Real Person Fic - CW: Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead [Part 1/2]
Title: Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead
Fandom: Real Person Fic - CW
Characters/Pairings: Jared/Jensen, past Jensen/OFC
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual content, mass off-screen death including a spouse. I will also warn that the end of this story is left wide-open, like Jensen Ackles' legs.
Word Count: 20,267
Author’s Note: This story is 150% based on the genius of Josh Ritter's songwriting. If you've never heard The Temptation of Adam, judge your own life choices. I give Josh all credit for any positive qualities this story may have and fully take the blame for any and all badness. That said, this is also all ordinaryink's fault. She made me listen to the song basically just to get me to write the fic and wasn't even sorry when I sobbed like a bitch. Sorry I used your beautiful music for gay porn, Josh (I'm not really sorry). I am also not a nuclear physicist, nor do I know really anything at all about nuclear war except what I learned in my history of the Cold War courses in undergrad (which can be summarized: yay Oppenheimer, boo everyone else)-don't expect solid science. I do my best to work around my own gaping lack of knowledge, but there will inevitably be places where you have to take a leap of faith with me. Also, I know that Twinkies do not actually have indefinite shelf lives. But it's a fucking apocalypse fic and I wanted to perpetuate myth through my love of saturated fat, so, like, just roll with it, yo. Twinkies are the very stuff of romance. I got really, really lucky to have this story claimed by cassiopeia7, not only because she did oodles of fantastic art that fit the story's atmosphere perfectly and was totally cool with my being somehow both AWOL and demanding at the same time, but also because she knows a thing or two about the USAF and corrected me on my gross mistakes. YAY HERO. Finally, a big 'thank you' to my gorgeous beta, wutendeskind.
Summary: AU: After years of training to be a U.S. missileer, Jared finds himself locked in a missile silo underground with only one other pissed off crew member to keep him company. There he and Jensen wait (and wait and wait) for a message from their superiors: an order that will either announce the end of World War III and tell them to return to life on the surface or leave them with the responsibility of sending a retaliatory missile to the enemy, ensuring that no one makes it out alive on either side except for those safely contained in fallout shelters.
ART
AO3 // PDF
Introductions are brief when a moment of delay is the difference between safety and spontaneous combustion. All Jared knows before they move in together is that the guy’s name is Jensen.
He’s just about the most beautiful thing Jared’s ever seen as he shoves his way through the hatch. Jared lets him go first, takes in the view, and follows him, pulling the door closed behind them. Forever, maybe.
Jared smiles appreciatively as Jensen settles his bags down in the hall by the entrance. He turns on the charm, saying in a playfully smarmy voice, “If this was the Cold War, we could keep each other warm."
Jensen doesn’t seem to think Jared’s nearly as cute as he was hoping. “If this was a Cold War, we wouldn’t be in a fucking missile silo,” he replies, gorgeous features contorting with annoyance.
It’s going to be a long apocalypse.
"There's only one bed, but it looks pretty damn comfortable," Jared announces, wiping his hands together as he exits the bedroom. It's the last place he had left to inspect, and now that he's seen the entire launch facility, he's feeling pretty good about this 'end of the world' thing. The living quarters are sweet. Anyway, he'll certainly be better off than he was a few hours ago, when it was looking likely he'd die in his shitty apartment once the last giant flash of engineered fire finally hit. "We can switch off. I'll flip a coin for first go at it?"
"It's yours."
Jared looks back into the room uncertainly. "You mean I can have the first night or-?"
"You can have the fucking bed."
Jensen is not a man of many words, and the ones he does manage are all cut short and cold. He's the one and only drawback so far, and Jared refuses to let the fact that 50% of the surviving human population has a stick up its ass bring him down. He's saved. He's got a fridge full of never-expiring meat. If Jensen wants to let him have the giant, fluffy bed and spare him every other night in a cot, Jared will take that, too.
"Suit yourself," Jared says, maintaining his chipper tone as he picks up his bags and carries them into the room.
He comes back out and finds that Jensen hasn't moved an inch. He's still sitting at the control station, staring blankly at the big red button.
"Seems weird they only equipped the place with one proper bedroom. I mean, they knew they'd have to have at least two people in here. Figure if they can manage a greenhouse underground they should be able to swing another bed. There's a nursery, for crying out loud."
Jensen fiddles with some gears, and Jared thinks he's being ignored until finally he hears, "It was built for a family. To repopulate the Earth once it was safe to go back up."
"Oh," Jared says. "Makes sense, I guess. Though it's a bit odd they took all that trouble and then chose to send in two guys."
"They didn't," Jensen replies, turning his chair so he's facing Jared. He looks up, right into Jared's eyes. "Just stop talking."
Jared shrugs and heads for the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He's not letting this guy get to him on Day One.
"Do you think you could do it?"
Jensen doesn't turn from his work. It's a completely different day, but the guy's still sitting hunched over in the exact same place and pose as when Jared last saw him. Jared decides right then and there to think of him as a very attractive piece of furniture instead of a bitchy bunkmate. "Do what?" he asks, though he clearly couldn't care less what Jared's talking about.
"Press the button," Jared clarifies, taking the seat next to Jensen at the control station. "Wipe out half the world."
Jensen gives Jared a glare for sitting, as if it's not just as much Jared's work to monitor this damn equipment as it is Jensen's. "That's what we're down here for," he replies. "If you think you can't do it, you shouldn't have said yes."
"No, no." Jared gives him a small shrug. "I mean, I'm pretty sure. But, like, it's a huge thing to do, right? You aren't even a little worried when the time comes you won't be able to?"
Jensen's expression tightens even more (Jared didn't think that was actually possible). "My world already ended. I don't care what happens to everyone else's."
Jared wants to ask what the hell that means, but Jensen doesn't seem like the type who sits around swapping origin stories.
Those first two days basically set the stage for the first two weeks they spend underground. Jensen doesn't say anything-ever-and trying to talk to him makes Jared feel like he's crazy. Like he's trying to converse with the walls. Actually, it's worse than that, because the walls at least have the decency to talk back. They respond to his questions, and Jared's even programmed the system to say good morning when he turns the station on. This is how desperate he is for conversation.
Not that he's complaining. There's a good chance he'd be deep fried by now if he were topside, so comparatively, this isn't so bad. And Jensen does all the work, which makes Jared wonder if he thinks Jared's a moron, but hey, it's not the most exciting stuff in the world, so he'll play dumb if that's how Jensen wants to do it.
But the standard remains: uneasy silence most of the time, nasty looks from Jensen when he can't get away with blatantly ignoring Jared, and a whole lot of nothing to do but read and play his guitar.
Sometimes Jared spends his entire day cooking, because their kitchen is insanely well-stocked, but it sucks not to have anyone to share with when he's done. Jensen doesn't even pretend to give any of Jared's food a chance. He looks at it like it's poisoned and Jared's crazy for eating it. Jared is a very good cook, thank you very much, and Jensen can just go fuck himself.
Somewhere between the second and third week of living in the silo, the sound of crying wakes Jared. If he weren't hearing it so clearly, or if there were anyone else down here he could assign the noise to, he would never believe it was Jensen. Cold, cruel, callous Jensen. Jensen the ice queen. Jared was half-convinced the guy was a robot.
But the crying is unmistakable and so painfully human it makes Jared uncomfortable. Makes him feel like he's the callous one. He's never heard anyone cry like this, so open and broken. He didn't think this kind of crying was possible.
He creeps across the hall, from his bedroom to the launch control room where Jensen spends every waking moment, and where he's now also set up his cot. He looks in from the door, because he's still expecting to find Jensen watching a movie or listening to some incredibly depressing shit on his personal sound system. But no, it's just Jensen, sitting up on his cot with his back to the door. Jared can make out that he's got his face buried in his hands.
He wishes there were something he could do, but he doesn't make a sound. He doesn't try to comfort Jensen, because what would he say? "Hey, I know you hate me, but you kind of woke me up, so wanna talk it out?"
No, he stands there watching what he knows he shouldn't be seeing just long enough to promise himself he'll tolerate Jensen's bad attitude a little better tomorrow.
Jared walks into the control room the next morning bright and early. He smiles at Jensen as he takes the second chair by the window and drinks a sip of the coffee he just brewed. Jensen looks like he's been up for hours, and Jared can't help wondering if he got back to sleep at all.
"I guess it's gonna be eggs and ham this morning," Jared says. "Well, every morning, pretty much. Not that I'm not a huge fan of the genetically engineered produce and all that, but I do kind of wish they'd stocked this place with some shitty breakfast cereals. You know, the kind that are all sugar. I could really go for some Cocoa Puffs right about now."
"I don't care what you have for breakfast, Jared," Jensen replies. "Why don't you go eat it and let me get some work done?"
"I did eat. I wasn't talking about my breakfast," Jared says. "I was talking about yours. It's in the kitchen. If…if you want it, that is. I can definitely find room for it if you don't. I just don't think I've seen you eat anything I would actually classify as a meal since we got down here, so…"
Jensen turns his chair toward Jared and blinks a few times, very slowly. Definitely possibly a robot. "You made me breakfast?"
Jared shrugs. "Yeah, well, one of us has to keep you alive, right? You're not exactly doing a bang up job." He puts his hand over Jensen's on the keyboard and tries to give him an encouraging smile. "Seriously, Jensen. I swear it's good food. I'm not going to kill you, I need someone to do all the hard stuff so I can sit around and scratch my balls all day. Just let me run the scans this morning and go eat. The work will still be here when you finish."
Jensen looks at his hand for a long, long time before he finally seems to decide he's okay with it. He smiles dimly and nods and begins to leave, but he stops at the doorway, says, "Hey, Jared."
Jared looks back at him.
"Thanks."
He smiles and watches Jensen walk out and thinks progress.
Jensen is obsessed with crossword puzzles. It was good planning, Jared will admit, to bring them down here. He's got a stack in the corner of the rec room-or maybe the living room? It would be a living room if this were a house, but Jared's not sure thinking of a missile silo as home is a healthy way to go through this, so he takes his cue from the blueprints of the place and settles for calling it the rec room-that's about four feet high, and he's already gone through two books since they got down here.
Ever since Jared made him breakfast, Jensen sits on the sofa a few feet away from the armchair Jared favors and works at them. He still doesn't say a goddamn thing and mumbles or grunts responses when Jared tries talking to him, but that's okay. Jared's beginning to suspect Jensen is only two parts asshole and one part nice guy with no social skills.
"What's a five letter word for 'apocalypse'?" Jensen asks out of the blue.
Jared thinks it over for about a minute, then laughs at how obvious it should have been from the jump. "W-W-I-I-I."
Jensen's face is hilarious to watch as it goes from 'huh?' to 'duh' to possibly the first real smile Jared's every seen on him. It's amazing, what that smile does. The frown lines around his lips disappear, and his eyes bunch up in the corners instead. It's almost like the sun breaks out through the window for a moment, which is ridiculous because they're miles underground and the sun might as well not exist anymore for all Jared's ever gonna see of it again.
"Clever," he says as he writes it down. "Very clever."
"Does it fit?" Jared asks. Not that he expects the conversation to keep going, but he'll do his part.
Jensen nods. "Only cross is with the second I. 27 down, large dog breed. IRISH. Knew that one. There was a lady who lived on the block I grew up on with one of those wolfhounds. Holy crap, that thing was taller than me until I was like eleven."
"Man," Jared says, plucking absently at the strings on the guitar in his lap, listening to see if anything sounds good, "I wish we could have a dog down here. Only thing I miss, dogs. But I guess asking for an underground park to walk one in would have been pushing it."
Jensen huffs out a kind of dismissive laugh, and Jared thinks that'll be it. But then he bites his lip and sets his book aside, holding his page with the pencil he'd been using and giving Jared a curious once-over. "What're you working on?"
"Not really working," Jared says, ducking his head away from the scrutiny. "Sorry if my playing's annoying you. I can stop. I've got plenty of books to-"
"No," Jensen says. "I didn't mean to pry. I just…you sounded pretty good."
It takes a whole lot of restraint to school his features instead of staring at Jensen with boggling eyes and his mouth hanging open. Jared briefly wonders if it was sarcastic, if Jensen is fucking with him, but it sounded like a real compliment, so he smiles and says, "Thanks."
For an awkward moment, the room sits quietly around them, until finally Jared decides that whatever they had going for a minute there is over.
He looks back down to the sheet of scribbled notes in front of him. Jared gets so distracted that he almost doesn’t hear the soft little question Jensen asks. "Will you play something for me?"
Shocked, Jared looks up again. "Uh, yeah. Okay. Any requests?"
Jensen shakes his head. "Just miss hearing music. Whatever you think I'll like. It doesn't have to be one of your songs if you don't feel comfortable sharing."
The bunker has a pretty extravagant sound system and more music stored on the drive than Jared even knows what to do with. He's never heard Jensen listen to a single song, so the news that he misses music is a little confusing. A part of him wants to say 'then why don't you play some?' but he's glad to have a captive audience, so he smiles and strums the notes to 'When the Levee Breaks.'
Jensen starts cracking up as soon as he figures out the song and after counting through the first verse with his foot tapping on the floor, he begins singing. He knows (almost) all the lyrics, and his voice is pretty good, deep and rich and…more than a little country.
"Good song choice," Jensen says as soon as they finish. "Very poignant."
"You sing!" It doesn’t sound as stupid in his head. He's kind of just amazed Jensen does anything but calculate and glare. It's almost like he's a real human being.
Jensen grins. "Well, you didn't seem like you were gonna do it."
"You don't want to hear me sing, trust me."
"I'll take your word for it," Jensen replies, still smiling. "You're good with the guitar, though. Better than most guys who think they can play the guitar, at least."
Jared laughs. "I think that might be a compliment, so I'll take it. I used to want to be a musician in high school. You know, like every other teenage boy on the planet. But after a while I realized the guy with a guitar thing doesn't work so well when you can't sing."
"You still write songs, though," Jensen says, pointing to the sheets of music Jared has spread out on the coffee table in front of him. "And I can hear you playing them from the lab. They're not bad."
"Do you play?" Jared asks, holding the guitar out.
"A little bit," Jensen replies, reaching to take it from Jared. He immediately starts tuning it, which makes Jared suspect that he's probably just being modest.
He watches as Jensen prepares for whatever he's about to play and says, "Are you from Texas originally?"
Jensen nods. "Right outside Dallas."
"Huh." Jared sits back in his chair and catalogues Jensen again. From his spiky, light brown hair to the socks poking out of the bottom of his flight suit. Not checking him out (not that he doesn't do that all the time, because bitchy or not, Jensen is a marvel to behold), just wondering what other seemingly obvious tidbits he's missed in the last two weeks. "You don't sound like it when you talk."
"Been working and living on the east coast for a long time," he says. "Ashamed to say it's gotten to me." Jensen glances up at him. "And you're from San Antonio. Still lived there, too, up until you got called down here."
Jared nods. "How'd you know that?"
"I read your file," Jensen admits. "When they told me who they were sending down, they let me look it over to approve. Not that there was much time to really find anyone else. You were the closest person with the minimum training, so."
"You approved of me?" Jared asks. "Not, uh, not to sound whiny, but that kind of surprises me."
Jensen's expression dims a little and he looks down at his lap. "I didn't honestly care all that much at that point. Wasn't gonna be the right person no matter-" He stops himself, sighs, and then looks up to Jared with a surprisingly sincere look on his face. "I'm sorry for how I've treated you since we got down here. I know I've been a dick."
"I didn't really make the best first impression," Jared replies, trying to give him an out.
Jensen shakes his head. "You were kidding around. I think it would have been funny but…well, I was dead set on hating you. Anything you said would have been about the same, and I get that that's fucked up. It's not your fault. You've done nothing but try to be nice to me, and I guess I'm trying to thank you. For not holding my shitty attitude against me."
Jared licks his lips, not really sure where to go from here. He wants to ask what Jensen is making such an effort not to say so bad it almost hurts, but he knows he's got no right to pry. At any rate, he's glad the only other person left on the face of the planet is not, in fact, a robot.
"You gonna play me something or what?" he finally asks, reaching out to slap at Jensen's leg encouragingly.
Jensen grins, accepting the peace offering without further comment. "You know 'Angeles'?"
Things are actually going pretty well for the next week or so. Comparatively, at least. Jensen's taken to spending a few hours every day in the rec room with Jared, either doing his crossword puzzles quietly in the corner while Jared reads or swapping songs on the guitar. Sometimes, he even makes up lyrics for Jared's songs, and even though most of them are playful, they aren't all that bad.
He's not the nightmare roommate Jared had taken him for, but every now and then, he relapses. Jared will say something he thinks is totally inoffensive and Jensen will get upset or walk out without even telling Jared what he did wrong. Sometimes Jared will look up from his book and Jensen will be staring off into space, crossword forgotten on his lap and a frown tugging down at his lips.
One day, Jared finds Jensen in the lab with a tense expression on his face, his hand resting over the big red launch button and his eyes fixed on the communication board as if he's expecting a message any moment.
Jared's stomach drops. There are only two messages they can receive. Any radio waves could give their location away if the enemy has somehow infiltrated their systems, so Jared and Jensen have been trained to accept the fact that there are only two scenarios in which the government will risk contacting them:
1. The war is over. False alarm. Everything is settled and no need to blow up Europe. You guys can come up now.
There is no way in hell that less than a month after San Francisco things are all peachy on the surface. Which leaves:
2. Game over. Press the button. Mutually assured destruction. There's no going back to the surface, not until the radiation has had years and years to clear.
Jared's never been an optimist. He's never cared much for the world or the idiots running it, the ones who got them into this mess to begin with. So he didn't realize just how much he was hoping, deep down, that they were going to figure out a better solution until this moment.
"Jensen," he says softly, moving into the launch control room and sitting down, careful not to jostle Jensen. God forbid he ends the world by accident. "What's-uh, what's up? Did we get an order?"
Jensen gives Jared a distracted shake of his head and doesn't move a single muscle. He's quiet for a long time and then he says, "Something should have happened by now, right? After San Francisco. We should have launched weeks ago."
"Maybe the diplomats actually learned how to be diplomatic," Jared says with a snicker. "About damn time, right?"
"No." Jensen's voice is cold, as cold as it was before he started warming to Jared, and Jared's more than a little disappointed to hear it. "We should have launched. We can't just sit here with our thumbs up our asses after what they did. It's not fucking right. What the hell are they waiting for?"
Jared stares in disbelief. "You want to launch?"
"I want to know they're not getting away with it."
"I'm sure we've retaliated. There are measured ways to respond without being the ones to wipe out-"
"Fuck measured," Jensen growls. "I want them to pay for what they did."
"They didn't wipe us off the map, Jen. If we launch this thing, their whole continent is as good as gone."
Jensen's expression calms the slightest bit, but he's still shaking his head. "It's not about how much land they covered, Jared. There were good people. They had families. They were loved. Those people weren't soldiers, they weren't politicians, they had nothing to do with any of this. Those bastards deserve to-"
"You're talking about doing the same thing right back at them," Jared replies in his most soothing voice, putting his hand over Jensen's and moving it slowly away from the button. "There are maybe a hundred people over there that had anything to do with what happened last month. There are millions more who had no idea, who were appalled by it. Good, innocent people who are just trying to live their lives. We would be just as bad as they are if we launched this thing, only on a bigger scale."
Jensen swallows hard and turns to Jared, and Jared pretends not to see the tear that slips down his cheek before he wipes it away. "I want them to pay. I wish I knew somehow that we didn't just let it happen."
He shakes his head, reaching out to put a hand on Jensen's shoulder. They're still not exactly what Jared would call friendly, and Jared has no idea what Jensen's so fucked up over, but he's starting to get an idea. He knows what he's about to say is risky, but the way Jensen's thinking has him all kinds of nervous, and he figures it's better Jensen be pissed at him than ready to end the world. "Launching that missile won't get you back what you lost."
Jensen rises to his feet, his hand balling into a fist as he raises it. Jared closes his eyes tight and braces himself for the hit, but it doesn't come. He finally looks up and sees Jensen glaring down at him. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says. "You have no idea what I lost."
Jared stands and lowers Jensen's arm, bracing his hands on Jensen's shoulders to steady him. "I know that whoever they were, they wouldn't want you to do this because of them."
Jensen looks angry again for a split second and then suddenly he's got his hands bunched in Jared's t shirt, his face pressed against Jared's chest, and he's openly sobbing.
After standing there awkwardly for about half a minute, Jared stops expecting that he'll figure out what to do and where to put his hands and just does what feels natural. He hugs his arms around Jensen's shaking shoulders and puts one hand in his hair, pulling Jensen in closer.
"Shh," he says. "It's okay, man. It's okay."
"It's not," Jensen whispers into the wet fabric his face is pressed against. "It's really not."
"I know," Jared replies. "I'm sorry, Jensen. I'm so, so sorry."
"They promised me." Jensen's voice is so quiet Jared almost can't hear him, but he can see the white of Jensen's knuckles from how hard he's holding on. "When they called me to come down here. The last thing Jim said to me, he pulled me aside, and he promised I would get to push that button. He said it wouldn't be more than a week, and it's been almost a month."
"He had no right to promise you that. He doesn't get to decide. This kind of thing is in more than one person's hands, and he's not exactly the top of the food chain."
"But he promised," Jensen says. "That's the only reason I came. They could have brought anyone else down here. I don't even want to live I just want…"
"You want revenge. And I get that. But revenge won't fix anything." Jared gives him a weak smile. "It's a good thing that they haven't sent us the command yet. It's good. It means there's still a chance for everyone up there. It means a whole lot of people aren't going through what you are right now."
Jensen nods grudgingly and pulls away just a little bit. He's still circled in Jared's arms, and Jared's not going to make him give that up if it's bringing him any comfort, even if it feels more than a little weird.
"I used to be the one trying to talk people down from making rash decisions." He finally takes a few steps away from Jared, rubbing his hand over his mouth. "I've never hated anyone. I've never wanted to hurt people. But I don't know what else I'm supposed to do."
Jared wishes he had an answer for that, or any goddamn idea how to help Jensen at all. But the best he can do is offer a distraction. He pats Jensen on the back and puts on a less somber tone. "You had breakfast yet today?"
Jensen shakes his head.
"That's what I thought," Jared tells him, steering him out of the launch room and toward the kitchen. It's a good day to keep Jensen as far away from the work station-and that button-as possible. "C'mon. Best way to start the day. I'll make French toast."
Jared wakes up the next morning with a box of Cocoa Puffs sitting on his nightstand. There's no note or explanation as to how it got there, but he can't help remembering complaining to Jensen about their lack of crappy breakfast cereals a few weeks ago, and he laughs as he sits up and reaches for it.
He walks out without even bothering to put a shirt on, too excited about the sugar high he has coming to remember decent standards of dress. Jensen's at the sink washing off the plates from his own breakfast, but he smiles and cocks an eyebrow when he sees Jared walking in.
"Where?" he asks, raising the box and shaking it.
Jensen huffs out a laugh. "I see you found my 'sorry I got snot on your shirt' offering."
"Where?" Jared repeats. Okay, so he's a little caveman in the morning. Nobody's perfect.
Jensen smirks and inclines his head toward the pantry. "I'll show you."
He leads Jared past all the shelves Jared's already familiar with, and then he stops in front of a door Jared knows leads to a small cabinet full of laundry detergent, mops, brooms, and a bunch of cleaning solution. Then Jensen reaches past one of the broom handles and pulls on a compartment Jared hadn't noticed before and-holy shit.
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he says in an awed tone that's only half a joke, if he's being honest.
Jensen laughs again. "I'm going to regret showing you this, aren't I?"
"Probably," Jared answers, reaching in and grabbing a few of the closest packages. "Candy! Oh god, oh god." He turns one box over in his hands and nearly starts jumping up and down with excitement. "Jensen! Jensen, these haven't existed since I was a little kid. How the hell did you get a whole box?"
Jensen pries the box of Twinkies delicately out of Jared's hands. "You can't survive an apocalypse without some Twinkies," he says. "It's a rule of nature. I had to pull some strings, sure, but-"
"Why did you hide this stuff from me? You are so mean."
Jensen gives him a lopsided smile. "Wasn't hiding it from you. This stuff was supposed to be for the kids. It was hidden from them."
"What kids?" Jared asks with a laugh, and he can't shove the words back in fast enough.
Jensen's expression dims a little but not as much as Jared expects. "Wishful thinking. Or not, I guess. Just in case it ever came to the point where we did have to try to rebuild the population. I didn't want my kids to have to grow up without a few guilty pleasures."
"Jensen, I-" Jared sets the food down on a shelf and reaches out; Jensen brushes him off.
He smiles, but it's not the most convincing smile Jared's ever seen. "I guess you act enough like a kid that I should have kept this stuff hidden though, huh? No eating it all at once."
Jared shakes his head very seriously. "No, sir. I wouldn't waste it." He sends a longing look toward the Twinkies. "But maybe just one of those for each of us? I don't even remember what they tasted like."
Jensen seems to consider it, then he gives a light shrug and smiles at Jared. "We'll have dinner together tonight and then we can each have one for dessert."
"Okay," Jared agrees with a grin. "That's fair enough."
Jensen leaves Jared in charge of deciding what's for dinner but makes a serviceable sous-chef throughout the day. They sit down to eat in the late afternoon with a bottle of red wine and are tired enough from all the cooking that the silence as they chew is more satisfied than awkward.
When they finish, Jensen offers to clean up. Jared stands by the sink and hands him plates as Jensen rinses and sets things on the drying rack.
"So, how did you end up here?" Jensen asks between toweling off a pan and sliding it back into the cabinet where it belongs. "Not many people willing to drop their lives with an hour's notice."
It hadn't been a hard decision. This is what Jared spent his life training for, ever since he got recruited in his third year of undergrad. He wanted to live, and, after being rejected in favor of some more experienced candidates, he thought he'd wasted all that effort training and was still gonna die the same as everyone.
He was watching the news, staring in terrified wonder at the coverage of San Francisco, when he got the call. Jim Beaver, head of the top secret Devil's Trap project, hadn't said much. He gave Jared coordinates and the meaning was implied. Be there and you're in. Who would have passed that up?
"Not even to avoid being cooked in a nuclear detonation?"
Jensen leans on the counter as he faces Jared, taking a sip from his wine. Jared can't help noticing that Jensen's eyes are just the slightest bit glassy, his lips wet from all the wine he's had. He's so hot it's actually hard to keep up with the conversation, and Jared wonders if this is supposed to feel like a date as much as it does. Dinner. Wine. A little conversation. He's got a few ideas about where the night could take them. "What about your family? Friends? There isn't anyone you're worried about up there?"
Jared shrugs. He's never been the kind of person who puts down roots. Not that he's unsociable-Jared's never had trouble making friends. He's just never had trouble moving on and leaving them behind, either. "My parents and I don't talk. Haven't in about eight years. Not since I came out to them, but we weren't all that close before then, so it's wasn't really a big deal."
Jensen frowns despite Jared's genuinely easy tone. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"I never liked them much and they never really liked me. I don't even think me being gay bothered them so much as it gave them a convenient excuse to cut me out of their lives. Honestly, the most upsetting thing about it is that they got to keep the dogs."
Jensen laughs at that, but Jared can't help noticing that there's more to the way he's looking at Jared. He looks like he pities Jared, which is kind of unsettling considering it's usually the other way around. He can't stand the critical gaze Jensen has fixed on him, so he waves his hands dismissively between them, drawing Jensen's eyes away from his own. "Dude, seriously, I'm okay with it."
"I believe you," Jensen says, folding his arms over his chest. "I think that's very sad."
Jared snorts. "You think it's sad that I'm emotionally well-adjusted?"
"A little." Jensen looks down. "I'm not trying to be a dick or anything. I just-there isn’t anyone you miss?"
The question kind of floors him. He thinks of Genevieve and Aldis, his buddies at work, and how maybe they're worried about him right now. He hadn't called to say goodbye. It hadn't even occurred to him. He thinks about the people up on the surface constantly: whether they're alive, whether he'll ever be able to rejoin them, but until this moment, he hadn't spared a single thought for any one specific person. Maybe…that's not as normal as he thought it was.
He goes on the defensive. "Well, what about you? You're here, aren't you?"
"My close friends and family all knew what I was preparing for. They've been expecting this since the war broke out." He bites his lip. "Doesn't mean I don't miss 'em like hell. Or that I'm not worried about them and they're not worried about me. But I said my goodbyes, at least."
Jared nods. "So this is what you wanted, then?"
Jensen looks away, at his wine glass, for a long, long time. He seems to be considering something. Finally he takes a long drink and sets the glass down before looking Jared square in the eye. "My wife was the brains of the operation. This whole thing-the warhead, the petty idea of blowing up a continent in retaliation-it always made me a little uncomfortable. I didn't understand back then. But she was fascinated, a scientist in every sense of the word, and every damn lab in the country wanted her. I was good enough, but really I just trotted at her heels. This was her dream, and she was mine. She even helped design the damn layout, chose all the furniture. She wanted it to be our home, she said."
Jared feels his eyes widen at the confession, and he watches the way Jensen's muscles tighten as he speaks, but he doesn't start crying, so that's a plus. Jared clears his throat. "She-she was in San Francisco when…?"
Jensen nods. "We were supposed to be at a conference that weekend. It was a big deal, you know? She had a paper to present, and then the stupidest goddamn thing happened. One of the pipes in our house burst. We couldn't leave it like that, but she was so disappointed. So I told her to go on without me and I'd meet her if it got fixed in time."
"Jesus," Jared mutters, stepping forward and putting his hand over one of Jensen's on the counter. "I'm so sorry."
"I was supposed to be there, too," Jensen says quietly. He's looking down at their hands, and his voice sounds thin. "I should have at least been with her. All I can think is that she was alone."
"That wouldn't have changed anything. It just would have meant you both would have-"
"I should be dead, Jared." He sounds so casual about it that it sends a chill down Jared's spine. "I spend most of my time wishing I was."
Jared squeezes his hand. "I'm glad you're not, if that's any consolation."
Jensen gives him a faint smile. "Yeah right. I spent the better part of this last month resenting you just for not being her. I shouldn't have come down here at all. It should have been a woman, so you could reproduce. I think they wanted me to back out for that reason, but I couldn't think straight through how badly I wanted to hurt someone as much as I was hurting. You, uh, you really saved me from that, because you were right. She fell in love with a guy who couldn't press that button. She wouldn't have wanted me to be like Jim and all those other hawks."
Jensen looks genuinely thankful, but Jared can't help resenting himself a little, too. God, this whole time he's been making stupid comments and observations about every aspect of the silo, filling up so much space that wasn't his to fill. All the while, every damn detail he pointed out must have just made Jensen miss her more. "I didn't realize you had so much history with this place. I…I've been a real idiot. I'm sorry."
Jensen shakes his head. "Don't be. I should have told you sooner. I'm just not used to talking about her like-I never used to have to say a damn thing. I'd tell people her name and they knew who my wife was. I spent so many years so happy just to be in her shadow. I can't accept that it's really gone."
And he'd thought maybe this was a date. It's fucking incredible, the depths of Jared's insensitivity toward Jensen, even after he vowed to be more considerate. Goes to show how shitty he is at reading people, but that hadn't ever bothered him until now. "Thank you. For telling me. I know this wasn't easy for you."
"I think it was good for me. Letting that out." Jensen passes his fingers over his lips and gives Jared a look that's so sincere Jared kind of feels humbled by it. "Look, I'm pretty beat. I think I'm gonna go to sleep."
Jared nods and watches him leave. It's not until he's in the room alone that Jared remembers the damn Twinkies that were supposed to be the point of this whole dinner. It feels wrong eating one now, alone and after Jensen had dropped such a bomb-and, wow, that was a poor choice of metaphor. Jared tucks the snacks back into their hiding place. He'll bring them out again on a happier occasion.
"Is that her?" Jared looks over Jensen's shoulder, at the picture Jensen's holding, as he takes his seat at the work station. The woman Jensen's thumb is stroking tenderly over has long black hair and a gorgeous smile. "She was very beautiful."
Jensen startles, like he hadn't even realized Jared was in the room, and looks like he's debating hiding the picture. "Yeah," he finally says.
"What was her name?" Jared asks, because it seemed like talking it out was pretty good for Jensen last night, and even though there are still dark circles under his eyes, Jensen doesn't look as run down as he usually does in the morning.
But apparently Jensen's not as open in the sober light of day. "I don't know that I feel comfortable sharing her with you yet."
"I understand," Jared says, even though he doesn't. How could he? "If…if you ever want to, I'll listen, okay?"
"Thanks, Jared." Jensen swallows a lump in his throat, then turns to look at Jared. "Do you think I could tuck her into the window there? I don't think she'd forgive me if I carried on this work without her."
Jensen waits for Jared's nod of consent before bending over the control board and settling the photograph into the corner where the Plexiglas and the metal surrounding it meet. Jared laughs when Jensen rolls his eyes at the picture as if he can hear her saying something snarky to him, and something like jealousy pings in his chest. He can tell how much Jensen loves her just from that exasperated expression. Jared's never loved anything like that.
Jensen's got friends. Jared thought he had friends but listening to Jensen on the rare occasion he'll get started telling stories from before they went under makes Jared realize he never really did.
There's Chris, for example, Jensen's best friend from college. Jensen knows every bone the guy's ever broken (not a small number, and Jared's sides nearly split as he laughs when Jensen tells him about the shit that brought them about), even the ones from before they met. Jared gets such an idea of Chris that he can picture him perfectly: short but powerful with long brown hair and what Jensen calls a 'sour lemon face.' Jared imagines the scar over his mouth from the time he and Jensen got into a drunken bar brawl over a hockey game (he deserved it, the bastard, Jensen tells him with a grin) and the rough texture of his hands from playing the guitar when he should have been studying (you two idiots would get along).
Or Misha, a guy Jensen met in one of the labs he worked after graduating. Misha is an evil genius, according to Jensen (complete megalomaniac, it terrifies me that he works on nuclear weapons) who wore the same outfit every day (trench coat, blue tie, white shirt, black pants, every. single. day.) and would secretly do nice things for people when they weren't looking, then deny, deny, deny.
And then there's her-Jensen still hasn't told Jared her name, and he doesn't think Jensen ever will. He doesn't talk about her very much, unlike the others, but Jared feels like he knows her nonetheless. He meets a new part of her every day. The careful deliberation that went into furnishing the silo around him; she made this dump into something that feels more like a home to Jared than the one he grew up in ever did. She was brilliant and driven as hell; Jared goes digging into the research filed away on the systems he runs when Jensen's not in the lab and wonders if a brain like this could ever slow down enough to sleep. He knows she must have been something else beyond all that, that there's a personality so explosive it would give the missile in the next room a run for its money. And, for all Jared wishes she were here instead of him, he envies her. He only has to look at Jensen to see the crater she left behind. There's nothing he can study that will let Jared uncover that side of her; he'll never know what you have to do to make someone love you like that. Jared never felt inadequate until he met her.
When Jensen starts telling a story about one of his friends, Jared can guess pieces of where it's going just based on what he knows about them. Chris is going to start a fight with the worst possible person, and the story probably ends with Steve having to bail him and Jensen (completely innocent, yet again, except for how bad my choice in friends is) out of jail. If it starts with Misha, the chances are good it's going to end in at least three small fires. Jensen's little sister's name (Mac, he calls her, short for Mackenzie, which is short for 'the Dark Lord of Chaos') need only be invoked for Jared to begin trying to guess the bad idea she had this time and how the hell she talked Jensen and his big brother Josh into going along with it (Jared's just surprised their parents never killed any of them).
When it's Jared's turn to tell a story, he feels stilted. Like an idiot who wasted the one life he got. He knows that Genevieve can do seemingly impossible math in her head without even having to pause, but he never asked where she's from or if she has a boyfriend or what her favorite color is. Aldis can type over 200 words in a minute, and Jared's never seen him make a mistake, but he never paid attention to the guy's drink order when they went out after work, and he doesn't know if Aldis likes what he does for a living or if he wanted to be a firefighter as a kid. Jared's neighbor Adrianne has six cats and at least three boyfriends, but he can't name any of them. He feels like he knows Jensen's friends better than he's ever known anyone for himself.
Until Jensen.
If he had met Jensen four months ago, he would have done his damnedest to take Jensen home, fuck him, and then never would have thought on him again. He would have missed out on everything that is Jensen-the scratch of his voice when he's tired and the ridiculously juvenile sense of humor (dick jokes are always funny, Jared) and that unbreakable loyalty that Jared finds so beautiful and so impossible to wrap his head around.
It should be awful, he thinks, being in so small a space with only one other person for months on end and with no termination date to look forward to. They should want to kill each other by now. At first it was like that, but now every day that passes makes Jared crave Jensen's company more.
And he can't help wondering: how many people as amazing as this did he blow off in his life? Would he have been as delighted by any of those anonymous guys he fucked if he'd given them a chance? Could he have loved someone the way Jensen loved his wife? He doesn't even know if he wants that, if he ever wants to care about someone enough to miss them like this, but he's willing to bet Jensen wouldn't trade knowing her for the easy emotional detachment Jared used to think was such an asset to him.
"The stars," Jared says after a long, thoughtful silence.
Jensen looks up from the pork chops they're having for dinner. "Huh?"
"My best friends," Jared says. "We go way back."
"To the start of the universe, I bet," Jensen says with a smirk.
Jared gasps and puts a hand on his face. "Does my age show?"
Jensen laughs, and Jared shrugs. "That's all I've got to offer. Ever since I was a kid, I spent every clear night watching the stars. I had them memorized. All the constellations that would appear and in what season. You'd think they all look the same, but I could tell them apart. I knew their names. If one died out, I bet I would have noticed. I would have missed it."
He thinks it must sound stupid, so incredibly, unspeakably stupid, to Jensen and his years of stored up intimacies with all the people he's ever loved. But it's the closest thing Jared has, he realizes, a little ashamed by it. Jensen doesn't take it as a joke like Jared expected. He looks serious when Jared meets his eyes. "Must have been hard, coming down here. Knowing you'd never see them again."
"Yeah," Jared admits. "I guess it was."
Jensen doesn't say much else through dinner and disappears into the launch room after. He refuses to come out until Jared knocks on his door the next day, because he's worried Jensen's obsessing over that button again.
He opens the door but only by a crack. "Hey, yeah?"
"Uh, dude, there's dinner on the table. You've been in there for almost a day."
"Yes," Jensen says with a nod. He looks back into the room but doesn't open the door any more, and then gives Jared a nervous glance. "I need half an hour longer."
He can see that the lights are off inside, and it's just a tad too weird. Jared tries to push the door open further, but Jensen doesn't budge. "What are you up to, man?"
"Half an hour," Jensen insists, and then he shuts the door in Jared's face.
After about twenty minutes, Jensen comes out and sits down at the table as if everything is perfectly normal. He eats and he keeps up the usual banter with Jared, so Jared doesn't push it until they're finishing cleaning up and Jensen disappears into the pantry. He comes back out holding two Twinkies, a bottle of wine, and what looks like a picnic blanket.
Jared just raises an eyebrow.
"Come here," Jensen says, angling his head toward the lab. "I want to show you something."
Jared follows quietly and watches Jensen set the blanket down on the ground between the work station and his cot. There's just hardly enough space for it.
"Sit," Jensen says, pointing to the makeshift picnic. "Or, better, lie down on your back and look up."
Jared obeys and watches Jensen cross the room. He turns off the lights, and suddenly the ceiling comes to life. Jared's breath catches in his throat. It's spring. It's the night sky in spring. The same sky Jared would be looking at right now if he was lying like this in the park he used to go to alone every night.
He's not alone now. Jensen lies down next to him. "I know it's not the same, but I hope I got close."
"It's perfect," Jared says, which isn't true because Virgo has one star too many and Lupus is a fucking mess. But that just makes it more perfect, somehow. Jared feels oddly close to crying. "How did you do this?"
"We had some glow-in-the-dark paint left over from marking off the catwalks," he says. "Didn't ever think we'd use it again, but I left it in the supply shed because it's so far out of the way I figured it would never bother anyone, right? So last night after you told me you missed the stars, I went to the library and found some star charts in there and…well, I tried, anyway. I would have done it in your room, but I think these are the only lights strong enough to really get the glow going once they're out."
Jared shakes his head even though he knows Jensen can't see it. "No, this is amazing. Thank you, Jensen."
Jensen wordlessly hands him a Twinkie, and Jared laughs when he sees the glowing residue on Jensen's hands as he unwraps his dessert and eats it. When they finish, they lie back, and Jared starts pointing out some of his favorite constellations, trying his best to help Jensen see the animals or objects they're supposed to represent (he doesn't).
At some point, Jensen puts his hand over Jared's. He doesn't say anything, just slides his hand there and holds it. The warm weight of his skin over Jared's feels like a thousand pounds of precious metal crushing down-too much of a good thing and it's killing him, because it's not his and he doesn’t know how to change that.
"I give up," Jensen says after a few hours, "I probably painted them wrong, because there's no way that's a lion."
Jared laughs. Leo is one of the few constellations that is exactly right. "I'll get you to see it eventually," he says, squeezing the hand that's still sitting inside of his own.
Jensen's quiet for a while, then says, "One day, after this is all over and we go back up, you can show me the real thing."
He climbs up onto his cot and says goodnight to Jared shortly after, but Jared doesn't go to his big comfy bed. He'd rather lie here, on the cold metal floor, curled under Jensen like a loyal dog, staring up at the sky Jensen made for him.
No, Jared finally decides, after nearly a month of questioning. He wouldn't have found anyone to love up there. Jared didn't pass someone like Jensen up while he was fucking his way through life; there's no one like Jensen. He doesn't need to go back to the surface at all.
This is the real thing.
Jensen yawns as he walks in and around the table Jared's sitting at, taking the empty chair to his right. "See, that's something I've never understood," Jensen says, covering his mouth as he yawns again. "What's the point of playing chess against yourself? It's not like you can trick you. It seems kind of futile."
"It's actually really valuable," Jared replies, only half of his attention focused on Jensen, the other half on the game. "You always have to imagine your opponent can read your mind in chess and try to outsmart that. So having an opponent who literally can read your mind is the best training."
Jensen chuckles softly and watches a few seconds longer, until Jared looks up at him. "I would, of course, welcome an actual opponent. If that's what you're angling for."
"Ah, what the hell," Jensen says.
Jared sets up a new game and sits back. "I'm excited," he says. "I love chess. I've missed having someone to play chess with."
"Please tell me you didn't have chess buddies topside, Jay. I will judge you."
"My 85-year-old uncle and I were bros, okay?" Jensen snorts, so Jared keeps going. "Hey, seriously. I'd kick his ass at chess and then we'd go pick up chicks."
"Oh yeah?" Jensen asks, raising an eyebrow. "I bet you were catnip to the ladies."
"Well, okay, my uncle did a little better in that department. But you should have seen the guy. He was in great shape for his age."
"Mmmhmm," Jensen says as he makes his first move. "The fact that you weren't attracted to them didn't ever hurt your chances?"
"If it did, I certainly never noticed," Jared replies, winking as he slides a pawn up two spots.
Jensen looks very engrossed for the next minute, and Jared thinks he's trying to choose a good move, but the expression doesn't change after his turn. Finally he says, "Do you miss it yet?"
"What? Life on the surface?"
Jensen nods.
Jared thinks it over while he moves his bishop right into one of Jensen's pawns. "Sometimes, yeah. I miss being out in the sun and stuff. Don't really miss people, but I guess…I guess I sort of wish I had a chance to change that? Kind of eye opening, going underground and realizing there's a good chance no one's noticed."
Again, Jensen nods. When he doesn’t add anything, Jared asks, "What about you?"
"See, that's the weird thing," Jensen says as he moves again. "I don't really."
"I'm betting that's all thanks to my good company," Jared jokes.
Jensen smiles at him. "It doesn't hurt."
"What else?"
Licking his lips, Jensen replies, "I think I got to miss out on a lot of being felt sorry for. That's wrong, right? That I'm kind of glad I didn't have to do that part?"
Jared shrugs. What the hell does he know about it?
"I don't think I could have handled my grief and everyone else's. I'm glad they shoved us down here before it could start."
"I get that," Jared says. He also gets Jensen's rook.
A small smile appears in the corner of Jensen's mouth, even as he's cursing Jared's move. "You do, don't you? I like that about you."
Jared laughs. "That I'm antisocial so I share in your desire not to have to engage with people's emotions?"
"When you put it that way," Jensen replies. He finally eats one of Jared's pawns, but the satisfied smile that gives him vanishes immediately when he realizes he fell into Jared's trap. Jared takes another bishop.
Jared sets the pieces aside and looks up at Jensen. "This whole thing is pretty bizarre, if you think about it."
"What whole thing? Us being stuck in a missile silo, or the fact that you're this much better than me at chess?"
"No, those things are to be expected." Jensen gives him a flat, unimpressed look, which makes Jared grin. "I meant this whole war."
"Fuckin' Switzerland," Jensen mutters under his breath.
"To think, we could have prevented this whole thing so easily if we hadn't just believed them when they said they were neutral."
"You have to give them props for thinking of it," Jensen says. "And holding the façade up so long while they stockpiled weapons."
"Yeah, but, like…" Jared runs a hand through his hair, then throws it in the air in frustration. "We let them build a machine that can create a black hole! What were we thinking?"
Jensen laughs. "Right?" He sighs. "Goes to show you can't trust anyone."
"No one named Othmar Von Arx, at least."
"It is a little super villain-y, now that you mention it." Jensen shakes his head. "You've gotta hand it to someone who can declare himself emperor of a tiny landlocked country and then conquer Europe, parts of Russia, and the Middle East all in the span of five years."
"Black hole machine," Jared reminds him. "That's not fair."
"He who controls the science controls the universe," Jensen replies with great pomp.
Jared nearly plants his face in his palm at that. He settles for taking another rook, instead. "And the people love him!"
"He's done the Swiss a lot of good," Jensen admits reluctantly. "They're the only goddamn people on the planet he seems to give a single shit about, but they're living it up at everyone else's expense, so I guess I get it."
Jared bites his nail. "Do you think it's true that we would have signed for peace if they'd surrendered him up after San Francisco?"
"I don’t know, Jared," Jensen says glumly. "A part of me hopes not. He wasn't the only one responsible. But on the other hand-"
"On the other hand, World War III is scary shit?"
Jensen nods. "I do miss peace," he says. "If this whole stupid mess had never happened, I'd probably be a dad in a few years. Instead I live in a glorified hole in the ground."
Jared frowns. He's sad for Jensen, for everything he's lost. And in a way, he's sad for himself, too. He doesn't really regret the things that led him here, even though he knows he should. He can't help being glad he met Jensen.
So he lets the conversation drop before he says anything as horrible as what he's thinking. They play for about an hour and a half before Jensen clears his throat grandly, as if he's about to make a very important announcement. Jared looks up, riveted.
"I am not very good at chess."
Jared cracks up until finally he can get himself under control. "That's an understatement."
"You did not warn me that you're, like, a master or something."
"Well, I would have if you'd mentioned that you sucked."
Jensen huffs. "I don't know if I would say that I suck."
Jared grins and continues, "I mean, nuclear physicist. I figured, how bad can he possibly be? Pretty bad, it turns out."
"Oh, shut it." He pushes the board away. "Anyway, you cheated."
"How did I cheat?" Jared asks. "Being better than you does not count as cheating."
Jensen opens his mouth and closes it a few times. Finally he says, "I'm tired. Of course I'm gonna suck."
Jared appraises him, feeling the wrinkle between his eyes form as he frowns. Jensen looks like something dead reheated in a microwave. True, he looks like a very attractive version of that, but still. "Have you slept at all in the last three months?"
It's easy to see Jensen contemplating whether or not he can get away with lying. Finally he shakes his head. "Not much."
"You can't sleep on that shitty cot forever," Jared tells him. "Let's switch off tonight, okay? Just one good night of sleep and then you can go back to whatever kinky masochistic deal you and the cot have worked out."
Jensen laughs, but his eyes get cagey. "That's fine, Jared. Really, I sleep enough."
"Enough to not be dead," Jared concedes. "Not enough to avoid being a zombie all day, and I don't know that I feel all that comfortable with entrusting the most powerful nuclear warhead on the planet to a zombie."
"That sounds like-" Jensen has to pause to yawn, which is Jared's whole point. "-discrimination."
"Dude."
Jensen rubs his hands over his eyes and frowns. "Look, I can't, okay? I can't sleep in that bed. She chose that fucking bed. It's her bed and she's not gonna be in it, and I just can't do it."
Jared fiddles his thumbs, debating whether or not he should push this. He knows it's not his place. But Jensen is wearing himself ragged trying to live like this. "It's my bed."
Jensen's eyebrows draw together as he looks up very quickly and catches Jared's eyes. "What?"
"It's my bed. I'm the only person who has ever slept in it. I've been sleeping in it for months. So it's mine, and I'd like you to take it tonight, because I'm seriously worried about you."
He watches Jensen's foot jiggle under the table for what feels like forever as Jensen thinks it over until finally he says, "Would you…would you share it with me?"
Jared feels his cheeks flush, and he wants to punch himself, because he knows Jensen must not mean it like that. But he can't help the thoughts that pop into his head. "You want me to sleep with you?"
"I'm sorry," Jensen says. "I'm sorry. That was weird. That was a weird thing to ask for."
"No, look, I used to sleep with guys all the time," Jared says, trying to sound reassuring. "I'm not one to think it's weird, I just..."
"If it's empty, I'm going to be thinking about her and how she's not there, and there's no way I'll sleep any better than in the cot. But if we share it-"
"If we share it, it's just a bed we're sharing so we can both sleep comfortably."
Jensen nods.
Jared gives him a fake smile and wonders if Jensen really has no idea how cruel it is to ask Jared to sleep next to him knowing Jensen will be wishing he was someone else. "Of course, Jen."
When they settle in that night, he can feel the warmth of Jensen's body under the covers. Jensen falls asleep long before Jared does-which makes Jared feel all kinds of smug because he told Jensen he needed a proper bed.
Jensen curls in until his back is so close that Jared can't get comfortable without wrapping an arm around him. Jensen only draws in closer at the contact, making a content sound as he settles against Jared's chest. The weight of him sparks something that spreads all the way through Jared's body.
It's not that he's turned on. Someone like Jensen rolled up in his bed-Jared expected to be turned on. But it's so much worse than that, because there's an ache in his chest that he's never felt before. An ache he only suspects he knows the name of.
It's a crack all the way down Jared's heart.
ON TO PART TWO
Fandom: Real Person Fic - CW
Characters/Pairings: Jared/Jensen, past Jensen/OFC
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual content, mass off-screen death including a spouse. I will also warn that the end of this story is left wide-open, like Jensen Ackles' legs.
Word Count: 20,267
Author’s Note: This story is 150% based on the genius of Josh Ritter's songwriting. If you've never heard The Temptation of Adam, judge your own life choices. I give Josh all credit for any positive qualities this story may have and fully take the blame for any and all badness. That said, this is also all ordinaryink's fault. She made me listen to the song basically just to get me to write the fic and wasn't even sorry when I sobbed like a bitch. Sorry I used your beautiful music for gay porn, Josh (I'm not really sorry). I am also not a nuclear physicist, nor do I know really anything at all about nuclear war except what I learned in my history of the Cold War courses in undergrad (which can be summarized: yay Oppenheimer, boo everyone else)-don't expect solid science. I do my best to work around my own gaping lack of knowledge, but there will inevitably be places where you have to take a leap of faith with me. Also, I know that Twinkies do not actually have indefinite shelf lives. But it's a fucking apocalypse fic and I wanted to perpetuate myth through my love of saturated fat, so, like, just roll with it, yo. Twinkies are the very stuff of romance. I got really, really lucky to have this story claimed by cassiopeia7, not only because she did oodles of fantastic art that fit the story's atmosphere perfectly and was totally cool with my being somehow both AWOL and demanding at the same time, but also because she knows a thing or two about the USAF and corrected me on my gross mistakes. YAY HERO. Finally, a big 'thank you' to my gorgeous beta, wutendeskind.
Summary: AU: After years of training to be a U.S. missileer, Jared finds himself locked in a missile silo underground with only one other pissed off crew member to keep him company. There he and Jensen wait (and wait and wait) for a message from their superiors: an order that will either announce the end of World War III and tell them to return to life on the surface or leave them with the responsibility of sending a retaliatory missile to the enemy, ensuring that no one makes it out alive on either side except for those safely contained in fallout shelters.
ART
AO3 // PDF
Introductions are brief when a moment of delay is the difference between safety and spontaneous combustion. All Jared knows before they move in together is that the guy’s name is Jensen.
He’s just about the most beautiful thing Jared’s ever seen as he shoves his way through the hatch. Jared lets him go first, takes in the view, and follows him, pulling the door closed behind them. Forever, maybe.
Jared smiles appreciatively as Jensen settles his bags down in the hall by the entrance. He turns on the charm, saying in a playfully smarmy voice, “If this was the Cold War, we could keep each other warm."
Jensen doesn’t seem to think Jared’s nearly as cute as he was hoping. “If this was a Cold War, we wouldn’t be in a fucking missile silo,” he replies, gorgeous features contorting with annoyance.
It’s going to be a long apocalypse.
"There's only one bed, but it looks pretty damn comfortable," Jared announces, wiping his hands together as he exits the bedroom. It's the last place he had left to inspect, and now that he's seen the entire launch facility, he's feeling pretty good about this 'end of the world' thing. The living quarters are sweet. Anyway, he'll certainly be better off than he was a few hours ago, when it was looking likely he'd die in his shitty apartment once the last giant flash of engineered fire finally hit. "We can switch off. I'll flip a coin for first go at it?"
"It's yours."
Jared looks back into the room uncertainly. "You mean I can have the first night or-?"
"You can have the fucking bed."
Jensen is not a man of many words, and the ones he does manage are all cut short and cold. He's the one and only drawback so far, and Jared refuses to let the fact that 50% of the surviving human population has a stick up its ass bring him down. He's saved. He's got a fridge full of never-expiring meat. If Jensen wants to let him have the giant, fluffy bed and spare him every other night in a cot, Jared will take that, too.
"Suit yourself," Jared says, maintaining his chipper tone as he picks up his bags and carries them into the room.
He comes back out and finds that Jensen hasn't moved an inch. He's still sitting at the control station, staring blankly at the big red button.
"Seems weird they only equipped the place with one proper bedroom. I mean, they knew they'd have to have at least two people in here. Figure if they can manage a greenhouse underground they should be able to swing another bed. There's a nursery, for crying out loud."
Jensen fiddles with some gears, and Jared thinks he's being ignored until finally he hears, "It was built for a family. To repopulate the Earth once it was safe to go back up."
"Oh," Jared says. "Makes sense, I guess. Though it's a bit odd they took all that trouble and then chose to send in two guys."
"They didn't," Jensen replies, turning his chair so he's facing Jared. He looks up, right into Jared's eyes. "Just stop talking."
Jared shrugs and heads for the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He's not letting this guy get to him on Day One.
"Do you think you could do it?"
Jensen doesn't turn from his work. It's a completely different day, but the guy's still sitting hunched over in the exact same place and pose as when Jared last saw him. Jared decides right then and there to think of him as a very attractive piece of furniture instead of a bitchy bunkmate. "Do what?" he asks, though he clearly couldn't care less what Jared's talking about.
"Press the button," Jared clarifies, taking the seat next to Jensen at the control station. "Wipe out half the world."
Jensen gives Jared a glare for sitting, as if it's not just as much Jared's work to monitor this damn equipment as it is Jensen's. "That's what we're down here for," he replies. "If you think you can't do it, you shouldn't have said yes."
"No, no." Jared gives him a small shrug. "I mean, I'm pretty sure. But, like, it's a huge thing to do, right? You aren't even a little worried when the time comes you won't be able to?"
Jensen's expression tightens even more (Jared didn't think that was actually possible). "My world already ended. I don't care what happens to everyone else's."
Jared wants to ask what the hell that means, but Jensen doesn't seem like the type who sits around swapping origin stories.
Those first two days basically set the stage for the first two weeks they spend underground. Jensen doesn't say anything-ever-and trying to talk to him makes Jared feel like he's crazy. Like he's trying to converse with the walls. Actually, it's worse than that, because the walls at least have the decency to talk back. They respond to his questions, and Jared's even programmed the system to say good morning when he turns the station on. This is how desperate he is for conversation.
Not that he's complaining. There's a good chance he'd be deep fried by now if he were topside, so comparatively, this isn't so bad. And Jensen does all the work, which makes Jared wonder if he thinks Jared's a moron, but hey, it's not the most exciting stuff in the world, so he'll play dumb if that's how Jensen wants to do it.
But the standard remains: uneasy silence most of the time, nasty looks from Jensen when he can't get away with blatantly ignoring Jared, and a whole lot of nothing to do but read and play his guitar.
Sometimes Jared spends his entire day cooking, because their kitchen is insanely well-stocked, but it sucks not to have anyone to share with when he's done. Jensen doesn't even pretend to give any of Jared's food a chance. He looks at it like it's poisoned and Jared's crazy for eating it. Jared is a very good cook, thank you very much, and Jensen can just go fuck himself.
Somewhere between the second and third week of living in the silo, the sound of crying wakes Jared. If he weren't hearing it so clearly, or if there were anyone else down here he could assign the noise to, he would never believe it was Jensen. Cold, cruel, callous Jensen. Jensen the ice queen. Jared was half-convinced the guy was a robot.
But the crying is unmistakable and so painfully human it makes Jared uncomfortable. Makes him feel like he's the callous one. He's never heard anyone cry like this, so open and broken. He didn't think this kind of crying was possible.
He creeps across the hall, from his bedroom to the launch control room where Jensen spends every waking moment, and where he's now also set up his cot. He looks in from the door, because he's still expecting to find Jensen watching a movie or listening to some incredibly depressing shit on his personal sound system. But no, it's just Jensen, sitting up on his cot with his back to the door. Jared can make out that he's got his face buried in his hands.
He wishes there were something he could do, but he doesn't make a sound. He doesn't try to comfort Jensen, because what would he say? "Hey, I know you hate me, but you kind of woke me up, so wanna talk it out?"
No, he stands there watching what he knows he shouldn't be seeing just long enough to promise himself he'll tolerate Jensen's bad attitude a little better tomorrow.
Jared walks into the control room the next morning bright and early. He smiles at Jensen as he takes the second chair by the window and drinks a sip of the coffee he just brewed. Jensen looks like he's been up for hours, and Jared can't help wondering if he got back to sleep at all.
"I guess it's gonna be eggs and ham this morning," Jared says. "Well, every morning, pretty much. Not that I'm not a huge fan of the genetically engineered produce and all that, but I do kind of wish they'd stocked this place with some shitty breakfast cereals. You know, the kind that are all sugar. I could really go for some Cocoa Puffs right about now."
"I don't care what you have for breakfast, Jared," Jensen replies. "Why don't you go eat it and let me get some work done?"
"I did eat. I wasn't talking about my breakfast," Jared says. "I was talking about yours. It's in the kitchen. If…if you want it, that is. I can definitely find room for it if you don't. I just don't think I've seen you eat anything I would actually classify as a meal since we got down here, so…"
Jensen turns his chair toward Jared and blinks a few times, very slowly. Definitely possibly a robot. "You made me breakfast?"
Jared shrugs. "Yeah, well, one of us has to keep you alive, right? You're not exactly doing a bang up job." He puts his hand over Jensen's on the keyboard and tries to give him an encouraging smile. "Seriously, Jensen. I swear it's good food. I'm not going to kill you, I need someone to do all the hard stuff so I can sit around and scratch my balls all day. Just let me run the scans this morning and go eat. The work will still be here when you finish."
Jensen looks at his hand for a long, long time before he finally seems to decide he's okay with it. He smiles dimly and nods and begins to leave, but he stops at the doorway, says, "Hey, Jared."
Jared looks back at him.
"Thanks."
He smiles and watches Jensen walk out and thinks progress.
Jensen is obsessed with crossword puzzles. It was good planning, Jared will admit, to bring them down here. He's got a stack in the corner of the rec room-or maybe the living room? It would be a living room if this were a house, but Jared's not sure thinking of a missile silo as home is a healthy way to go through this, so he takes his cue from the blueprints of the place and settles for calling it the rec room-that's about four feet high, and he's already gone through two books since they got down here.
Ever since Jared made him breakfast, Jensen sits on the sofa a few feet away from the armchair Jared favors and works at them. He still doesn't say a goddamn thing and mumbles or grunts responses when Jared tries talking to him, but that's okay. Jared's beginning to suspect Jensen is only two parts asshole and one part nice guy with no social skills.
"What's a five letter word for 'apocalypse'?" Jensen asks out of the blue.
Jared thinks it over for about a minute, then laughs at how obvious it should have been from the jump. "W-W-I-I-I."
Jensen's face is hilarious to watch as it goes from 'huh?' to 'duh' to possibly the first real smile Jared's every seen on him. It's amazing, what that smile does. The frown lines around his lips disappear, and his eyes bunch up in the corners instead. It's almost like the sun breaks out through the window for a moment, which is ridiculous because they're miles underground and the sun might as well not exist anymore for all Jared's ever gonna see of it again.
"Clever," he says as he writes it down. "Very clever."
"Does it fit?" Jared asks. Not that he expects the conversation to keep going, but he'll do his part.
Jensen nods. "Only cross is with the second I. 27 down, large dog breed. IRISH. Knew that one. There was a lady who lived on the block I grew up on with one of those wolfhounds. Holy crap, that thing was taller than me until I was like eleven."
"Man," Jared says, plucking absently at the strings on the guitar in his lap, listening to see if anything sounds good, "I wish we could have a dog down here. Only thing I miss, dogs. But I guess asking for an underground park to walk one in would have been pushing it."
Jensen huffs out a kind of dismissive laugh, and Jared thinks that'll be it. But then he bites his lip and sets his book aside, holding his page with the pencil he'd been using and giving Jared a curious once-over. "What're you working on?"
"Not really working," Jared says, ducking his head away from the scrutiny. "Sorry if my playing's annoying you. I can stop. I've got plenty of books to-"
"No," Jensen says. "I didn't mean to pry. I just…you sounded pretty good."
It takes a whole lot of restraint to school his features instead of staring at Jensen with boggling eyes and his mouth hanging open. Jared briefly wonders if it was sarcastic, if Jensen is fucking with him, but it sounded like a real compliment, so he smiles and says, "Thanks."
For an awkward moment, the room sits quietly around them, until finally Jared decides that whatever they had going for a minute there is over.
He looks back down to the sheet of scribbled notes in front of him. Jared gets so distracted that he almost doesn’t hear the soft little question Jensen asks. "Will you play something for me?"
Shocked, Jared looks up again. "Uh, yeah. Okay. Any requests?"
Jensen shakes his head. "Just miss hearing music. Whatever you think I'll like. It doesn't have to be one of your songs if you don't feel comfortable sharing."
The bunker has a pretty extravagant sound system and more music stored on the drive than Jared even knows what to do with. He's never heard Jensen listen to a single song, so the news that he misses music is a little confusing. A part of him wants to say 'then why don't you play some?' but he's glad to have a captive audience, so he smiles and strums the notes to 'When the Levee Breaks.'
Jensen starts cracking up as soon as he figures out the song and after counting through the first verse with his foot tapping on the floor, he begins singing. He knows (almost) all the lyrics, and his voice is pretty good, deep and rich and…more than a little country.
"Good song choice," Jensen says as soon as they finish. "Very poignant."
"You sing!" It doesn’t sound as stupid in his head. He's kind of just amazed Jensen does anything but calculate and glare. It's almost like he's a real human being.
Jensen grins. "Well, you didn't seem like you were gonna do it."
"You don't want to hear me sing, trust me."
"I'll take your word for it," Jensen replies, still smiling. "You're good with the guitar, though. Better than most guys who think they can play the guitar, at least."
Jared laughs. "I think that might be a compliment, so I'll take it. I used to want to be a musician in high school. You know, like every other teenage boy on the planet. But after a while I realized the guy with a guitar thing doesn't work so well when you can't sing."
"You still write songs, though," Jensen says, pointing to the sheets of music Jared has spread out on the coffee table in front of him. "And I can hear you playing them from the lab. They're not bad."
"Do you play?" Jared asks, holding the guitar out.
"A little bit," Jensen replies, reaching to take it from Jared. He immediately starts tuning it, which makes Jared suspect that he's probably just being modest.
He watches as Jensen prepares for whatever he's about to play and says, "Are you from Texas originally?"
Jensen nods. "Right outside Dallas."
"Huh." Jared sits back in his chair and catalogues Jensen again. From his spiky, light brown hair to the socks poking out of the bottom of his flight suit. Not checking him out (not that he doesn't do that all the time, because bitchy or not, Jensen is a marvel to behold), just wondering what other seemingly obvious tidbits he's missed in the last two weeks. "You don't sound like it when you talk."
"Been working and living on the east coast for a long time," he says. "Ashamed to say it's gotten to me." Jensen glances up at him. "And you're from San Antonio. Still lived there, too, up until you got called down here."
Jared nods. "How'd you know that?"
"I read your file," Jensen admits. "When they told me who they were sending down, they let me look it over to approve. Not that there was much time to really find anyone else. You were the closest person with the minimum training, so."
"You approved of me?" Jared asks. "Not, uh, not to sound whiny, but that kind of surprises me."
Jensen's expression dims a little and he looks down at his lap. "I didn't honestly care all that much at that point. Wasn't gonna be the right person no matter-" He stops himself, sighs, and then looks up to Jared with a surprisingly sincere look on his face. "I'm sorry for how I've treated you since we got down here. I know I've been a dick."
"I didn't really make the best first impression," Jared replies, trying to give him an out.
Jensen shakes his head. "You were kidding around. I think it would have been funny but…well, I was dead set on hating you. Anything you said would have been about the same, and I get that that's fucked up. It's not your fault. You've done nothing but try to be nice to me, and I guess I'm trying to thank you. For not holding my shitty attitude against me."
Jared licks his lips, not really sure where to go from here. He wants to ask what Jensen is making such an effort not to say so bad it almost hurts, but he knows he's got no right to pry. At any rate, he's glad the only other person left on the face of the planet is not, in fact, a robot.
"You gonna play me something or what?" he finally asks, reaching out to slap at Jensen's leg encouragingly.
Jensen grins, accepting the peace offering without further comment. "You know 'Angeles'?"
Things are actually going pretty well for the next week or so. Comparatively, at least. Jensen's taken to spending a few hours every day in the rec room with Jared, either doing his crossword puzzles quietly in the corner while Jared reads or swapping songs on the guitar. Sometimes, he even makes up lyrics for Jared's songs, and even though most of them are playful, they aren't all that bad.
He's not the nightmare roommate Jared had taken him for, but every now and then, he relapses. Jared will say something he thinks is totally inoffensive and Jensen will get upset or walk out without even telling Jared what he did wrong. Sometimes Jared will look up from his book and Jensen will be staring off into space, crossword forgotten on his lap and a frown tugging down at his lips.
One day, Jared finds Jensen in the lab with a tense expression on his face, his hand resting over the big red launch button and his eyes fixed on the communication board as if he's expecting a message any moment.
Jared's stomach drops. There are only two messages they can receive. Any radio waves could give their location away if the enemy has somehow infiltrated their systems, so Jared and Jensen have been trained to accept the fact that there are only two scenarios in which the government will risk contacting them:
1. The war is over. False alarm. Everything is settled and no need to blow up Europe. You guys can come up now.
There is no way in hell that less than a month after San Francisco things are all peachy on the surface. Which leaves:
2. Game over. Press the button. Mutually assured destruction. There's no going back to the surface, not until the radiation has had years and years to clear.
Jared's never been an optimist. He's never cared much for the world or the idiots running it, the ones who got them into this mess to begin with. So he didn't realize just how much he was hoping, deep down, that they were going to figure out a better solution until this moment.
"Jensen," he says softly, moving into the launch control room and sitting down, careful not to jostle Jensen. God forbid he ends the world by accident. "What's-uh, what's up? Did we get an order?"
Jensen gives Jared a distracted shake of his head and doesn't move a single muscle. He's quiet for a long time and then he says, "Something should have happened by now, right? After San Francisco. We should have launched weeks ago."
"Maybe the diplomats actually learned how to be diplomatic," Jared says with a snicker. "About damn time, right?"
"No." Jensen's voice is cold, as cold as it was before he started warming to Jared, and Jared's more than a little disappointed to hear it. "We should have launched. We can't just sit here with our thumbs up our asses after what they did. It's not fucking right. What the hell are they waiting for?"
Jared stares in disbelief. "You want to launch?"
"I want to know they're not getting away with it."
"I'm sure we've retaliated. There are measured ways to respond without being the ones to wipe out-"
"Fuck measured," Jensen growls. "I want them to pay for what they did."
"They didn't wipe us off the map, Jen. If we launch this thing, their whole continent is as good as gone."
Jensen's expression calms the slightest bit, but he's still shaking his head. "It's not about how much land they covered, Jared. There were good people. They had families. They were loved. Those people weren't soldiers, they weren't politicians, they had nothing to do with any of this. Those bastards deserve to-"
"You're talking about doing the same thing right back at them," Jared replies in his most soothing voice, putting his hand over Jensen's and moving it slowly away from the button. "There are maybe a hundred people over there that had anything to do with what happened last month. There are millions more who had no idea, who were appalled by it. Good, innocent people who are just trying to live their lives. We would be just as bad as they are if we launched this thing, only on a bigger scale."
Jensen swallows hard and turns to Jared, and Jared pretends not to see the tear that slips down his cheek before he wipes it away. "I want them to pay. I wish I knew somehow that we didn't just let it happen."
He shakes his head, reaching out to put a hand on Jensen's shoulder. They're still not exactly what Jared would call friendly, and Jared has no idea what Jensen's so fucked up over, but he's starting to get an idea. He knows what he's about to say is risky, but the way Jensen's thinking has him all kinds of nervous, and he figures it's better Jensen be pissed at him than ready to end the world. "Launching that missile won't get you back what you lost."
Jensen rises to his feet, his hand balling into a fist as he raises it. Jared closes his eyes tight and braces himself for the hit, but it doesn't come. He finally looks up and sees Jensen glaring down at him. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says. "You have no idea what I lost."
Jared stands and lowers Jensen's arm, bracing his hands on Jensen's shoulders to steady him. "I know that whoever they were, they wouldn't want you to do this because of them."
Jensen looks angry again for a split second and then suddenly he's got his hands bunched in Jared's t shirt, his face pressed against Jared's chest, and he's openly sobbing.
After standing there awkwardly for about half a minute, Jared stops expecting that he'll figure out what to do and where to put his hands and just does what feels natural. He hugs his arms around Jensen's shaking shoulders and puts one hand in his hair, pulling Jensen in closer.
"Shh," he says. "It's okay, man. It's okay."
"It's not," Jensen whispers into the wet fabric his face is pressed against. "It's really not."
"I know," Jared replies. "I'm sorry, Jensen. I'm so, so sorry."
"They promised me." Jensen's voice is so quiet Jared almost can't hear him, but he can see the white of Jensen's knuckles from how hard he's holding on. "When they called me to come down here. The last thing Jim said to me, he pulled me aside, and he promised I would get to push that button. He said it wouldn't be more than a week, and it's been almost a month."
"He had no right to promise you that. He doesn't get to decide. This kind of thing is in more than one person's hands, and he's not exactly the top of the food chain."
"But he promised," Jensen says. "That's the only reason I came. They could have brought anyone else down here. I don't even want to live I just want…"
"You want revenge. And I get that. But revenge won't fix anything." Jared gives him a weak smile. "It's a good thing that they haven't sent us the command yet. It's good. It means there's still a chance for everyone up there. It means a whole lot of people aren't going through what you are right now."
Jensen nods grudgingly and pulls away just a little bit. He's still circled in Jared's arms, and Jared's not going to make him give that up if it's bringing him any comfort, even if it feels more than a little weird.
"I used to be the one trying to talk people down from making rash decisions." He finally takes a few steps away from Jared, rubbing his hand over his mouth. "I've never hated anyone. I've never wanted to hurt people. But I don't know what else I'm supposed to do."
Jared wishes he had an answer for that, or any goddamn idea how to help Jensen at all. But the best he can do is offer a distraction. He pats Jensen on the back and puts on a less somber tone. "You had breakfast yet today?"
Jensen shakes his head.
"That's what I thought," Jared tells him, steering him out of the launch room and toward the kitchen. It's a good day to keep Jensen as far away from the work station-and that button-as possible. "C'mon. Best way to start the day. I'll make French toast."
Jared wakes up the next morning with a box of Cocoa Puffs sitting on his nightstand. There's no note or explanation as to how it got there, but he can't help remembering complaining to Jensen about their lack of crappy breakfast cereals a few weeks ago, and he laughs as he sits up and reaches for it.
He walks out without even bothering to put a shirt on, too excited about the sugar high he has coming to remember decent standards of dress. Jensen's at the sink washing off the plates from his own breakfast, but he smiles and cocks an eyebrow when he sees Jared walking in.
"Where?" he asks, raising the box and shaking it.
Jensen huffs out a laugh. "I see you found my 'sorry I got snot on your shirt' offering."
"Where?" Jared repeats. Okay, so he's a little caveman in the morning. Nobody's perfect.
Jensen smirks and inclines his head toward the pantry. "I'll show you."
He leads Jared past all the shelves Jared's already familiar with, and then he stops in front of a door Jared knows leads to a small cabinet full of laundry detergent, mops, brooms, and a bunch of cleaning solution. Then Jensen reaches past one of the broom handles and pulls on a compartment Jared hadn't noticed before and-holy shit.
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he says in an awed tone that's only half a joke, if he's being honest.
Jensen laughs again. "I'm going to regret showing you this, aren't I?"
"Probably," Jared answers, reaching in and grabbing a few of the closest packages. "Candy! Oh god, oh god." He turns one box over in his hands and nearly starts jumping up and down with excitement. "Jensen! Jensen, these haven't existed since I was a little kid. How the hell did you get a whole box?"
Jensen pries the box of Twinkies delicately out of Jared's hands. "You can't survive an apocalypse without some Twinkies," he says. "It's a rule of nature. I had to pull some strings, sure, but-"
"Why did you hide this stuff from me? You are so mean."
Jensen gives him a lopsided smile. "Wasn't hiding it from you. This stuff was supposed to be for the kids. It was hidden from them."
"What kids?" Jared asks with a laugh, and he can't shove the words back in fast enough.
Jensen's expression dims a little but not as much as Jared expects. "Wishful thinking. Or not, I guess. Just in case it ever came to the point where we did have to try to rebuild the population. I didn't want my kids to have to grow up without a few guilty pleasures."
"Jensen, I-" Jared sets the food down on a shelf and reaches out; Jensen brushes him off.
He smiles, but it's not the most convincing smile Jared's ever seen. "I guess you act enough like a kid that I should have kept this stuff hidden though, huh? No eating it all at once."
Jared shakes his head very seriously. "No, sir. I wouldn't waste it." He sends a longing look toward the Twinkies. "But maybe just one of those for each of us? I don't even remember what they tasted like."
Jensen seems to consider it, then he gives a light shrug and smiles at Jared. "We'll have dinner together tonight and then we can each have one for dessert."
"Okay," Jared agrees with a grin. "That's fair enough."
Jensen leaves Jared in charge of deciding what's for dinner but makes a serviceable sous-chef throughout the day. They sit down to eat in the late afternoon with a bottle of red wine and are tired enough from all the cooking that the silence as they chew is more satisfied than awkward.
When they finish, Jensen offers to clean up. Jared stands by the sink and hands him plates as Jensen rinses and sets things on the drying rack.
"So, how did you end up here?" Jensen asks between toweling off a pan and sliding it back into the cabinet where it belongs. "Not many people willing to drop their lives with an hour's notice."
It hadn't been a hard decision. This is what Jared spent his life training for, ever since he got recruited in his third year of undergrad. He wanted to live, and, after being rejected in favor of some more experienced candidates, he thought he'd wasted all that effort training and was still gonna die the same as everyone.
He was watching the news, staring in terrified wonder at the coverage of San Francisco, when he got the call. Jim Beaver, head of the top secret Devil's Trap project, hadn't said much. He gave Jared coordinates and the meaning was implied. Be there and you're in. Who would have passed that up?
"Not even to avoid being cooked in a nuclear detonation?"
Jensen leans on the counter as he faces Jared, taking a sip from his wine. Jared can't help noticing that Jensen's eyes are just the slightest bit glassy, his lips wet from all the wine he's had. He's so hot it's actually hard to keep up with the conversation, and Jared wonders if this is supposed to feel like a date as much as it does. Dinner. Wine. A little conversation. He's got a few ideas about where the night could take them. "What about your family? Friends? There isn't anyone you're worried about up there?"
Jared shrugs. He's never been the kind of person who puts down roots. Not that he's unsociable-Jared's never had trouble making friends. He's just never had trouble moving on and leaving them behind, either. "My parents and I don't talk. Haven't in about eight years. Not since I came out to them, but we weren't all that close before then, so it's wasn't really a big deal."
Jensen frowns despite Jared's genuinely easy tone. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"I never liked them much and they never really liked me. I don't even think me being gay bothered them so much as it gave them a convenient excuse to cut me out of their lives. Honestly, the most upsetting thing about it is that they got to keep the dogs."
Jensen laughs at that, but Jared can't help noticing that there's more to the way he's looking at Jared. He looks like he pities Jared, which is kind of unsettling considering it's usually the other way around. He can't stand the critical gaze Jensen has fixed on him, so he waves his hands dismissively between them, drawing Jensen's eyes away from his own. "Dude, seriously, I'm okay with it."
"I believe you," Jensen says, folding his arms over his chest. "I think that's very sad."
Jared snorts. "You think it's sad that I'm emotionally well-adjusted?"
"A little." Jensen looks down. "I'm not trying to be a dick or anything. I just-there isn’t anyone you miss?"
The question kind of floors him. He thinks of Genevieve and Aldis, his buddies at work, and how maybe they're worried about him right now. He hadn't called to say goodbye. It hadn't even occurred to him. He thinks about the people up on the surface constantly: whether they're alive, whether he'll ever be able to rejoin them, but until this moment, he hadn't spared a single thought for any one specific person. Maybe…that's not as normal as he thought it was.
He goes on the defensive. "Well, what about you? You're here, aren't you?"
"My close friends and family all knew what I was preparing for. They've been expecting this since the war broke out." He bites his lip. "Doesn't mean I don't miss 'em like hell. Or that I'm not worried about them and they're not worried about me. But I said my goodbyes, at least."
Jared nods. "So this is what you wanted, then?"
Jensen looks away, at his wine glass, for a long, long time. He seems to be considering something. Finally he takes a long drink and sets the glass down before looking Jared square in the eye. "My wife was the brains of the operation. This whole thing-the warhead, the petty idea of blowing up a continent in retaliation-it always made me a little uncomfortable. I didn't understand back then. But she was fascinated, a scientist in every sense of the word, and every damn lab in the country wanted her. I was good enough, but really I just trotted at her heels. This was her dream, and she was mine. She even helped design the damn layout, chose all the furniture. She wanted it to be our home, she said."
Jared feels his eyes widen at the confession, and he watches the way Jensen's muscles tighten as he speaks, but he doesn't start crying, so that's a plus. Jared clears his throat. "She-she was in San Francisco when…?"
Jensen nods. "We were supposed to be at a conference that weekend. It was a big deal, you know? She had a paper to present, and then the stupidest goddamn thing happened. One of the pipes in our house burst. We couldn't leave it like that, but she was so disappointed. So I told her to go on without me and I'd meet her if it got fixed in time."
"Jesus," Jared mutters, stepping forward and putting his hand over one of Jensen's on the counter. "I'm so sorry."
"I was supposed to be there, too," Jensen says quietly. He's looking down at their hands, and his voice sounds thin. "I should have at least been with her. All I can think is that she was alone."
"That wouldn't have changed anything. It just would have meant you both would have-"
"I should be dead, Jared." He sounds so casual about it that it sends a chill down Jared's spine. "I spend most of my time wishing I was."
Jared squeezes his hand. "I'm glad you're not, if that's any consolation."
Jensen gives him a faint smile. "Yeah right. I spent the better part of this last month resenting you just for not being her. I shouldn't have come down here at all. It should have been a woman, so you could reproduce. I think they wanted me to back out for that reason, but I couldn't think straight through how badly I wanted to hurt someone as much as I was hurting. You, uh, you really saved me from that, because you were right. She fell in love with a guy who couldn't press that button. She wouldn't have wanted me to be like Jim and all those other hawks."
Jensen looks genuinely thankful, but Jared can't help resenting himself a little, too. God, this whole time he's been making stupid comments and observations about every aspect of the silo, filling up so much space that wasn't his to fill. All the while, every damn detail he pointed out must have just made Jensen miss her more. "I didn't realize you had so much history with this place. I…I've been a real idiot. I'm sorry."
Jensen shakes his head. "Don't be. I should have told you sooner. I'm just not used to talking about her like-I never used to have to say a damn thing. I'd tell people her name and they knew who my wife was. I spent so many years so happy just to be in her shadow. I can't accept that it's really gone."
And he'd thought maybe this was a date. It's fucking incredible, the depths of Jared's insensitivity toward Jensen, even after he vowed to be more considerate. Goes to show how shitty he is at reading people, but that hadn't ever bothered him until now. "Thank you. For telling me. I know this wasn't easy for you."
"I think it was good for me. Letting that out." Jensen passes his fingers over his lips and gives Jared a look that's so sincere Jared kind of feels humbled by it. "Look, I'm pretty beat. I think I'm gonna go to sleep."
Jared nods and watches him leave. It's not until he's in the room alone that Jared remembers the damn Twinkies that were supposed to be the point of this whole dinner. It feels wrong eating one now, alone and after Jensen had dropped such a bomb-and, wow, that was a poor choice of metaphor. Jared tucks the snacks back into their hiding place. He'll bring them out again on a happier occasion.
"Is that her?" Jared looks over Jensen's shoulder, at the picture Jensen's holding, as he takes his seat at the work station. The woman Jensen's thumb is stroking tenderly over has long black hair and a gorgeous smile. "She was very beautiful."
Jensen startles, like he hadn't even realized Jared was in the room, and looks like he's debating hiding the picture. "Yeah," he finally says.
"What was her name?" Jared asks, because it seemed like talking it out was pretty good for Jensen last night, and even though there are still dark circles under his eyes, Jensen doesn't look as run down as he usually does in the morning.
But apparently Jensen's not as open in the sober light of day. "I don't know that I feel comfortable sharing her with you yet."
"I understand," Jared says, even though he doesn't. How could he? "If…if you ever want to, I'll listen, okay?"
"Thanks, Jared." Jensen swallows a lump in his throat, then turns to look at Jared. "Do you think I could tuck her into the window there? I don't think she'd forgive me if I carried on this work without her."
Jensen waits for Jared's nod of consent before bending over the control board and settling the photograph into the corner where the Plexiglas and the metal surrounding it meet. Jared laughs when Jensen rolls his eyes at the picture as if he can hear her saying something snarky to him, and something like jealousy pings in his chest. He can tell how much Jensen loves her just from that exasperated expression. Jared's never loved anything like that.
Jensen's got friends. Jared thought he had friends but listening to Jensen on the rare occasion he'll get started telling stories from before they went under makes Jared realize he never really did.
There's Chris, for example, Jensen's best friend from college. Jensen knows every bone the guy's ever broken (not a small number, and Jared's sides nearly split as he laughs when Jensen tells him about the shit that brought them about), even the ones from before they met. Jared gets such an idea of Chris that he can picture him perfectly: short but powerful with long brown hair and what Jensen calls a 'sour lemon face.' Jared imagines the scar over his mouth from the time he and Jensen got into a drunken bar brawl over a hockey game (he deserved it, the bastard, Jensen tells him with a grin) and the rough texture of his hands from playing the guitar when he should have been studying (you two idiots would get along).
Or Misha, a guy Jensen met in one of the labs he worked after graduating. Misha is an evil genius, according to Jensen (complete megalomaniac, it terrifies me that he works on nuclear weapons) who wore the same outfit every day (trench coat, blue tie, white shirt, black pants, every. single. day.) and would secretly do nice things for people when they weren't looking, then deny, deny, deny.
And then there's her-Jensen still hasn't told Jared her name, and he doesn't think Jensen ever will. He doesn't talk about her very much, unlike the others, but Jared feels like he knows her nonetheless. He meets a new part of her every day. The careful deliberation that went into furnishing the silo around him; she made this dump into something that feels more like a home to Jared than the one he grew up in ever did. She was brilliant and driven as hell; Jared goes digging into the research filed away on the systems he runs when Jensen's not in the lab and wonders if a brain like this could ever slow down enough to sleep. He knows she must have been something else beyond all that, that there's a personality so explosive it would give the missile in the next room a run for its money. And, for all Jared wishes she were here instead of him, he envies her. He only has to look at Jensen to see the crater she left behind. There's nothing he can study that will let Jared uncover that side of her; he'll never know what you have to do to make someone love you like that. Jared never felt inadequate until he met her.
When Jensen starts telling a story about one of his friends, Jared can guess pieces of where it's going just based on what he knows about them. Chris is going to start a fight with the worst possible person, and the story probably ends with Steve having to bail him and Jensen (completely innocent, yet again, except for how bad my choice in friends is) out of jail. If it starts with Misha, the chances are good it's going to end in at least three small fires. Jensen's little sister's name (Mac, he calls her, short for Mackenzie, which is short for 'the Dark Lord of Chaos') need only be invoked for Jared to begin trying to guess the bad idea she had this time and how the hell she talked Jensen and his big brother Josh into going along with it (Jared's just surprised their parents never killed any of them).
When it's Jared's turn to tell a story, he feels stilted. Like an idiot who wasted the one life he got. He knows that Genevieve can do seemingly impossible math in her head without even having to pause, but he never asked where she's from or if she has a boyfriend or what her favorite color is. Aldis can type over 200 words in a minute, and Jared's never seen him make a mistake, but he never paid attention to the guy's drink order when they went out after work, and he doesn't know if Aldis likes what he does for a living or if he wanted to be a firefighter as a kid. Jared's neighbor Adrianne has six cats and at least three boyfriends, but he can't name any of them. He feels like he knows Jensen's friends better than he's ever known anyone for himself.
Until Jensen.
If he had met Jensen four months ago, he would have done his damnedest to take Jensen home, fuck him, and then never would have thought on him again. He would have missed out on everything that is Jensen-the scratch of his voice when he's tired and the ridiculously juvenile sense of humor (dick jokes are always funny, Jared) and that unbreakable loyalty that Jared finds so beautiful and so impossible to wrap his head around.
It should be awful, he thinks, being in so small a space with only one other person for months on end and with no termination date to look forward to. They should want to kill each other by now. At first it was like that, but now every day that passes makes Jared crave Jensen's company more.
And he can't help wondering: how many people as amazing as this did he blow off in his life? Would he have been as delighted by any of those anonymous guys he fucked if he'd given them a chance? Could he have loved someone the way Jensen loved his wife? He doesn't even know if he wants that, if he ever wants to care about someone enough to miss them like this, but he's willing to bet Jensen wouldn't trade knowing her for the easy emotional detachment Jared used to think was such an asset to him.
"The stars," Jared says after a long, thoughtful silence.
Jensen looks up from the pork chops they're having for dinner. "Huh?"
"My best friends," Jared says. "We go way back."
"To the start of the universe, I bet," Jensen says with a smirk.
Jared gasps and puts a hand on his face. "Does my age show?"
Jensen laughs, and Jared shrugs. "That's all I've got to offer. Ever since I was a kid, I spent every clear night watching the stars. I had them memorized. All the constellations that would appear and in what season. You'd think they all look the same, but I could tell them apart. I knew their names. If one died out, I bet I would have noticed. I would have missed it."
He thinks it must sound stupid, so incredibly, unspeakably stupid, to Jensen and his years of stored up intimacies with all the people he's ever loved. But it's the closest thing Jared has, he realizes, a little ashamed by it. Jensen doesn't take it as a joke like Jared expected. He looks serious when Jared meets his eyes. "Must have been hard, coming down here. Knowing you'd never see them again."
"Yeah," Jared admits. "I guess it was."
Jensen doesn't say much else through dinner and disappears into the launch room after. He refuses to come out until Jared knocks on his door the next day, because he's worried Jensen's obsessing over that button again.
He opens the door but only by a crack. "Hey, yeah?"
"Uh, dude, there's dinner on the table. You've been in there for almost a day."
"Yes," Jensen says with a nod. He looks back into the room but doesn't open the door any more, and then gives Jared a nervous glance. "I need half an hour longer."
He can see that the lights are off inside, and it's just a tad too weird. Jared tries to push the door open further, but Jensen doesn't budge. "What are you up to, man?"
"Half an hour," Jensen insists, and then he shuts the door in Jared's face.
After about twenty minutes, Jensen comes out and sits down at the table as if everything is perfectly normal. He eats and he keeps up the usual banter with Jared, so Jared doesn't push it until they're finishing cleaning up and Jensen disappears into the pantry. He comes back out holding two Twinkies, a bottle of wine, and what looks like a picnic blanket.
Jared just raises an eyebrow.
"Come here," Jensen says, angling his head toward the lab. "I want to show you something."
Jared follows quietly and watches Jensen set the blanket down on the ground between the work station and his cot. There's just hardly enough space for it.
"Sit," Jensen says, pointing to the makeshift picnic. "Or, better, lie down on your back and look up."
Jared obeys and watches Jensen cross the room. He turns off the lights, and suddenly the ceiling comes to life. Jared's breath catches in his throat. It's spring. It's the night sky in spring. The same sky Jared would be looking at right now if he was lying like this in the park he used to go to alone every night.
He's not alone now. Jensen lies down next to him. "I know it's not the same, but I hope I got close."
"It's perfect," Jared says, which isn't true because Virgo has one star too many and Lupus is a fucking mess. But that just makes it more perfect, somehow. Jared feels oddly close to crying. "How did you do this?"
"We had some glow-in-the-dark paint left over from marking off the catwalks," he says. "Didn't ever think we'd use it again, but I left it in the supply shed because it's so far out of the way I figured it would never bother anyone, right? So last night after you told me you missed the stars, I went to the library and found some star charts in there and…well, I tried, anyway. I would have done it in your room, but I think these are the only lights strong enough to really get the glow going once they're out."
Jared shakes his head even though he knows Jensen can't see it. "No, this is amazing. Thank you, Jensen."
Jensen wordlessly hands him a Twinkie, and Jared laughs when he sees the glowing residue on Jensen's hands as he unwraps his dessert and eats it. When they finish, they lie back, and Jared starts pointing out some of his favorite constellations, trying his best to help Jensen see the animals or objects they're supposed to represent (he doesn't).
At some point, Jensen puts his hand over Jared's. He doesn't say anything, just slides his hand there and holds it. The warm weight of his skin over Jared's feels like a thousand pounds of precious metal crushing down-too much of a good thing and it's killing him, because it's not his and he doesn’t know how to change that.
"I give up," Jensen says after a few hours, "I probably painted them wrong, because there's no way that's a lion."
Jared laughs. Leo is one of the few constellations that is exactly right. "I'll get you to see it eventually," he says, squeezing the hand that's still sitting inside of his own.
Jensen's quiet for a while, then says, "One day, after this is all over and we go back up, you can show me the real thing."
He climbs up onto his cot and says goodnight to Jared shortly after, but Jared doesn't go to his big comfy bed. He'd rather lie here, on the cold metal floor, curled under Jensen like a loyal dog, staring up at the sky Jensen made for him.
No, Jared finally decides, after nearly a month of questioning. He wouldn't have found anyone to love up there. Jared didn't pass someone like Jensen up while he was fucking his way through life; there's no one like Jensen. He doesn't need to go back to the surface at all.
This is the real thing.
Jensen yawns as he walks in and around the table Jared's sitting at, taking the empty chair to his right. "See, that's something I've never understood," Jensen says, covering his mouth as he yawns again. "What's the point of playing chess against yourself? It's not like you can trick you. It seems kind of futile."
"It's actually really valuable," Jared replies, only half of his attention focused on Jensen, the other half on the game. "You always have to imagine your opponent can read your mind in chess and try to outsmart that. So having an opponent who literally can read your mind is the best training."
Jensen chuckles softly and watches a few seconds longer, until Jared looks up at him. "I would, of course, welcome an actual opponent. If that's what you're angling for."
"Ah, what the hell," Jensen says.
Jared sets up a new game and sits back. "I'm excited," he says. "I love chess. I've missed having someone to play chess with."
"Please tell me you didn't have chess buddies topside, Jay. I will judge you."
"My 85-year-old uncle and I were bros, okay?" Jensen snorts, so Jared keeps going. "Hey, seriously. I'd kick his ass at chess and then we'd go pick up chicks."
"Oh yeah?" Jensen asks, raising an eyebrow. "I bet you were catnip to the ladies."
"Well, okay, my uncle did a little better in that department. But you should have seen the guy. He was in great shape for his age."
"Mmmhmm," Jensen says as he makes his first move. "The fact that you weren't attracted to them didn't ever hurt your chances?"
"If it did, I certainly never noticed," Jared replies, winking as he slides a pawn up two spots.
Jensen looks very engrossed for the next minute, and Jared thinks he's trying to choose a good move, but the expression doesn't change after his turn. Finally he says, "Do you miss it yet?"
"What? Life on the surface?"
Jensen nods.
Jared thinks it over while he moves his bishop right into one of Jensen's pawns. "Sometimes, yeah. I miss being out in the sun and stuff. Don't really miss people, but I guess…I guess I sort of wish I had a chance to change that? Kind of eye opening, going underground and realizing there's a good chance no one's noticed."
Again, Jensen nods. When he doesn’t add anything, Jared asks, "What about you?"
"See, that's the weird thing," Jensen says as he moves again. "I don't really."
"I'm betting that's all thanks to my good company," Jared jokes.
Jensen smiles at him. "It doesn't hurt."
"What else?"
Licking his lips, Jensen replies, "I think I got to miss out on a lot of being felt sorry for. That's wrong, right? That I'm kind of glad I didn't have to do that part?"
Jared shrugs. What the hell does he know about it?
"I don't think I could have handled my grief and everyone else's. I'm glad they shoved us down here before it could start."
"I get that," Jared says. He also gets Jensen's rook.
A small smile appears in the corner of Jensen's mouth, even as he's cursing Jared's move. "You do, don't you? I like that about you."
Jared laughs. "That I'm antisocial so I share in your desire not to have to engage with people's emotions?"
"When you put it that way," Jensen replies. He finally eats one of Jared's pawns, but the satisfied smile that gives him vanishes immediately when he realizes he fell into Jared's trap. Jared takes another bishop.
Jared sets the pieces aside and looks up at Jensen. "This whole thing is pretty bizarre, if you think about it."
"What whole thing? Us being stuck in a missile silo, or the fact that you're this much better than me at chess?"
"No, those things are to be expected." Jensen gives him a flat, unimpressed look, which makes Jared grin. "I meant this whole war."
"Fuckin' Switzerland," Jensen mutters under his breath.
"To think, we could have prevented this whole thing so easily if we hadn't just believed them when they said they were neutral."
"You have to give them props for thinking of it," Jensen says. "And holding the façade up so long while they stockpiled weapons."
"Yeah, but, like…" Jared runs a hand through his hair, then throws it in the air in frustration. "We let them build a machine that can create a black hole! What were we thinking?"
Jensen laughs. "Right?" He sighs. "Goes to show you can't trust anyone."
"No one named Othmar Von Arx, at least."
"It is a little super villain-y, now that you mention it." Jensen shakes his head. "You've gotta hand it to someone who can declare himself emperor of a tiny landlocked country and then conquer Europe, parts of Russia, and the Middle East all in the span of five years."
"Black hole machine," Jared reminds him. "That's not fair."
"He who controls the science controls the universe," Jensen replies with great pomp.
Jared nearly plants his face in his palm at that. He settles for taking another rook, instead. "And the people love him!"
"He's done the Swiss a lot of good," Jensen admits reluctantly. "They're the only goddamn people on the planet he seems to give a single shit about, but they're living it up at everyone else's expense, so I guess I get it."
Jared bites his nail. "Do you think it's true that we would have signed for peace if they'd surrendered him up after San Francisco?"
"I don’t know, Jared," Jensen says glumly. "A part of me hopes not. He wasn't the only one responsible. But on the other hand-"
"On the other hand, World War III is scary shit?"
Jensen nods. "I do miss peace," he says. "If this whole stupid mess had never happened, I'd probably be a dad in a few years. Instead I live in a glorified hole in the ground."
Jared frowns. He's sad for Jensen, for everything he's lost. And in a way, he's sad for himself, too. He doesn't really regret the things that led him here, even though he knows he should. He can't help being glad he met Jensen.
So he lets the conversation drop before he says anything as horrible as what he's thinking. They play for about an hour and a half before Jensen clears his throat grandly, as if he's about to make a very important announcement. Jared looks up, riveted.
"I am not very good at chess."
Jared cracks up until finally he can get himself under control. "That's an understatement."
"You did not warn me that you're, like, a master or something."
"Well, I would have if you'd mentioned that you sucked."
Jensen huffs. "I don't know if I would say that I suck."
Jared grins and continues, "I mean, nuclear physicist. I figured, how bad can he possibly be? Pretty bad, it turns out."
"Oh, shut it." He pushes the board away. "Anyway, you cheated."
"How did I cheat?" Jared asks. "Being better than you does not count as cheating."
Jensen opens his mouth and closes it a few times. Finally he says, "I'm tired. Of course I'm gonna suck."
Jared appraises him, feeling the wrinkle between his eyes form as he frowns. Jensen looks like something dead reheated in a microwave. True, he looks like a very attractive version of that, but still. "Have you slept at all in the last three months?"
It's easy to see Jensen contemplating whether or not he can get away with lying. Finally he shakes his head. "Not much."
"You can't sleep on that shitty cot forever," Jared tells him. "Let's switch off tonight, okay? Just one good night of sleep and then you can go back to whatever kinky masochistic deal you and the cot have worked out."
Jensen laughs, but his eyes get cagey. "That's fine, Jared. Really, I sleep enough."
"Enough to not be dead," Jared concedes. "Not enough to avoid being a zombie all day, and I don't know that I feel all that comfortable with entrusting the most powerful nuclear warhead on the planet to a zombie."
"That sounds like-" Jensen has to pause to yawn, which is Jared's whole point. "-discrimination."
"Dude."
Jensen rubs his hands over his eyes and frowns. "Look, I can't, okay? I can't sleep in that bed. She chose that fucking bed. It's her bed and she's not gonna be in it, and I just can't do it."
Jared fiddles his thumbs, debating whether or not he should push this. He knows it's not his place. But Jensen is wearing himself ragged trying to live like this. "It's my bed."
Jensen's eyebrows draw together as he looks up very quickly and catches Jared's eyes. "What?"
"It's my bed. I'm the only person who has ever slept in it. I've been sleeping in it for months. So it's mine, and I'd like you to take it tonight, because I'm seriously worried about you."
He watches Jensen's foot jiggle under the table for what feels like forever as Jensen thinks it over until finally he says, "Would you…would you share it with me?"
Jared feels his cheeks flush, and he wants to punch himself, because he knows Jensen must not mean it like that. But he can't help the thoughts that pop into his head. "You want me to sleep with you?"
"I'm sorry," Jensen says. "I'm sorry. That was weird. That was a weird thing to ask for."
"No, look, I used to sleep with guys all the time," Jared says, trying to sound reassuring. "I'm not one to think it's weird, I just..."
"If it's empty, I'm going to be thinking about her and how she's not there, and there's no way I'll sleep any better than in the cot. But if we share it-"
"If we share it, it's just a bed we're sharing so we can both sleep comfortably."
Jensen nods.
Jared gives him a fake smile and wonders if Jensen really has no idea how cruel it is to ask Jared to sleep next to him knowing Jensen will be wishing he was someone else. "Of course, Jen."
When they settle in that night, he can feel the warmth of Jensen's body under the covers. Jensen falls asleep long before Jared does-which makes Jared feel all kinds of smug because he told Jensen he needed a proper bed.
Jensen curls in until his back is so close that Jared can't get comfortable without wrapping an arm around him. Jensen only draws in closer at the contact, making a content sound as he settles against Jared's chest. The weight of him sparks something that spreads all the way through Jared's body.
It's not that he's turned on. Someone like Jensen rolled up in his bed-Jared expected to be turned on. But it's so much worse than that, because there's an ache in his chest that he's never felt before. An ache he only suspects he knows the name of.
It's a crack all the way down Jared's heart.
ON TO PART TWO