coy little tics that betray them both. Because when Misha asks, “So about those sketches,” it’s obvious Jensen’s empty-handed. No leather-bound portfolio or scratchpad stuck under his arm. Not even crude shapes scrawled on the back of a napkin he’s shoved in his pocket.
He’s caught. But that’s okay too.
The doors of the armoire clatter when he cages Misha back against them and Misha lets him do it, lips twisting and fingers twining into the back of Jensen’s jacket, his expression entirely too smug for anyone’s good. Jensen has to ask.
“How long?” he says, nosing in under the slope of Misha’s jaw to lay the words to skin.
Restless again, Misha shifts, and Jensen feels him swallow, the bob of Adam’s apple beneath his lips near convulsive, but he doesn’t try to put distance between them. He just squirms silently, back arched to press closer without actually answering the question.
Jensen sighs and he can smell the wine on his own breath mingling with the scent of Misha’s soap, sharp and clean. “How long?” he asks again, pulling back far enough to see the lie if Misha tries to tell it.
He doesn’t, can’t maybe, but he won’t look at Jensen either, his eyes focused on the empty space over Jensen’s shoulder. And Jensen decides it doesn’t matter. Years or weeks or days. Dragging an unwilling admission from Misha won’t repair his wounded pride, and it might actually hurt this thing that’s attempting to spring up between them - new and tender and so uncertain. So he lets it drop.
“I never wanted this,” Misha says, jaw set and eyes suddenly sharp, meeting Jensen’s unwaveringly. “I was content to ignore you, to be ignored by you.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re not a vacuous dick who can’t remember my name,” he says and Jensen feels it like a gut shot. “Even I can’t persist in the face of an illusion shattered so thoroughly.”
Misha’s fists clench, probably ruining the lines of this jacket forever, but Jensen couldn’t care less when the fabric pulls tight across his shoulders, under his arms, and that urgency echoes, reverberates through the graceful bones of Misha’s wrists as he shudders.
“Am I that transparent?” Misha asks, and Jensen can’t help himself, can’t stay his hand when it reaches out, fingers tucked into the hollow behind Misha’s ear, tracing the line of his jaw and down, thumbing the shallow spurs of collarbone he’s wanted to touch, to taste, all night. And then he does taste, lapping at the dip between them, savoring the maleness of Misha, earthy wood and oil and warmth, like he’s starving for it.
Jensen smiles, plucking his way down the buttons of Misha’s vest, determined in his destination even as he lies through his teeth and says, “Only to me,” like he’d known when he hadn’t. And really it’s because he wants to hear that sarcastic snort he knows will come flatten out to gasp when he presses palm to pants, lightweight wool soft and Misha’s cock surging full, twitching back through the fabric.
“Fuck,” is all Misha manages. There’s a harsh, hollow thunk when the back of his head cracks against wood, and then his hands are roving, lighting Jensen up wherever they stray until they settle uneasily on his shoulders.
Jesus, he’s going to enjoy really pulling Misha apart, later, when they have time and space, when there’s nothing to distract him from his purpose. It’s an odd moment to understand at last what Kristen meant, but he does and it’s disappointing to think that all she still sees is that version of him he’d been, ruthless and manipulative enough to bend Misha to his will with sex. So he’ll make the fucking time, make himself forget that he was ever that asshole, because he does care. Maybe a little too much.
Then Misha moves, tugging him back with a rock of his hips and a hissed, “Jensen,” against his ear. Jensen hears it in more places than one, dick pressing at his fly with wanton little jerks, wetness gathering at the tip even as he ruts against Misha’s thigh like an over-eager teenager.
And finally, finally they’re sharing breath, teeth clacking twice before they find the right angle. Misha’s mouth is a furnace, perfect and slick, moans skittering up his ribcage for Jensen to swallow until he can’t take it anymore, the sweep of tongue and playful nips not enough to hold him because he wants, needs more. His knees protest when he drops, and if Jensen were in anything approaching his right mind he’d worry about the linen, the drifting dunes of sawdust, the oblong patches of dried wood stain splashed against the concrete. Luckily, he’s not in his right mind. The suit’s long gone anyway and even if it wasn’t, it’d be worth ruining to hear Misha choke on his tongue like he’s drowning, to see him arch and twist and feel him work those slender, clever fingers into Jensen’s hair.
His “Yes,” and “Please,” go straight to Jensen’s gut and he’s fumbling fast at button and zip, mouth watering before he even gets Misha’s dick out. Misha bucks, unrestrained, and Jensen slaps his forearm across the span of Misha’s hips, the armoire rocking to a dangerous angle with the force of it. It’s still worth it. Even if the piece tips over and shatters, even if he has to pay for its replacement out of his own pocket, it would still be worth it.
Misha tastes bitter and hot, and the groan that spills from his throat is only vaguely human. He’s needy, thrusting hard against Jensen’s weight as he tongues the vein, tugging hair when Jensen closes his lips around the head to suck. The power Misha gives over so willingly is exhilarating and Jensen takes, relishes receiving it, his hand wrapped tight and working in time with tongue and mouth and in no time Misha’s shaking himself up to that precipice, yanking at Jensen’s hair to let him know.
“Oh, fuck,” he mutters, “I’m gonna -“
Jensen hears that too, revels in Misha’s unraveling and the warm splash across his tongue. Misha folds in on himself without Jensen to hold him steady, spent dick slipping free as he crumples and falls, his ass hitting concrete hard enough force a groan up his throat. What’s more important is the blissed-out look on his face, the curve of his back against the armoire, the way he clutches at Jensen’s jacket and his lips make the shape of Jensen’s name without sound, a benediction he doesn’t deserve.
Jensen lets him have the moment, unencumbered by worldly considerations, and he’s just as efficient in putting Misha back together - cock tucked away, zip zipped, and button buttoned - as he was in taking him apart.
For Jensen, the urge is still there, but the fire’s banked and coals glowing. He can wait, will wait until he leads Misha up the stairs to his bedroom, until he can lay Misha back against his sheets and know he’ll stay.
But Misha has other ideas, his eyes glittering bright when Jensen rocks back and settles in, a stack of reclaimed timber at his back. No, Misha says, “Let me,” with a dark chuckle, tongue flashing pink between his lips and those wonderfully wicked fingers already poised to dance across his stomach. Jensen catches him, wraps his wrist up tight and bites the fleshy heel of Misha’s hand just because he can, because Misha will let him and fuck if that isn’t almost enough. He presses a kiss in behind, and closes his eyes to the feel of Misha’s thumb stroking along his cheekbone.
“Fuck you,” Misha says fondly. “Fuck you and your beautiful fucking face.”
Jensen laughs. He can’t help it. “Later,” he says, “I like to be thorough, and I’m not licking you open on the floor of your workshop. Yet.”
Misha smirks, another fleeting flash of white teeth , but there’s still a sadness there, a wall of doubt or suspicion or distrust, there’s no way to know. And Jensen’s forced to acknowledge his other urges, the ones not tied to flesh. He wants to know what happened. Whether all the globe-trotting paraphernalia up front belongs to Misha alone or if there was someone important once, someone who shoved that caution up under Misha’s skin. It’s too much and too soon, he thinks, but that’s better than the not enough he’s been swimming through, drowning in one-night-stands and bar-bathroom blow-jobs.
Misha’s hand against his cheek snaps him back again, a gentle pat that he leans into unconsciously when Misha says, “Promises, promises,” and scoots closer, knees hooked lazily over Jensen’s thighs.
“Ask anyone,” Jensen murmurs, “I’m a man of my word.” He finally gives into the urge he can’t seem to deny, the one that tells him to haul Misha in. And Misha obliges, easy as breathing, until they’re touching everywhere they can be given where they are and the unfortunate lack of nakedness.
Another shudder takes Misha, stem to stern, and Jensen wishes he knew what it meant. He doesn’t, couldn’t possibly, and his only clue comes in the way Misha tucks in, teeth to neck, and sighs.
“Hope you don’t mind if I hold you to it,” he says.
And Jesus, they’re veering dangerously close to the kind of maudlin that’s not fun for anyone, so he smacks the curve of Misha’s ass, says, “C’mon,” and kisses the patch of forehead he can still see. “Apparently I have to defend my honor by fucking you blind.”
“The humanity,” Misha mutters, wry and dry and perfectly petulant, but Jensen can feel the smile.
“You have no idea.”
He’s loathe to turn Misha loose, but the cross-town trip sort of demands it and Misha looks no worse for wear when they break apart - a little flushed and a little disheveled, but that’s something that sparks warmth in Jensen’s chest that sings out along his limbs. Misha lets him lead them back to the car, and Jensen marks out the paces in reverse, flipping the right switches off, drinking in the haphazard jumble of Misha’s art scattered across floor and table alike.
Misha doesn’t ask where they’re going, not even when the car doors slam shut behind them. But when the shutter rolls closed, the night air heavy with humidity off the lake and the baked in heat of the day, he stops, head swiveled sideways as if to check the driver’s side mirror and says, “Two years. Two. And yes, I’ll furnish the Empress Hastings’ condo, but you’ll have to help me get it out”
Jensen grins and responds the only way he can.
“I can do that.”
“And don’t think this means I’m a pushover,” Misha mutters, glance darting briefly across the front seat. “I was distracted by your - everything.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jensen answers. “Now take me home.”
Misha sighs, knuckles flashing white around the steering wheel, and says, “I’m so fucked.”
If Jensen has his way, he’s inclined to agree.