fic: Your Heart Was a Legend
Title: Your Heart Was a Legend
Author:
ordinarily
Fandom: RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~6,900
Summary: Give me Jensen being won in a game of cards by really toppy Jeff or Jared in a pseudo-historical setting, and lots of blushing awkwardness please!
Notes: Written for the fifth round of blindfold. Inspired by, but not a slavish copy of, Almost Famous. Title from Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2."
It's almost three in the morning. If Jensen were at home right now, he'd be asleep, tucked up in his heavy old-fashioned iron bed. Maybe the windows would be open; October is nice in Texas. The curtains might be moving gently in the breeze coming through the window. His homework would be tidy and complete, waiting in his book bag by the door for his mother's first wakeup call at seven.
It's almost three in the morning, and Jensen is not at home. He's 1500 miles away from home, sitting in the infamous Chelsea Hotel with an even more infamous bunch of people. There's smoking paraphernalia on the dresser, and he's pretty sure Christian Kane is snorting cocaine in the bathroom. Jeff Morgan from The Colts just staggered in with a guitar slung over his back, left a crate of booze, and walked out again without a word; a month ago, Jensen had never seen so much alcohol in a place that wasn't actually selling it, but he's used to it by now.
And Jensen, Jensen's sitting in the corner, silent and watchful, clutching a notebook in one hand and a bottle of vending-machine Coke in the other. He's not a part of the scene; even if everyone in the room didn't already know it, it'd be obvious. But he's here for a reason -- he's going to tell Kane’s story -- and so he watches, and they let him. They perform for him, same as they do on stage, menace or frustration or poetics or humor, and he writes as much of it down as can. There's a lot to write; he spends a lot of time scribbling notes.
Almost three in the morning, and he can still hear people walking out in the hall. In fact, it's louder out there than it is in the room; the party going on earlier has mellowed into something more intimate, and the crowd from two hours ago dissipated so slowly that he didn’t realize it was happening for a while. He doesn't even know whose room it is, actually. He followed his story in here, and his story is currently in the bathroom with a girl and very likely a mirror and a rolled up bill and maybe even a needle, and he's seventeen for God's sake and he doesn't know quite what to do about that. He's trying to decide whether he should knock on the door or maybe alert the guys in the corner, a poker game featuring two more Colts, Steve from Kane, and a couple of guys from an cult favorite band called Boy King (not as famous as The Colts or Kane but just as good, poppier and more lyrical, music jangling around the singer’s low-pitched vocals), and shit, what if Christian Kane is dead? What's he going to do then?
Christian Kane is not, in fact, dead: the bathroom door opens, and he steps out. He's looking twitchy but not manic, a good sign, Jensen thinks. Maybe. Jensen hasn’t been exposed to stuff like this much, growing up in Richardson. Chris went in there with a girl, but the girl's gone now –- Jensen doesn't know quite how that happened, maybe he fell asleep for a minute? But the bathroom's definitely empty now, and there’s no girl in sight -– and Chris eyes him with flat eyes for a minute before he says, “Carlson, you gonna babysit the kid for a while? Got shit to do.” He jerks his head toward the door, already starting toward it, shirt open, jeans unbuttoned, but still purposeful, as though there's really somewhere important he has to be at this hour, half-dressed. He's stepping through it while Steve's still turning his head to look.
“Hey, wait a second, asshole, letting the the kid tag along was your idea. Why do I have to babysit?” But Chris is gone, and Jensen's still sitting in the corner with his Coke and his notebook. He can feel the blush rising in his cheeks, and he's glad the room's lit only by lamplight and the city lights filtering in through the window.
Steve stares skeptically at Jensen, then his face softens. “Aw, goddamnit. It's okay, kid, I won't bite you. What's your name again?”
“Jensen, I guess.” Jensen’s only been traveling on a bus with him for a month now. Why should he remember Jensen’s name?
Steve raises his eyebrows. “You guess? You're not sure what your name is?”
Jensen smiles. He can feel the awkward spreading over him. “Uh, no, I'm sure. It's just...not what Chris calls me.” God, why did he mention that? Stupid to mention that.
The tall lead singer of Boy King – Jared's his name, Jared, it's Jensen's job to know these things – is looking at him, too. “What does he call you instead?”
The blush is getting hotter. “Jenny,” he says, staring at the bottle in his hand, voice quiet, like maybe they'll let it drop if they don't hear him say it.
The table laughs, everyone except Jared. “Well, you don't look like a Jenny to me,” he says. His voice is kind, but his eyes are heavy-lidded in the low light, and he's watching Jensen intently, like he's figuring Jensen out, like he's waiting for him to say or do something, but Jensen doesn't know what. “So, Jensen,” he says, and his voice sounds like the voice in Boy King’s songs, now, gravelly-sweet, “you play poker?”
:::
And yes, he's played poker, four or five times, but after three beers and an hour playing with these guys, all of them older, all taking the game pretty seriously, he's more than ready to admit that he's totally out of his league here. Actually, he'd been ready to admit that about ten minutes in, but Jared's taken pity on him, helping him, leaning in so close their shoulders touch, whispering instructions in his ear, a couple of times even spotting him chips when he's inched close to completely busted.
He's up a little by now, thanks to Jared’s coaching, and he's got a decent hand, nines full of aces. His head is spinning, from the beer and from the game. The stakes are rising steadily, and Jensen’s floundering a little because Jared's not offering advice on this one, he's leaning back, watching Jensen with a tiny, encouraging smile on his face. Jensen's feeling lucky with Jared's eyes on him, and he sees all bets, one by one.
And one by one, the others drop out, until it's just him and Jared, and he's down to the last of his chips. “Guess I have to call,” he says as he throws them in. “This is all I have.”
Jared's smile widens. “Well, not all you have,” he says.
Chad, sitting on Jensen's other side, leans forward to glare at Jared. “Dude, best not go there,” he says.
Jared rolls his eyes at Chad. “Man, since when are you the voice of fucking reason? This is his choice, I’m not forcing anybody to do anything. He can call now, or he can go all in,” he says calmly.
“Yeah, well, this isn’t exactly something you usually--” Chad stops, bites his lip at Jared’s expression, and holds up both hands, a placatory gesture.
Jared’s refocused on Jensen, though, face changing, but still challenging. “What do you say, Jensen? Are you going all in?”
“I'm all in now,” Jensen says, gesturing at the empty space where his chips should be. “I really don't have anything else, unless maybe you want my watch or something. It's pretty cool. Digital, see?” He holds out his wrist for Jared's inspection.
Jared puts his hand face-down on the table and takes Jensen’s wrist to study the watch closely, thumb tucking underneath the band to test the strength of it. “Yeah, it's cool, but that's not really what I had in mind. There's still you.” He leans closer, so close his lips are touching Jensen's ear. “Here's the stake. You win, you take everything in the pot and all the chips I've got, which is a lotta money.” And it is, there must be five hundred bucks' worth of chips sitting in front of Jared. “I win, you come back to my room and interview me, I’m your story until it's time for you to ship out.” He glances over at Steve, who's looking sort of horrified and sort of amused. “How long'll that be, Carlson? You can spare him, right?”
Steve raises his hands. “Gotta be Jensen's call, man. He's not mine to give.” Steve turns to Jensen. “Last show's on Saturday, so we leave on Sunday morning. You'd stay with him for a couple of days, kid. You ask me, that’s a long-ass interview.” The last word’s stressed, and Jensen can’t figure out what he’s trying to say, but Jared’s callused thumb is scratching over the skin on the inside of his wrist and the hair on his arms is standing up and he should either call or fold right now, he knows it, that’s his weekly per diem on the table, but that uncharacteristic recklessness is still riding him, and he hears himself saying, “Yeah, sure, I could interview you. Chris told me tonight after the show that he’s gonna be busy in New York anyway.” He’s been busy all the way down the road, for the whole tour so far, and this Kane interview should have been an easy score, but it’s nothing like what he’d thought it was going to be when he’d started out, nothing like the way his interviews usually go. His notebook’s packed with odds and ends and observations and about ten minutes of actual interview, and Jensen’s tired of sitting in corners, and Jared’s still watching him expectantly. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I’m all in, then.”
Jared’s smile widens into a dimpled grin. “Oh, that’s great,” he says, and he leans back to push his chips into the pot and pick up his hand. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.” He looks entirely too cheerful, and Jensen’s suddenly afraid he’s been had.
It becomes completely clear that he has been had as soon as Jared lays his cards on the table. Four kings. Jensen watches as Jared sweeps the all his chips off the table into an available liquor box and sets it to one side. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. Cash me out when y’all are done; me and Jensen have some interviewing to do.” He shakes Jensen’s shoulder gently and pulls him to his feet. Chad looks like he wants to say something else as they leave, but he’s quiet as they make their way to the door. The other guys are already turning back to the game, Steve shuffling the deck with an expert flick of his wrists.
:::
It’s nearly four o’clock now, and Jensen feels lightheaded and punch-drunk, eyesight telescoping and expanding in the house-of-mirrors way it usually only does when he’s got a new pair of glasses. Jared’s own eyes are bloodshot. He looks like maybe he’s been up for days now. Maybe he has. But Jared’s the subject now, and he’s at his disposal for a limited amount of time, and so Jensen doesn’t object or suggest sleeping.
He needs a fresh notebook, though, so he leads Jared back to his room. Standing in the shabby, tiny double, down the hall and a world away from the suite where they’d been playing poker, Jared eyes the clothes on the floor, the dresser, draped over the TV set and lamp. “Somehow, I wouldna pegged you as guy who wears pink nighties,” he says, holding up the item in question, filmy and floaty.
Jensen grabs his duffle, sitting compactly in the corner of the room, and unzips it to dig for supplies. “That’s Danneel’s, I think,” he says absently. “I share with three girls.”
“Danneel? Wait, you room with the Living Loving Maids?” Jared grins widely at Jensen, deep dimples flashing. He looks younger, wide open like this. “How’d you get so lucky?”
Jensen shrugs; living with three girls is not the sexual all-you-can-eat buffet everyone imagines it to be, but it does have its occasional benefits. “They’re hardly ever here anyway.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Jared’s still grinning. “I hope you’re taking pictures for the kids back home,” he says. “Every guy you know is gonna be crazy with jealousy, traveling with Kane and living with the LLMs.”
Jensen mumbles something noncommittal. The guys back home might be jealous if they even knew who he was, but he’s gone so much, anymore, that even if they do remember him, they probably think he’s moved away, or sick, or something. He won’t be sharing his what-and-who-I-did-on-tour pics with them.
Jared, standing in a sea of flowered hats and lingerie, drops the pink slip and grabs a black feather boa. “I’m borrowing this,” he says, wrapping it nonchalantly around his neck. “I’ll send you back with it, okay?”
Jensen doesn’t even know who it belongs to, and he doubts whoever it is will miss it. He lets Jared grab his hand and tow him to the door. The boa’s trailing softly over their arms as they go, and he’s just going to an interview, something he’s done fifty times by now, for several different music magazines, but he feels, as the door shuts behind him, like his life’s about to change.
:::
The walk to Jared’s room is uncomfortable. Jared doesn’t let go of Jensen’s hand, like he’s forgotten he’s holding it, and Jensen feels hot and uneasy for some reason, Jensen’s fingers wrapped around his are causing his stomach to flip in a way that’s very new and kind of upsetting. He clutches his notebook tighter, and passes the trip peering into open doors, where people are still moving around even now. He sees Jeff Morgan in one of them. Hilarie’s on his lap and they’re passing a joint. Jared waves their linked hands casually at Jeff, and Hilarie raises her eyebrows at Jensen. He’ll be explaining this next time they’re together, he thinks, but who knows when that’ll be? Maybe not till the tour bus on Sunday, on the way to Philadelphia.
Jared smiles at Jensen before he unlocks the door and holds it open for him. “Want a drink or something?” he asks. We’ve got more beer, some Coke, I think. Gen likes Tab, so we have that. 7-Up, maybe.”
Jensen slides into interview mode almost seamlessly now. He’s learned that much, to ask your questions where you can, even if they’re not part of the official interview. He’ll sort everything out later, when he’s writing. “I’ll take a 7-Up. Who’s Gen?”
“Girlfriend,” Jared says, shuffling things to get to a lonely 7-Up at the back of the little kitchenette-sized fridge. “She's visiting an old school friend. Be back next week.”
“Next week? How long are you staying here?” Jensen looks around as Jared hands him the bottle. It’s bigger than Jensen’s room, a small suite, and there are things everywhere, not just clothes and musical instruments, but books, records and a record player in a corner. The room’s lit by a big neon sign hanging on the wall that says BOY KING, red letters set in a yellow crown. It’s the iconic image from Boy King’s first album cover.
Jared’s been here a while. He lives here in the hotel.
“We moved in about six months ago.” Jared says, hitching up his jeans as he sits on the sofa, beer in hand. “Gen wants to find a place for real, but I can’t make up my mind to go.” He looks young again, suddenly,and Jensen's reminded that for all he's such a big guy, he's really not all that much older than he is. Twenty-one, twenty-two? “I mean, Dylan and Hendrix lived here, you know? Janis Joplin. Leonard Cohen.” Mark Twain, adds Jensen, silently. Arthur Miller, Charles Bukowski. “It’s like music runs in the water here. It feels like we’re more a part of everything when we’re living here.”
Jensen opens up his notebook and adjusts his glasses, starts to write. Two minutes in, and this is going better than his Kane interviews. “Yeah, I get it.” Jensen feels it too. He saw Lou Reed here last night, sitting in a room where Dylan Thomas slept, and it felt like a thirty-second pilgrimage. He tries to imagine being steeped in it every day, and can’t quite do it. It’s too much.
He looks up from his scribbling to find Jared watching him with a curious expression on his face. “Yeah, I think you do,” he says with a slow, spreading smile. “So are you really interviewing me?”
“Well, yeah,” Jensen says, looks down confused at the notebook in his hand. “I thought that’s what we were doing here.”
Jared laughs, and for the first time all night he looks as uncomfortable as Jensen. “Well. I had a different kind of interview in mind,” he says, and pats the sofa beside him. “Come sit over here.”
And Jensen understands this too, now. He’s seventeen, sure, but he’s also been on tour for a month, and interviewing rock stars for a couple of years now. He’s seen boys pairing off with boys dressed as girls, with boys dressed as boys. He’s seen two girls getting it on with four guys watching. He himself lost his virginity sixteen days ago to three girls at once, one of whom wore a silver-buckled white leather strap-on and nothing else (though she couldn’t convince him to let her use it on him). He understands that these things happen, in this world. He’s just so much a constant observer in that he keeps forgetting that these things might sometimes happen to him, too.
He’s just effectively sold himself to the lead singer of Boy King. For two days and change.
Oops.
He stands, unsure of where to go or what to do. Wants to walk out, so badly his knees are trembling. But, but, but. His knees are trembling, and maybe not only with an urge to run. He remembers something Danneel said about Jared last night, staring at him with sleepy eyes, that she’d want him even without the music. He thinks of Jared’s smile and his hand on his shoulder. Their fingers twined. His breath hot in Jensen’s ear. Jensen guesses that he’s been running on low heat all night, and it’s about Jared, because Jared keeps leaning in. And it’s not discomfort he’s feeling, not entirely.
His breath hurts in his lungs. There are sparks behind his eyelids.
He walks over and sits next to Jared.
Jared reaches for Jensen’s hand carefully. His face is wholly serious for the first time tonight, no half-smiles or grins in sight. “Look,” he says. “I didn’t realize that you didn’t know what this was about till now. If you want out, I’ll walk you back to your room, we’ll just forget tonight ever happened, no problem.” He swipes his free hand through his hair. “But I gotta say that I hope you’ll stay. I’ve been thinking about this since I saw you last night.”
“You saw me when we got here?”
Jared laughs. “Jensen, everyone saw you. You’re young you look seriously incorruptible, and so I think everyone in the Chelsea wants to corrupt you.”
Jensen laughs weakly. “They really don’t.” Jensen’s spent weeks now getting shuffled to one side to let the important people pass. No one ever looks twice at him, and he says so now.
Jared just shakes his head. “Just because Kane are a pack of assholes doesn’t mean everyone is. Trust me, if you were to walk down to the lobby right now and drag someone off to your room, chances are pretty good they’d come willingly.”
Jensen’s face is flaming. “Now you’re just making fun of me,” he mutters.
“Kinda, yeah. But only because I can’t imagine you pulling a caveman on anybody. Not because no one would come back up with you.” Jared’s fingers are skating lightly over Jensen’s palm, and Jensen’s dick is fully hard, but Jensen has to discount that evidence of willingness somewhat. He’s seventeen; he gets hard during shampoo commercials. But he’s feeling the touch elsewhere, traveling up his arm like an ungrounded current, to the tips of his aching fingers, and that’s different. New, or at least, it’s been happening since the poker game, but Jensen’s finally beginning to understand what it means.
His head may not be fully wrapped around this yet, but his body’s clearly there already, waiting for the rest of him.
“So,” Jared says, smile hung a little lopsidedly back on his face. “Back to your room?”
Jensen feels like he sits there, silently, watching their hands, for a long time. But when he looks up, he’s sure.
“No,” he says. “I’m staying.”
The smile evens out, comes closer. “Good,” says Jared, right against his mouth. Jensen can feel Jared’s breath against his lips. He can’t see anything now but Jared’s eyes, and so he closes his own. Feels Jared’s tongue touch his lips, and he gasps, mouth opening for it with Jared following.
And they’re kissing. He’s kissing Jared Padalecki, who wrote “Impala,” Boy King's first single, when he was only a little older than Jensen. Jared Padalecki, who won him from Kane in a game of poker with Jensen’s unwitting consent.
Who has a girlfriend.
He yanks himself away, jumping to his feet so fast all the blood in his dick rushes back into his head, and he sways dizzily. “Wait,” he says, “wait. Your girlfriend, is she gonna --”
Jared leans back on his hands, watching Jensen. “Nah,” he says casually, “Gen’s cool. We try to give each other as much space as we can, you know?” Something must show on Jensen’s face, some doubt, because Jared goes on. “You do know what it’s like, right? She sees who she wants, I see who I want. We’re together at the end of the day, but where we go before that is up to us, get it?”
Jensen does. He thinks. He’s heard things like this, and sometimes they work out and sometimes they seem to go really, badly wrong, but he figures he’s asked what he needed to ask, and it’s on Jared’s head now, whatever happens -- Jensen’ll be long gone before she gets back, after all. Jared looks like he’s telling the truth, though. Jensen hopes he’s telling the truth.
Jared reaches for him again. “Come here,” he says, and pulls Jensen till he’s standing between Jared’s legs, he watches Jensen’s face as he slips his hands underneath Jensen’s t-shirt, and Jensen breathes in through his nose at the feel of Jared’s hands flat against his hipbones.
“God,” says Jared, in his low-note cello voice. “Been wanting to do this all night. You were thinking so hard in that hotel room, while we were playing. Wished you were thinking about this.”
Jensen had been busy worrying that his Rolling Stone cover story was ODing in a bathroom fifteen feet away from him. He hadn’t been thinking about Jared’s hands, smoothing their way up under his shirt. He wishes he had been. It would have made his night much more fun. Maybe anxious. Probably fun.
Jared’s palms find his nipples, and Jensen gasps as they massage firmly. Jensen’s only recently discovered how sensitive he is there -- has Danneel to thank for that -- and presses in, leaning his weight into Jared, who presses back a little, rearranging them so Jensen’s straddling Jared’s legs. He tugs Jensen’s shirt off over his head, unbuttons his jeans, pulls him so he’s sitting in Jared’s lap.
When his mouth meets Jensen’s again, it’s harsher, dirtier. Jared bites his lips open, at the same time smoothing back down his chest and the zipper of his jeans, fingers toying at the waistband of Jensen’s shorts before slipping inside them, and Jensen’s world has been reduced to those two points of contact, mouth and lower belly. He doesn’t know what his own hands are doing, doesn’t know how he’s moving, doesn’t know if he’s embarrassing himself or Jared and doesn’t care. He just wants Jared’s fingers closing hard around his dick, stroking exactly rough enough, Jared’s mouth sucking so hard on Jensen’s lips that they feel swollen, skin tender and red and bruised. He doesn’t last long, that far gone, bursts open, sweet and sticky like dropped overripe fruit.
When he comes to, he’s wrapped like a blanket around Jared, nose tucked into Jensen’s ear and arms linked tightly behind Jared’s back. His bare belly’s flat up against Jared’s shirt, and they’re both warm and wet, kind of slimy. He shifts, pulling back a little to look down between them. They both look, at his softening cock and Jared’s wet shirt, the tent in Jared’s jeans, and then back up.
Jensen’s face is flaming. Jared’s not only fully dressed, Jensen hasn’t bothered to touch him at all, apparently. “Uh,” he says.
“Hey, it’s all fine,” Jared says. “We’re not nearly done for the night. Or the week.” He pushes Jensen off his lap, and Jensen’s jeans, fully unfastened, slip down to his ankles. Oh, god, he’s still wearing his shoes; the grubby gray rubber toes of his All-Stars peek out from under the puddle of denim. He starts to toe them off, and thinks better of it, glances up for a quick Jared-check.
Jared’s watching him, focused and utterly unsmiling. No one has ever looked at Jensen like that. He looks completely opaque, and for a second he’s a stranger.
“Take the rest of it off,” says the stranger.
Jensen’s still wearing his shorts and shoes, still almost wearing his jeans, but he feels stripped bare under that stare. It’s daunting, but he feels his dick twitch too, and Jared sees it and his face is more familiar and friendly again as his eyes travel back up to Jensen’s.
“You like that, huh?” Jared’s approaching kind, pitched low and honey-smooth, but that darkness is still there underneath it, and Jensen doesn’t know what he’s responding to in that tone, but he does seem to be responding, because when Jared continues, “Like me telling you what to do next?” his dick’s twitching again, starting to harden under Jared’s voice and his eyes.
“Oh, yeah, you really do.” His nostrils are flared. “You know what, Jensen, this has already been an amazingly good night, and this right here, I think this might be the best part of it.” He leans forward, never taking his eyes off Jensen’s, and says again, “Take the rest of it off, Jensen.”
Jensen shudders. Goes back to toeing off his shoes, and then kicks off his jeans one leg at a time. Smooths his hands under the waistband of his shorts to buy a little time, but Jared’s still watching, unmoving, and he finally pushes them down, one quick gesture, and just like that, standing in a guy’s hotel suite in New York under the garish red and yellow neon lights, he’s about as far from his Richardson life as he can possibly be.
He’s completely naked, and he should be mortified, but with Jared’s eyes gleaming like that, he feels like maybe the nakedness maybe isn’t such a bad thing. He’s flushed again, but now he’s not sure whether it’s embarrassment or not, or an equal mixture of embarrassment and arousal, and he just stands there, shaking from the impact of everything that’s happened tonight, stuck on sensory overload.
And Jared’s still fully-clothed, still staring. Still hasn’t moved. Still hasn’t said anything. His head’s tipped back slightly, and his eyelids dip low.
Finally he sits up a little. “Turn around,” he says, making a tight twirling motion with his finger, and Jensen moves immediately, slow revolve in place like a top. When he’s made a full revolution, he’s facing Jared again. “Nice,” Jared says simply. “Very nice.” He reaches out and runs his hand down Jensen’s side, tucking his fingers tightly into the undercurve of Jensen’s ass.
And Jensen wants more, feels greedy for it, but he doesn’t know whether touching’s allowed. Slowly, he moves his hands up to Jared’s shoulders and grips them as though they’re the only thing keeping him from floating away.
“Ready to go?” Jared tightens his grip on Jensen’s thigh, squeezing. Jensen nods, yes, and Jared stands up without another word and leads him into the bedroom.
It’s darker in the bedroom, feels cooler and quieter. The heavily lined curtains are closed and the air feels thicker, almost liquid. The bed fills the space, and Jared leads him to it, pushes him down to sit, turns on a lamp and shuts the bedroom door, then returns to stand in front of Jensen. He runs a thumb over Jensen’s lips, and, daring, Jensen licks at it, lightly.
Jared smiles approvingly down at him. “Yeah, I like that.” He pushes his thumb slowly into Jensen’s mouth, and Jensen opens easily for him, still licking, before he closes his mouth and sucks. Jared’s eyelids flutter briefly, and then he’s reaching with his other hand for the button on his own jeans. No underwear underneath, so when he unzips, Jared’s cock is right there at eye level, hard and plum-tipped, leaking.
And Jensen may be inexperienced, but he’s not stupid. He has a pretty good idea of what Jared wants here, and so he reaches for it, slides his palm up the underside of it. Pulls away from Jared’s thumb and then leans forward.
Jared stops him before he gets there. “Hey,” he says. “You done this before?”
He hasn’t. He’s only ever been on the receiving end a couple of times, even, and until tonight, he’d never thought seriously about doing it to someone else. This is Jared, though. He wants to give Jared something like what Jared gave to him ten minutes ago. “No,” he says, looking at Jared’s really pretty spectacular dick, still stroking it slowly.
Jared’s breath hitches as his fingers linger on the glans. “Okay. Okay. We’ll take this slow. I’ll do the work here, okay? You just...open up. Cover your teeth with your lips.”
With the first slide of Jared’s dick, Jensen’s overbalanced, in over his head. It’s impossible to keep everything in mind all at once. He sucks, forgets to guard his teeth, and Jared hisses. He covers his lips, but forgets to move his head. He moves his head, but moves too far and gags. He feels like having gotten blowjobs before, he should have some idea of what Jared wants, but his mind’s blank, he doesn’t know at all, and he’s starting to panic. The flailing will start any minute.
It all sort of, well, sucks, until Jared puts his hand on Jensen’s cheek. He’s smiling, so Jensen doesn’t think he’s scarred Jared for life or anything, but still. “It’s okay. First time for everything, right?” His thumb strokes over Jensen’s lips, still stretched motionlessly around him. “You just cover your teeth, I’ll take care of the rest, all right?”
Jensen nods as best he can with his mouth full of cock. Jared wraps his hand around the base, slowly feeds it to Jensen until he can feel it nudging the back of his mouth, just enough to get his gag reflex giving way, flooding his mouth with spit, before Jared pulls back a bare inch. Eases forward again, gently, and pulls back. And again, and again, and there’s a languid rhythm to it now, Jared pushing gently through his own fist and Jensen’s mouth over and over again.
After a minute, Jensen feels comfortable enough to add a variation, and ripples his tongue against the underside. Jared gasps, and Jensen feels better immediately, less painfully lacking. He does it again, and gets the same reaction. He’s drooling, can’t swallow, but Jared doesn’t seem to mind that. He wipes his hand under Jensen’s chin, smiles, and rests his hand on the top of Jensen’s head, gripping tight enough to pull Jensen’s hair, but not pushing, steady and slow on the rhythm. “Tighten your lips,” says Jared, and that’s easy, too, and Jared groans. He’s doing this. It’s working.
When Jensen reaches out to push Jared’s hand away from his dick so he can do that part himself, though, Jared pulls out completely. “Wait,” he says, drawing in a long, unsteady breath. “I think it’s time to move on.”
Jensen tries to speak, stops, swallows, and tries again. “Don’t you want to--” come, he wants to say, but somehow, stupidly, considering he’s already done it himself, and all over Jared’s shirt at that, he can’t make himself say it.
He wonders if he’s done something else wrong.
Jared understands, though, and smiles. “Nah,” he says. “I want this to last a while, kid. ‘S too good to rush, you know?” Jensen flushes at that, but this time with pride, not embarrassment. He may be just some kid, but he’s keeping up so far. He wants to keep keeping up, too, so he doesn’t say anything, just lets Jared pull him to his feet -- realizing only when he’s standing that he’s hard again, just from sucking Jared off -- and kiss him, brief flash of tongue for him to chase, and arrange him, kneeling on the bed, facing the headboard with his back to Jared.
Jared leans forward against his him, pressing tightly enough to feel the imprint of buttons on his back, the heat of Jared’s dick pushing into the crack of his ass. Jared runs a hand down his chest, over a nipple, tangling in his pubic hair and gripping for a brief second at the base of his dick, then moving back to squeeze his balls gently. “Don’t move,” he says, and if he thinks Jensen’s capable of any movement at all, he’s just wrong about that. “I’ll be back in a minute.” When he steps away, Jensen’s back feels cold.
He’s back in less than that, after some fumbling in the bathroom cabinets, up all heat and grasping hands right at Jensen’s back, and Jensen leans back into him, lets Jared suck and bite at his neck till there’s a localized ache under his mouth, leans in for another kiss and Jared’s holding his head, moving him so he can get deeper in.
When he pulls back, he pulls a tube out of his pocket. “Hands on the bed,” he says, and Jensen swallows, aware of his exposure in a way he’s never been in his life before -- he has never, ever been nakeder than this -- and Jared says, soft, “I’ll take care of you, Jensen, don’t worry.” And then there are fingers there, at his hole, rubbing against it and then one inside, and the feel of his body making space for the intrusion is insdecribable, scary and unexpectedly comfortable too, as though his body’s been waiting for this all night. Which maybe it has; Jensen’s body’s been surprising him consistently for the last couple of hours now, after all.
Jared settles his hand on the small of Jensen’s back. “Easy, easy,” he’s murmuring. “Relax, it’ll be fine, I’ll take care of you, promise.” It’s almost a chant, automatic, half involuntary. “It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.” And part of Jensen resents the implication that he needs soothing, like a cornered animal, but he finds himself responding to it anyway. His spine arches under Jared’s hand. His hole twitches around Jared’s finger, spasming once before he lets Jared further in.
One finger. Two, then three, and each step is a slight increase in burn, but Jared’s true to his word, he never pushes hard, and Jensen doesn’t know how long they work at it, his body stretched to fit more and more of Jared into him, but he’s feeling comparatively relaxed when Jared’s fingers touch on a little knot inside him that has him twisting and shaking in shocked pleasure, and suddenly he’s pushing back, all conscious efforts to relax forgotten.
“Do that again,” he says, and Jared obliges immediately, hand sliding up to grip Jensen’s shoulder as he presses harder in and hits the same spot, and they’re rocking together, Jensen getting that flash of the best thing that’s ever happened to him on every touch of Jared’s fingers. His eyes are closed, now, and at some point his arms must’ve gone out from under him, because he’s arched down on to his elbows, and he doesn’t want to think about what he must look like to Jared, rocking back, stretching himself wide open on Jared’s hand, but he almost, almost doesn’t care.
And then Jared pulls out. Jensen stops suddenly and looks back over his shoulder. That taut, opaque look is back on his face now. His eyes are slits. There’s a flush on his cheeks that spreads all the way down to the collar on his shirt. He looks almost angry, but this time Jensen recognizes the look for what it is. He’s learning. He takes in the sight of Jared, rock-hard cock poking out of the opening of his jeans. Jared’s clasping it tightly. A drop of precome lands on Jensen’s calf.
Jared leans forward to run his hand up through Jensen’s hair. The wet tip of his dick bumps the top of his thigh, and he shifts his hips so that it catches in Jensen’s open hole. “This is it, Jensen,” Jared says. “You got a chance to say no -- now’s a really good time, you don’t want this.”
Jensen rocks back again. “I want this,” he says. “I want you to do it.” He can’t believe he wants it as much as he does. He feels pinned to the bed by Jared’s cock. He wants more, more, more.
Jared gives him more, just a little. He rocks forward a tiny bit, slides back out, barely in again, working his way in in infinitesimally slow degrees. Jensen’s impatient for it by now, and twice he tries to thrust himself back harder on Jared. Jared stops him, once with a simple, “no,” and the second time with a death grip on his hips. “Let me do it, Jensen,” he says. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”
Jensen thinks he’s almost beyond being hurt now; he just keeps wanting Jared’s cock touching that place inside him, keeps thinking about how amazing it’s going to feel. He huffs in frustration, and Jared’s corresponding laugh is breathless.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “we’ll get there.” And he keeps rocking those tiny thrusts into Jensen, making his spine tingle, and by the time he’s deep enough to touch that place again, Jensen’s humming with pleasure even without it, letting Jared set the pace, letting Jared put his fingers in Jensen’s mouth to suck, letting him grip Jensen’s hips and control his movements, and every bit of it’s just as good as that flash of screaming pleasure on the in-stroke, and it’s building, slowly, slowly, and Jared gets a hand on his dick and suddenly it’s blazing through him like a brushfire. His whole body seizes, everything knotted tightly up inside him, and when Jared pulls hard on his cock one more time, thrusts hard one more time, all the way in, all in, Jensen can feel the scrape of denim against his ass and thighs, and weirdly, that’s the thing that sets it off. It all unravels, pours out of him until he’s just a loose pile of skin on the bed.
Jared’s dick’s still in him, though, still moving, hands still gripping Jensen by the hips, arms pulling while the rest of him pushes. It takes Jensen a second to process that he’s still getting fucked, and fucked hard at that, and boneless as he is, he makes no effort to hoist himself back up on his hands or elbows. He’s got his cheek against the bed, rubbing it in his own come with Jared pounding into him, rougher and deeper with every thrust, and Jensen’s loving every second of it. With Jared’s cock filling him up, he’s as relaxed as Jared could possibly have wanted him.
By the time Jared comes, clenching his fingers tight with a shout, he’s halfway to hard again. And they haven’t even gotten to use the feather boa yet.
:::
After Jared’s pulled out, cleaned them both up, put on a record, and opened the curtains to the lightening sky, they get into bed together for the first time. It’s absurd in that way that Jensen’s learning first times almost always are, that panicked realization that you’re naked, in a bed, getting ready to sleep with somebody you’ve never been naked with before. Jared’s smiling at him, though, that open look that makes him look almost Jensen’s age, and he feels bruised, tender in a lot of places and outright sore in a few others. He’s lying on his stomach to ease the worst of it, and Jared’s fingers, rubbing up and down his back, keep straying there. His fingertip slips inside, once or twice, and when it does, Jensen feels that heat all over again.
This is maybe crazy, but he’s got no regrets. He’s got Jared and music and a notebook and a pencil and two wide-open days, and they’ll fall asleep like this and wake up hours later to the sounds of street traffic and the needle scratching at the edge of the record label, over and over again, and he’ll think, this is where I should be, until it's time to go.
Author:
ordinarilyFandom: RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~6,900
Summary: Give me Jensen being won in a game of cards by really toppy Jeff or Jared in a pseudo-historical setting, and lots of blushing awkwardness please!
Notes: Written for the fifth round of blindfold. Inspired by, but not a slavish copy of, Almost Famous. Title from Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2."
It's almost three in the morning. If Jensen were at home right now, he'd be asleep, tucked up in his heavy old-fashioned iron bed. Maybe the windows would be open; October is nice in Texas. The curtains might be moving gently in the breeze coming through the window. His homework would be tidy and complete, waiting in his book bag by the door for his mother's first wakeup call at seven.
It's almost three in the morning, and Jensen is not at home. He's 1500 miles away from home, sitting in the infamous Chelsea Hotel with an even more infamous bunch of people. There's smoking paraphernalia on the dresser, and he's pretty sure Christian Kane is snorting cocaine in the bathroom. Jeff Morgan from The Colts just staggered in with a guitar slung over his back, left a crate of booze, and walked out again without a word; a month ago, Jensen had never seen so much alcohol in a place that wasn't actually selling it, but he's used to it by now.
And Jensen, Jensen's sitting in the corner, silent and watchful, clutching a notebook in one hand and a bottle of vending-machine Coke in the other. He's not a part of the scene; even if everyone in the room didn't already know it, it'd be obvious. But he's here for a reason -- he's going to tell Kane’s story -- and so he watches, and they let him. They perform for him, same as they do on stage, menace or frustration or poetics or humor, and he writes as much of it down as can. There's a lot to write; he spends a lot of time scribbling notes.
Almost three in the morning, and he can still hear people walking out in the hall. In fact, it's louder out there than it is in the room; the party going on earlier has mellowed into something more intimate, and the crowd from two hours ago dissipated so slowly that he didn’t realize it was happening for a while. He doesn't even know whose room it is, actually. He followed his story in here, and his story is currently in the bathroom with a girl and very likely a mirror and a rolled up bill and maybe even a needle, and he's seventeen for God's sake and he doesn't know quite what to do about that. He's trying to decide whether he should knock on the door or maybe alert the guys in the corner, a poker game featuring two more Colts, Steve from Kane, and a couple of guys from an cult favorite band called Boy King (not as famous as The Colts or Kane but just as good, poppier and more lyrical, music jangling around the singer’s low-pitched vocals), and shit, what if Christian Kane is dead? What's he going to do then?
Christian Kane is not, in fact, dead: the bathroom door opens, and he steps out. He's looking twitchy but not manic, a good sign, Jensen thinks. Maybe. Jensen hasn’t been exposed to stuff like this much, growing up in Richardson. Chris went in there with a girl, but the girl's gone now –- Jensen doesn't know quite how that happened, maybe he fell asleep for a minute? But the bathroom's definitely empty now, and there’s no girl in sight -– and Chris eyes him with flat eyes for a minute before he says, “Carlson, you gonna babysit the kid for a while? Got shit to do.” He jerks his head toward the door, already starting toward it, shirt open, jeans unbuttoned, but still purposeful, as though there's really somewhere important he has to be at this hour, half-dressed. He's stepping through it while Steve's still turning his head to look.
“Hey, wait a second, asshole, letting the the kid tag along was your idea. Why do I have to babysit?” But Chris is gone, and Jensen's still sitting in the corner with his Coke and his notebook. He can feel the blush rising in his cheeks, and he's glad the room's lit only by lamplight and the city lights filtering in through the window.
Steve stares skeptically at Jensen, then his face softens. “Aw, goddamnit. It's okay, kid, I won't bite you. What's your name again?”
“Jensen, I guess.” Jensen’s only been traveling on a bus with him for a month now. Why should he remember Jensen’s name?
Steve raises his eyebrows. “You guess? You're not sure what your name is?”
Jensen smiles. He can feel the awkward spreading over him. “Uh, no, I'm sure. It's just...not what Chris calls me.” God, why did he mention that? Stupid to mention that.
The tall lead singer of Boy King – Jared's his name, Jared, it's Jensen's job to know these things – is looking at him, too. “What does he call you instead?”
The blush is getting hotter. “Jenny,” he says, staring at the bottle in his hand, voice quiet, like maybe they'll let it drop if they don't hear him say it.
The table laughs, everyone except Jared. “Well, you don't look like a Jenny to me,” he says. His voice is kind, but his eyes are heavy-lidded in the low light, and he's watching Jensen intently, like he's figuring Jensen out, like he's waiting for him to say or do something, but Jensen doesn't know what. “So, Jensen,” he says, and his voice sounds like the voice in Boy King’s songs, now, gravelly-sweet, “you play poker?”
:::
And yes, he's played poker, four or five times, but after three beers and an hour playing with these guys, all of them older, all taking the game pretty seriously, he's more than ready to admit that he's totally out of his league here. Actually, he'd been ready to admit that about ten minutes in, but Jared's taken pity on him, helping him, leaning in so close their shoulders touch, whispering instructions in his ear, a couple of times even spotting him chips when he's inched close to completely busted.
He's up a little by now, thanks to Jared’s coaching, and he's got a decent hand, nines full of aces. His head is spinning, from the beer and from the game. The stakes are rising steadily, and Jensen’s floundering a little because Jared's not offering advice on this one, he's leaning back, watching Jensen with a tiny, encouraging smile on his face. Jensen's feeling lucky with Jared's eyes on him, and he sees all bets, one by one.
And one by one, the others drop out, until it's just him and Jared, and he's down to the last of his chips. “Guess I have to call,” he says as he throws them in. “This is all I have.”
Jared's smile widens. “Well, not all you have,” he says.
Chad, sitting on Jensen's other side, leans forward to glare at Jared. “Dude, best not go there,” he says.
Jared rolls his eyes at Chad. “Man, since when are you the voice of fucking reason? This is his choice, I’m not forcing anybody to do anything. He can call now, or he can go all in,” he says calmly.
“Yeah, well, this isn’t exactly something you usually--” Chad stops, bites his lip at Jared’s expression, and holds up both hands, a placatory gesture.
Jared’s refocused on Jensen, though, face changing, but still challenging. “What do you say, Jensen? Are you going all in?”
“I'm all in now,” Jensen says, gesturing at the empty space where his chips should be. “I really don't have anything else, unless maybe you want my watch or something. It's pretty cool. Digital, see?” He holds out his wrist for Jared's inspection.
Jared puts his hand face-down on the table and takes Jensen’s wrist to study the watch closely, thumb tucking underneath the band to test the strength of it. “Yeah, it's cool, but that's not really what I had in mind. There's still you.” He leans closer, so close his lips are touching Jensen's ear. “Here's the stake. You win, you take everything in the pot and all the chips I've got, which is a lotta money.” And it is, there must be five hundred bucks' worth of chips sitting in front of Jared. “I win, you come back to my room and interview me, I’m your story until it's time for you to ship out.” He glances over at Steve, who's looking sort of horrified and sort of amused. “How long'll that be, Carlson? You can spare him, right?”
Steve raises his hands. “Gotta be Jensen's call, man. He's not mine to give.” Steve turns to Jensen. “Last show's on Saturday, so we leave on Sunday morning. You'd stay with him for a couple of days, kid. You ask me, that’s a long-ass interview.” The last word’s stressed, and Jensen can’t figure out what he’s trying to say, but Jared’s callused thumb is scratching over the skin on the inside of his wrist and the hair on his arms is standing up and he should either call or fold right now, he knows it, that’s his weekly per diem on the table, but that uncharacteristic recklessness is still riding him, and he hears himself saying, “Yeah, sure, I could interview you. Chris told me tonight after the show that he’s gonna be busy in New York anyway.” He’s been busy all the way down the road, for the whole tour so far, and this Kane interview should have been an easy score, but it’s nothing like what he’d thought it was going to be when he’d started out, nothing like the way his interviews usually go. His notebook’s packed with odds and ends and observations and about ten minutes of actual interview, and Jensen’s tired of sitting in corners, and Jared’s still watching him expectantly. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I’m all in, then.”
Jared’s smile widens into a dimpled grin. “Oh, that’s great,” he says, and he leans back to push his chips into the pot and pick up his hand. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.” He looks entirely too cheerful, and Jensen’s suddenly afraid he’s been had.
It becomes completely clear that he has been had as soon as Jared lays his cards on the table. Four kings. Jensen watches as Jared sweeps the all his chips off the table into an available liquor box and sets it to one side. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. Cash me out when y’all are done; me and Jensen have some interviewing to do.” He shakes Jensen’s shoulder gently and pulls him to his feet. Chad looks like he wants to say something else as they leave, but he’s quiet as they make their way to the door. The other guys are already turning back to the game, Steve shuffling the deck with an expert flick of his wrists.
:::
It’s nearly four o’clock now, and Jensen feels lightheaded and punch-drunk, eyesight telescoping and expanding in the house-of-mirrors way it usually only does when he’s got a new pair of glasses. Jared’s own eyes are bloodshot. He looks like maybe he’s been up for days now. Maybe he has. But Jared’s the subject now, and he’s at his disposal for a limited amount of time, and so Jensen doesn’t object or suggest sleeping.
He needs a fresh notebook, though, so he leads Jared back to his room. Standing in the shabby, tiny double, down the hall and a world away from the suite where they’d been playing poker, Jared eyes the clothes on the floor, the dresser, draped over the TV set and lamp. “Somehow, I wouldna pegged you as guy who wears pink nighties,” he says, holding up the item in question, filmy and floaty.
Jensen grabs his duffle, sitting compactly in the corner of the room, and unzips it to dig for supplies. “That’s Danneel’s, I think,” he says absently. “I share with three girls.”
“Danneel? Wait, you room with the Living Loving Maids?” Jared grins widely at Jensen, deep dimples flashing. He looks younger, wide open like this. “How’d you get so lucky?”
Jensen shrugs; living with three girls is not the sexual all-you-can-eat buffet everyone imagines it to be, but it does have its occasional benefits. “They’re hardly ever here anyway.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Jared’s still grinning. “I hope you’re taking pictures for the kids back home,” he says. “Every guy you know is gonna be crazy with jealousy, traveling with Kane and living with the LLMs.”
Jensen mumbles something noncommittal. The guys back home might be jealous if they even knew who he was, but he’s gone so much, anymore, that even if they do remember him, they probably think he’s moved away, or sick, or something. He won’t be sharing his what-and-who-I-did-on-tour pics with them.
Jared, standing in a sea of flowered hats and lingerie, drops the pink slip and grabs a black feather boa. “I’m borrowing this,” he says, wrapping it nonchalantly around his neck. “I’ll send you back with it, okay?”
Jensen doesn’t even know who it belongs to, and he doubts whoever it is will miss it. He lets Jared grab his hand and tow him to the door. The boa’s trailing softly over their arms as they go, and he’s just going to an interview, something he’s done fifty times by now, for several different music magazines, but he feels, as the door shuts behind him, like his life’s about to change.
:::
The walk to Jared’s room is uncomfortable. Jared doesn’t let go of Jensen’s hand, like he’s forgotten he’s holding it, and Jensen feels hot and uneasy for some reason, Jensen’s fingers wrapped around his are causing his stomach to flip in a way that’s very new and kind of upsetting. He clutches his notebook tighter, and passes the trip peering into open doors, where people are still moving around even now. He sees Jeff Morgan in one of them. Hilarie’s on his lap and they’re passing a joint. Jared waves their linked hands casually at Jeff, and Hilarie raises her eyebrows at Jensen. He’ll be explaining this next time they’re together, he thinks, but who knows when that’ll be? Maybe not till the tour bus on Sunday, on the way to Philadelphia.
Jared smiles at Jensen before he unlocks the door and holds it open for him. “Want a drink or something?” he asks. We’ve got more beer, some Coke, I think. Gen likes Tab, so we have that. 7-Up, maybe.”
Jensen slides into interview mode almost seamlessly now. He’s learned that much, to ask your questions where you can, even if they’re not part of the official interview. He’ll sort everything out later, when he’s writing. “I’ll take a 7-Up. Who’s Gen?”
“Girlfriend,” Jared says, shuffling things to get to a lonely 7-Up at the back of the little kitchenette-sized fridge. “She's visiting an old school friend. Be back next week.”
“Next week? How long are you staying here?” Jensen looks around as Jared hands him the bottle. It’s bigger than Jensen’s room, a small suite, and there are things everywhere, not just clothes and musical instruments, but books, records and a record player in a corner. The room’s lit by a big neon sign hanging on the wall that says BOY KING, red letters set in a yellow crown. It’s the iconic image from Boy King’s first album cover.
Jared’s been here a while. He lives here in the hotel.
“We moved in about six months ago.” Jared says, hitching up his jeans as he sits on the sofa, beer in hand. “Gen wants to find a place for real, but I can’t make up my mind to go.” He looks young again, suddenly,and Jensen's reminded that for all he's such a big guy, he's really not all that much older than he is. Twenty-one, twenty-two? “I mean, Dylan and Hendrix lived here, you know? Janis Joplin. Leonard Cohen.” Mark Twain, adds Jensen, silently. Arthur Miller, Charles Bukowski. “It’s like music runs in the water here. It feels like we’re more a part of everything when we’re living here.”
Jensen opens up his notebook and adjusts his glasses, starts to write. Two minutes in, and this is going better than his Kane interviews. “Yeah, I get it.” Jensen feels it too. He saw Lou Reed here last night, sitting in a room where Dylan Thomas slept, and it felt like a thirty-second pilgrimage. He tries to imagine being steeped in it every day, and can’t quite do it. It’s too much.
He looks up from his scribbling to find Jared watching him with a curious expression on his face. “Yeah, I think you do,” he says with a slow, spreading smile. “So are you really interviewing me?”
“Well, yeah,” Jensen says, looks down confused at the notebook in his hand. “I thought that’s what we were doing here.”
Jared laughs, and for the first time all night he looks as uncomfortable as Jensen. “Well. I had a different kind of interview in mind,” he says, and pats the sofa beside him. “Come sit over here.”
And Jensen understands this too, now. He’s seventeen, sure, but he’s also been on tour for a month, and interviewing rock stars for a couple of years now. He’s seen boys pairing off with boys dressed as girls, with boys dressed as boys. He’s seen two girls getting it on with four guys watching. He himself lost his virginity sixteen days ago to three girls at once, one of whom wore a silver-buckled white leather strap-on and nothing else (though she couldn’t convince him to let her use it on him). He understands that these things happen, in this world. He’s just so much a constant observer in that he keeps forgetting that these things might sometimes happen to him, too.
He’s just effectively sold himself to the lead singer of Boy King. For two days and change.
Oops.
He stands, unsure of where to go or what to do. Wants to walk out, so badly his knees are trembling. But, but, but. His knees are trembling, and maybe not only with an urge to run. He remembers something Danneel said about Jared last night, staring at him with sleepy eyes, that she’d want him even without the music. He thinks of Jared’s smile and his hand on his shoulder. Their fingers twined. His breath hot in Jensen’s ear. Jensen guesses that he’s been running on low heat all night, and it’s about Jared, because Jared keeps leaning in. And it’s not discomfort he’s feeling, not entirely.
His breath hurts in his lungs. There are sparks behind his eyelids.
He walks over and sits next to Jared.
Jared reaches for Jensen’s hand carefully. His face is wholly serious for the first time tonight, no half-smiles or grins in sight. “Look,” he says. “I didn’t realize that you didn’t know what this was about till now. If you want out, I’ll walk you back to your room, we’ll just forget tonight ever happened, no problem.” He swipes his free hand through his hair. “But I gotta say that I hope you’ll stay. I’ve been thinking about this since I saw you last night.”
“You saw me when we got here?”
Jared laughs. “Jensen, everyone saw you. You’re young you look seriously incorruptible, and so I think everyone in the Chelsea wants to corrupt you.”
Jensen laughs weakly. “They really don’t.” Jensen’s spent weeks now getting shuffled to one side to let the important people pass. No one ever looks twice at him, and he says so now.
Jared just shakes his head. “Just because Kane are a pack of assholes doesn’t mean everyone is. Trust me, if you were to walk down to the lobby right now and drag someone off to your room, chances are pretty good they’d come willingly.”
Jensen’s face is flaming. “Now you’re just making fun of me,” he mutters.
“Kinda, yeah. But only because I can’t imagine you pulling a caveman on anybody. Not because no one would come back up with you.” Jared’s fingers are skating lightly over Jensen’s palm, and Jensen’s dick is fully hard, but Jensen has to discount that evidence of willingness somewhat. He’s seventeen; he gets hard during shampoo commercials. But he’s feeling the touch elsewhere, traveling up his arm like an ungrounded current, to the tips of his aching fingers, and that’s different. New, or at least, it’s been happening since the poker game, but Jensen’s finally beginning to understand what it means.
His head may not be fully wrapped around this yet, but his body’s clearly there already, waiting for the rest of him.
“So,” Jared says, smile hung a little lopsidedly back on his face. “Back to your room?”
Jensen feels like he sits there, silently, watching their hands, for a long time. But when he looks up, he’s sure.
“No,” he says. “I’m staying.”
The smile evens out, comes closer. “Good,” says Jared, right against his mouth. Jensen can feel Jared’s breath against his lips. He can’t see anything now but Jared’s eyes, and so he closes his own. Feels Jared’s tongue touch his lips, and he gasps, mouth opening for it with Jared following.
And they’re kissing. He’s kissing Jared Padalecki, who wrote “Impala,” Boy King's first single, when he was only a little older than Jensen. Jared Padalecki, who won him from Kane in a game of poker with Jensen’s unwitting consent.
Who has a girlfriend.
He yanks himself away, jumping to his feet so fast all the blood in his dick rushes back into his head, and he sways dizzily. “Wait,” he says, “wait. Your girlfriend, is she gonna --”
Jared leans back on his hands, watching Jensen. “Nah,” he says casually, “Gen’s cool. We try to give each other as much space as we can, you know?” Something must show on Jensen’s face, some doubt, because Jared goes on. “You do know what it’s like, right? She sees who she wants, I see who I want. We’re together at the end of the day, but where we go before that is up to us, get it?”
Jensen does. He thinks. He’s heard things like this, and sometimes they work out and sometimes they seem to go really, badly wrong, but he figures he’s asked what he needed to ask, and it’s on Jared’s head now, whatever happens -- Jensen’ll be long gone before she gets back, after all. Jared looks like he’s telling the truth, though. Jensen hopes he’s telling the truth.
Jared reaches for him again. “Come here,” he says, and pulls Jensen till he’s standing between Jared’s legs, he watches Jensen’s face as he slips his hands underneath Jensen’s t-shirt, and Jensen breathes in through his nose at the feel of Jared’s hands flat against his hipbones.
“God,” says Jared, in his low-note cello voice. “Been wanting to do this all night. You were thinking so hard in that hotel room, while we were playing. Wished you were thinking about this.”
Jensen had been busy worrying that his Rolling Stone cover story was ODing in a bathroom fifteen feet away from him. He hadn’t been thinking about Jared’s hands, smoothing their way up under his shirt. He wishes he had been. It would have made his night much more fun. Maybe anxious. Probably fun.
Jared’s palms find his nipples, and Jensen gasps as they massage firmly. Jensen’s only recently discovered how sensitive he is there -- has Danneel to thank for that -- and presses in, leaning his weight into Jared, who presses back a little, rearranging them so Jensen’s straddling Jared’s legs. He tugs Jensen’s shirt off over his head, unbuttons his jeans, pulls him so he’s sitting in Jared’s lap.
When his mouth meets Jensen’s again, it’s harsher, dirtier. Jared bites his lips open, at the same time smoothing back down his chest and the zipper of his jeans, fingers toying at the waistband of Jensen’s shorts before slipping inside them, and Jensen’s world has been reduced to those two points of contact, mouth and lower belly. He doesn’t know what his own hands are doing, doesn’t know how he’s moving, doesn’t know if he’s embarrassing himself or Jared and doesn’t care. He just wants Jared’s fingers closing hard around his dick, stroking exactly rough enough, Jared’s mouth sucking so hard on Jensen’s lips that they feel swollen, skin tender and red and bruised. He doesn’t last long, that far gone, bursts open, sweet and sticky like dropped overripe fruit.
When he comes to, he’s wrapped like a blanket around Jared, nose tucked into Jensen’s ear and arms linked tightly behind Jared’s back. His bare belly’s flat up against Jared’s shirt, and they’re both warm and wet, kind of slimy. He shifts, pulling back a little to look down between them. They both look, at his softening cock and Jared’s wet shirt, the tent in Jared’s jeans, and then back up.
Jensen’s face is flaming. Jared’s not only fully dressed, Jensen hasn’t bothered to touch him at all, apparently. “Uh,” he says.
“Hey, it’s all fine,” Jared says. “We’re not nearly done for the night. Or the week.” He pushes Jensen off his lap, and Jensen’s jeans, fully unfastened, slip down to his ankles. Oh, god, he’s still wearing his shoes; the grubby gray rubber toes of his All-Stars peek out from under the puddle of denim. He starts to toe them off, and thinks better of it, glances up for a quick Jared-check.
Jared’s watching him, focused and utterly unsmiling. No one has ever looked at Jensen like that. He looks completely opaque, and for a second he’s a stranger.
“Take the rest of it off,” says the stranger.
Jensen’s still wearing his shorts and shoes, still almost wearing his jeans, but he feels stripped bare under that stare. It’s daunting, but he feels his dick twitch too, and Jared sees it and his face is more familiar and friendly again as his eyes travel back up to Jensen’s.
“You like that, huh?” Jared’s approaching kind, pitched low and honey-smooth, but that darkness is still there underneath it, and Jensen doesn’t know what he’s responding to in that tone, but he does seem to be responding, because when Jared continues, “Like me telling you what to do next?” his dick’s twitching again, starting to harden under Jared’s voice and his eyes.
“Oh, yeah, you really do.” His nostrils are flared. “You know what, Jensen, this has already been an amazingly good night, and this right here, I think this might be the best part of it.” He leans forward, never taking his eyes off Jensen’s, and says again, “Take the rest of it off, Jensen.”
Jensen shudders. Goes back to toeing off his shoes, and then kicks off his jeans one leg at a time. Smooths his hands under the waistband of his shorts to buy a little time, but Jared’s still watching, unmoving, and he finally pushes them down, one quick gesture, and just like that, standing in a guy’s hotel suite in New York under the garish red and yellow neon lights, he’s about as far from his Richardson life as he can possibly be.
He’s completely naked, and he should be mortified, but with Jared’s eyes gleaming like that, he feels like maybe the nakedness maybe isn’t such a bad thing. He’s flushed again, but now he’s not sure whether it’s embarrassment or not, or an equal mixture of embarrassment and arousal, and he just stands there, shaking from the impact of everything that’s happened tonight, stuck on sensory overload.
And Jared’s still fully-clothed, still staring. Still hasn’t moved. Still hasn’t said anything. His head’s tipped back slightly, and his eyelids dip low.
Finally he sits up a little. “Turn around,” he says, making a tight twirling motion with his finger, and Jensen moves immediately, slow revolve in place like a top. When he’s made a full revolution, he’s facing Jared again. “Nice,” Jared says simply. “Very nice.” He reaches out and runs his hand down Jensen’s side, tucking his fingers tightly into the undercurve of Jensen’s ass.
And Jensen wants more, feels greedy for it, but he doesn’t know whether touching’s allowed. Slowly, he moves his hands up to Jared’s shoulders and grips them as though they’re the only thing keeping him from floating away.
“Ready to go?” Jared tightens his grip on Jensen’s thigh, squeezing. Jensen nods, yes, and Jared stands up without another word and leads him into the bedroom.
It’s darker in the bedroom, feels cooler and quieter. The heavily lined curtains are closed and the air feels thicker, almost liquid. The bed fills the space, and Jared leads him to it, pushes him down to sit, turns on a lamp and shuts the bedroom door, then returns to stand in front of Jensen. He runs a thumb over Jensen’s lips, and, daring, Jensen licks at it, lightly.
Jared smiles approvingly down at him. “Yeah, I like that.” He pushes his thumb slowly into Jensen’s mouth, and Jensen opens easily for him, still licking, before he closes his mouth and sucks. Jared’s eyelids flutter briefly, and then he’s reaching with his other hand for the button on his own jeans. No underwear underneath, so when he unzips, Jared’s cock is right there at eye level, hard and plum-tipped, leaking.
And Jensen may be inexperienced, but he’s not stupid. He has a pretty good idea of what Jared wants here, and so he reaches for it, slides his palm up the underside of it. Pulls away from Jared’s thumb and then leans forward.
Jared stops him before he gets there. “Hey,” he says. “You done this before?”
He hasn’t. He’s only ever been on the receiving end a couple of times, even, and until tonight, he’d never thought seriously about doing it to someone else. This is Jared, though. He wants to give Jared something like what Jared gave to him ten minutes ago. “No,” he says, looking at Jared’s really pretty spectacular dick, still stroking it slowly.
Jared’s breath hitches as his fingers linger on the glans. “Okay. Okay. We’ll take this slow. I’ll do the work here, okay? You just...open up. Cover your teeth with your lips.”
With the first slide of Jared’s dick, Jensen’s overbalanced, in over his head. It’s impossible to keep everything in mind all at once. He sucks, forgets to guard his teeth, and Jared hisses. He covers his lips, but forgets to move his head. He moves his head, but moves too far and gags. He feels like having gotten blowjobs before, he should have some idea of what Jared wants, but his mind’s blank, he doesn’t know at all, and he’s starting to panic. The flailing will start any minute.
It all sort of, well, sucks, until Jared puts his hand on Jensen’s cheek. He’s smiling, so Jensen doesn’t think he’s scarred Jared for life or anything, but still. “It’s okay. First time for everything, right?” His thumb strokes over Jensen’s lips, still stretched motionlessly around him. “You just cover your teeth, I’ll take care of the rest, all right?”
Jensen nods as best he can with his mouth full of cock. Jared wraps his hand around the base, slowly feeds it to Jensen until he can feel it nudging the back of his mouth, just enough to get his gag reflex giving way, flooding his mouth with spit, before Jared pulls back a bare inch. Eases forward again, gently, and pulls back. And again, and again, and there’s a languid rhythm to it now, Jared pushing gently through his own fist and Jensen’s mouth over and over again.
After a minute, Jensen feels comfortable enough to add a variation, and ripples his tongue against the underside. Jared gasps, and Jensen feels better immediately, less painfully lacking. He does it again, and gets the same reaction. He’s drooling, can’t swallow, but Jared doesn’t seem to mind that. He wipes his hand under Jensen’s chin, smiles, and rests his hand on the top of Jensen’s head, gripping tight enough to pull Jensen’s hair, but not pushing, steady and slow on the rhythm. “Tighten your lips,” says Jared, and that’s easy, too, and Jared groans. He’s doing this. It’s working.
When Jensen reaches out to push Jared’s hand away from his dick so he can do that part himself, though, Jared pulls out completely. “Wait,” he says, drawing in a long, unsteady breath. “I think it’s time to move on.”
Jensen tries to speak, stops, swallows, and tries again. “Don’t you want to--” come, he wants to say, but somehow, stupidly, considering he’s already done it himself, and all over Jared’s shirt at that, he can’t make himself say it.
He wonders if he’s done something else wrong.
Jared understands, though, and smiles. “Nah,” he says. “I want this to last a while, kid. ‘S too good to rush, you know?” Jensen flushes at that, but this time with pride, not embarrassment. He may be just some kid, but he’s keeping up so far. He wants to keep keeping up, too, so he doesn’t say anything, just lets Jared pull him to his feet -- realizing only when he’s standing that he’s hard again, just from sucking Jared off -- and kiss him, brief flash of tongue for him to chase, and arrange him, kneeling on the bed, facing the headboard with his back to Jared.
Jared leans forward against his him, pressing tightly enough to feel the imprint of buttons on his back, the heat of Jared’s dick pushing into the crack of his ass. Jared runs a hand down his chest, over a nipple, tangling in his pubic hair and gripping for a brief second at the base of his dick, then moving back to squeeze his balls gently. “Don’t move,” he says, and if he thinks Jensen’s capable of any movement at all, he’s just wrong about that. “I’ll be back in a minute.” When he steps away, Jensen’s back feels cold.
He’s back in less than that, after some fumbling in the bathroom cabinets, up all heat and grasping hands right at Jensen’s back, and Jensen leans back into him, lets Jared suck and bite at his neck till there’s a localized ache under his mouth, leans in for another kiss and Jared’s holding his head, moving him so he can get deeper in.
When he pulls back, he pulls a tube out of his pocket. “Hands on the bed,” he says, and Jensen swallows, aware of his exposure in a way he’s never been in his life before -- he has never, ever been nakeder than this -- and Jared says, soft, “I’ll take care of you, Jensen, don’t worry.” And then there are fingers there, at his hole, rubbing against it and then one inside, and the feel of his body making space for the intrusion is insdecribable, scary and unexpectedly comfortable too, as though his body’s been waiting for this all night. Which maybe it has; Jensen’s body’s been surprising him consistently for the last couple of hours now, after all.
Jared settles his hand on the small of Jensen’s back. “Easy, easy,” he’s murmuring. “Relax, it’ll be fine, I’ll take care of you, promise.” It’s almost a chant, automatic, half involuntary. “It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.” And part of Jensen resents the implication that he needs soothing, like a cornered animal, but he finds himself responding to it anyway. His spine arches under Jared’s hand. His hole twitches around Jared’s finger, spasming once before he lets Jared further in.
One finger. Two, then three, and each step is a slight increase in burn, but Jared’s true to his word, he never pushes hard, and Jensen doesn’t know how long they work at it, his body stretched to fit more and more of Jared into him, but he’s feeling comparatively relaxed when Jared’s fingers touch on a little knot inside him that has him twisting and shaking in shocked pleasure, and suddenly he’s pushing back, all conscious efforts to relax forgotten.
“Do that again,” he says, and Jared obliges immediately, hand sliding up to grip Jensen’s shoulder as he presses harder in and hits the same spot, and they’re rocking together, Jensen getting that flash of the best thing that’s ever happened to him on every touch of Jared’s fingers. His eyes are closed, now, and at some point his arms must’ve gone out from under him, because he’s arched down on to his elbows, and he doesn’t want to think about what he must look like to Jared, rocking back, stretching himself wide open on Jared’s hand, but he almost, almost doesn’t care.
And then Jared pulls out. Jensen stops suddenly and looks back over his shoulder. That taut, opaque look is back on his face now. His eyes are slits. There’s a flush on his cheeks that spreads all the way down to the collar on his shirt. He looks almost angry, but this time Jensen recognizes the look for what it is. He’s learning. He takes in the sight of Jared, rock-hard cock poking out of the opening of his jeans. Jared’s clasping it tightly. A drop of precome lands on Jensen’s calf.
Jared leans forward to run his hand up through Jensen’s hair. The wet tip of his dick bumps the top of his thigh, and he shifts his hips so that it catches in Jensen’s open hole. “This is it, Jensen,” Jared says. “You got a chance to say no -- now’s a really good time, you don’t want this.”
Jensen rocks back again. “I want this,” he says. “I want you to do it.” He can’t believe he wants it as much as he does. He feels pinned to the bed by Jared’s cock. He wants more, more, more.
Jared gives him more, just a little. He rocks forward a tiny bit, slides back out, barely in again, working his way in in infinitesimally slow degrees. Jensen’s impatient for it by now, and twice he tries to thrust himself back harder on Jared. Jared stops him, once with a simple, “no,” and the second time with a death grip on his hips. “Let me do it, Jensen,” he says. “Don’t wanna hurt you.”
Jensen thinks he’s almost beyond being hurt now; he just keeps wanting Jared’s cock touching that place inside him, keeps thinking about how amazing it’s going to feel. He huffs in frustration, and Jared’s corresponding laugh is breathless.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “we’ll get there.” And he keeps rocking those tiny thrusts into Jensen, making his spine tingle, and by the time he’s deep enough to touch that place again, Jensen’s humming with pleasure even without it, letting Jared set the pace, letting Jared put his fingers in Jensen’s mouth to suck, letting him grip Jensen’s hips and control his movements, and every bit of it’s just as good as that flash of screaming pleasure on the in-stroke, and it’s building, slowly, slowly, and Jared gets a hand on his dick and suddenly it’s blazing through him like a brushfire. His whole body seizes, everything knotted tightly up inside him, and when Jared pulls hard on his cock one more time, thrusts hard one more time, all the way in, all in, Jensen can feel the scrape of denim against his ass and thighs, and weirdly, that’s the thing that sets it off. It all unravels, pours out of him until he’s just a loose pile of skin on the bed.
Jared’s dick’s still in him, though, still moving, hands still gripping Jensen by the hips, arms pulling while the rest of him pushes. It takes Jensen a second to process that he’s still getting fucked, and fucked hard at that, and boneless as he is, he makes no effort to hoist himself back up on his hands or elbows. He’s got his cheek against the bed, rubbing it in his own come with Jared pounding into him, rougher and deeper with every thrust, and Jensen’s loving every second of it. With Jared’s cock filling him up, he’s as relaxed as Jared could possibly have wanted him.
By the time Jared comes, clenching his fingers tight with a shout, he’s halfway to hard again. And they haven’t even gotten to use the feather boa yet.
:::
After Jared’s pulled out, cleaned them both up, put on a record, and opened the curtains to the lightening sky, they get into bed together for the first time. It’s absurd in that way that Jensen’s learning first times almost always are, that panicked realization that you’re naked, in a bed, getting ready to sleep with somebody you’ve never been naked with before. Jared’s smiling at him, though, that open look that makes him look almost Jensen’s age, and he feels bruised, tender in a lot of places and outright sore in a few others. He’s lying on his stomach to ease the worst of it, and Jared’s fingers, rubbing up and down his back, keep straying there. His fingertip slips inside, once or twice, and when it does, Jensen feels that heat all over again.
This is maybe crazy, but he’s got no regrets. He’s got Jared and music and a notebook and a pencil and two wide-open days, and they’ll fall asleep like this and wake up hours later to the sounds of street traffic and the needle scratching at the edge of the record label, over and over again, and he’ll think, this is where I should be, until it's time to go.