.0125 - It's Not Like Years Ago, Recklessness in Water
Jensen/Jared (Jensen/Danneel, Jared/Genevieve) - the usual
1,533 words
Title by R.E.M.
For An (darklondonsky) She knows why. I just hope it doesn't completely suck.
teaser: “I… think we just decided to be rational, you know? Responsible.”
Later, Jared will blame it on the moon. On the deathly shade of white light and the strange, undeniable push-pull of its orbiting. On a warm April night... On anything.
Now, it’s just thirst that wakes him up and leads him downstairs, and a dark, lonely silhouette on Jensen’s front porch that he spots from the window.
Jensen’s sitting on the top step of the stairs, leaning back against the wooden railing, one bare foot tugged underneath him. There’s a bottle of Jack beside him and a nearly empty glass in his hand. There’s weariness in his face that Jared’s been seeing lately, for days, weeks, shadows in his eyes. It’s like poorly washed-away make-up, residues of Dean and his wounds and sins that cling to Jensen’s own skin, to his mind, refusing to let go.
Jensen looks up at the sound of Jared’s footsteps, the barely audible noise of rubber sneakers on concrete, but he doesn’t say a word. The tiny smile he offers is tight and forced, more of a grimace.
Jared sits down beside him and knocks his knee against Jensen’s, feels the rasp of soft hairs against the fabric of his sweatpants. “Bad dream?”
“Yeah.” A sigh; tired, raspy.
“Very bad?”
“I don’t know, I don’t remember it.” Jensen brings the drink to his lips and takes a sip. Long and dirty, chasing venom with a poison. His hand is shaking, his knuckles are pale enough to be white, wrapped a bit too firmly and convulsively around the glass.
“Right.”
Jensen shakes his head, looks down into his glass. “It made no sense anyway.” It sounds like an excuse, an apology.
“Dean?” Jared tries. Because, really, if there’s a theme of a nightmare that Jensen doesn’t want to talk about, it’s the Winchester guy. His conviction that it’s embarrassing, stupid.
“Yeah.” Jensen takes another sip, a gulp, finishing his drink in one swallow. “No. No, it was me… And you,” he adds like an afterthought.
“Oh, do tell.” Jared chuckles, but it’s bitter, faked. Because there was a ‘me and you’ once. Before their kids. Before the weddings. There was an ‘us’ with the promise of tomorrow, many of them. But then it ended, disappeared. Jared keeps on wondering where to.
Jensen cocks his head to the side slightly, giving Jared a wry look. “I killed you.” His tone is a lot less dangerous; scared, still, shaky.
“Oh. Oh, that’s… That’s not very nice of you.”
“I ripped your throat open,” Jensen says, looking across the expanse of the midnight-deep lake, somewhere far, lost in his thoughts, in the aftershocks of his dream. “Tore you apart.”
“Well, I’m… sure you had good reasons for that,” Jared shrugs easily, trying to make him smile. Failing.
Jensen’s eyebrow arches up in unvoiced, tired disbelief. He reaches for the bottle to pour himself another drink, but Jared stops him before he can. Jensen’s hand is cold beneath his, thin skin and hard bones of his wrist. “This won’t make it better.”
“You sure?” Annoyance. Tiredness. Silent agreement.
Jared takes the empty glass from him, too, pushes it away. Far enough. “Positive.”
Jensen nods, barely, and Jared realizes, in the sweep of Jensen’s lashes and the unconscious bite into his lower lip, that this is more than just a dream. More than a nightmare.
It’s a night like this, years ago. It’s them. Truth and dare, and a dare that led to a lot more. Nightswimming.
Jared recalls cold water, still and silver, and Jensen’s body so close to his own. Wet fingers at the nape of his neck and a smile beneath his lips. Blinding desire, mind-blowing need. Quiet, muffled gasps, and Jensen’s cock, hard and hot, the only truly warm part of him, pressing pleadingly into his thigh. His hands low on Jensen’s back, sliding down to cup his ass and push the offending fabric of his underwear down and away... Words were overrated, unnecessary. They’d never needed them before, nor after.
Jared shudders, unwillingly, at the memory and the sudden, unexpected flow of want rushing through his body like something animate. When he meets Jensen’s eyes, he sees the same in there. The same unspoken it. Scared, suppressed, denied flashes of yesterdays.
“I’m alright, you see?” Jared says, but it’s a lie. There is a wound, open, infected. They share the identical cut. “You’d never hurt me. Just a dream.”
It should be enough, a look, the face before him, the truth beneath his feet, but Jensen reaches out just to be sure. Blind fingertips on Jared’s cheek, a few loose strands of his hair pushed behind his ear, skin soft and calloused in places, bruised by guitar strings, by prop guns. The contact is familiar, innocent, but so intimate. It makes it so easy to forget.
Jared leans his head into Jensen’s touch and looks up, drowning in black green and craving more. So much more. Everything. When he kisses the inner side of Jensen’s wrist, the protruding veins pulsing with life, Jensen jerks, makes to pull his hand way. He wants to, Jared can feel that fight or flee instinct bubbling just below the surface, but he doesn’t. He stays right where he is.
“You’re so beautiful.” Jared doesn’t think he’s ever heard Jensen’s voice sound so fragile and breakable. Dean’s, yeah, a hundred times, but not this man’s. Jensen doesn’t break easily, and his masks and masquerades only slip so often. “It’s like I forget… Sometimes.”
“Jens…”
“Or make myself forget.”
Jared knows it’s coming, sees Jensen shift, his face moving closer, the thick, nervous swallow. But when Jensen’s mouth brushes over his, smooth and warm, it surprises him, still. Because he counted on him to draw back, panic in the very last second, frightened by reality, by the promise, the vow he had made. Jensen is everything but predictable though.
It’s brief, tentative. Just a taste, a promise. There’s a hot, heavy exhale ghosting across Jared’s cheek, a few days’ worth of stubble grazing his chin, and a full upper lip catching at the brim of his lower one, a slip-slide of wet heat. But it’s enough.
Fuck. Jared’s sigh sounds more like a growl, full of prickling want that makes his fingers tremble with the desire to touch, grasp, and grip; tear their wounds open, let them bleed out to heal.
Jensen pulls away, almost immediately, lips parted and eyes wide, staring up at Jared like he’s supposed to have the answers. But Jared’s not sure he even has the questions right now.
Jensen’s face scrunches up as if in pain, good conscious and want, the tempting flavor of wrong mixing in the shake of his head. “I… I-I’m sorry,” he says, standing up, and Jared ruminates if he’s aware of how unconvincing his voice is. “I shouldn’t have.” Jensen shoves his hands into the pockets of his three-quarter length jogging pants and walks down the stairs, visibly fighting the urge to run.
Jared wants to reach for him, pull him back, but he doesn’t even move, stays seated at the stairs, watching him.
Jensen hasn’t gotten far, only a few steps down the stony pathway, but the four meters could just as well be miles. He feels distant, completely unreachable.
“Jens, what happened to us?” Jared asks after a while, deafened by silence, by all the unspoken. For too damn long. “Because... It’s not like I’ve stopped loving you. Or… wanting you. I still feel the same.”
Jensen glances up at him, momentarily, then drops heavily down onto the curb leading along Danneel’s roses. “I… think we just decided to be rational, you know? Responsible.”
“That sounds awfully mature of us.”
Jensen chuckles; just a quiet sound, but real. “Yeah. I suppose it does.”
Jared stands up and looks around, taking in the lake, the pier, the two newly bought houses divided only a by fence, even though the gate is constantly open anyway. “So is that all this is?” he questions, following Jensen down the pathway. “Just us being… mature?” Doing the right things? The proper things?
Jensen looks up at him, his eyes like liquefied sadness and regret. “I love her.” Explanation. Justification. Self-defense.
“I know.”
Jared crunches down to his level and touches Jensen’s cheek, fingers curling around his jawline, guiding him closer. There’s a protest, there’s a no wanting to be said, possibly screamed out, but it remains unuttered.
A mistake, a terrible error it might be, Jared kisses him, finally. Hand settled on Jensen’s bare knee and tongue slipping in between his lips, tasting night and Jack and him. There’s only a little gentleness in it, rush instead of slowness. Possessiveness. He’d never hurt him, not really, not deliberately, but Jensen’s been always arousing some primal instincts in him, ancient-like need to conquer and claim...
So yeah, later, Jared will blame it on the moon, the alignment of the planets, eruptions on the sun... But tonight, it’s the full lip drawn in between white teeth and the choked moan that still makes it through. It’s the heat of the body beneath him and blunt fingernails digging into his hipbones. Tonight, it’s them. All the nono’s turned into a don’t stop.
1,533 words
Title by R.E.M.
For An (darklondonsky) She knows why. I just hope it doesn't completely suck.
teaser: “I… think we just decided to be rational, you know? Responsible.”
Later, Jared will blame it on the moon. On the deathly shade of white light and the strange, undeniable push-pull of its orbiting. On a warm April night... On anything.
Now, it’s just thirst that wakes him up and leads him downstairs, and a dark, lonely silhouette on Jensen’s front porch that he spots from the window.
Jensen’s sitting on the top step of the stairs, leaning back against the wooden railing, one bare foot tugged underneath him. There’s a bottle of Jack beside him and a nearly empty glass in his hand. There’s weariness in his face that Jared’s been seeing lately, for days, weeks, shadows in his eyes. It’s like poorly washed-away make-up, residues of Dean and his wounds and sins that cling to Jensen’s own skin, to his mind, refusing to let go.
Jensen looks up at the sound of Jared’s footsteps, the barely audible noise of rubber sneakers on concrete, but he doesn’t say a word. The tiny smile he offers is tight and forced, more of a grimace.
Jared sits down beside him and knocks his knee against Jensen’s, feels the rasp of soft hairs against the fabric of his sweatpants. “Bad dream?”
“Yeah.” A sigh; tired, raspy.
“Very bad?”
“I don’t know, I don’t remember it.” Jensen brings the drink to his lips and takes a sip. Long and dirty, chasing venom with a poison. His hand is shaking, his knuckles are pale enough to be white, wrapped a bit too firmly and convulsively around the glass.
“Right.”
Jensen shakes his head, looks down into his glass. “It made no sense anyway.” It sounds like an excuse, an apology.
“Dean?” Jared tries. Because, really, if there’s a theme of a nightmare that Jensen doesn’t want to talk about, it’s the Winchester guy. His conviction that it’s embarrassing, stupid.
“Yeah.” Jensen takes another sip, a gulp, finishing his drink in one swallow. “No. No, it was me… And you,” he adds like an afterthought.
“Oh, do tell.” Jared chuckles, but it’s bitter, faked. Because there was a ‘me and you’ once. Before their kids. Before the weddings. There was an ‘us’ with the promise of tomorrow, many of them. But then it ended, disappeared. Jared keeps on wondering where to.
Jensen cocks his head to the side slightly, giving Jared a wry look. “I killed you.” His tone is a lot less dangerous; scared, still, shaky.
“Oh. Oh, that’s… That’s not very nice of you.”
“I ripped your throat open,” Jensen says, looking across the expanse of the midnight-deep lake, somewhere far, lost in his thoughts, in the aftershocks of his dream. “Tore you apart.”
“Well, I’m… sure you had good reasons for that,” Jared shrugs easily, trying to make him smile. Failing.
Jensen’s eyebrow arches up in unvoiced, tired disbelief. He reaches for the bottle to pour himself another drink, but Jared stops him before he can. Jensen’s hand is cold beneath his, thin skin and hard bones of his wrist. “This won’t make it better.”
“You sure?” Annoyance. Tiredness. Silent agreement.
Jared takes the empty glass from him, too, pushes it away. Far enough. “Positive.”
Jensen nods, barely, and Jared realizes, in the sweep of Jensen’s lashes and the unconscious bite into his lower lip, that this is more than just a dream. More than a nightmare.
It’s a night like this, years ago. It’s them. Truth and dare, and a dare that led to a lot more. Nightswimming.
Jared recalls cold water, still and silver, and Jensen’s body so close to his own. Wet fingers at the nape of his neck and a smile beneath his lips. Blinding desire, mind-blowing need. Quiet, muffled gasps, and Jensen’s cock, hard and hot, the only truly warm part of him, pressing pleadingly into his thigh. His hands low on Jensen’s back, sliding down to cup his ass and push the offending fabric of his underwear down and away... Words were overrated, unnecessary. They’d never needed them before, nor after.
Jared shudders, unwillingly, at the memory and the sudden, unexpected flow of want rushing through his body like something animate. When he meets Jensen’s eyes, he sees the same in there. The same unspoken it. Scared, suppressed, denied flashes of yesterdays.
“I’m alright, you see?” Jared says, but it’s a lie. There is a wound, open, infected. They share the identical cut. “You’d never hurt me. Just a dream.”
It should be enough, a look, the face before him, the truth beneath his feet, but Jensen reaches out just to be sure. Blind fingertips on Jared’s cheek, a few loose strands of his hair pushed behind his ear, skin soft and calloused in places, bruised by guitar strings, by prop guns. The contact is familiar, innocent, but so intimate. It makes it so easy to forget.
Jared leans his head into Jensen’s touch and looks up, drowning in black green and craving more. So much more. Everything. When he kisses the inner side of Jensen’s wrist, the protruding veins pulsing with life, Jensen jerks, makes to pull his hand way. He wants to, Jared can feel that fight or flee instinct bubbling just below the surface, but he doesn’t. He stays right where he is.
“You’re so beautiful.” Jared doesn’t think he’s ever heard Jensen’s voice sound so fragile and breakable. Dean’s, yeah, a hundred times, but not this man’s. Jensen doesn’t break easily, and his masks and masquerades only slip so often. “It’s like I forget… Sometimes.”
“Jens…”
“Or make myself forget.”
Jared knows it’s coming, sees Jensen shift, his face moving closer, the thick, nervous swallow. But when Jensen’s mouth brushes over his, smooth and warm, it surprises him, still. Because he counted on him to draw back, panic in the very last second, frightened by reality, by the promise, the vow he had made. Jensen is everything but predictable though.
It’s brief, tentative. Just a taste, a promise. There’s a hot, heavy exhale ghosting across Jared’s cheek, a few days’ worth of stubble grazing his chin, and a full upper lip catching at the brim of his lower one, a slip-slide of wet heat. But it’s enough.
Fuck. Jared’s sigh sounds more like a growl, full of prickling want that makes his fingers tremble with the desire to touch, grasp, and grip; tear their wounds open, let them bleed out to heal.
Jensen pulls away, almost immediately, lips parted and eyes wide, staring up at Jared like he’s supposed to have the answers. But Jared’s not sure he even has the questions right now.
Jensen’s face scrunches up as if in pain, good conscious and want, the tempting flavor of wrong mixing in the shake of his head. “I… I-I’m sorry,” he says, standing up, and Jared ruminates if he’s aware of how unconvincing his voice is. “I shouldn’t have.” Jensen shoves his hands into the pockets of his three-quarter length jogging pants and walks down the stairs, visibly fighting the urge to run.
Jared wants to reach for him, pull him back, but he doesn’t even move, stays seated at the stairs, watching him.
Jensen hasn’t gotten far, only a few steps down the stony pathway, but the four meters could just as well be miles. He feels distant, completely unreachable.
“Jens, what happened to us?” Jared asks after a while, deafened by silence, by all the unspoken. For too damn long. “Because... It’s not like I’ve stopped loving you. Or… wanting you. I still feel the same.”
Jensen glances up at him, momentarily, then drops heavily down onto the curb leading along Danneel’s roses. “I… think we just decided to be rational, you know? Responsible.”
“That sounds awfully mature of us.”
Jensen chuckles; just a quiet sound, but real. “Yeah. I suppose it does.”
Jared stands up and looks around, taking in the lake, the pier, the two newly bought houses divided only a by fence, even though the gate is constantly open anyway. “So is that all this is?” he questions, following Jensen down the pathway. “Just us being… mature?” Doing the right things? The proper things?
Jensen looks up at him, his eyes like liquefied sadness and regret. “I love her.” Explanation. Justification. Self-defense.
“I know.”
Jared crunches down to his level and touches Jensen’s cheek, fingers curling around his jawline, guiding him closer. There’s a protest, there’s a no wanting to be said, possibly screamed out, but it remains unuttered.
A mistake, a terrible error it might be, Jared kisses him, finally. Hand settled on Jensen’s bare knee and tongue slipping in between his lips, tasting night and Jack and him. There’s only a little gentleness in it, rush instead of slowness. Possessiveness. He’d never hurt him, not really, not deliberately, but Jensen’s been always arousing some primal instincts in him, ancient-like need to conquer and claim...
So yeah, later, Jared will blame it on the moon, the alignment of the planets, eruptions on the sun... But tonight, it’s the full lip drawn in between white teeth and the choked moan that still makes it through. It’s the heat of the body beneath him and blunt fingernails digging into his hipbones. Tonight, it’s them. All the nono’s turned into a don’t stop.