The Moon Is New - Part Five
Jensen doesn't think he's ever successfully gotten out of the bathroom in so short a period of time as he manages now, sluicing water haphazardly off his arms and thighs and chest with broad sweeps of his hands simultaneously with stumbling across the room to snatch up the first towels that come to hand. Jared's after him almost as quickly, arms sliding around his waist, and Jensen legitimately has to pause to collect himself at the strange wave of feeling that crests in him at that, the unaccustomed possessiveness of it -- protective, almost, and Jensen has never been protected; never quite the lover and certainly not the beloved. Jared, in this as in everything, makes him feel strange inside.
There is no time now, though, to pause and think about these things, not with his heart beating a tarantella in his chest, not with Jared's cock jutting up against the small of his back, hot and close. "Here," Jensen says, brusquely, the tone a last line of defence as he thrusts a towel into Jared's hands. "Keep -- you don't need to, not entirely, just --" They're not sentences, not even close, but Jared seems to understand, hears the tense shiver in his voice and echoes it in his shaky nod as he takes the towel and scrubs at his hair with it, although his eyes never leave Jensen's face. Jensen swallows, and turns hastily for the door, fingers looping around Jared's wrist. "Come on."
They aren't dry by the time they reach the bedroom, but Jared drops his towel in the doorway anyway, leaves it forgotten in a heap as he stares at the bed. "Whoa."
Following his line of sight, Jensen can deduce well enough the cause of his hesitation. Jensen's bed is no less opulent than the rest of his furnishings -- and after all, why not? By fair means or foul, he's well off, and there's nobody dependent on him, nobody else whose needs he has to think about before his own. There's no particular benefit to him in sitting on what money he's accrued; it isn't as if it isn't still coming in all the time -- and that makes him twinge, a little, remembering just what it is he does to keep it coming, what it is he'll have to do tomorrow.
Beside him, Jared is still blinking at the masses of pillows, the huge breadth of the mattress, and Jensen doesn't have time for that, doesn't want to pause and think about where all his wealth has come from, all his enormous quantities of things. He never had much, growing up, and there's always been something especially satisfying about being able to have all these things now, all to himself in this apartment where nobody but Misha has ever really been invited. Even Misha was never invited into the inner sanctum of Jensen's bedroom, but Jensen likes to sleep, and he'd spared no expense on the bed for a reason. Anyone else might have been eager to show it off, put it to other uses than prolonged and extremely comfortable slumber, but Jensen has guarded it jealously as his own little secret -- until now. Until Jared, his wide eyes and broad shoulders and the long naked lines of him. Jensen didn't think twice between clambering out of the bath, hot and shivering and aching for it, and pulling Jared in here. Didn't think twice, as if it were exactly where Jared ought to be, and contemplating it was both unnecessary and futile. As if this had always been where they were bound to end up.
Enough of this. Jensen tightens his grip on Jared's wrist, tugs a little. "Tip," he says, going for sultry, although he hears the catches in his voice the moment he speaks, the tiny giveaways, little tremors of heat. "You can perform a much fuller inspection from close up."
Jared laughs at that, bright and startled, and it's good, the ease of it; makes Jensen smile wide back at him and move, taking a coaxing step of his own towards the bed in expectation of Jared following. And Jared does follow; waits for Jensen to hoist his still-damp self up onto the high, broad bed, but once Jensen is ensconced on the mattress, Jared wastes no more time in whatever trance of reverent hesitation he'd fallen into, but pulls himself up and onto his knees over Jensen, falling forward until his knees are either side of Jensen's hips, his elbows pressing into the pillows and his face wide open.
And this is -- this is another first, Jensen thinks, as clearly as he can manage through the sudden haze of heat that's apparently determined to take over his body, starting at his ankles and crawling all the way up to his throat, leaving him unexpectedly breathless. This is Jared over him, probably without a thought for the effect it's having on Jensen -- probably, Jensen has to admit, all unknowing that it's having any effect on Jensen at all. Previously, after all, they'd always just rolled and rutted and tangled and thrust until things fell out naturally -- which is to say, with Jensen on top, one thigh slotted between Jared's until it came time to work him open properly, fuck him deep. This is the way things work for Jensen: he's a big guy, kind of a control freak, as Misha would doubtless be delighted to confirm, and boys never protest his quiet suggestion (not really a suggestion at all) that they simply lie back and let him take care of them.
This is the first time, Jensen realises, in all his years out of Texas, that he's felt as if there was anyone who might want to take care of him.
That's what it is, though, undoubtedly. There's something nurturing in Jared, something tangible already in his lanky, teenage form, but which will become clearer and clearer as he bulks out, grows into the man Jensen can already see the shape of. Jared is a protector, happy to be beloved, but naturally inclined to love as an active verb, and Jensen is the one he's chosen. Jensen resists, by nature and by design, but choosing to resist that kind of love from Jared would be like trying to resist a hurricane, foolhardy and utterly futile. Jared is here, the weight of his attentions pressing down on Jensen's chest like a physical force, and Jensen not only doesn't feel as if he can shove up against him, turn him over and reassert control, he doesn't want to. He's tired, worn down and attached and unwilling to lose this, and he can't summon the energy to fight any longer against the inevitable.
It is in this moment, really, that Jensen makes his decision, although he doesn't become aware of it until later. For now, he only slides his hands up the smooth expanse of Jared's back, over his shoulders and over the nape of his neck to pull him down, lifts his hips and sets them in motion, rocking against each other, hot and close and easy.
Jared's breath hitches, tight little sound in the back of his throat, and Jensen can tell by the way he angles his body down and thrusts back against Jensen that he's close, still, as close as Jensen is, the journey from the bathroom not really having served as much of an interruption at all. In a way, it's a relief, the tension still stoked up hot between them, knowing that Jared is still as very there as Jensen; but then there's the part where Jensen wants this to last, wants to draw it out, wants to fall asleep with Jared only after hours and hours of touching him everywhere, licking at all the secret parts of his mouth and tongue, mapping all that golden skin with his hands. He's done it all before, of course, touched every part of Jared he can reach, inside and out, but this might be the last time in a good long while, and Jensen doesn't want to risk forgetting, not if he has time to learn it all again before he goes. Jared is shifting against him, his cock stiff and smearing precome in the shallow of Jensen's belly, and Jensen doesn't want him to come before he's had him entirely.
He doesn't register what he's doing, how his body reacts to his mind's unspoken demand, until he's already doing it, canting his pelvis upward, hooking his legs around Jared's waist. It is Jared who realises; Jared whose sudden stutter, whose sharp sound of surprise bring Jensen back to himself, pointing out the wanton roll of his hips up against Jared's body, the uncharacteristic, slutty arch of his back. To his credit, though, Jared doesn't pause, only goes on thrusting, the muscles in his narrow waist shifting now against Jensen's ankles, against his calves, his mouth dipping down to nip at the curve of Jensen's throat. "Shit," he groans, deep and tortured, "Jensen -- Jensen --"
It makes it real, then, the sound of his name twisted through Jared's shock of wanting, but it only makes Jensen's stomach pull tighter, the spread out sense of yes coalescing into something solid and undeviating. He is spread under Jared, he thinks, making the situation real and clear in his mind: he is spread under Jared and he is working his hips against him; he is pulling tricks on Jared that girls pull on other men in bars. He is working his hips against Jared like a man who wants to get fucked, and the most important part is that Jensen does. He's never wanted that in his life, never really even thought about wanting it, but right now, with Jared's strong, broad hands on him, Jared's body trustworthy and familiar over his, Jensen wants it. He wants to be beloved.
He shoves Jared away only with a great effort, the muscles in his arms shaking, and even still it is not so much a shove as a curl of his spine, far enough for him to get one hand down and under himself, barely breaking their rhythm. Jared notices, though; pulls back to facilitate. "Jen?" he tries, softly, his eyes shadowed and wide, although the flush of sex has now spread all the way down into his chest. Jensen closes his eyes.
"Yeah," he says, grunts, whatever. He can't do this, he swiftly determines, with his legs hooked around Jared's waist, so he drops them, spreads them wide and plants his feet. "Yeah, I just -- in the night table --"
There is only one night table, meaning that there's no real need to gesture, but Jensen does so anyway, as if the casual motion with the one hand will somehow cancel out the utterly alien things his other hand is now doing, fingers working up between his thighs, finding the pucker of muscle and tracing dry little circles around it until it twitches under his touch. Jensen has done this to countless men before, it's hardly new, and yet it is new, to feel it like this himself, to close his eyes and spread his legs and know that it is he who is exposed, here, and not his partner. That he is the one who will be taken, tonight, who will be breached and invaded and filled.
Except that, with Jared, it won't be like that. The tip of Jensen's index finger slips inside, just a little way, and his breath catches, his hips jerk. It won't be an invasion with Jared. Nothing is a fight with him. A joining, rather, a full reciprocation of everything Jared's given him already, and Jensen more than wants that; Jensen needs it.
When Jared turns back towards him, eyes dark-dazzled and his shoulders heaving with his breaths, he's steady, at least, when he holds out his hand with the bottle, and what coherency Jensen has left is spent on marvelling at it. Jared must, he's sure, be in some kind of state of shock, sitting back on his haunches while Jensen takes the bottle from him without comment and fumbles the cap open, but he doesn't ask -- intuits, perhaps, that Jensen doesn't want to be asked, doesn't want to talk about it. Jensen only wants to do, wants to slick up his fingers and work them into himself while Jared sits at his feet and watches, the heat of his gaze almost like a physical burn.
"Shit," Jensen grits out, as the first finger sinks fully home, and Jared does move at that, hand drifting to his lap to close around his cock, gripping the base of it.
"Okay?" he murmurs, his voice rough as shale, and Jensen remembers, unbidden, the first time he did this to Jared, how casual he was in soothing. Realises how much more there is in it now, when Jared, who has felt this himself so many times, says those things to him. Jensen bites his lip, works his finger in and out a little, and, shit. Possibly this will be good in more ways than simply as a provider of emotional satisfaction.
"Yeah," he manages, a little shaky with surprise, and Jared grins, dark and heated, shifts a little closer. It occurs to Jensen that he should probably be embarrassed, Jared shifting in so close between his legs while Jensen works a second finger into his ass, but in truth, he doesn't feel it.
Jared's breathing is quickening, the hand on his cock squeezing reflexively, and he's watching the movements of Jensen's hand with unabashed fascination. Like it's hot, watching Jensen's fingers sink into himself, slick and glistening, and that thought makes Jensen flush all over, sends a wash of heat arrowing down between his legs, spread across an area that's somehow so much greater than just the pinpoint focus of his cock, as it might have been before.
"Yeah," he murmurs again, as the second finger slides in fully alongside the first, scraping against every nerve ending he has, "yeah, it's -- good --"
Jared's still watching him, bright-eyed and earnest, but he's shifting closer still, now, until Jensen can feel the heat of his skin against the insides of his legs, the slightly sticky touch of his sweat. "Up," he breathes; clears his throat and leans in, and then his mouth is almost against Jensen's stomach, breath warm against his cock when Jared speaks. "You have to -- crook up a little, yeah?"
Christ, Jensen is hot. Physically, as well as mentally, sweat breaking out in prickles at the nape of his neck, and Jared's mouth in such close proximity to his cock is not helping, Jared's soft pink mouth only a tongue's stretch away from the precome drooling onto Jensen's belly. He groans, low in his throat, shifts his fingers as Jared directs, and -- "Fuck!"
"Yeah?" Jared's hand is moving, now, drifting up the inside of Jensen's thigh, knuckles brushing his perineum. "Good, huh?"
"Oh, God," Jensen manages, weakly, because, yeah, he knows what the prostate is, has made enough boys squirm under his attentions to theirs, but he never -- he didn't know it would feel quite like that, or maybe he'd have been fucking himself, at least, for years. "Oh God, yeah."
Jared laughs weakly, the sound wrenched out through a haze of sexed-out distraction, and it would have been hot enough all on its own without the way his fingers brush against Jensen's where they enter his body, where his rim is stretched taut around two of them. "God, Jen," Jared's saying, and then his finger is pushing, nudging Jensen's aside, the tip of it working inside. "You're so -- you don't even --"
"Fuck," Jensen manages, as it dawns on him what Jared is doing, as Jared's finger slides into his body alongside his own. He'd felt full already, stuffed up and spread; had wondered how he could possibly be expected to splay out further to accommodate something the size of a cock, but his body seems to want to take more, stretching out around the additional finger as if it's nothing, the burn more pleasure than pain. "Fuck, Jared -- yeah, come on --"
And Jared doesn't need any encouragement, his hair fallen forward into his face as he works his finger; as he reaches for the lube and smears it messy and desperate over his hand and Jensen's ass and the goddamn bed.
The stretch of it is so shockingly good, so unexpectedly visceral and present and hot when Jared breaches him with a second finger, that Jensen doesn't even register that Jared's ducking his head until there's a mouth on his cock, Jared's lips sealing hot and wet around the head of him. Fuck, though, it's stupidly arousing, Jared's tongue curling knowledgeably around him and his fingers working up into him until he's caught between the two sensations, the two points of contact creating a circuit across which electricity crackles. Jensen bites his lip, stutters up one moment into the familiar silken warmth and then back, hard, onto Jared's fingers. "Jay," he gets out, tosses his head and lifts his hips, "Jay, shit," and it's weirdly instinctive, too, to move his own fingers in tandem with Jared's, to stroke at his inner walls as Jared fucks shallowly in and out.
"Mmm," Jared murmurs, a low hum around his cock, and fuck, okay, that -- yes.
"Shit, now," Jensen hisses, free hand carding into Jared's hair and tugging at it mercilessly. Having gotten this far, having succeeded in slowing the runaway train of Jared's teenage sexuality all the way to the point that he's four fingers open and aching to be fucked, Jensen is not about to trip two feet before the finish line and come from a blowjob. "Jared, 'm gonna -- if you don't -- so can you just --"
"Yes," Jared assures him, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the head of Jensen's cock as he sits back on his heels and repositions himself. "Yeah, Jensen, if you -- can I --" There's hesitation in his voice, the natural uncertainty of doing this for the first time, but his hands on Jensen are oddly calming, nevertheless, his clean hand gentling Jensen's side as if soothing a horse while he withdraws his fingers slowly.
Jensen takes a deep breath and follows suit. Immediately, he's overcome by the urge to fuck his hips up into something; wants to haul Jared down and into him immediately, just to get rid of the sudden and uncomfortable sensation of emptiness. Only minutes ago, he'd been despairing of ever coaxing his body into taking one finger, and now he feels as if he could take anything; as if he needs something if only so he won't feel like some kind of aching void any longer.
Jared, though, knows all about how this feels. Jared, Jensen thinks, as Jared spreads his thighs and slots himself in carefully between them, is possibly massively better qualified to do this than Jensen has ever been, for all his years of experience. Jared knows the way the blood is coursing through Jensen, awash with little sparks when he cants himself up towards Jared's body; he knows the way it feels to be spread open and yet unfulfilled, to be trembling all over, afraid of something that is and yet is absolutely not the man who is about to fuck you.
"Shit," Jensen whispers, closes his eyes, and Jared leans down and over him to press their mouths together, soft sucking kiss to the swell of Jensen's lower lip.
"I got you," he says, and that's one of Jensen's own lines, too, but he believes it from Jared's mouth. He couldn't not.
Jared pushes into him slowly, carefully, but it isn't necessary, not really. Jensen's more than ready, his thighs curling up instinctively to bracket Jared's waist, holding him still as he groans and tenses and hesitates, getting accustomed to the sensation. In a way, the sense of being sheathed must be more unfamiliar to Jared than the pressure of Jared's cock is to Jensen; for if fingers are not quite the same as the thick shove of Jared's cock inside of him, they are endlessly closer an approximation in that circumstance than a tunnel of fingers can ever be to the feeling of being in someone, buried to the hilt in the heat of another body. Jared is frozen in the sensation, back arched and stilled, and Jensen waits, takes a deep breath and strokes Jared's back until he relaxes sufficiently to move.
The moment he does, hips pulling back with the bend of Jared's body like a bow pulled tight under some invisible force, Jensen knows that they won't last. Jared is inside him, thick and hot and human, and his mouth on Jensen's seems to catch on every nerve in his body, pulling them tight to the surface of his skin in long skeins of sensation. Jared is panting above him, the muscles in his back clenching and releasing as he pulls out, thrusts, pulls out, thrusts, sliding out a little more each time until Jensen works himself up to rolling into the strokes, goes with it until Jared's pulling out almost full length every time, slamming back home in long heated slides.
He's making all kinds of noise, harsh little sounds in the back of his throat, and Jensen has no doubt he's far from silent himself, but it's as if the world has gone fuzzy around the edges, strange parts of it gone numb, like his body can't concentrate anything beyond the feeling banking in his stomach that's too big for his senses to sustain anything else alongside it. This is good, Jensen thinks, stupidly understated; Jared is fucking him faster, now, sucking a dark bruise into the curve of his throat as his hips work frenetic and steady, and Jensen's cock is fattening impossibly between them, his slick smearing all down the shaft as he shivers and rocks. It's good, and Jensen doesn't want to stop, but at the same time there's a whiteness building behind his eyes and he knows it can't be long, now, and that it's going to be so good.
"Jensen," Jared's murmuring above him, rubbing his mouth in the sweat-damp crook of Jensen's neck, hips pistoning into him hard and fast. "Jensen, God -- Jen, 'm gonna --"
"Yeah," Jensen hisses, hitches his hips up further and lets the feeling arrow down into his groin, lets it surge up out of him in the first rise of a wave that's just on the edge of breaking. He wants Jared first, though, wants to feel Jared spill inside him, let the wet-hot rush of it push him over the edge. "Come on, baby, I'm here. Come on."
Jared comes like a punch, like a freight train, so sudden and hard he must have been caught on the absolute brink of it for minutes now. Jensen's seen him, made him come like that before, has felt Jared's muscles flutter and clench around him, but he's never felt it like this, the way Jared's cock feels as it swells and pulses, and he's utterly unprepared for the way it jolts him from the inside out, shoves him over his own final edge without a hint of warning.
"Christ," is all he manages before it hits him, blindsides him, and then he can feel himself shivering apart, every muscle in his lower body clamping up as his cock jerks and spurts between their bellies. Jared's still moving, last little helpless stutters of his hips into Jensen's body, and he whimpers a little as Jensen comes around him, the sensation doubtless too much on his sensitive cock but good, still so good.
Fuck, everything about this is good, starting with Jared and ending with the way Jensen's ass aches; the way he'll feel the burn tomorrow and the way it'll be better, somehow, to have that with him than simply to have the knowledge that there's someone else at home feeling it. Jared goes limp on top of him after a moment, cock still softening slowly inside Jensen's body, and he's grinning and breathless and shivering all over with aftershock, and Jensen feels as if he's just been gutted and cored and then put back together by someone who knew he could do a better job this time. Everything about this is good, Jensen thinks, except for the part where he'll have to leave it in the morning.
That part -- Jensen doesn't want to think about that part. Not with Jared nuzzling sleepily at the hollow of his throat, Jared pulling back, after a long moment, to study his face with wide, worshipful eyes. Not with the way Jared leans in to kiss him softly, so softly; the way he remembers to roll his hips and let himself slip out, so they won't fall asleep that way and end up hurting Jensen in the morning. The way Jared cares so much about how Jensen might feel, and Jensen --
He'll have to think about it, he knows. He can't just slip out in the dark in the small hours and not come back for God knows how many weeks, leave Jared in his apartment to keep his bed warm and tell him nothing. They'll have to talk about this. Jensen will have to break the news and watch Jared's face, and he knows now what he'll see there. It will be pain, and, no, that won't be better than indifference. It will be pain on Jared's face, and Jensen is starting to realise that nothing is worse than that.
Against his cheek, he can feel Jared's smile, the warmth of his mouth as he shifts to press a kiss to the bow of Jensen's upper lip, oblivious. "God," Jared's whispering, low and reverent, "Jensen. I love you so much."
Jensen's hand hesitates in its stroking, stills in Jared's hair, and Jared shifts a little, face changing, but there's no horror there, no sudden anxiety, but only a mild concern. "Sorry," Jared says, quickly. "I just -- I couldn't help myself." Not I didn't mean that, Jensen. Not it was the sex that made me say it. Only I love you and I didn't mean to rock you out of your nice little comfort zone, Jen.
Jensen swallows and, after a moment, resumes his stroking, long, smooth pulls through Jared's hair. "Yeah," he manages, because what could it hurt? The cat is pretty effectively out of the bag now, and it's too late to do anything about it. "Yeah, I -- you know." Deep breath. He hooks one leg over Jared's. "Me too."
The sound Jared makes, the way his smile quirks up at the corners, eyes gone soft and warm and stunned, is worth every ounce of the effort. Jensen smiles back, thumbs at Jared's cheekbone. "Yeah," he puts in, hurriedly, "okay, okay. Don't get too excited." He kicks a little at Jared's calf. "Still a brat."
Jared's laughter is gorgeous, startled out of him warm and bright and more valuable than any of Jensen's opulence. Telling him can wait, Jensen decides. They can have tonight. He may have to leave in the morning, but there was never any crack-of-dawn arrangement, and he wants this night.
He presses a kiss to the top of Jared's head, gentle and brief. It's ludicrously sentimental, but Jared only laughs a little, pleased, and Jensen doesn't care.
When Jared wakes up in the morning, Jensen's awake. He knows it even before he's pulled himself fully out of sleep; feels it the way he feels the yellow warmth of the sun casting bars of light across his body through the minuscule chink in the curtains. Nobody pulled them properly closed last night, apparently. Jared can't say he's surprised.
He doesn't know how he feels about Jensen's wakefulness. Still unsurprised, maybe -- Jensen always did give the impression of being the sort of man who'd be up when needed, alert within a matter of seconds -- but there's something tense in the line of his body where it meets Jared's, something off in it that Jared doesn't like. Jensen was like this, Jared remembers now, for the first half of last evening, before all the strangeness got lost under all the sex. And, yes, that's a memory that still has the power to make Jared's mouth quirk up, lazy and pleased, despite his trepidation.
Jensen has an arm thrown over Jared's body, palm flat and broad, protective, on his stomach. Jared shifts a little, stretches, to show he's awake, and presses himself back against Jensen. "Morning," he murmurs, turning to peer over his shoulder.
Jensen laughs, his face soft and fond. Wistful, maybe. Jared isn't sure he wants to know why. "Morning."
The same wistfulness is clear and naked in his voice, and it makes Jared frown, brows drawing together a little. He arches his back, bringing the curve of his backside into full contact with Jensen's groin, and, okay, apparently Jensen is still functioning normally in some areas. Jared's pleased to note this, for more reasons than just the obvious. If Jensen can still curl himself around Jared in bed, cock swelling hot against his ass, then, at least, Jared can't have been so monumentally awful at the whole ass-fucking thing that Jensen's been turned off him as a sexual being for life.
Jared threads his fingers through Jensen's, squeezes his hand. "You okay?"
He thinks, as he says it, that it's a futile question. Jensen doesn't answer enquiries about the state of his health, physical or mental, with anything more than a shrug or an enigmatic smile or, if Jared's lucky, a kiss to rule a line under the subject and deem it closed. Now, though, Jensen shifts and sighs a little, eyes darting away, and Jared is immediately on his guard. His voice tightens. "Jensen?" A hundred scenarios, each one more ludicrous than its predecessor, begin to cycle through his mind on fastforward. "What's wrong? Nobody's got a hitman on you, do they? You're not dying of cancer?" Or, worst of all -- and Jared can hardly keep his voice steady to ask it, but he has to know "-- you're not breaking up with me, are you?"
Breaking up? Jensen should say, and laugh. I don't do boyfriends, kiddo, but I still wouldn't kick your ass out of bed, if that's what you're asking. Jared can almost hear it, see the phantom curve of Jensen's habitual smile, the cocky tilt of his head.
"No," is what Jensen does say, quick and anxious, face pulling unhappily. "No, Jay, no, nothing like that." And he reaches out, fingers carding through Jared's hair where it's tangled across his face, smoothing it back. "No. It's just, I..."
He trails off. Jared tries to ignore the deep wash of relief in his stomach at the suddenness of Jensen's assurances, the pointed use of the nickname. He can gloat about what that might mean after he's determined what's actually wrong with Jensen.
"So?" he prompts, turning over fully so that they're facing each other. "What's wrong?" A squeeze of Jensen's hand.
"Jen."
"Jay." Jensen's still not looking at him, won't look at him, although his fingers are kneading Jared's relentlessly. "It's just. You know what I do."
"Yeah," Jared says, slowly, uncomprehending. "You're a rumrunner. Misha told me."
Jensen smiles a little, tight and resigned. "And did Misha explain what that meant?"
Jared shrugs lopsidedly. "Means you bring him the stuff and he sells it. You go out and you get it and you --" He stops, something slipping ominously, suddenly into place in his stomach. Jensen smuggles things into the country from outside of it; Jensen, who has been here selling things on for months, now, but whose supply can't possibly be exhaustible. Jensen...
Jared blinks, catches Jensen's eyes full on, and Jensen nods at him, slowly. "Going out today," he says, voice a dry, thready little thing. "Might be gone a few weeks."
"Oh," Jared says, hollowly. "Oh." He doesn't know, for the moment, what else to say. He knew, after all, what Jensen was, what he did, it was just that it had somehow failed to occur to him that this would have actual repercussions on real life. That Jensen was nomadic by nature and by career, slipping from one place to the next as the tide took him.
"Yeah," Jensen says, and he sounds as regretful as Jared feels, although he must have had in the back of his mind all along that this was coming. "I probably should have told you earlier, if you --" He breaks off, bites his lip. "I mean, hell, I may be presuming, here, acting like it'll actually be a huge deal for you to have me out of your hair for a few weeks, but I --"
Jared's chest clenches at that, pained and indignant. "Jen, I --" he starts, but Jensen holds up a hand, stalling him.
"I've gotten attached to you, is all," Jensen says, and Jared knows what that means from him. God, he knows Jensen. This is -- this is huge. "I've gotten attached to this, and I shouldn't have, it was dumb, because I knew this was what I did, you know? This is what I do. I go and I'll be back, sure, if you'll still be here, but I'll always have to go again. And you're just a kid, Jared. I don't do this and this is why. Just, with you..." He trails off, spreads his hands. "I don't know. You fuck me up." He laughs, short, and there's nothing like amusement in it. "Hell, Jay, I've got ten years on you but this is as new to me as it must be to you. I just -- I don't know." He bites his lip, and his eyes, when he looks up at Jared again, are oddly open, earnest and young. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
Every protective instinct, every warm, nurturing thing, surges up in Jared at that like a hurricane, like a tidal wave, and he hooks his arms immediately under Jensen's, hauling them together, skin to skin. "You do what you want to," he offers, insistent. "You want to be with me, you be with me, okay? I knew this was coming and I shouldn't have forgotten and I won't like it, but dammit, Jen, I can get used to it, as long as you always come back." He squeezes, crosses his arms over Jensen's ribcage and pulls, as if he could get them even closer together; as if he could eradicate every last molecule of space between them. "You go, is what you do. And then you come back and I'll be here. It's not hard."
There are tears in his voice towards the end of it, but Jared doesn't register that they're on his face, too, until he sees Jensen's eyes, glassy green and damp at the corners, and it hits him like a bullet to the chest. Jensen doesn't -- Jensen shouldn't, and any other time Jared would have been frantically wiping his own tears away in case it got Jensen all embarrassed and irritated with him, but Jensen is with him on this, one hundred and fifty percent. Jensen doesn't want to go because of Jared, and that knowledge makes Jared's own unhappiness at the prospect just that little bit less extreme, just that little bit less painful. Jensen has to leave, and he'll hate it, he'll hate it every day, but if Jensen has to leave in order for both of them to realise just how much Jensen wants to be able to come back -- well. Jared leans up, smiling a little, and presses a kiss to Jensen's mouth. "Okay?" he says, soft, and Jensen nods back jerkily, eyes wide open and dark green and startled.
"How do you," he tries, cut-off and low, "-- you just know, goddammit, Jared, this is why."
Jensen hesitates a second, draws in a stuttered breath and turns his head, and then his mouth is warm on Jared's, sudden and sure, the edges of the contact a little damp with something Jensen would doubtless deny. Just like that, one shift and they're kissing, before Jared can draw a breath to ask him what he means -- as if it matters; as if it could possibly be anything he hasn't figured out for himself already.
"Jensen," he tries, but Jensen's hands are warm on his face already, holding him too firmly for Jared to be able to articulate more than a soft sound, lost in the cavern of Jensen's mouth. Jensen groans against him, tugs, and Jared surrenders to the path of least resistance, curling his tongue to stroke against Jensen's where it's pushing, tastebud-rough, between his teeth. This could be the last time for months, he thinks, but the words don't seem to take root, the idea too vast and aching to register in anything but the abstract. This will be the last time, and Jensen is warm and naked against him, guiding Jared's hand down between his legs, turning his wrist until Jared feels him, still loose and pliant from the night before.
He forgets himself then, forgets his inarticulacy in the face of Jensen's closeness, and groans some curse word that Jensen feeds back to him with a twist of his tongue. Jensen lifts his hips, raising his knees to push his feet flat into the mattress, and Jared feels the last of the blood rush away from his brain, leaving him dizzy and breathless. Beneath him, Jensen is shifting, guiding Jared flush between his legs, and Jared is weak at the realisation that he wants this again, that last night was not some sort of horrible last-time fluke, a gift born of pity. Jensen wants this, his hand braced on Jared's wrist, holding it in place, and Jared swallows back a low sound in his throat as he pushes inside, obedient slick-smooth slide of his fingers.
Jensen bucks up around him immediately, head falling back, and Jared's own breath quickens, rasping in his throat. Jensen's hot around him, tight clutch of his body, but Jared is big enough to have stretched him good and he takes Jared's two fingers easily, thrashes when Jared crooks them up to find the sensitive place at his core.
Ordinarily, they're loud, now, when they have opportunity to be, when there's music steadily pulsing downstairs and nobody in the neighbouring rooms to mock them for their enthusiasm. Jensen's place has thick walls, Jared has no doubt, but they're quiet, all the same, moving more slowly than usual, working each other on long, smooth strokes and ragged breaths. Jensen arches up when he's ready for a third finger, face twisting at the pleasurable burn Jared knows so well himself, but he says nothing, not Jared or fuck, yes, there the way he used to. Jared knows well enough why not -- something about the quietude that's settled around them, this sacrosanct bubble of stolen intensity that any amount of conversation could break. It holds then suspended within it, guiding Jared's mouth in its meandering paths over Jensen's chest and shoulders, guiding his fingers as they work him open, deep and careful, slow and firm.
Beneath him, Jensen is caught up in it, too, the movements of his hips gone careful and deliberate, repeated undulations like the wash of the waves. "Jay," Jensen says at the crest of it, as Jared cants his hips to take hold of Jensen's thighs, slide home into him. He hisses softly at the burn, but there are no more words, only the whispering of skin as they rock together, the quickening of their breath when coordination becomes too erratic for kissing.
It's difficult, wrapped up in each other like this, to get any friction, to get the right angle to thrust properly, but Jensen doesn't seem to want to disentangle them and Jared is content to let him cling, hands skating over Jensen's flanks, his ribcage, as they shift together slow and close. It's never been like this before, the burn in his stomach licking like embers through his chest, down the lengths of his limbs to his fingers and toes, to his mouth where it rubs over Jensen's, open and damp. They've never been so deep inside each other that the want is no longer in Jared's cock, arrowing out through his groin, but skidding through him instead with his blood, loose and wrenching, visceral and raw. Jensen shifts, and Jared feels it everywhere, breathes it on a shudder into Jensen's mouth, and Jensen's hands are in his hair, on his face, his mouth on Jared's lips, at his throat, everywhere. Jensen is under him, around him, and Jared feels the warmth in his stomach transmute into something else; something new that catches at the bolt of his jaw, metallic as tears, and makes it ache.
When he comes, it's almost a surprise, welling up out of him huge and strange like a sob or a cry. One moment, he's mapping Jensen's hips, Jensen's stomach, with his hands, thumbs skittering over the head of his cock where it's leaking slick between their bellies, and then Jensen is clenching up everywhere, shuddering, and the motion takes root in Jared's chest, breaks over him like a dam and tugs him into its current. He arches, gasping, but Jensen only groans into his mouth as he spills between them, brings their mouths together again and Jared lets himself fall in pulses, biting at Jensen's mouth, licking at his tongue. "Jensen," he breathes at the zenith of it, "Jensen," but Jensen is breathless and his face is wet, and when they break apart he is still, sweat-damp against Jared's skin.
They dress in silence afterwards, something tremulous and unhappy between them, and Jared bites his lip on the feeling that rose up in him with Jensen in his arms; the strange, everywhere feeling that now won't seem to dissipate. Jensen doesn't need to hear that, not right now, not when he has no choice about what he has to do; and when he kisses Jared goodbye outside the speakeasy, Jared's fairly sure it didn't need to be articulated, anyway. There's something in the cling of their mouths, the way Jensen's hand fists in the collar of Jared's shirt, that says it all without words.
Misha is in the process of decanting what remains of his depleted stock into new bottles when Jared comes in. It's a laborious and not particularly interesting task, involving a lot of attention to the co-operation of hand and eye, and Misha would probably have taken Jared's arrival as an opportunity to take a break under any circumstances. Today, though, it is immediately obvious from the slump of Jared's shoulders, his dulled, disconsolate expression, that Misha needs to stop what he's doing right now and take however long a break Jared needs.
"Oh, Jared." He bites his lip, sets down his funnel on the bar and slips nimbly through the gap in the counter, into the main room. Jared looks back at him, steady and openly miserable, and Misha's heart clenches in his chest. "Baby. Come here." He holds out his arms.
He's damp, he knows, the front of his apron covered in stains where various toxins decided to make an escape from their containers while they had the chance, but Jared stumbles blindly towards him all the same and without hesitation, tucking his face into the curve of Misha's neck. Jared's taller than him by several inches now, still not quite done growing, but everything in his posture right now makes him small in Misha's arms, his shoulders pulled in tight and unhappy. Misha rubs a palm over the breadth of Jared's back, wide firm strokes across his spine, and holds him back just as tightly as Jared is gripping him. Against his neck, Jared's face is growing tellingly damp, and it makes Misha's heart hurt for him. "Jensen left, didn't he?"
Jared's nod is constrained, quick and disbelieving and devastated. "This morning," he says, his voice very small. To his credit, it doesn't break, but Misha hears it wavering. "Just -- just now."
"Oh, Jared." Misha doesn't enjoy feeling as inadequate as he feels right now, but it isn't as if there's very much else to say. He knew, after all, that this day would come, and he had certainly had the opportunity to attempt to warn Jensen off, all those weeks and weeks ago. But then Jensen had started to glow like that, and he and Jared had looked at each other as if incapable of seeing anything beyond, and Misha just hadn't had the heart to intervene. Jensen didn't do boyfriends because he had no desire to suffer the heartache that inevitably goes with attachment; but Jared had been an exception, the one whose company seemed somehow to override all that. Misha's known Jensen long enough to be able to determine these things, and he knows Jared can't be the only one of them unhappy. It's about time Jensen finally stopped evading the difficult parts of adult relationships, and he's a good man, good enough for Jared if anyone is. It's just that knowing these things doesn't make it any easier to see Jared like this, seventeen and shattered in his arms.
"I knew he'd be leaving soon," Misha says, carding his fingers through Jared's hair where it curls over his collar, "but I didn't know it'd be today." Jared's face is downy-soft, the edge of Misha's stubble rasping against it, and he strokes a thumb soothingly over the bolt of his jaw, the boyish curve of his cheek. "When'd he tell you?"
"This morning," Jared says, muffled and wet. He sighs, turns his face and nuzzles into Misha's neck like an animal, as if he thinks he can give everything up and crawl under Misha's skin to hide. "I knew he'd be leaving soon, too, but it didn't --" he pauses, breath hitching. "Don't think either of us wanted to actually talk about it."
"Oh, Jared." He's officially become a broken record, now, but it's oddly difficult not to just go on repeating the words when Jared says these things, making Misha's chest pull tight in sympathy. Jared's heavy against him, clinging dejectedly, and they really can't go on standing like this in the middle of the basement bar for as long as Jared needs comforting. Misha has a sneaking suspicion this won't be over quickly, and also that his legs might give out under Jared's weight before they're done. He cups his hand around the back of Jared's skull, slides it down to grip his nape, warm and reassuring. "Come on," he says, gently, tugging a little. "Come sit with me."
There's always something odd about sitting in the bar during the day, something about the room that feels oddly incomplete without the yellow glow of the lamps, the clouds of smoke and swing. As he pulls Jared down with him onto the long upholstered bench that runs the length of one wall, Misha feels the weirdness of it sharply, himself in his whisky-stained apron cradling the back of Jared's skull in his palm.
Jared, though, is too preoccupied to register any such strangeness, curling immediately into Misha's side, laying his head on Misha's shoulder. Misha crooks an arm up around his shoulders, feeling fiercely protective as he strokes Jared's hair. "It'll be okay," he says, placating, and Jared nods jerkily because agreeing is the thing to do, even though Misha's only spouting platitudes and nothing he says will make this feel okay. Both of them know Jensen will be back, but they both also know that nothing will help until he is. Jared throws a long arm across Misha's body, fists his hand in the opposite side of his collar.
"Gonna miss him," he manages, and his voice is pitifully small, thin and cracking. "Misha, I don't -- I don't know how this happened. I don't know what I'm gonna -- what --"
"Hey," Misha breaks in, before Jared can run himself entirely into the ground, and when he palms Jared's shoulders he feels the well of tears deep in his ribcage, the rise and fall of a sob that doesn't quite achieve expression. "Hey, shh." He's openly rocking Jared now, as if he were a very small child or a wounded animal, but Jared moves with him, malleable and clinging, and Misha figures that anything that soothes him shouldn't be scoffed at. "All right, kiddo. I know it hurts, I know."
"Shit," Jared mutters wetly, and he sounds almost furious, whether at Jensen or at himself, Misha cannot quite determine. The next sound he makes is a sob, though, hitched and stifled, so Misha makes no response, only goes on with the rocking, making a cradle of his body.
"Ssh," he hushes, from time to time, "ssh. I got you. I got you."
By the time Jared's shoulders have stopped shaking, the light has changed and the stains on Misha's apron are mostly dry, but the shoulder of his shirt is suitably wet to make up for it, dark with Jared's reactionary tears. Misha doesn't say anything when Jared finally pulls himself upright, because Jared is seventeen and too old to have his tears wiped carefully from his cheeks, but he smiles a little, at least. I'm here.
The look he gets back doesn't quite touch what Misha would call a smile, but Jared is trying, and that's the main thing. He'll survive.
part 6