.0111 - Give Me Love Like Her, 'Cause Lately I've Been Waking Up Alone
Jensen/Jared (Jensen/Danneel, Jared/Genevive)
3,296 words
Warning: Infidelity / open marriage
Title from Ed Sheeran
Teaser: He’s standing by the window, quiet as the night itself and more beautiful than Jared remembers him. Partly dressed in light and partly covered in darkness. Jared thinks, oddly, that it’s pretty much how he’s been always seeing Jensen. Just partly...
Sequel to Give a Little Time to Me, We'll Play Hide and Seek
There are snowflakes melting on the fringe of Jensen’s lashes, and water on his mouth. There’s something sad in his eyes, partly reluctant and partly just reconciled, as he stands there at the threshold of Jared’s condo, the hood of his sweatshirt falling across his forehead, the laces on his combat boots untied, drenched and dirty.
Jared knows there’s a disaster just waiting to happen, every day they meet like this. Each night he opens the door to find him standing there, hesitating and waiting, his guilt so evident it’s almost tangible, but here, still.
Jensen’s standing in the middle of Jared’s living room, impatient and uncomfortable, pale in the contrast with the raw red bricks of the wall behind him. He’s quiet, unmoving. There’s this strange darkness in his gaze, both Jensen’s own - reproofs and want - and Dean’s. His pain and secrets, all the dark paths that Jensen’s walked with him and cannot quite shake off. It’s almost petrifying how attractive all of this makes him, along with the dark, tight jeans that Danneel picked, his old Henley, holey in spots, and Dean’s MOC reckless scruff. Years older than when they had fallen into this mess of love and no and yes and can’t, but no less beautiful. He watches Jared watching him, reluctant, like he cannot help himself, his face blank, completely unreadable.
It’s a game. A mind game, every time. A battle of patience and will, of giving up and giving in. One that Jared will lose, he knows, tonight, like all the nights before. Drawn in by Jensen’s inviting, predatory silence and stillness, by the frigid heat in his gaze, the no in each of the words he never really says.
Three months; a pattern of quietness, of limited words and movements. Habits; in touching, speaking, moving. Love and lust. And a dose of self-reproaches, shame, heavier than the emptiness that had been there before. Jensen’s, but enough to drag down the both of them.
Hands in the back pockets of his jeans, Jensen shrugs, uneasy, when his eyes meet Jared’s, for one time too many. “What?” he asks, voice husky, dripping like poisoned honey. There’s annoyance in his tone, layer after layer, impatience, and a tiny, almost unnoticeable shade of fear, worries. A flavor that Jared’s learned to ignore, deny. It’s somewhat easier that way.
“Nothing,” he smiles. “I’m just looking.”
“At what?”
“At you. I like looking at you.”
Jensen rolls his eyes, shakes his head. His tongue flicks out, just the tip, pink and soft, wetting the corner of his mouth. “You plan on doing it all night?”
“I could.” Jared pulls from the door where he spent the last ten minutes just standing, wanting to yield, and, equally, drag this evening into forever, a few hours, at least, and steps towards Jensen.
Jensen doesn’t move, he doesn’t back up a step, but he looks like he wants to. He always does, torn between staying and running, unable to decide. Incapable of choosing one or the other, or focusing on only one of them. She’s there, every night, in every single touch. Like a shadow, an unwanted visitor. Jared wonders, sometimes, if she can feel him, too, when Jensen touches her, when they make love. If she, maybe, likes the forbidden touch of wrong there, a little bit too.
Putting his hand on Jensen’s hip, seeking naked skin, Jared pushes him towards the wall, guides him there, really; smoothly, unforced, his lips bare inches from Jensen’s. He can feel the heat of Jensen’s body, the subtle hint of cologne and sweat, enticing, arousing. So comfortably familiar. “But you wouldn’t let me. Would you?”
Just a few hours, sometimes even less, never more. Jensen is like Cinderella who disappears when the clock strikes midnight. Camouflages, disguises, and charming, colorful tricks that dissipate. Eventually. Always. Masks get torn, colors fade, magic evaporates. Then there’s only a man beneath; wounded, vulnerable. Running.
There are days when Jared feels like he’s hiring a prostitute. Just that dirty and low, completely void. Only, he doesn’t pay (though, maybe if he did, he could make him stay), and Jensen is far from a stranger with a faked name and questionable history. He’s also much more than he’s willing to show, or give, at times like these.
Jensen’s silence, the way he’s looking up at Jared; his eyes a tired, bottle shade of green, lips slightly parted, something like remorse mingled with restiveness in his gaze, the no-answer answer… it is an answer, too. And the only one Jared will get.
Jensen is good with silent answers. He’s always been excellent at saying everything without saying a word, and during the last few weeks, he’s mastered this talent to perfection. He doesn’t want to talk. He’s not here to talk, and Jared has learned, by watching Jensen leave, too many times, that there’s no point in wasting their limited time with one-sided conversations. After all, when he opened the door and let him in, it wasn’t because he wanted to talk.
Every day, they spend hours talking, on the camera, behind. They spent years just talking, keeping distance. This is different. Here, words are just a bonus, an unnecessary luxury. They have sex in silence, they move, communicate without words. Jensen’s departure is always painfully quiet. They have managed to turn their friendship-relationship into deafening silence, and Jared is certain that it’s heading towards a painful crash, but he doesn’t know how to avert it, how to stop. He’s not even sure he really wants to change it, because words could break this, them. Too many words might chase Jensen away, and Jared cannot let him go. Not again.
Jared gathers a handful of Jensen’s shirt, the soft-worn material of his Henley, and drags him resolutely closer, surrendering. Jensen stumbles forward, too easily, his eyes dark and firmly locked on Jared’s lips, his mouth partly open, full of unvoiced objections. His breath hits Jared’s face, hot and heavy, filled with desire and unmade promises, and with the undertow of vigilance and hesitation.
There’s a part of him that wants to fight this, every damn time. Maybe a smaller portion of his mind, of him, but not weaker. Although he’s here for that one single reason, so evident to all of them, he’s still not quite okay with this. Jared thinks he never really will be.
After the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards event, after Danneel’s proposition and their little misstep, Jensen spent days just walking around Jared, saying no more than he needed to and keeping distance, even more obvious than before. It was unnerving, terrifying. Jared was sure that Jensen’s answer would still be no, final and solid, and - as if that alone wouldn’t hurt enough - that his silence would tear them apart. For good.
It was one night at a bar, a few beers, and two shots of Jack, when Jensen’s words started to speak louder than his quietness.
“Maybe we should have asked Clif to come with,” he noted, his chin propped up on his forearm, eyes tracking the lazy swirl of the brown liquid inside his glass in his other hand. “Or Misha. Or… someone.”
It stung. It hurt. “You are that scared to be alone with me.”
Jensen looked up, head tilted slightly to the side, his eyes finding Jared’s, a notch darker and full of everything that Jared thought Jensen would rather hide. “It’s not you I’m scared of.” He got up then, steady, seemingly sober all of a sudden. “I should go.”
“Jens--”
Jensen left, but he didn’t get far. Jared found him crouched by the wall, masked by shadows and the neon lights of the bar, the glowing end of a cigarette dancing around his fingers like a lost firefly. The first cigarette in months, maybe years.
“Do you believe… in hell?” Jensen asked as he pulled himself up, taking three, four steps towards Jared. There was something unsettling in his gaze, openly careworn, tired. Scared. All of his worries and beliefs, all that he had been taught wrapped into one uncomfortable package of a question.
“Only in the one inside of us,” Jared replied as he broke the distance between them completely, leaving just enough room for them to breathe. “In consciousness. And guilt… I don’t believe in Him, not like you do.”
Jensen nodded at that, looking even more torn than before. He stepped back again and took another drag from his cigarette, blowing the smoke up to the starless sky above. “I don’t know what I believe in. Not anymore.”
And there it was, the tiny lines of doubt, like a spider web of cracks in certainty. In Jensen’s conviction, his belief. All he needed was… a little push.
“Jensen…”
Jensen stared at Jared, measuring him, tempting him. “The more I’m trying to say no… the more I feel like saying yes.”
“Then say yes.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“But aren’t you the only one who sees it that complicated? Danneel, she… You know, she would never agree if she wasn’t sure she can handle it.”
Jensen dusted off the ash of his cigarette with the pad of his thumb, then dropped the unfinished piece to the ground, crushing it with the tip off his boot. “But what if she agreed only because she thought that it would happen anyway?”
Jared stepped closer, tasting the smoke in the air in between them. “But we both know that it wouldn’t happen. Don’t we? That you’d never let it happen.” Not without her consent.
There was just a fraction of defeat, of resignation, but it was enough.
The kiss tasted of beer and scotch and nicotine, and the scent of relief escaping on a soft sigh.
“I missed you.” It’s a whisper, a plea for more nights like this, for shorter periods in between them.
Jensen nods, once. Something in his eyes flickers, the sorrow in there getting even more captivating. He takes a breath, licks his lips. There’s a ‘Me too’ just wanting to slip, a confession, fragile and bare, a little too honest to really happen.
Jared wants to hear it, just once, but words don’t really matter. Not when there is Jensen’s mouth, soft and almost too warm, so close to Jared’s own. His hands, at his sides, undecided, waiting. So willing, prepared to yield, but not.
All these nights, every time, he waits. For Jared to break, to snap, to take the first step, or more. He caves in, always, in the end, and he takes, demands, gives everything he’s got. But he can’t be the first to move.
He is a temptation when he’s far, up close, he’s a fire. An unavoidable car wreck. Everything he does, every kiss, touch, movement, there’s passion in there, attentiveness that disperses Jared’s being into burning molecules.
Even now, pressed to the wall, and pressing himself to Jared, he’s like the personification of sin. His lips are open beneath Jared’s, smooth and hot and moist, his tongue teasing, flirting with Jared’s, then withdrawing, making him blindly follow. His hands, sliding down Jared’s chest, leave a trail of slow want in their wake, much darker and insistent when his fingertips brush the inch of exposed skin of Jared’s stomach.
“C’mon,” he says, impatience lacing his tone, his fingers fighting with the belt on Jared’s jeans, almost unable to move. Blanketed by Jared’s bigger body and want, Jared’s knee pushed in between his thighs, his fingers gripping Jensen’s shirt at the sides tight enough to tug it partly off his shoulder.
Jared looks down at Jensen’s hands, pale, long fingers and freckles, at the untanned line on his ring finger that says so much more than Jensen ever will. The necklace hanging on his neck, all the beads, chains and leather cords on his wrists are there, everything, except for his wedding ring. He never wears it, not here. As if cheating was easier without it. And it’s just another thing, another detail driving Jared insane.
He doesn’t space out for long, it’s seconds, no more, but still enough for Jensen to notice, to pause. He glances up, regarding Jared through thick lashes, full lips swollen, toned to bruised pink. “Jay?”
Jared puts his hands on Jensen’s, fingers wrapped around Jensen’s wrists, holding him there. Because he knows he’ll try to run.
“Stay.”
Jensen cocks his head to the side slightly, confused. “I am… here,” he notes.
“Now,” Jared corrects softly. “But how long are you actually planning to stay tonight? An hour? Or two? Just long enough for one quick fucking session between you coming over here and leaving again?”
Jensen looks away, quickly, unhappy; he doesn’t like the word. Fucking. So dirty and cheap. Jared doesn’t know a word that would describe this better.
Jensen makes to wrench his hands free and, after a minute more, Jared lets him. Jensen moves away, immediately, walks over to the window and puts his hand on the window frame, head bowed. Jared watches him, his face reflected in the glass, slightly blurred and warped. Jensen doesn’t look happy, but not taken by surprise either. Jared thinks, maybe he’s been expecting this all along, maybe just earlier, and willing it away. He had to know that this was coming.
He could stay, every night, it wouldn’t change a thing. The girls know, both of them think that that’s how this works. But this is easier. To run, from Jared, from all of this. To run and pretend that it doesn’t matter, it’s just sex. Flesh and lust, nature, nothing deeper, nothing more serious. Staying just long enough to let it happen, and then pretend. Pretend and deny.
“Look, I… I know that this is weird,” Jared starts, hesitantly, sitting down at the edge of the coffee table, a few feet away from where Jensen’s standing. He’s not looking at him, stares at his hands instead, trembling with unfading desire, wanting to touch, caress. “That it goes basically against everything you believe in. Everything you promised. To her. To yourself. But… in spite of all that, you’re here. And every time you leave, I let you go. Because I don’t wanna lose this. Or you. I’m… trying to be grateful for the hour or two you’re willing to stay, but…” He looks up, meeting Jensen’s eyes through the window. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t want more. Because I do. And I’m not talking rings or common vacation in Maui… just a few more hours. One whole night with you.”
Everything about Jensen, the tight set of his jaw, his fingers digging into the wooden window frame, his posture, rigid, guarded, says no. Jared doesn’t know what it is, what’s holding him from running, again, keeping him here, but whatever it is, it’s strong. Because what Jensen really says, is, “Okay.”
But, sometimes, a promise is unpleasantly far from an act, from reality.
Jared is still rather dazed from his orgasm, rivulets of sweat tripping down his skin, hair plastered to his forehead and mouth, a deafening echo of his own heartbeat pulsing in his temples. But Jensen is already up, jeans on. He’s standing by the window, quiet as the night itself and more beautiful than Jared remembers him. Partly dressed in light and partly covered in darkness. Jared thinks, oddly, that it’s pretty much how he’s been always seeing Jensen. Just partly.
He props himself up on his elbows, watching Jensen with some kind of cold resignation. He desperately wishes he could be surprised. He’s angry, disappointed, feeling, again, the painful sense of emptiness creeping its way onto his chest, but not surprised.
“You can run all you want right after. But it won’t make it any less real.”
Jensen sighs and stops, ends up with his shirt hanging off one arm like something dead, and leans heavily against the wall. Resigned. Hips canted forward, jutting hipbones and the flat plains of his stomach; whole body like a sinful invitation. He’s really thin, disturbingly so, more slender than Jared’s ever seen him. Jared can already feel the bruises from hard bones forming on his skin. Jensen leaves strangely shaped ones, Jared fingerprints.
“It’s not like that,” Jensen objects subtly. He lets his shirt drop to the floor, runs a hand over his face. He looks tired, exhausted even.
Jared sits up, hands draped over his knees, clueless, vacant. “Then how?”
Jensen looks down at him, for a moment, too brief, then at the expensive carpet under his bare feet. He doesn’t say how, he doesn’t say a word.
“Why? Because fucking is good - just physical, natural, but staying for the night is just too much? Too… involved? Real? You agreed to this. You struggled, I know that, but you… agreed. Yet all you’ve been doing ever since is running… Why?!”
There’s silence, a long, endless moment of quietness that makes Jared want to scream. Yell. Break something just to burst the growing bubble of it.
Then, “Because I love you,” Jensen tells the window. It’s so soft, so quiet Jared thinks he’s hearing wrong.
“What?” He didn’t mean to, but he’s whispering, too.
Jensen looks at him, eyes shadowed, his whole face protected by shadows. “Because I love you.” Somehow, he makes it sound both like an explanation and a reproach. His voice is shaky, so weak it’s probably going to break. “Because every night I leave, I wanna stay. Because every minute that I spend with you makes me realize that I love you… more. And… each time I look her in the eye, I’m sure that she knows that, too. That she’s always known… Because I’m scared that if I ever stop running, I’m gonna lose them both.” He turns his back to Jared, like a skeleton wrapped in sheets, each vertebra visible, shoulder blades hard and fragile at once, the denim hanging on his hips probably just by a miracle. “That, in the end… you’re all gonna leave.”
Jared doesn’t remember moving, leaving the bed and standing up, he doesn’t recall walking across the room, but suddenly he’s there, arms wrapped around Jensen’s waist, his chin resting on Jensen’s shoulder. “Jen…” Jensen’s skin is still damp, flushed, a few degrees from almost hot, his hair sweaty. Jared presses his lips to the side of Jensen’s neck, kisses the cruel swell of his collarbone. “She’s not gonna leave you. She loves you.”
Jensen chuckles, but it’s not a pretty sound. It’s harsh, dark. “An unfaithful husband? The father of her child who’s more often gone than with them? What’s there to love?”
“You,” Jared replies simply, holding him tighter, crushing Jensen’s whole frame in his massive arms that look even stronger now, enough to hurt. He drops his forehead on Jensen’s shoulder, close to tears he doesn’t want to let fall. “Everything.” One of his hands slides down Jensen’s stomach and lower, stopping just above the line of his jeans. There, right beside his left hipbone is a black tattoo, just a few weeks old. Small, almost like subtitles, easy to cover up, simple. But poignant, undeniable. Two letters J, done in an old handwriting-style. For Justice. And, “One of them is yours”. Jared spreads his fingers over it, possessively, protectively. He can’t see it, but he knows it’s there, and where exactly. “I’m not gonna leave either. I am right here… forever.”
“You left once, too. What should stop you from doing it again?”
“Knowing what a terrible mistake I’ve done. I won’t do it again, I promise… I love you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Just don’t. Please.”
“I hate you. You’re the worst person ever.”
This time, the breath that Jensen lets out sounds nearly like a smile.
He doesn’t stay for the night anyway.
3,296 words
Warning: Infidelity / open marriage
Title from Ed Sheeran
Teaser: He’s standing by the window, quiet as the night itself and more beautiful than Jared remembers him. Partly dressed in light and partly covered in darkness. Jared thinks, oddly, that it’s pretty much how he’s been always seeing Jensen. Just partly...
Sequel to Give a Little Time to Me, We'll Play Hide and Seek
There are snowflakes melting on the fringe of Jensen’s lashes, and water on his mouth. There’s something sad in his eyes, partly reluctant and partly just reconciled, as he stands there at the threshold of Jared’s condo, the hood of his sweatshirt falling across his forehead, the laces on his combat boots untied, drenched and dirty.
Jared knows there’s a disaster just waiting to happen, every day they meet like this. Each night he opens the door to find him standing there, hesitating and waiting, his guilt so evident it’s almost tangible, but here, still.
Jensen’s standing in the middle of Jared’s living room, impatient and uncomfortable, pale in the contrast with the raw red bricks of the wall behind him. He’s quiet, unmoving. There’s this strange darkness in his gaze, both Jensen’s own - reproofs and want - and Dean’s. His pain and secrets, all the dark paths that Jensen’s walked with him and cannot quite shake off. It’s almost petrifying how attractive all of this makes him, along with the dark, tight jeans that Danneel picked, his old Henley, holey in spots, and Dean’s MOC reckless scruff. Years older than when they had fallen into this mess of love and no and yes and can’t, but no less beautiful. He watches Jared watching him, reluctant, like he cannot help himself, his face blank, completely unreadable.
It’s a game. A mind game, every time. A battle of patience and will, of giving up and giving in. One that Jared will lose, he knows, tonight, like all the nights before. Drawn in by Jensen’s inviting, predatory silence and stillness, by the frigid heat in his gaze, the no in each of the words he never really says.
Three months; a pattern of quietness, of limited words and movements. Habits; in touching, speaking, moving. Love and lust. And a dose of self-reproaches, shame, heavier than the emptiness that had been there before. Jensen’s, but enough to drag down the both of them.
Hands in the back pockets of his jeans, Jensen shrugs, uneasy, when his eyes meet Jared’s, for one time too many. “What?” he asks, voice husky, dripping like poisoned honey. There’s annoyance in his tone, layer after layer, impatience, and a tiny, almost unnoticeable shade of fear, worries. A flavor that Jared’s learned to ignore, deny. It’s somewhat easier that way.
“Nothing,” he smiles. “I’m just looking.”
“At what?”
“At you. I like looking at you.”
Jensen rolls his eyes, shakes his head. His tongue flicks out, just the tip, pink and soft, wetting the corner of his mouth. “You plan on doing it all night?”
“I could.” Jared pulls from the door where he spent the last ten minutes just standing, wanting to yield, and, equally, drag this evening into forever, a few hours, at least, and steps towards Jensen.
Jensen doesn’t move, he doesn’t back up a step, but he looks like he wants to. He always does, torn between staying and running, unable to decide. Incapable of choosing one or the other, or focusing on only one of them. She’s there, every night, in every single touch. Like a shadow, an unwanted visitor. Jared wonders, sometimes, if she can feel him, too, when Jensen touches her, when they make love. If she, maybe, likes the forbidden touch of wrong there, a little bit too.
Putting his hand on Jensen’s hip, seeking naked skin, Jared pushes him towards the wall, guides him there, really; smoothly, unforced, his lips bare inches from Jensen’s. He can feel the heat of Jensen’s body, the subtle hint of cologne and sweat, enticing, arousing. So comfortably familiar. “But you wouldn’t let me. Would you?”
Just a few hours, sometimes even less, never more. Jensen is like Cinderella who disappears when the clock strikes midnight. Camouflages, disguises, and charming, colorful tricks that dissipate. Eventually. Always. Masks get torn, colors fade, magic evaporates. Then there’s only a man beneath; wounded, vulnerable. Running.
There are days when Jared feels like he’s hiring a prostitute. Just that dirty and low, completely void. Only, he doesn’t pay (though, maybe if he did, he could make him stay), and Jensen is far from a stranger with a faked name and questionable history. He’s also much more than he’s willing to show, or give, at times like these.
Jensen’s silence, the way he’s looking up at Jared; his eyes a tired, bottle shade of green, lips slightly parted, something like remorse mingled with restiveness in his gaze, the no-answer answer… it is an answer, too. And the only one Jared will get.
Jensen is good with silent answers. He’s always been excellent at saying everything without saying a word, and during the last few weeks, he’s mastered this talent to perfection. He doesn’t want to talk. He’s not here to talk, and Jared has learned, by watching Jensen leave, too many times, that there’s no point in wasting their limited time with one-sided conversations. After all, when he opened the door and let him in, it wasn’t because he wanted to talk.
Every day, they spend hours talking, on the camera, behind. They spent years just talking, keeping distance. This is different. Here, words are just a bonus, an unnecessary luxury. They have sex in silence, they move, communicate without words. Jensen’s departure is always painfully quiet. They have managed to turn their friendship-relationship into deafening silence, and Jared is certain that it’s heading towards a painful crash, but he doesn’t know how to avert it, how to stop. He’s not even sure he really wants to change it, because words could break this, them. Too many words might chase Jensen away, and Jared cannot let him go. Not again.
Jared gathers a handful of Jensen’s shirt, the soft-worn material of his Henley, and drags him resolutely closer, surrendering. Jensen stumbles forward, too easily, his eyes dark and firmly locked on Jared’s lips, his mouth partly open, full of unvoiced objections. His breath hits Jared’s face, hot and heavy, filled with desire and unmade promises, and with the undertow of vigilance and hesitation.
There’s a part of him that wants to fight this, every damn time. Maybe a smaller portion of his mind, of him, but not weaker. Although he’s here for that one single reason, so evident to all of them, he’s still not quite okay with this. Jared thinks he never really will be.
After the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards event, after Danneel’s proposition and their little misstep, Jensen spent days just walking around Jared, saying no more than he needed to and keeping distance, even more obvious than before. It was unnerving, terrifying. Jared was sure that Jensen’s answer would still be no, final and solid, and - as if that alone wouldn’t hurt enough - that his silence would tear them apart. For good.
It was one night at a bar, a few beers, and two shots of Jack, when Jensen’s words started to speak louder than his quietness.
“Maybe we should have asked Clif to come with,” he noted, his chin propped up on his forearm, eyes tracking the lazy swirl of the brown liquid inside his glass in his other hand. “Or Misha. Or… someone.”
It stung. It hurt. “You are that scared to be alone with me.”
Jensen looked up, head tilted slightly to the side, his eyes finding Jared’s, a notch darker and full of everything that Jared thought Jensen would rather hide. “It’s not you I’m scared of.” He got up then, steady, seemingly sober all of a sudden. “I should go.”
“Jens--”
Jensen left, but he didn’t get far. Jared found him crouched by the wall, masked by shadows and the neon lights of the bar, the glowing end of a cigarette dancing around his fingers like a lost firefly. The first cigarette in months, maybe years.
“Do you believe… in hell?” Jensen asked as he pulled himself up, taking three, four steps towards Jared. There was something unsettling in his gaze, openly careworn, tired. Scared. All of his worries and beliefs, all that he had been taught wrapped into one uncomfortable package of a question.
“Only in the one inside of us,” Jared replied as he broke the distance between them completely, leaving just enough room for them to breathe. “In consciousness. And guilt… I don’t believe in Him, not like you do.”
Jensen nodded at that, looking even more torn than before. He stepped back again and took another drag from his cigarette, blowing the smoke up to the starless sky above. “I don’t know what I believe in. Not anymore.”
And there it was, the tiny lines of doubt, like a spider web of cracks in certainty. In Jensen’s conviction, his belief. All he needed was… a little push.
“Jensen…”
Jensen stared at Jared, measuring him, tempting him. “The more I’m trying to say no… the more I feel like saying yes.”
“Then say yes.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“But aren’t you the only one who sees it that complicated? Danneel, she… You know, she would never agree if she wasn’t sure she can handle it.”
Jensen dusted off the ash of his cigarette with the pad of his thumb, then dropped the unfinished piece to the ground, crushing it with the tip off his boot. “But what if she agreed only because she thought that it would happen anyway?”
Jared stepped closer, tasting the smoke in the air in between them. “But we both know that it wouldn’t happen. Don’t we? That you’d never let it happen.” Not without her consent.
There was just a fraction of defeat, of resignation, but it was enough.
The kiss tasted of beer and scotch and nicotine, and the scent of relief escaping on a soft sigh.
“I missed you.” It’s a whisper, a plea for more nights like this, for shorter periods in between them.
Jensen nods, once. Something in his eyes flickers, the sorrow in there getting even more captivating. He takes a breath, licks his lips. There’s a ‘Me too’ just wanting to slip, a confession, fragile and bare, a little too honest to really happen.
Jared wants to hear it, just once, but words don’t really matter. Not when there is Jensen’s mouth, soft and almost too warm, so close to Jared’s own. His hands, at his sides, undecided, waiting. So willing, prepared to yield, but not.
All these nights, every time, he waits. For Jared to break, to snap, to take the first step, or more. He caves in, always, in the end, and he takes, demands, gives everything he’s got. But he can’t be the first to move.
He is a temptation when he’s far, up close, he’s a fire. An unavoidable car wreck. Everything he does, every kiss, touch, movement, there’s passion in there, attentiveness that disperses Jared’s being into burning molecules.
Even now, pressed to the wall, and pressing himself to Jared, he’s like the personification of sin. His lips are open beneath Jared’s, smooth and hot and moist, his tongue teasing, flirting with Jared’s, then withdrawing, making him blindly follow. His hands, sliding down Jared’s chest, leave a trail of slow want in their wake, much darker and insistent when his fingertips brush the inch of exposed skin of Jared’s stomach.
“C’mon,” he says, impatience lacing his tone, his fingers fighting with the belt on Jared’s jeans, almost unable to move. Blanketed by Jared’s bigger body and want, Jared’s knee pushed in between his thighs, his fingers gripping Jensen’s shirt at the sides tight enough to tug it partly off his shoulder.
Jared looks down at Jensen’s hands, pale, long fingers and freckles, at the untanned line on his ring finger that says so much more than Jensen ever will. The necklace hanging on his neck, all the beads, chains and leather cords on his wrists are there, everything, except for his wedding ring. He never wears it, not here. As if cheating was easier without it. And it’s just another thing, another detail driving Jared insane.
He doesn’t space out for long, it’s seconds, no more, but still enough for Jensen to notice, to pause. He glances up, regarding Jared through thick lashes, full lips swollen, toned to bruised pink. “Jay?”
Jared puts his hands on Jensen’s, fingers wrapped around Jensen’s wrists, holding him there. Because he knows he’ll try to run.
“Stay.”
Jensen cocks his head to the side slightly, confused. “I am… here,” he notes.
“Now,” Jared corrects softly. “But how long are you actually planning to stay tonight? An hour? Or two? Just long enough for one quick fucking session between you coming over here and leaving again?”
Jensen looks away, quickly, unhappy; he doesn’t like the word. Fucking. So dirty and cheap. Jared doesn’t know a word that would describe this better.
Jensen makes to wrench his hands free and, after a minute more, Jared lets him. Jensen moves away, immediately, walks over to the window and puts his hand on the window frame, head bowed. Jared watches him, his face reflected in the glass, slightly blurred and warped. Jensen doesn’t look happy, but not taken by surprise either. Jared thinks, maybe he’s been expecting this all along, maybe just earlier, and willing it away. He had to know that this was coming.
He could stay, every night, it wouldn’t change a thing. The girls know, both of them think that that’s how this works. But this is easier. To run, from Jared, from all of this. To run and pretend that it doesn’t matter, it’s just sex. Flesh and lust, nature, nothing deeper, nothing more serious. Staying just long enough to let it happen, and then pretend. Pretend and deny.
“Look, I… I know that this is weird,” Jared starts, hesitantly, sitting down at the edge of the coffee table, a few feet away from where Jensen’s standing. He’s not looking at him, stares at his hands instead, trembling with unfading desire, wanting to touch, caress. “That it goes basically against everything you believe in. Everything you promised. To her. To yourself. But… in spite of all that, you’re here. And every time you leave, I let you go. Because I don’t wanna lose this. Or you. I’m… trying to be grateful for the hour or two you’re willing to stay, but…” He looks up, meeting Jensen’s eyes through the window. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t want more. Because I do. And I’m not talking rings or common vacation in Maui… just a few more hours. One whole night with you.”
Everything about Jensen, the tight set of his jaw, his fingers digging into the wooden window frame, his posture, rigid, guarded, says no. Jared doesn’t know what it is, what’s holding him from running, again, keeping him here, but whatever it is, it’s strong. Because what Jensen really says, is, “Okay.”
But, sometimes, a promise is unpleasantly far from an act, from reality.
Jared is still rather dazed from his orgasm, rivulets of sweat tripping down his skin, hair plastered to his forehead and mouth, a deafening echo of his own heartbeat pulsing in his temples. But Jensen is already up, jeans on. He’s standing by the window, quiet as the night itself and more beautiful than Jared remembers him. Partly dressed in light and partly covered in darkness. Jared thinks, oddly, that it’s pretty much how he’s been always seeing Jensen. Just partly.
He props himself up on his elbows, watching Jensen with some kind of cold resignation. He desperately wishes he could be surprised. He’s angry, disappointed, feeling, again, the painful sense of emptiness creeping its way onto his chest, but not surprised.
“You can run all you want right after. But it won’t make it any less real.”
Jensen sighs and stops, ends up with his shirt hanging off one arm like something dead, and leans heavily against the wall. Resigned. Hips canted forward, jutting hipbones and the flat plains of his stomach; whole body like a sinful invitation. He’s really thin, disturbingly so, more slender than Jared’s ever seen him. Jared can already feel the bruises from hard bones forming on his skin. Jensen leaves strangely shaped ones, Jared fingerprints.
“It’s not like that,” Jensen objects subtly. He lets his shirt drop to the floor, runs a hand over his face. He looks tired, exhausted even.
Jared sits up, hands draped over his knees, clueless, vacant. “Then how?”
Jensen looks down at him, for a moment, too brief, then at the expensive carpet under his bare feet. He doesn’t say how, he doesn’t say a word.
“Why? Because fucking is good - just physical, natural, but staying for the night is just too much? Too… involved? Real? You agreed to this. You struggled, I know that, but you… agreed. Yet all you’ve been doing ever since is running… Why?!”
There’s silence, a long, endless moment of quietness that makes Jared want to scream. Yell. Break something just to burst the growing bubble of it.
Then, “Because I love you,” Jensen tells the window. It’s so soft, so quiet Jared thinks he’s hearing wrong.
“What?” He didn’t mean to, but he’s whispering, too.
Jensen looks at him, eyes shadowed, his whole face protected by shadows. “Because I love you.” Somehow, he makes it sound both like an explanation and a reproach. His voice is shaky, so weak it’s probably going to break. “Because every night I leave, I wanna stay. Because every minute that I spend with you makes me realize that I love you… more. And… each time I look her in the eye, I’m sure that she knows that, too. That she’s always known… Because I’m scared that if I ever stop running, I’m gonna lose them both.” He turns his back to Jared, like a skeleton wrapped in sheets, each vertebra visible, shoulder blades hard and fragile at once, the denim hanging on his hips probably just by a miracle. “That, in the end… you’re all gonna leave.”
Jared doesn’t remember moving, leaving the bed and standing up, he doesn’t recall walking across the room, but suddenly he’s there, arms wrapped around Jensen’s waist, his chin resting on Jensen’s shoulder. “Jen…” Jensen’s skin is still damp, flushed, a few degrees from almost hot, his hair sweaty. Jared presses his lips to the side of Jensen’s neck, kisses the cruel swell of his collarbone. “She’s not gonna leave you. She loves you.”
Jensen chuckles, but it’s not a pretty sound. It’s harsh, dark. “An unfaithful husband? The father of her child who’s more often gone than with them? What’s there to love?”
“You,” Jared replies simply, holding him tighter, crushing Jensen’s whole frame in his massive arms that look even stronger now, enough to hurt. He drops his forehead on Jensen’s shoulder, close to tears he doesn’t want to let fall. “Everything.” One of his hands slides down Jensen’s stomach and lower, stopping just above the line of his jeans. There, right beside his left hipbone is a black tattoo, just a few weeks old. Small, almost like subtitles, easy to cover up, simple. But poignant, undeniable. Two letters J, done in an old handwriting-style. For Justice. And, “One of them is yours”. Jared spreads his fingers over it, possessively, protectively. He can’t see it, but he knows it’s there, and where exactly. “I’m not gonna leave either. I am right here… forever.”
“You left once, too. What should stop you from doing it again?”
“Knowing what a terrible mistake I’ve done. I won’t do it again, I promise… I love you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Just don’t. Please.”
“I hate you. You’re the worst person ever.”
This time, the breath that Jensen lets out sounds nearly like a smile.
He doesn’t stay for the night anyway.