Half of Your Heart
Now with beautiful art by darklondonsky, read here
Fandom: Supernatural RPS, AU
Characters: Jensen/Jared, Jensen/OFM
Summary: “I should be with her.”
But he’s not. He’s here instead. Standing at the window of a rented hotel room, two towns away from where he lives because people watch and see, and talk...
Prompt: Infidelity
Wordcount: 3,700
Disclaimer: F.I.C.T.I.O.N.
Beta: agent_jl36 Thank you! And I apologize for any remaining mistakes.
Feedback is really appreciated. Especially this time.
A/N: I, like many, went to the dark side and wrote my first AU. And it took me 'only' three years. Maybe it'll be the last one, too. And you should read it because Jensen is an artist and because there are tattoos.
Although it might be surprising, I am not a fan of infidelity. Shouldn't be when it broke our family. So, no way. I just like love that isn't easy and forbidden love.
Divider pic found on Google
Now also in .mp3 version by froggyfun365
“This is the last time,” Jensen says gravely, addressing the raindrop stained window-pane or the blooming cherry tree in the distance, Jared’s not really sure, but he’s definitely not looking at him. “This can’t happen again.”
But he said it the last time, too. And before. And before. He said it so many times that the words lost their weight and the sentence lacks its meaning. He means it, every time. At least Jared thinks he means it when he’s saying it. But his goodbye is never the last one, his eyes never say, ‘This is it. I’m ending it today.’
Because he can’t do that. Any more than Jared can stop coming up to him, stop entering his life. Any more that she can keep them apart, or let Jensen go.
Jared’s starting to believe that Jensen says it only because he always says it. Because that’s what he said the first time. And the time after. The last time. And every time in between. Thinks that he has to say it, because it’s so typical for him and their encounters. Because it’s just his line, kind of like the ‘it’s just a rough sketch’ with which he rejects every of Jared’s compliments on his stunning work.
“We’ll have our anniversary soon,” he notes, his tone even and erased of every emotion, completely flat.
It’s the third anniversary. Or maybe the sixth. Or twentieth. Jared doesn’t know.
He can’t even remember how long they’ve been stuck in this time loop, this Déjà vu that repeats itself with no regularity, but with stubborn persistence, pursuing a certain pattern. The same place, the same time, random days in the week, in the month. One face in the crowd, one look, a sudden pause in his speech. The briefest flash of pink tongue that flickers out to wet suddenly dry, full lips, the sweep of dark blonde eyelashes when his eyes move higher to meet Jared’s own over the heads of strangers.
It’s not always planned, Same time, next year style, sometimes it’s wholly accidental. Like today.
The last place Jared expected to find Jensen was in the middle of a group of small kids and their parents at the town fair, drawing portraits, street artist like.
Jensen isn’t the kind of an artist who seeks attention or publicity, he’s pretty much the exact opposite. He draws and paints and illustrates comic books under a pseudonym, but charity is charity. Doing something for kids is one of the very few reasons for which Jensen gives up his anonymity from time to time and crawls from under the rock he’s hiding.
“I should be with her.”
But he’s not. He’s here instead. Standing at the window of a rented hotel room, two towns away from where he lives because people watch and see, and talk, and regarding the storm happening outside. The white and yellow and purple-blue zig-zag lines, some simple, some forked, crossing the ashy-gray sky, and following the transparent tracks of the raindrops on the glass with the tip of his finger.
He’s wearing only a pair of washed-out jeans, blue and torn in a few places, and a play of shadows and light the stormy clouds ripple on his bare skin, using his body like a projection screen.
Jensen’s muscular but slender, too slender, and the pants hang dangerously low on his narrow hips in spite of the leather belt. Jared would swear they’re actually sinking even lower as he watches, revealing slivers of the non-tanned skin beneath and just the beginning of the gentle swell of Jensen’s firm, little ass. It’s subtle, innocent even. But enough to make Jared’s spent body warm up again, set his blood on fire with lust that never really fades.
He wonders, sometimes, if she can taste him on Jensen when he returns to her. The way he can smell her warmth on Jensen’s skin, even beneath the layer of water and shower gel. Her perfume in the little spot beneath Jensen’s ear, which always makes him shiver when Jared presses the tip of his tongue there. Or on the inner side of his right thigh, blended into the inch-long scar from a too wild bike riding.
Too many times he thought about sending her a message, silent, wordless like a tattoo.
To tell her how much Jensen really likes being with him, how much he enjoys his touches and kisses, the sex. Their lovemaking, slow and tender, or hungry and desperate. The way their bodies fit together, different and so alike, absolutely perfect. Thought about leaving a mark, biting or scratching Jensen’s soft skin, brand him as his, even though he’s not and never will be. Thinks about it even when he knows that he can’t, that he has no right to. That if any of them has any domain on Jensen, it’s her.
She’s been there for years. A wife, a girlfriend, a long-time best friend. Jared came much later. He never meant for this to happen, never imagined it would. But, still, he started doing something he never wanted to do, he has become someone he never thought he could be. A part of a love triangle, the one that’s surplus there. The element that destabilizes a well-balanced machine, a perfectly working relationship.
But he can’t help himself. Can’t when Jensen’s gone, can even less when he finally holds him in his arms again, tastes the flavor of his kisses. Jensen’s like a poison. A drug, strong and dangerous, which use only increases the addiction and, subsequently, the dose. He wishes he could stop. Stop seeing him, wanting him, loving. He even tried it, not once, but he always came back.
He wishes he could hate her, could maybe even conjure up a few reasons, weak and pathetic they might be, they would still be good enough for him, because it’d be so much easier then. But she’s Jensen’s, so of course she’s an incredibly amazing, sweet and witty person, beautiful and undeniably sexy on top of it. He even met her on a few occasions and discussed Jensen’s painting. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe how he felt. Awkward and guilty. And really, really awful. But not even that made him stop.
She knows and she knew, and still she’s kind, tolerates it, them. Because Jensen loves her, madly so, and she knows that. And because he gives back everything he has, everything he is. Just sometimes, several days a year, he gives everything he has to Jared.
They met at work. Bumped into each other in a shadowed hallway of the building where Jared was working at the time, struggling to get higher than a column writer. There was a thud and a gasp, papers flying, falling to the ground in lazy spirals like early snowflakes. Full drawings and rough sketches, notes and full-pages instructions, everything ended on the floor eventually, stained with smaller and bigger drops of the coffee Jared knocked out of the guy’s hand. Big green eyes looked up at Jared through a curtain of dark blonde, unbelievably long lashes and a grey beret. And there were freckles, too. Tiny, caramel-like dots on the bridge of his nose and high cheekbones that Jared wanted to connect like a drawing by numbers.
Jared was a good swimmer, very good. He knew how to swim since he was three and a half and fell into the lake behind his grandpa’s house. He was the best in his class when he was eight.
But when he looked into the eyes of this man, he found himself drowning, hasn’t made a single, solid stroke since. There was something there in Jensen’s eyes, something like a promise, a mystery. Something that guaranteed heaven and troubles at once.
“Oh,” Jensen said then, voice thick like honey and warmer than April in Texas, his single word mingling with Jared’s litany of mumbled apologies and, “My God, you’re pretty”. Because he was idiotic like that.
Jensen blushed and smiled, a self-conscious and unsure smile that made his eyes crinkle, and that was pretty much it.
Jared saw the ring, simple silver with a groove in the middle on Jensen’s left hand, knew well what it meant. But his heart refused to listen.
Pulling from the door, Jared walks over to Jensen, almost jumping right out of his skin when a bolt slides down, with what he’s sure is an audible sizzle, touching the moist ground on the horizon. A deafening blow of a thunder follows and then it’s Jensen’s turn to jerk in startle. Because that’s when Jared steps up to him, his hands sliding down Jensen’s sides, thumbs hooking in the loops of his jeans. The denim is rough against his bare thighs, Jensen’s skin almost too hot against his stomach. He presses his lips against the dragon tattooed on Jensen’s right shoulder blade, the only colored picture he has, made in dark red and bluish green, kissing the open mouth of the beast, the razor sharp teeth he would never want to touch if they were real. Then he rests his chin on Jensen’s shoulder, breathing him in and smiling when Jensen leans into him automatically, his hand coming up to entangle in Jared’s still slightly damp hair. Jensen always smells like coffee, bitter and hot, and like the paints he uses, like charcoal and canvas.
“Stay with me tonight,” Jared whispers, like it’s a secret. Like no one knows they’re here. Like she doesn’t know.
Jensen never stays for the night and Jared assumes that it’s just another of Jensen’s many rules he doesn’t really understand.
In all these years, four, six, eight, maybe a hundred, he stayed only once. And even then only because he was too sick to drive back. He spent the night curled into a tight ball of pain on the bathroom floor, bent over a toilet bowl, sweating and shaking and running a fever. Jared held Jensen’s hair, drenched with perspiration and constantly falling into his eyes, back from his face, wrapped him up into the bed sheets and kept him more or less upright, stroking his back soothingly. Finally, close to dawn when Jensen was too exhausted and wrecked to protest anymore, Jared drove him to the hospital where they took out his appendix. Almost late.
The scar is still there, completely healed but not fading, a few inches long and swelled. Jared can feel it easily when he moves his thumb a little higher.
Only a few hours, that’s all he has. That’s what he’s always had. And he tries to make them good, perfect, tries not to lose a single minute with something unimportant or stupid. Post remittances, deadlines, global warming, nothing exists, just Jensen. And just them.
The scenario is always the same. When Jensen knocks on the door, the second one on the second floor, that Jared spent an hour pottering behind, Jared pulls him right in. He wraps him in his arms and holds tight, still scared that he’ll pull away, will take a step back and leave, just like he should, and just like Jared knows he will, one day. He kisses him and caresses, mapping sharp bones and edges and familiar lines, tracing the dark, thick contours of tattoos that mark Jensen’s freckled, fair skin, each symbol stunning and meaningful. Fights with buttons and stubborn zippers, thinks that Jensen always wears these kind of clothes that have too much of everything only to torture him and drive him insane, tugs at fabric that doesn’t want to cooperate until seams are cracking and buttons flying in every direction.
Jensen always laughs at that, at him, tells him to take it easy, slow down and give him a second to catch his breath at least, but his hands are just that hungry and desperate, wanting to touch and feel, and getting each other in the way.
Jared loves him like that, loves knowing that he’s not alone in that, that although Jensen has everything he could ask for, he still keeps coming back to him, for this, for love and this something that neither of them asked for, but neither can refuse.
Sometimes it’s fast and needy, sometimes slow. Jared likes both versions, but he especially enjoys the latter. When there’s enough to time for everything. When he can open Jensen slowly, with faked patience he can really only pretend because he’s still dying to be in him, drive him to the very edge, just just to fall, only to drag him back, tease him, make him growl impatiently and dig his blunt fingernails into Jared’s shoulders, leaving marks of need and petulance. When he can keep it up until Jensen’s writhing underneath him, breathy and wanting, and impatient, burning skin damp and slick with sweat, begging Jared to just do it, for Christsake, to fuck him, Goddamnit, or he’s going to kill him. Jensen’s never more beautiful than in these moments. And Jared likes tormenting him like this, loves the desperate hitched noises he makes, the way his body screams for Jared’s, drawing him near, pulling him in, until they’re one and Jared can’t tell where he ends and Jensen begins, and doesn’t really care.
“I can’t,” Jensen says now, still staring ahead, seemingly undisturbed and silently amazed. Jared is quite sure he’s trying to capture the scene in front of him, bottle up the atmosphere of the storm and rain and too much ozone, so he can project it into his work later. He does it all the time.
“Can’t? Or don’t want to?”
Jensen shrugs and opens his mouth, only to close it again a few seconds later. “It doesn’t feel right,” he replies finally. And leave it to Jensen to feel bad about staying for the night when he just was unfaithful, has been repeatedly for more than seven years.
“She’s in Scotland,” Jared reminds, knowing that she is and will be for a few more days, and that Jensen’s dogs are taken care of and he doesn’t need to worry about them. “She knows you’re here. She knows why. So why can’t you stay with me… Just once?”
Jensen turns in Jared’s arms and leans against the window, resting his hands on Jared’s hips, the tips of his fingers almost unpleasantly cold on Jared’s bare skin, and looks up at him. He doesn’t say anything, just watches, studying Jared’s face, all the lines and wrinkles and moles, with the same intensity he uses when he draws him, naked or nearly so. With the look of an artist. Seconds pass, quiet but heavy, just mildly disturbed by the slowly ceasing rain and their breathing, and Jared is sure that the answer will be no. A little regretful, disappointed no, maybe, but still no, solid and final. But then Jensen nods, and smiles, if only barely. “Okay.”
“Who is he?” Jensen asks softly, copying the shape of the nearly faded mark on Jared’s collarbone with the pad of this thumb.
The purple-pink bruise that Michael’s left there two days ago, evidently convinced that it was a wonderful idea. Jared didn’t think so, and he definitely doesn’t think it’s funny now, not when Jensen’s looking at him like this, a frown etched in between his eyebrows, his eyes shadowed with something close to worry.
“No one,” Jared replies, and he isn’t lying.
Michael is a friend, a good one, but no more. Though there are moments, nights like the one before yesterday, when they’re both feeling a little too lonely and empty, and when their glasses of wine are no longer full or even half-full, and the bottles of beer make a row of collapsed statues at their feet, when the meaning of a friendship tilts a little, slipping to something different.
“Jared.”
“He’s not important.”
“Could be.”
“No.”
“Could be,” Jensen repeats, sounding a bit more insistent and, at the same time, a bit scared. “If you let him.”
“No, he couldn’t.”
There are people, some more important, some completely insignificant, Jared is no saint and never tried to be one. There are a few dates, nights he doesn’t really regret, but no one who cuts deep enough, who leaves more than just a fleeting imprint that disappears come morning light. No one is Jensen. And no one can soothe the pulsing ache inside of him as well as his green-eyed artist. It was, after all, Jensen who left it there in the first place.
Drawing in a heavy breath, Jensen moves his hand higher to touch Jared’s mouth, silencing him, because he knows that Jared will protest against his next words, or at least try. “You’re wasting your life with me. Like this. You could be happy.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. You can’t be. Not like this.”
Jared could argue. Try to convince Jensen that he is, that he lives full and free and that Jensen doesn’t bind him down in any way, couldn’t, if Jared didn’t let him, but he doesn’t want to.
They took a bath together, less than ten minutes ago, kneeing and elbowing each other until they were cramped in together, water sloshing on the tiled floor, dabbers of foam sliding leisurely down the bathtub, and Jensen’s hair smells of lavender. His skin is still flushed pink and too warm, and Jared doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want to think, or move, he just wants to lie like this, with Jensen’s firm naked body beneath his, Jensen’s thighs framing his hips, and the beating of his heart echoing through Jared’s bones. Eventually just try and will Jensen’s hand, which is currently resting on his shoulder, to move a little more south.
He says, “I love you,” instead, and means it, more than he’s ever meant anything else.
Jensen sighs and shakes his head, giving it up. He knows Jared, maybe too well, and he knows that nothing can move him if he doesn’t want to be moved. There’s a smile, just a shadow of it tugging at the corners of his mouth, as he slips his fingers in Jared’s hair, grabbing a handful of it to pull him down. His lips part on a quiet, barely audible, “I love you, too,” and Jared actually thinks that he feels these words brushing his mouth more than he really hears them. Either way, he knows they’re true.
The sunlight, making its way through the open blinds, is more white than yellow, and fresh, reborn after yesterday’s storm.
And way too bright and early for Jared’s liking. He can feel the vacant, cooling space in the bed beside him, senses it almost like another entity. Something that is literally driving them apart, and wishes he could keep the day at bay, far, for a few more hours. He fakes sleep, instead watches Jensen through his lashes as he moves around, collecting the scattered pieces of his clothing, his wallet and cell phone. His skin is glowing in the light and it looks especially smooth and pale. And Jensen downright sickly thin. Jared can easily count his ribs, every bump of his vertebra as he bends to retrieve his discarded T-shirt from the plushy carpet.
The sun catches on Jensen’s jewelry, casting flashes of the ring with which he’s tied to her, like with the vow he gave her on one day of May, a few years ago. On his necklace, the ball chain with the pendant of Saint Luke, the patron saint of artists that binds him to Jared. Just like the little tattoo on his left hip, the black, tiny angel, beautiful but low enough to disappear when it’s not supposed to be seen, to match Jared’s own. Only while Jared’s angel is the Archangel Michael, strong and fierce and well-armed, Jensen’s is a fallen one, naked, broken and weak, with feathers disseminated at his feet. Jared, over and over again, tries not to see any hidden meaning there.
“Stop it, it’s creepy,” Jensen says as he smooths the T-shirt down his stomach and looks up at Jared, almost threateningly.
Jared yawns exaggeratedly and sits up, blinking sleepily. “Wha-? I’m sleepin’ here.”
“You’re spying on me.”
“I’m watching you,” Jared corrects, because there is a difference. “You have no idea how fascinating that is.”
“You’re a freak,” Jensen states, with a chuckle that is both warm and bitter.
He sighs and looks around, patting his pockets. There’s a dull thump of his wallet, louder, more plastic of his cellphone, and a quiet clinging of keys.
There’s nothing more to look for, nothing more to do. He catches Jared’s eyes, regarding him, knowing, and offers a little smile, as sweet as a fresh lemon. He looks kinda clueless and lost.
“C’m here,” Jared says as he pulls himself up to his knees, reaching out with both arms and curling his fists in the fabric of Jensen’s T-shirt when he’s close enough.
Jensen goes willingly, slipping his hand into Jared’s hair to tilt his head just right, and moaning quietly when their lips meet in a kiss that is slow, almost lazy, but enough to make the tips of Jared’s fingers tingle. And which tastes nothing like the goodbye that it is.
Later, but way too soon in Jared’s opinion, Jensen pulls back and runs his fingertips down Jared’s face, following the line of his cheekbone and jawline. Only to move up again and push the loose strand of Jared’s hair behind his ear. Then he smiles and steps back. “You take care of yourself, ‘kay?” he whispers, his voice cracking just a little.
Jared nods, even though Jensen’s not looking at him anymore. A backpack thrown over his shoulder, Jensen’s reaching for the doorknob, not glancing back.
“I’ll see you, right?” Jared calls, all of a sudden panicked that this is it, that this is finally the morning when Jensen walks away and never comes back.
Jensen’s basically out in the corridor and closing the door, when his eyes flicker up to Jared. They’re warm and they don’t say goodbye, “Yeah.”
He doesn’t say when, but he doesn’t say no. And that’s good enough for now. That is always good enough.
The End
Thank you for reading!