Fic: Tabula Rasa (Jared/Jensen, NC-17)
Title: Tabula Rasa
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: ~10,000
Warnings: I have nothing to declare except my schmoopiness.
Summary: In Reykjavik, there lived a boy whose back was a looking glass into the future, whose skin had begun to manifest portents in ink when he was seven years old. (See the art post. No, really. See it. Admire it. :))
Notes: This was written for spn_illuminated, to an art prompt by the awesomely talented petite_madame. You can see her art post here. Thanks to akadougal for the beta, and to petite_madame for being as supportive as she is scarily imaginative!
Tabula Rasa
Reykjavik, 1902
"Madam," said Mr Misha Collins, tipping his soft felt hat to the girl behind the greengrocer's counter, "I do beg your pardon. I fear I have been a fish for far too long."
Misha -- more properly, Dmitri, for those who could pronounce it -- was a man of a great many names and still more faces. In pursuit of his art, he had traveled from the Indies to the Caucasus, from the Eastern Seaboard to the silver Caspian Sea. His face was one that could have come from anywhere, and, facilitating his desire to be at home in every country on earth, he was fluent in seven languages, not including the dialects.
Unfortunately for all concerned, Icelandic was not one of them.
"Heathen," said the grocer's girl, and slammed the door in his face. Fluent or not, her meaning was clear enough. It seemed that the Icelandic for heathen was 'heiðingi'. Misha -- who had, indeed, abandoned the Orthodox church some fifteen years ago, when his mother abandoned him -- could not find it in himself to protest.
The trouble with these outlandish places was, he thought, as he picked himself up and set off down the narrow street, twofold. In the first place, the highest number of reports in Misha's area of expertise came undoubtedly from places on the fringes of civilisation. Misha knew this, because he had grown up in one such place, where his interest in the bizarre and supernatural had begun with his childhood friend, Danneel, and her powers of teleportation. And yet, it was in such places that fear and bigotry toward these special people ran highest, which always complicated matters when Misha arrived to investigate reported phenomena.
In Reykjavik, he had heard, there lived a boy whose back was a looking glass into the future, whose skin had begun to manifest portents in ink when he was seven years old. At first, remembering the old stories, the townsfolk had thought him some kind of hereditary king, the dragon of the æwintrecyning poised to manifest between his shoulder blades. But the dragon spurned the boy, and in its place sprang visions of the future, the destiny of any and every onlooker engraving itself on skin still fine with youth. The accuracy of the drawings had distressed the boy's parents to the extent that, eventually, they accused him of witchcraft and threw him into the streets. It was from there that Misha hoped to rescue him, knowing that, elsewhere in the world, he would be appreciated by the right sort of crowd. It was finding him that was the problem, particularly when the locals seemed so loath to speak.
When Misha finally tracked him to earth in an abandoned warehouse, it was not through the aid of any so-called decent people. The streetboys were more inclined to exchange information for cash, although they laughed at Misha's accent and his strange, foreign clothes. They recognized his description of the boy he sought, called him Jensen, and told Misha where he could be found. He had, they said, never fully adjusted to street living, although he was seventeen now and very tall. They called him fallegur, beautiful, and he was. When Misha found him, crouched over a fire in his roofless room, he thought him quite the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. Misha was, at this time, twenty-eight and worldly: he had seen all manner of incredible things, but the fact remained that, even disregarding the tattoos, Jensen had a face like nothing on earth.
Naturally, he spoke no English, but it seemed Misha's Icelandic was good enough, and Jensen desperate enough, that a bargain was struck within a half hour. Later, in Misha's high-ceilinged hotel room, Jensen shed his shirt and Misha saw a montage of circus freaks parade across his back, gold coins descending from the blade of one shoulder, Misha's own name lit up, incandescent. Then, Jensen skinned out of his trousers, too, spread himself face down upon the bed, and Misha flushed, realizing what this boy had done to survive -- what he thought Misha wanted from him.
Beautiful though Jensen was, Misha liked women. In particular, he liked Danneel, and, when she was unavailable, people who did not expect to be paid for their services. He touched Jensen's shoulder, signaling no, no. Not that. No need for that.
Clearly surprised, Jensen sat up on the bed, smoothed his fair hair. His skin was Norse-pale, freckled across the cheekbones. His sea-green eyes were contemplative, considering. "All right," he said at length, in Icelandic, and then, "How do you say that, in English? All right?"
Misha laughed a little and tossed Jensen his shirt, deliberately aiming so the fabric would fall across Jensen's lap, covering him decently. "Okay," he said, enunciating carefully, and held out his hand for Jensen to shake. "I like you, Jensen. I think you have an amazing gift, and that's what I want you to show off to my customers. Not your lovely ass, all right?" He paused. "Okay?"
"Okay," Jensen returned, and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Okay."
St Louis, Missouri, 1912
'Misha's Circus of the Bizarre and Fantastic', as it called itself, seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Jared had never seen anything quite like it. Not, of course, that Jared had ever spent much time in any of the great metropolises of the world -- he had begun life in a one horse town outside of San Antonio, Texas, and moved out to Missouri when the St Louis Messenger had taken him on. It was, he supposed, entirely possible that this kind of thing showed up in St Louis all the time, but it was still entirely new to Jared, all strange, exotic music and electric lightbulbs. His colleagues at the Messenger had advised him to stay away, but Jared was twenty-three and new to the big city. Anomalies like this were bound to draw his interest, and no amount of discouragement from his colleagues was likely to stop him investigating further.
"I guarantee I can deliver a decent article about it," he insisted, cajoling. Jared had always been told his big eyes could convince anyone of anything, if he set his mind to it. He had once been inclined to think this was only his mother's bias, but the truth was that his hopeful expressions had served him well with Jeffrey Morgan, editor of the Messenger. He'd done some great work for Morgan in the year he'd been in St Louis, and there could be no harm in asking.
Morgan, at least, looked less skeptical about the whole thing than Jared's section editor had. He sucked his teeth contemplatively, one hand rubbing idly at the nape of his neck. "It's a freak show, Jared. Why are you so goddamn interested?"
Jared shrugged. "It looks...intriguing," he said, which was perfectly true. The sudden appearance of a veritable village of gaudy tents at Carnival Field had intrigued more people than Jared alone. "They showed up unannounced and they look incredibly showy. Maybe they're the real deal. Or maybe they're not. Either way, it'd make good reading."
Morgan laughed, crossing his arms across his chest. It was late and the state of Morgan's clothes showed it, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a smear of printer's ink demarcating the muscle in one strong forearm. His vest was unbuttoned, showing his suspenders beneath, and the day's worth of stubble threw his jawline into shadow. Some people on the paper found Morgan, after a full shift, intimidating. Jared, on the contrary, found him appealing in a way that'd given him trouble for as long as his dick had functioned. He did his best not to let his manner become flirtatious toward Morgan -- hell, toward any man: the Code Napoleon did not apply in Missouri -- but sometimes, he knew, he failed, and Morgan, however unconsciously, seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise. Sometimes, that worked to Jared's advantage.
This seemed to be one of those times.
"If I say yes," Morgan began, "I better get something in good time, Padalecki. None of your 'but I got too interested!' double-page features that take two weeks to write."
Jared nodded earnestly. "It'll be relevant, timely and of printable length, Mr Morgan, I promise." He widened his eyes, probably milking it too much now, but Morgan seemed to be in an affable mood. "I could go tomorrow night?"
"You could," Morgan conceded good-naturedly, with a lopsided smile. Reaching into his desk drawer, he withdrew a bill and tossed it casually onto the desktop. "There's a dollar. Bring me some cotton candy and a good scoop, wouldya?"
Grinning, Jared pocketed the bill and straightened up, moving to button his jacket. "You can count on me, sir," he said. "You want blue cotton candy, or pink?"
"Evening, handsome. You lost?"
It was as if the woman had materialized out of thin air. Jared had been making his way for some five minutes down the long, central corridor of Misha's tabernacle compound, and he could have sworn there was nobody with him but other patrons in their dowdy winter clothes, examining the portrait posters strung along the walls. One minute, Jared was studying an advertisement for The Cat Faced Boy, brow furrowed in thought, and the next, there was a beautiful girl at his elbow, her dress a translucent shimmer like water.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision, but she was still there afterward, her long red hair worn loose and her breasts made prominent by the corset lines of the dress. Even Jared, who had never been especially fascinated by cleavage, found it difficult to keep his eyes from straying from her face. He cleared his throat. "Not lost," he countered, "just deciding where to go." He threw her a smile. "Why -- do you have a suggestion?"
For a second, the woman just laughed, and then -- instantaneously, completely, and without warning -- vanished into thin air with a loud crack of static. It happened so suddenly that Jared found himself too shocked even to cry out, although he did manage to leap a foot into the air quite without intention. "What --?"
"Looking for me?"
She was behind him. When he turned, heart racing wildly in his throat, he saw the artist's rendering at her back, the iridescent dress immediately recognizable, and the by-line: DANNEEL THE VANISHER.
"Of course," Danneel said, following the line of his eyes, "I don't just vanish. I reappear, too. The title's a little misleading -- sometimes people expect me to have the power of invisibility, or something. What I do is actually teleportation, but Misha couldn't think of a way to convey that snappily for the poster." She shrugged, her manner as nonchalant as if she were discussing the weather, and Jared fought to regain the power of speech.
"You," he managed intelligently, and then, after a moment's further floundering, "How did you do that?"
Danneel spread her hands. "Magic," she said smartly, one side of her mouth quirking up in a wry little smile. "If I knew anything about the science of it beyond that, I'd tell you. Maybe, a hundred years from now, they'll understand it."
Jared was at a loss for words. Something told him Mr Morgan wouldn't be especially pleased to receive an article declaring that magic was alive and well in Misha's circus, but he had seen Danneel disappear before his eyes. No sleight of hand could have done that. "Are you all --?" He hesitated, but she understood his meaning immediately.
"Real? Yes. That's why the show's been so successful for so long. Misha goes all over the world to find his acts. No charlatan would survive here." She waved a hand, encompassing the length of the corridor and its row of posters. "A girl joined us recently who breathes fire like a dragon. Richard has the ears and whiskers of a cat, and the tongue of one, too." She wiggled an eyebrow. "Christian can move things with his mind. Take your pick; we're all genuine." She dropped her arms to her sides and surveyed him quizzically. "What did you want to see?"
It was all Jared could do to laugh hollowly. "To think," he said weakly, "I came here expecting lion tamers and fortune tellers."
"Oh," Danneel shot back casually, "we have a fortune teller. Not the sort you've ever seen before, but only because he's better." She indicated with a finger, and Jared followed the line of her arm to a door some way down the hall. "Jensen. He shows you his back, and your fortune will write itself across it in the most elaborate tattoos you've ever seen in your life."
Jared, in point of fact, had never seen a tattoo of any sort. His family had always been respectably middle class, and tattoos were the province of sailors and dicemen. The idea intrigued him and he cleared his throat thoughtfully. "Jensen?"
"Jensen," Danneel reiterated. He could see from her smile that she knew she'd already won him over, hooked him on the promise of true magic. "And he's so beautiful, Jared. I'm Misha's woman, but I'd have taken him a-courting too if he'd ever shown an interest in what I could offer him." Her palms skimmed her hips, the swell of them out from her waist, and Jared felt himself color. He had an uncanny feeling he knew what she was implying, and it made his chest flush hot and cold with nerves.
"Well," he managed, "I think I'll -- yeah. Maybe I'll go and see Jensen, then. See what's in store for me."
He was moving down the corridor, now, his pace brisk and stumbling, but Danneel made no move to stop him -- only gazed after him with something akin to fondness, her hands on her hips and a smile playing about the corners of her pink-painted mouth. She was very lovely, to be sure, but there was something about her that sparked like a chemical reaction, something that suggested she saw more of him than he wished to reveal. He couldn't begin to fathom what Danneel really was, but it was genuine. Of that, he was certain.
It wasn't until he was tumbling through Jensen's door that it occurred to him -- he never had given her his name.
Stepping into Jensen's room gave one the bizarre impression of stepping into a cloudless night sky, the whole thing a drapery of dark blue cloth that shimmered in the glow of a thousand tiny lights. At first, the lights were all Jared could see: one moment, they seemed only stitches of silvered silk, but the next they appeared to give off their own pale radiance from a source Jared could not quite understand. He was still peering at one of these constellations -- which seemed to defy all his efforts to focus well enough to examine them properly -- when a voice came out of the depths of the tent, soft and amused. "Have you come to see me?"
Jared's head jerked up guiltily. Ten feet ahead of him stood a young man -- presumably the famous Jensen -- in a silk dressing-gown the precise sea-green color of his eyes. Seeing him, Jared promptly lost all interest in the decorative stars.
Physically, he was perfect -- so ludicrously, artistically perfect that Jared's arms twitched with the urge to reach out toward him and touch the fine bones of his face, the lush swell of his mouth. His shoulders were broad, tapering down to the narrow nip of a waist where the robe was fastened loosely. It was quite evident that he was naked underneath, and the thought made the blood rush hotly to Jared's cheeks. Jensen's talent lay in ink that bloomed upon his skin; soon, surely, he would have to take the robe off, and Jared didn't know if he could cope with this boy denuded for him. His cautious mind observed critically that it was a bad idea, even while his pulse picked up and his bones ached hollowly with the craving. "I..."
Jensen laughed, not cruelly. He held out a hand. "Come this way."
Jared's feet were moving before he could stop them. The tent was not a tent in any sense of the word Jared recognized, except in that it was made of fabric. It reminded him of the desert dwellings he had seen in photographs of Woolley's expeditions to Mesopotamia, vast, sequential rooms of cloth. Jensen pushed aside a low-hanging drape of midnight blue, and beyond it, Jared found, lay a smaller enclosure of red gauze, a sort of inner sanctum, where, he presumed, the magic happened. In the center of it stood a chaise longue. Jared glanced at it and blushed all the harder.
"Danneel send you in here?" Jensen was turning, circling the chaise until he stood on the opposite side of it to Jared. He shifted as he spoke until he was looking almost over his shoulder at Jared, presenting him mostly with his back. Jared cleared his throat, nervous.
"I -- yeah. I mentioned I'd expected fortune tellers, and she said you were one." He paused. "But better."
Jensen's smile was knowing. "She knew you'd like me."
"...yes," Jared said, hesitantly. The awkward feeling had returned to his chest, the sense of being seen through. What was worst was that, on some level below the discomfort, it felt tentatively liberating -- or it would have, had it been anything but in his own mind. He shook himself. "What do I have to do?"
Jensen laughed again and pulled himself up onto the chaise, facing away from Jared. "Nothing," he said shortly, and then turned his face away to look at the opposite wall. "All you have to do," he explained, slowly, "is watch."
His hands went to his waist. Jared's heart leaped, watching the way the cord of Jensen's robe tensed and then loosened as the knot was undone, the way the fabric sagged at his back. Then Jensen's hands went to his lapels, drawing the two sides of the gown back toward his shoulders and off over the round muscle of them. For a breathless moment, the silk still clung to them, but then Jensen shrugged, the motion fluid and deliberate, and it cascaded to his waist. He sat very upright, and the robe did not comprise much fabric. It formed a low heap of green on the chaise, above which Jared could see the beginnings of Jensen's natal cleft, the way his backside curved deeply into the small of his back. Jared's breath caught.
"Well?"
Jensen's nape was bare and vulnerable like this, his head tipped forward, his back exposed. It was a beautiful back, smooth and strongly muscled, the shoulder blades cresting under the skin like wings. Jared felt -- horribly, intensely -- that he could have put his mouth upon that back and busied himself there for hours, tasting the knobs of Jensen's spine and the dimples low at the base of it, but -- Jared forced himself to focus.
Jensen's skin was entirely unblemished. Jared cocked his head pensively.
"There's nothing," he said.
Jensen tensed. Jared could tell that it wasn't a good sort of tension, whatever wonders it did for the musculature of his back. "Nothing?" His head remained dipped, and now Jared thought the position was more defensive than open, prioritising self-protection over vulnerability. He blinked.
"N-no," he said. He didn't tell Jensen that he didn't particularly care what, if anything, was written on his back, provided he had Jensen's permission to stand here and admire it as sane men admired Notre Dame. He felt that it might not be a helpful remark.
Jensen, however, evidently did care. He sucked in a short breath through his teeth, and chanced a glance over his right shoulder, not letting his eyes stray toward Jared. Then, as if satisfied of Jared's truthfulness, he said, "You could be too far away. Come and touch me."
His voice sounded a little different now, less professional pleasantness and more...Jared couldn't quite place it. A certain rawness, perhaps. He could sympathize. He felt more than a little raw himself. "Touch you?"
Jensen nodded. "Yes. Sometimes people are -- resistant, I'm not sure why. You might need to uncover the images yourself. Put your hands on my shoulders, then run them down my back."
He sounded a little discomfited, but Jared couldn't help but think he would be more uncomfortable if Jared refused. Jared had no objection to touching Jensen's back; it was more the feeling that he might be unable to prise his hands away that stopped his mouth. "I --"
"Please."
That did it. Jared took a step forward, hands outstretched, and then another. When he settled his hands on Jensen's shoulders, the skin there was silk-smooth beneath his palms, as if Jensen treated it often -- as, Jared supposed, made sense, given that it was his livelihood. He could feel himself thickening in his trousers quite inappropriately. He swallowed, locked his wrists as if to forestall any touch too lingering, and began to follow the lines of Jensen's back toward his waist, the broad plains of his shoulders and the narrower span of his ribs, thumbs following the shallow valley of his spine. Beneath his hands, Jensen twitched, not unhappily, and Jared felt his heart clench. He felt oddly sensitized all over, as if it were he who was naked with Jensen's hands all over him, mapping out his body, He was breathing tightly by the time he reached Jensen's waist, but still --
"Well?" Jensen prompted. Jared bit his lip and shook his head, although Jensen couldn't see it.
"Nothing," he said, although it pained him to do so.
"What?" The word cracked like a whip. The next second, Jensen was off the chaise longue and stalking toward the other side of the tent, where, Jared now saw, hung a mirror, though Jared couldn't imagine how it was suspended. Jensen's dressing gown remained where it was, and Jared felt a guilty rush of want flutter in his groin, although Jensen's distress was obvious and Jared felt that, too.
If Morgan had been here, Jared knew what he would have said. Charlatan, and a scathing article written up for tomorrow's Messenger. But Jared couldn't bring himself to believe that Jensen was lying about his powers. In the first place, it was in the interest of a charlatan at least to fake the alleged powers, or else how could they be convincing? And in the second, he had seen Danneel. She was real. He couldn't believe a man could find gems like her and be unable to tell a dud. Jared twisted his hands in front of himself and glanced over at Jensen. "Are you all right?"
Jensen had his back to the mirror, peering at it over his shoulder, which was fine except that it presented Jared with a full and unobstructed view of his front. His beautiful, sin-worthy front, the muscles of his chest and stomach well-defined and statuesque, his dick soft in the crease of his thigh. God. Jared wanted to spread Jensen's thighs and take him like a woman -- or push his legs together and take him instead like a schoolboy, with his dick thrust between.
His sense of personal guilt was made all the worse by the fact that Jensen so clearly had other, more pressing issues on his mind than his own nakedness in front of a perfect stranger. "No," he said, his voice strained and unhappy. "No, no, no. This has never happened before, honestly." He turned eyes of appeal on Jared, who shook his head earnestly.
"Oh, I believe you," he assured Jensen hastily. "If you were going to make it up, you'd do it so it was convincing, wouldn't you?"
Jensen raked his hands through his hair in a gesture of utter despair. "Of course I would, not that I'd know where to begin. I can only think of one reason this might happen and it isn't good." He dropped his hands loosely and indicated the main door of the tent, the way they'd come. "Could you do me a favor and go find Danneel? We need some help here." He paused. "And make sure you come back with her. If I'm right -- which I hope I'm not -- you could be in trouble."
It was curiosity, more than fear for his own safety, that made Jared hurry, but hurry he did until he came upon Danneel in the corridor, in conversation with a young lady. As this didn't seem a time for observing social niceties, Jared simply barreled in and caught her by the arm, nodding his head in apology to the lady. "It's Jensen," he explained. "Something's gone wrong and he needs you. Will you come?"
Danneel's brow furrowed, her lips tightening. "I -- of course," she said, throwing her own apologetic glance to the girl as she allowed Jared to pull her away.
When they re-entered Jensen's tent, he had pulled himself up onto the chaise again, which was something, although the robe was still tossed behind him on the cushions. He glanced over his shoulder as they came in and called out, "Danneel?"
"I'm here," Danneel assured him, hurrying ahead of Jared to take hold of Jensen's shoulders. "What's the matter, sugar?"
Danneel had barely made contact before the drawings began to appear. Big, sweeping, intricate drawings, curlicues and inscriptions spiraling out across Jensen's back in bursts of monochrome and color. Jared made out a circus tent, a tall man, a small girl. Oddly, a pair of spectacles. He blinked, and Jensen paused, catching his breath as if he could feel it. "Do you see it?" he prompted, his voice rushed with anxiety. "Tattoos? Are they there?"
Danneel frowned as if confused. "My -- of course they're there, Jensen; where else would they be?"
Jensen turned a little further, twisting his body to look her full in the face, and then glanced over at Jared. "Ask him," he said, nodding his head in Jared's direction. "We got a problem, Danni." Then, to Jared, softer, "C'mere."
Jared went. He laid his hands on Jensen's shoulders without prompting, this time, and the ink under Jensen's skin began slowly to fade, dissipating until he was the same unbroken pale gold all over. Danneel was watching fixedly, as if waiting for something else to appear, but nothing did. There was only blankness, the empty canvas of Jared's future. Nothing.
Jared's stomach went suddenly hollow. He had an awful feeling he knew what Jensen was thinking when he wondered what might have caused this, and it wasn't good. He glanced up at Danneel. "What do you think?"
Danneel looked at Jensen. Jensen looked back, and Jared could see in their faces the uncertainty. He knew, absolutely and immediately, that this had never happened before. Jensen could not tell his future, and he was the first. He swallowed. "Jensen?"
It was a moment before Jensen spoke. "We need to talk to Misha about this," he said. "I don't -- I don't want to scare you, Jared, but you can probably..."
"Yeah," Jared cut in, before he could say it. "Yeah, I -- if we can get this checked out, I'd be --"
"Yes," Danneel interrupted, reaching out to squeeze his arm. "Don't worry, Jared. It might take a few different routes of investigation -- Misha might have to make some enquiries -- but we'll find out what's going on. And if you need help, we'll help you. Right, Jensen?"
"Right," Jensen said. The anxiety in his face looked different now, presumably because he was aware it wasn't his powers that were the problem, but much of it was still there, as if he felt afraid for Jared, genuinely concerned. Jared let that inkling warm him through the new flood of cold that now mounted in his belly.
"I have a telephone number," Jared offered, "if you'd like it?"
Jensen shook his head firmly. "Come back," he said, and then his hand was on Jared's shoulder, kneading the muscle for a long moment before it slid down his arm, brushed the sensitive inside of his wrist. "Come back tomorrow, and we'll tell you what we've found out. All right?"
"All right," Jared said heavily. He couldn't resist groping for Jensen's hand as it departed, offering something between a handshake and something altogether different, though Jensen didn't seem to mind it. "All right. I'll come back tomorrow night."
The next day at work, Jared was subdued. He felt it was understandable, but obviously he could not explain to anyone else the cause of it. When Mr Morgan dropped by his desk, Jared explained to him, in a flat tone of voice he recognized as quite unlike himself, that the carnival idea had fallen through and that Jared could not possibly write an article about it. Also, he had forgotten the cotton candy. Morgan, apparently realizing there was more to Jared's low mood than he would say, simply patted Jared's shoulder in avuncular fashion and told him not to worry about it. Which was all very nice, but didn't exactly help with the major thing worrying Jared: namely, that his future had not shown up on Jensen's back because there had been no future to show.
On the way back to the circus, he moved with uncharacteristic care. Pedestrians, trolleycars, the occasional automobile -- all of them now posed possible threats to his existence, and Jared navigated them cautiously. When he arrived at Misha's, it was not yet open for the evening, but the gentleman at the door seemed to know Jensen was expecting a visitor, probably early, and let Jared pass.
In Jensen's room, Jared found Danneel and Jensen both in fairly plain and ordinary streetclothes, which for some reason surprised him. Logically, of course, he knew they couldn't possibly go about their regular business in their showclothes -- it was just that it hadn't really occurred to Jared that they'd have any regular business to attend to. Now, they sat either end of the chaise longue, both smiling wanly at Jared as he approached.
"We have a plan lined up," Jensen called out. His collarless shirt was open at the neck, highlighting the pale tan of his skin and the honey-warm hollow of his throat. Even through his nerves, Jared was still (frustratingly) able to appreciate that. He cleared his throat.
"A plan?"
"Traci," Danneel said succinctly. "She isn't with the circus -- Misha doesn't think we need another fortune teller since we've got Jensen -- but she's an old friend, and completely genuine. She reads your palm as a prop, but really she doesn't need the palm at all." Danneel shrugged. "She just sees."
Jared's heart had begun to pound again. "If there's anything to see."
"What? Hey." Jensen frowned, patting the chaise longue between himself and Danneel. "None of that shit. We'll get this sorted out, I promise."
Jared eyed Jensen's hand warily, and Jensen, as if in exasperation, patted the cushion again. "Come sit here with us and wait."
Jared squared his shoulders. There was plenty of room, really, and if he his thigh should be pressed a little closely to Jensen's, then, what of it? It wouldn't be an issue to Jensen, ergo, it shouldn't be one to him. He took a deep breath and sat down.
By the time the outer door opened to admit Traci, Jared had to admit that things didn't quite work like that. Their conversation was as casual as could be expected under the circumstances, but still, Jared found himself more fixated on the slight shifting of Jensen's thigh than upon his stories of his childhood in Iceland, Danneel's descriptions of growing up with Misha. By the time their visitor appeared in the inner sanctum, Jared was only too happy for an excuse to leap off the chaise longue, half convinced that Jensen had been teasing him on purpose. It was ludicrous, but that was how he felt. "Traci?"
The woman turned to him with a smile and held out her hand at an angle that said, unmistakably, that she wished it to be kissed. She was perhaps forty, slender but strong-looking with the most unusual eyes. "Jared," she said, and her voice was rather low and certain, the sort of voice that could have inspired confidence in the most ardent skeptic. "Our friends tell me you have a problem. Why don't you come over here with me and we'll see what we can see?"
Jensen, catching his eye, inclined his head in a gesture of encouragement, and Jared swallowed his momentary flash of insecurity. "All right," he said. Traci smiled, indicating the cushions strewn on the floor, and Jared took the hint and followed her down.
Barely had Traci taken Jared's hand when she said, "Oh."
Jensen and Danneel leaned forward on the chaise. "Oh?" Jensen prompted. "What's 'oh'?"
Traci smiled and shook her head slightly. "None of your business, Ackles." To Jared, she said, "Do you want me to actually read your fortune, honey, or did you just want to be sure you have one?"
Jared blinked slowly. "Uh." The idea of reading his future on Jensen's skin had been appealing, but he suspected that part of it had been completely unrelated to the actual fortune. The thought of hearing Traci spell out, in front of Danneel and Jensen, what she saw held less attraction for him. "I guess you could tell me the gist, if there is one?"
Traci laughed. "A diplomat, I see." She squeezed his hand. "Well, there definitely is one. I see newsprint and nice ties...and an automobile. Oh, and --" she caught his eye and smiled, and there again was that odd nugget of understanding he'd seen in Danneel, in Jensen -- "there's someone for you, Jared."
Jared colored. "Oh," he began, but was saved from the embarrassment of formulating an answer by Danneel's interruption.
"So he's not going to die?"
"Not any time soon," Traci said tartly, getting to her feet again. "Was that what you thought?"
"I had no tattoos for him," Jensen put in, sounding a little lost. "If there's a future to tell, I should be able to show him it, shouldn't I?" He turned appealing eyes on Traci, but she only held up her hands and shrugged.
"Hey -- I'm only the messenger. If you want a repairman for your mechanism, you'd better see if Misha has any other ideas." She reached out to ruffle Jensen's hair. "There'll be some reason, but it isn't that Jared here is going to be sleeping with the fishes, so it doesn't matter, really, does it?"
"No," Danneel conceded, with a shrug, but Jensen looked unconvinced.
"Maybe not," he said, "but still." He sighed. "Not that we're going to be able to work it out tonight. Jared, now that you know you're not doomed, do you want to actually do the circus thing tonight? On the house." He smiled, showing little crinkles at the corners of his eyes that made Jared itch to lean in and kiss them. "Then, if you like, you can come back here when I close up shop at eleven. We could -- talk."
"Sure," Jared blurted, so quickly it was almost embarrassing. "I'd love that."
Jensen grinned back at him sudden and blinding, too, so Jared figured he was all right.
Jared came to Jensen's tent at eleven and stayed until one. Given that the following day was Friday, this was a horrible idea all round and Jared knew it, but it didn't feel like one. Jensen was -- marvelous. There was no other word for it: he had, quite genuinely, lived a life full of marvels, and more insane still was the fact that he seemed actually interested in Jared's tales of his childhood in Texas, his mundane job as a reporter at the Messenger. What might have become a question-and-answer session flowed quite naturally into a lazy conversation, Jensen's presence a long, warm blur against Jared's side, and by the time Jared finally forced himself to get up and go, he was fairly glowing with pleasure all over. Superficially, his skin tingled with quiet want at Jensen's nearness, but the core of the feeling was something more than that, a simple happiness Jared could barely remember ever feeling with another person. Jensen was wonderful. Jared was horribly, idiotically smitten.
Still. This time the night before, he had been convinced of his own impending doom. There was nothing like a near-death experience, it seemed, to put little things like illegal homosexual tendencies into perspective.
They made arrangements for Jared to come back again the following night, in hopes that Jensen might have found out something more about his inability to manifest a fortune for Jared as he'd done for every other person who had ever looked upon his bare back. Jensen would be working, naturally, so Jared had stayed late at the paper to compensate for disappearing early on the Thursday night, and arrived at the circus just as Jensen's showing hours were ending.
When he walked into Jensen's tent, Jensen was still only in the green dressing gown he wore when he was working, which, Jared supposed, was to be expected. What he hadn't expected was to find Jensen alone. He spread his hands, gesturing around the tent at its emptiness. "Hello," he said. "Didn't find any miracle-healers or soothsayers to tell you what your problem is, I take it?"
Jensen laughed and shook his head. "No-o," he said, but he was smiling, more than Jared thought the situation warranted. There was something preternaturally pleased with itself in Jensen's smile, something catlike, childish. Something repressed like a happy secret. "Misha had a few ideas, though."
"Misha?" Jared glanced around again. "Is he coming later?"
"Uh-uh." Jensen shook his head. He was seated on the chaise longue but, this time, facing Jared, and his long bare legs swung idly back and forth. "He told me what to try, but we don't need him to try it. We need to do it ourselves."
A pounding sprang up like slow drums in the pit of Jared's stomach. He dampened his lips with the tip of his tongue and said, "I thought we tried everything?"
Jensen was looking back at him very intently, now, the shocking sea-green of his irises almost glowing in the low light. Slowly, his hand went to his waist, and Jared's breath hitched, sudden and dizzily. "We're going to try again," Jensen said, and Jared didn't think he was imagining the low, husky note to his voice as he unfastened the knot, let his robe fall open. A shrug of his shoulders sent it slithering to the cushions at his back, and Jared found himself frozen, as if rooted to the spot.
"Jensen," he said. He felt insane, as if this were a dream or a waking fantasy come real, the product of too much incense and circus magic. But when Jensen stood up, body proudly pale and bare, it didn't feel like a figment of his imagination. The tiny scar low down on Jensen's ribs, the ventral trail of hair descending from his navel like an arrow to his cock -- these were details Jared's mind would not have conjured, and his heart raced at the implication. Jensen was soft, but Jared could see him beginning to thicken, and it sent arousal thundering through him in a low, heavy beat, cumulative, building.
When Jensen turned around, it was almost a relief. Was a relief, until such time as Jared's eyes dropped below his waistline to the roundness of his backside, the firm muscle crying out to be kneaded and gripped and -- God -- smacked. Jared was more than half-hard, now, beginning to strain against his buttons. Then Jensen said, "Jared -- touch me," and his breath burst out of him on a tight moan he was too late to catch.
He froze, horrified, but Jensen said nothing -- indeed, if anything, only deepened the arch of his back, palms on the chaise longue and backside thrust out a little, and his breath seemed uncommonly shallow. Emboldened, then, Jared stepped forward, set his fingers lightly on Jensen's shoulders, thumbs resting carefully either side of his nape. Jensen breathed out thickly, said, "Well?" although Jared was sure he knew there was nothing -- nothing on his back but Jared's hands, Jared's eyes. Jared's attention.
"Nothing," Jared said in a voice that wobbled dangerously. Jensen tilted his head a little, rolled his shoulders.
"Keep trying," he said, and his voice was palpably low now, something rough and wild about it, some untamed quality that set Jared's skin singing with want. Gently, touching Jensen only with the barest brush of skin, he drew his hands a little lower.
"Like this?"
"Lower." The same low urgency, and Jared could not deny it. Nor, he found, did he wish to. His thumbs traced the vertebrae of Jensen's spine as his fingers feathered over his ribs, into the slightly hollow place below.
"Like this?"
"Yes," Jensen said. "Anything?"
"No."
"Keep going."
Jared could hear himself breathing, now, hot little rasped-out breaths, and he knew that Jensen could surely hear it too. Somewhere along the line, Jared had shifted unconsciously closer to Jensen, so that now the thrust of his dick, barely restrained by his pants, was almost flush against Jensen's backside, but Jensen made no protest. One backward thrust, and they would be touching. Jared bit his lip and dragged his hands lower, over the place where Jensen's kidneys were, into the deep small of his back. Without intent, his thumbs brushed the cleft of Jensen's backside, and Jensen hissed, snapped abruptly backward. "Jared."
God, they were touching. Touching, there, and it felt as if every ounce of sensation in Jared's body had relocated to his cock where it rode Jensen's cleft. Precome spooled palpably from his slit to smear on his undershorts, and Jared could have sobbed with desperation. This was ridiculous, degenerate, but his hand slid around Jensen's body all the same, forming a loose circle around his waist. "Jensen --"
Jensen's twist in his arms was a perfectly logical move, but Jared was incapable of logic at this moment, with all his blood pounding in his dick and his skin on fire and so, naturally, it took him by surprise. Jensen's hands came up immediately to fist in Jared's hair, pinning him in place, and Jared moaned, hips bucking forward half-consciously into Jensen's. "Holy shit, Jared," Jensen bit out, and tugged again, arching his back so that they rubbed together, Jensen's bare cock sliding hotly against Jared's through two layers of cloth.
"Is this the plan?" Jared managed, in a voice gone ragged with want as his palms found Jensen's backside, hauled him in.
Jensen made an inchoate noise, cut off in his throat. "I don't care," he said, and leaned up to press his mouth to Jared's.
It wasn't like a first kiss. Jensen's lips were as impossibly soft as Jared had expected them to be, but they slid hard against his, taking advantage of Jared's surprise to slide open against him so the wet inside of Jensen's mouth caught on the curve of Jared's lower lip. For a moment, it was all Jared could do to kiss back, tentative, mouth moving automatically, and then Jensen pressed closer, tongue curling out to tease the corner of Jared's mouth, and it was as if something in him snapped. His hands came up, took hold of Jensen's jaw, fingers hooked around the bolts of it and thumbs making little circles by his chin, as if to coax his mouth wider. Jensen moaned, and Jared wasted no time in pressing his advantage deeper, sucking on Jensen's plush lower lip, delving beyond to rub the sensitive flat of his tongue over Jensen's.
Jensen offered no resistance. Jared had imagined this, kissing another man deep and hard and matched like this, but the reality of it was gut-wrenching, the way Jensen threw himself back into the rhythm of Jared's kisses, sucked on Jared's tongue. His hands had slid out of Jared's hair, now, and were shoving at his jacket, working at the buttons of his shirt, but Jared barely noticed it over the tingle in his lips, the way every nerve ending seemed to spark as their mouths moved together. It was the sound of it that held him as much as anything, the wet, slick, dirty sound of their tongues sliding over each other, the harsh little whimper Jensen uttered as Jared rubbed his tongue over the rough roof of his mouth. Somehow, he didn't think this could be at all conducive to working out what was wrong with Jensen's tattoos, but when Jensen moaned and hauled him in, all thought of that -- of everything -- fled from his mind.
"Up," Jensen was saying, mouth kiss-bitten and his voice gone brown-sugar-dark, "up." And then he was scrambling up onto the chaise longue, gloriously naked, his cock a dark swell against his stomach, the tip of it glistening. "Jared."
Guiltily, Jared tore his eyes away and fumbled for the edge of the couch himself. "Yeah," he said nonsensically, "yeah, I -- " He toed instinctively at his shoes, knowing they would be nothing but trouble, and Jensen took the opportunity to lean across and unbutton his trousers for him so that when Jared straightened, the cloth slithered down his thighs to land in a soft heap at his feet. His shirt and jacket had been dealt with already; only the undershirt remained, and that came off in one swift upsweep of his arms.
Jensen's groan was more than a little gratifying. "God, you're gorgeous." He held out his arms. "Come here."
Jared wasted no time in obliging. The chaise longue wasn't big enough for both of them, not really, but Jensen spread his legs in a way that urged Jared between them, his arms winding around Jared's naked back and palming him, touching him, gripping him everywhere. Between them, Jensen's dick was a hot, fat pressure in the cut of Jared's pelvis, and Jared couldn't help but grind down, nipping at the soft place below Jensen's ear, the tendon in his neck. "I haven't," he began, but Jensen shushed him, cut him off.
"I know," he said, and his hands slid the whole length of Jared's back to the waistband of his shorts, hooked underneath and hauled them down over the curve of his ass. "I don't care. Good."
There was something in Jensen's voice that was so possessive, fiercely so, that it made Jared's head spin almost as much as the drag of Jensen's abdomen against his newly bare cock, the way the tip of him caught in little sticky smears on Jensen's skin. Jared grit his teeth and rolled his hips, Jensen's thighs and pelvis forming a cradle around him, and Jensen cried out, arched his back, lifted into the pressure. "God," he panted, voice soft and hot in Jared's ear, "I wanted you to do this to me the first time I saw you. " His hand worked its way between them, curled around Jared's dick and jacked it slowly, the slide of it wet and practiced and good. "Later on, we're going to find a proper bed, and you're going to fuck me till I can taste it."
"Oh -- shit," Jared got out, hips hitching into Jensen's hand. "Yes. Yes."
Jensen hummed, this low, drunken, strung-out sound that skittered all the way down Jared's back like static electricity. "Now, though --" He bit at Jared's mouth, kissing him hard and fierce, and then he made to pull away and Jared caught at him instinctively, but he was only turning around, wriggling until he was pinioned face-down beneath Jared's weight. His back was still bare and unblemished, but Jared was too focused on breathing to worry about that.
"You can fuck me like boys do," Jensen told him, one cheek pressed flat against the cushions of the chaise, and Jared groaned, couldn't resist a slow roll of his hips against the cleft of Jensen's ass, his dick smearing sticky and slick between the smooth rises of muscle.
"I can do that," he whispered, shifting awkwardly so his knees were either side of Jensen's thighs, Jensen's legs pressed close together. He pressed two fingers between the lock of Jensen's legs, testing, and imagined for a moment pressing those fingers fully into Jensen's body, into the clutch of him hot and tight. Jensen moaned, Jared's fingers barely brushing his perineum, and he was slick enough, Jared thought, sweat and precome and want, to make this easy. He bit his lip, snugged the drooling head of his cock against the backs of Jensen's thighs, the dark space between. "Like this?"
"Yes," Jensen said, hissed through his teeth, and rocked backward.
Jared slid home easy as a knife through butter, the thrust of his cock carving its own hot channel between Jensen's thighs, the thunder of his pulse a welcoming counter to the rush of blood in Jared's dick. It felt -- God, achingly good, nothing like the midnight grip of Jared's own hand, and Jensen moaned and writhed on the chaise, humping his dick against the cushions as Jared thrust against his perineum, nosed bluntly at his balls. He meant to go slowly, his first few thrusts smooth slides of his cock in and out, but the heat of it surged through his abdomen, making the muscles leap and his mind give itself over swiftly to frenzy. Beneath him, the muscles of Jensen's back and ass clenched and shifted, and Jared ducked his head to bite at his vulnerable nape, suck at the skin of his shoulderblade, hips pistoning faster between Jensen's thighs. "Jensen," he rasped out, "Jensen --" and Jensen moaned again, pulled himself abruptly up onto his knees and then clamped his thighs together once again.
"Like this," he said, hoarse, and his right hand went to his own dick, began to work it frantically. "Jared, like this."
Jared shifted forward on his knees, fitting the pan of his pelvis to the curve of Jensen's backside and oh, God, if it had been good before, it was mindlessly, stupidly good like this, his dick pumping slick and fast and easy between Jensen's legs in near-perfect imitation of the fucking that would come. Not that he needed anything more, with the heat building heavy in his groin, his hand curving around Jensen's waist to slot his fingers between Jensen's so they could jack his prick together.
"Oh," Jensen spat out, tensing, and then the muscles in his thighs pulled taut, clamped down around Jared's dick. "Oh --" He rocked forward jagged and hard into Jared's hand, and then he was coming, the hot wetness of it spilling all over Jared's knuckles. His whole body tightened in the long beat before it relaxed again, and Jared felt the first pulse of his own arousal pulling out of him under the stimulus, the clench of Jensen's muscles around him as he thrust.
"Fuck," he whispered, and his hand came back still stickied to take hold of Jensen's hips, hold him still as his rhythm broke, dissolved entirely. "Jensen -- Christ --" He came like madness, hot and endless between Jensen's thighs, milked dry in a way that left him bloodless in the very best of ways. "Oh, God."
"Mmmmf," Jensen said and, laughing breathlessly, slumped forward onto his face.
The chaise wasn't big enough, really, for cuddling, but it hadn't been big enough for fucking either and yet, they had made do. Jared rubbed one hand reflexively over the small of Jensen's back, neither of them feeling inclined to move. At length, when his breath had returned to him, he said, curious, "Was there a plan, then?" His thumb made little circles on Jensen's skin, but Jared's eyes were on his face. "Or were you just trying to seduce me?"
"I didn't hear any complaints," Jensen shot back, smiling, but he nodded. "Misha had read somewhere that there could be reasons magic like mine doesn't work on some people. Possibly, you're just immune to it, but sometimes it could be that the contact wasn't strong enough, that more --" he had the grace to blush "--um, intimacy was needed. But --" he shrugged -- "it seems you really are immune."
Jared grinned and leaned in to press a kiss to the corner of Jensen's mouth. "But not to your charms," he pointed out. Jensen laughed again and kissed him back.
It wasn't until later, when the chaise longue had finally become uncomfortable enough to make their muscles too stiff to bear, that Jared noticed it. There, mostly concealed beneath his hand at the small of Jensen's back, was a black curlicue, the beginning of a word that disappeared under Jared's palm. Blinking, Jared lifted his hand and stared.
"Jensen," he said, after a moment.
"Mmm?" Jensen blinked at him drowsily, head twisted to look at Jared over his shoulder. "What?"
Jared tapped the small of Jensen's back with a finger. "It, uh. It seems I'm not immune after all." He could feel something like a grin -- a huge, chest-bursting, monumental Leviathan of a grin -- building in the cavern of his chest with his heartbeat, which even now was picking up. "Looks like your magic has other circumstances under which it refuses to work. Either that, or it wanted to be --" he bit his lip " -- quite sure."
"What?" Jensen scrambled off the bed in one motion and stumbled for the mirror. Putting his back to it, he craned over his shoulder to examine the ink that had now emerged, clear and sharp, at the base of his spine. In the reflection, it was backward, but Jared knew already what it said. His fortune was, it seemed, simple enough.
At the small of Jensen's back, in neat Roman capitals, was inscribed the legend:
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
which would have been pleasing enough in itself, and quite enough for Jared. But it was the word below it -- the single, lavishly illuminated word that skirted the upper curve of Jensen's backside -- that had Jared fighting down laughter, a stupid grin, and ill-advised song.
'Jensen', it said, and it was suddenly the most beautiful word in any language Jared knew (or any he did not). Just 'Jensen'.
When he shifted his eyes from the reflection to Jensen's face, he found a smile there that matched the one he himself was resisting, something warm and deep that crinkled the corners of Jensen's eyes, made his teeth flash white in his face. "Me," Jensen said, slow and warm. "I like it."
He held out his arms, and Jared went to him, incandescent.
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: ~10,000
Warnings: I have nothing to declare except my schmoopiness.
Summary: In Reykjavik, there lived a boy whose back was a looking glass into the future, whose skin had begun to manifest portents in ink when he was seven years old. (See the art post. No, really. See it. Admire it. :))
Notes: This was written for spn_illuminated, to an art prompt by the awesomely talented petite_madame. You can see her art post here. Thanks to akadougal for the beta, and to petite_madame for being as supportive as she is scarily imaginative!
Tabula Rasa
Reykjavik, 1902
"Madam," said Mr Misha Collins, tipping his soft felt hat to the girl behind the greengrocer's counter, "I do beg your pardon. I fear I have been a fish for far too long."
Misha -- more properly, Dmitri, for those who could pronounce it -- was a man of a great many names and still more faces. In pursuit of his art, he had traveled from the Indies to the Caucasus, from the Eastern Seaboard to the silver Caspian Sea. His face was one that could have come from anywhere, and, facilitating his desire to be at home in every country on earth, he was fluent in seven languages, not including the dialects.
Unfortunately for all concerned, Icelandic was not one of them.
"Heathen," said the grocer's girl, and slammed the door in his face. Fluent or not, her meaning was clear enough. It seemed that the Icelandic for heathen was 'heiðingi'. Misha -- who had, indeed, abandoned the Orthodox church some fifteen years ago, when his mother abandoned him -- could not find it in himself to protest.
The trouble with these outlandish places was, he thought, as he picked himself up and set off down the narrow street, twofold. In the first place, the highest number of reports in Misha's area of expertise came undoubtedly from places on the fringes of civilisation. Misha knew this, because he had grown up in one such place, where his interest in the bizarre and supernatural had begun with his childhood friend, Danneel, and her powers of teleportation. And yet, it was in such places that fear and bigotry toward these special people ran highest, which always complicated matters when Misha arrived to investigate reported phenomena.
In Reykjavik, he had heard, there lived a boy whose back was a looking glass into the future, whose skin had begun to manifest portents in ink when he was seven years old. At first, remembering the old stories, the townsfolk had thought him some kind of hereditary king, the dragon of the æwintrecyning poised to manifest between his shoulder blades. But the dragon spurned the boy, and in its place sprang visions of the future, the destiny of any and every onlooker engraving itself on skin still fine with youth. The accuracy of the drawings had distressed the boy's parents to the extent that, eventually, they accused him of witchcraft and threw him into the streets. It was from there that Misha hoped to rescue him, knowing that, elsewhere in the world, he would be appreciated by the right sort of crowd. It was finding him that was the problem, particularly when the locals seemed so loath to speak.
When Misha finally tracked him to earth in an abandoned warehouse, it was not through the aid of any so-called decent people. The streetboys were more inclined to exchange information for cash, although they laughed at Misha's accent and his strange, foreign clothes. They recognized his description of the boy he sought, called him Jensen, and told Misha where he could be found. He had, they said, never fully adjusted to street living, although he was seventeen now and very tall. They called him fallegur, beautiful, and he was. When Misha found him, crouched over a fire in his roofless room, he thought him quite the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. Misha was, at this time, twenty-eight and worldly: he had seen all manner of incredible things, but the fact remained that, even disregarding the tattoos, Jensen had a face like nothing on earth.
Naturally, he spoke no English, but it seemed Misha's Icelandic was good enough, and Jensen desperate enough, that a bargain was struck within a half hour. Later, in Misha's high-ceilinged hotel room, Jensen shed his shirt and Misha saw a montage of circus freaks parade across his back, gold coins descending from the blade of one shoulder, Misha's own name lit up, incandescent. Then, Jensen skinned out of his trousers, too, spread himself face down upon the bed, and Misha flushed, realizing what this boy had done to survive -- what he thought Misha wanted from him.
Beautiful though Jensen was, Misha liked women. In particular, he liked Danneel, and, when she was unavailable, people who did not expect to be paid for their services. He touched Jensen's shoulder, signaling no, no. Not that. No need for that.
Clearly surprised, Jensen sat up on the bed, smoothed his fair hair. His skin was Norse-pale, freckled across the cheekbones. His sea-green eyes were contemplative, considering. "All right," he said at length, in Icelandic, and then, "How do you say that, in English? All right?"
Misha laughed a little and tossed Jensen his shirt, deliberately aiming so the fabric would fall across Jensen's lap, covering him decently. "Okay," he said, enunciating carefully, and held out his hand for Jensen to shake. "I like you, Jensen. I think you have an amazing gift, and that's what I want you to show off to my customers. Not your lovely ass, all right?" He paused. "Okay?"
"Okay," Jensen returned, and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Okay."
St Louis, Missouri, 1912
'Misha's Circus of the Bizarre and Fantastic', as it called itself, seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Jared had never seen anything quite like it. Not, of course, that Jared had ever spent much time in any of the great metropolises of the world -- he had begun life in a one horse town outside of San Antonio, Texas, and moved out to Missouri when the St Louis Messenger had taken him on. It was, he supposed, entirely possible that this kind of thing showed up in St Louis all the time, but it was still entirely new to Jared, all strange, exotic music and electric lightbulbs. His colleagues at the Messenger had advised him to stay away, but Jared was twenty-three and new to the big city. Anomalies like this were bound to draw his interest, and no amount of discouragement from his colleagues was likely to stop him investigating further.
"I guarantee I can deliver a decent article about it," he insisted, cajoling. Jared had always been told his big eyes could convince anyone of anything, if he set his mind to it. He had once been inclined to think this was only his mother's bias, but the truth was that his hopeful expressions had served him well with Jeffrey Morgan, editor of the Messenger. He'd done some great work for Morgan in the year he'd been in St Louis, and there could be no harm in asking.
Morgan, at least, looked less skeptical about the whole thing than Jared's section editor had. He sucked his teeth contemplatively, one hand rubbing idly at the nape of his neck. "It's a freak show, Jared. Why are you so goddamn interested?"
Jared shrugged. "It looks...intriguing," he said, which was perfectly true. The sudden appearance of a veritable village of gaudy tents at Carnival Field had intrigued more people than Jared alone. "They showed up unannounced and they look incredibly showy. Maybe they're the real deal. Or maybe they're not. Either way, it'd make good reading."
Morgan laughed, crossing his arms across his chest. It was late and the state of Morgan's clothes showed it, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a smear of printer's ink demarcating the muscle in one strong forearm. His vest was unbuttoned, showing his suspenders beneath, and the day's worth of stubble threw his jawline into shadow. Some people on the paper found Morgan, after a full shift, intimidating. Jared, on the contrary, found him appealing in a way that'd given him trouble for as long as his dick had functioned. He did his best not to let his manner become flirtatious toward Morgan -- hell, toward any man: the Code Napoleon did not apply in Missouri -- but sometimes, he knew, he failed, and Morgan, however unconsciously, seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise. Sometimes, that worked to Jared's advantage.
This seemed to be one of those times.
"If I say yes," Morgan began, "I better get something in good time, Padalecki. None of your 'but I got too interested!' double-page features that take two weeks to write."
Jared nodded earnestly. "It'll be relevant, timely and of printable length, Mr Morgan, I promise." He widened his eyes, probably milking it too much now, but Morgan seemed to be in an affable mood. "I could go tomorrow night?"
"You could," Morgan conceded good-naturedly, with a lopsided smile. Reaching into his desk drawer, he withdrew a bill and tossed it casually onto the desktop. "There's a dollar. Bring me some cotton candy and a good scoop, wouldya?"
Grinning, Jared pocketed the bill and straightened up, moving to button his jacket. "You can count on me, sir," he said. "You want blue cotton candy, or pink?"
"Evening, handsome. You lost?"
It was as if the woman had materialized out of thin air. Jared had been making his way for some five minutes down the long, central corridor of Misha's tabernacle compound, and he could have sworn there was nobody with him but other patrons in their dowdy winter clothes, examining the portrait posters strung along the walls. One minute, Jared was studying an advertisement for The Cat Faced Boy, brow furrowed in thought, and the next, there was a beautiful girl at his elbow, her dress a translucent shimmer like water.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision, but she was still there afterward, her long red hair worn loose and her breasts made prominent by the corset lines of the dress. Even Jared, who had never been especially fascinated by cleavage, found it difficult to keep his eyes from straying from her face. He cleared his throat. "Not lost," he countered, "just deciding where to go." He threw her a smile. "Why -- do you have a suggestion?"
For a second, the woman just laughed, and then -- instantaneously, completely, and without warning -- vanished into thin air with a loud crack of static. It happened so suddenly that Jared found himself too shocked even to cry out, although he did manage to leap a foot into the air quite without intention. "What --?"
"Looking for me?"
She was behind him. When he turned, heart racing wildly in his throat, he saw the artist's rendering at her back, the iridescent dress immediately recognizable, and the by-line: DANNEEL THE VANISHER.
"Of course," Danneel said, following the line of his eyes, "I don't just vanish. I reappear, too. The title's a little misleading -- sometimes people expect me to have the power of invisibility, or something. What I do is actually teleportation, but Misha couldn't think of a way to convey that snappily for the poster." She shrugged, her manner as nonchalant as if she were discussing the weather, and Jared fought to regain the power of speech.
"You," he managed intelligently, and then, after a moment's further floundering, "How did you do that?"
Danneel spread her hands. "Magic," she said smartly, one side of her mouth quirking up in a wry little smile. "If I knew anything about the science of it beyond that, I'd tell you. Maybe, a hundred years from now, they'll understand it."
Jared was at a loss for words. Something told him Mr Morgan wouldn't be especially pleased to receive an article declaring that magic was alive and well in Misha's circus, but he had seen Danneel disappear before his eyes. No sleight of hand could have done that. "Are you all --?" He hesitated, but she understood his meaning immediately.
"Real? Yes. That's why the show's been so successful for so long. Misha goes all over the world to find his acts. No charlatan would survive here." She waved a hand, encompassing the length of the corridor and its row of posters. "A girl joined us recently who breathes fire like a dragon. Richard has the ears and whiskers of a cat, and the tongue of one, too." She wiggled an eyebrow. "Christian can move things with his mind. Take your pick; we're all genuine." She dropped her arms to her sides and surveyed him quizzically. "What did you want to see?"
It was all Jared could do to laugh hollowly. "To think," he said weakly, "I came here expecting lion tamers and fortune tellers."
"Oh," Danneel shot back casually, "we have a fortune teller. Not the sort you've ever seen before, but only because he's better." She indicated with a finger, and Jared followed the line of her arm to a door some way down the hall. "Jensen. He shows you his back, and your fortune will write itself across it in the most elaborate tattoos you've ever seen in your life."
Jared, in point of fact, had never seen a tattoo of any sort. His family had always been respectably middle class, and tattoos were the province of sailors and dicemen. The idea intrigued him and he cleared his throat thoughtfully. "Jensen?"
"Jensen," Danneel reiterated. He could see from her smile that she knew she'd already won him over, hooked him on the promise of true magic. "And he's so beautiful, Jared. I'm Misha's woman, but I'd have taken him a-courting too if he'd ever shown an interest in what I could offer him." Her palms skimmed her hips, the swell of them out from her waist, and Jared felt himself color. He had an uncanny feeling he knew what she was implying, and it made his chest flush hot and cold with nerves.
"Well," he managed, "I think I'll -- yeah. Maybe I'll go and see Jensen, then. See what's in store for me."
He was moving down the corridor, now, his pace brisk and stumbling, but Danneel made no move to stop him -- only gazed after him with something akin to fondness, her hands on her hips and a smile playing about the corners of her pink-painted mouth. She was very lovely, to be sure, but there was something about her that sparked like a chemical reaction, something that suggested she saw more of him than he wished to reveal. He couldn't begin to fathom what Danneel really was, but it was genuine. Of that, he was certain.
It wasn't until he was tumbling through Jensen's door that it occurred to him -- he never had given her his name.
Stepping into Jensen's room gave one the bizarre impression of stepping into a cloudless night sky, the whole thing a drapery of dark blue cloth that shimmered in the glow of a thousand tiny lights. At first, the lights were all Jared could see: one moment, they seemed only stitches of silvered silk, but the next they appeared to give off their own pale radiance from a source Jared could not quite understand. He was still peering at one of these constellations -- which seemed to defy all his efforts to focus well enough to examine them properly -- when a voice came out of the depths of the tent, soft and amused. "Have you come to see me?"
Jared's head jerked up guiltily. Ten feet ahead of him stood a young man -- presumably the famous Jensen -- in a silk dressing-gown the precise sea-green color of his eyes. Seeing him, Jared promptly lost all interest in the decorative stars.
Physically, he was perfect -- so ludicrously, artistically perfect that Jared's arms twitched with the urge to reach out toward him and touch the fine bones of his face, the lush swell of his mouth. His shoulders were broad, tapering down to the narrow nip of a waist where the robe was fastened loosely. It was quite evident that he was naked underneath, and the thought made the blood rush hotly to Jared's cheeks. Jensen's talent lay in ink that bloomed upon his skin; soon, surely, he would have to take the robe off, and Jared didn't know if he could cope with this boy denuded for him. His cautious mind observed critically that it was a bad idea, even while his pulse picked up and his bones ached hollowly with the craving. "I..."
Jensen laughed, not cruelly. He held out a hand. "Come this way."
Jared's feet were moving before he could stop them. The tent was not a tent in any sense of the word Jared recognized, except in that it was made of fabric. It reminded him of the desert dwellings he had seen in photographs of Woolley's expeditions to Mesopotamia, vast, sequential rooms of cloth. Jensen pushed aside a low-hanging drape of midnight blue, and beyond it, Jared found, lay a smaller enclosure of red gauze, a sort of inner sanctum, where, he presumed, the magic happened. In the center of it stood a chaise longue. Jared glanced at it and blushed all the harder.
"Danneel send you in here?" Jensen was turning, circling the chaise until he stood on the opposite side of it to Jared. He shifted as he spoke until he was looking almost over his shoulder at Jared, presenting him mostly with his back. Jared cleared his throat, nervous.
"I -- yeah. I mentioned I'd expected fortune tellers, and she said you were one." He paused. "But better."
Jensen's smile was knowing. "She knew you'd like me."
"...yes," Jared said, hesitantly. The awkward feeling had returned to his chest, the sense of being seen through. What was worst was that, on some level below the discomfort, it felt tentatively liberating -- or it would have, had it been anything but in his own mind. He shook himself. "What do I have to do?"
Jensen laughed again and pulled himself up onto the chaise, facing away from Jared. "Nothing," he said shortly, and then turned his face away to look at the opposite wall. "All you have to do," he explained, slowly, "is watch."
His hands went to his waist. Jared's heart leaped, watching the way the cord of Jensen's robe tensed and then loosened as the knot was undone, the way the fabric sagged at his back. Then Jensen's hands went to his lapels, drawing the two sides of the gown back toward his shoulders and off over the round muscle of them. For a breathless moment, the silk still clung to them, but then Jensen shrugged, the motion fluid and deliberate, and it cascaded to his waist. He sat very upright, and the robe did not comprise much fabric. It formed a low heap of green on the chaise, above which Jared could see the beginnings of Jensen's natal cleft, the way his backside curved deeply into the small of his back. Jared's breath caught.
"Well?"
Jensen's nape was bare and vulnerable like this, his head tipped forward, his back exposed. It was a beautiful back, smooth and strongly muscled, the shoulder blades cresting under the skin like wings. Jared felt -- horribly, intensely -- that he could have put his mouth upon that back and busied himself there for hours, tasting the knobs of Jensen's spine and the dimples low at the base of it, but -- Jared forced himself to focus.
Jensen's skin was entirely unblemished. Jared cocked his head pensively.
"There's nothing," he said.
Jensen tensed. Jared could tell that it wasn't a good sort of tension, whatever wonders it did for the musculature of his back. "Nothing?" His head remained dipped, and now Jared thought the position was more defensive than open, prioritising self-protection over vulnerability. He blinked.
"N-no," he said. He didn't tell Jensen that he didn't particularly care what, if anything, was written on his back, provided he had Jensen's permission to stand here and admire it as sane men admired Notre Dame. He felt that it might not be a helpful remark.
Jensen, however, evidently did care. He sucked in a short breath through his teeth, and chanced a glance over his right shoulder, not letting his eyes stray toward Jared. Then, as if satisfied of Jared's truthfulness, he said, "You could be too far away. Come and touch me."
His voice sounded a little different now, less professional pleasantness and more...Jared couldn't quite place it. A certain rawness, perhaps. He could sympathize. He felt more than a little raw himself. "Touch you?"
Jensen nodded. "Yes. Sometimes people are -- resistant, I'm not sure why. You might need to uncover the images yourself. Put your hands on my shoulders, then run them down my back."
He sounded a little discomfited, but Jared couldn't help but think he would be more uncomfortable if Jared refused. Jared had no objection to touching Jensen's back; it was more the feeling that he might be unable to prise his hands away that stopped his mouth. "I --"
"Please."
That did it. Jared took a step forward, hands outstretched, and then another. When he settled his hands on Jensen's shoulders, the skin there was silk-smooth beneath his palms, as if Jensen treated it often -- as, Jared supposed, made sense, given that it was his livelihood. He could feel himself thickening in his trousers quite inappropriately. He swallowed, locked his wrists as if to forestall any touch too lingering, and began to follow the lines of Jensen's back toward his waist, the broad plains of his shoulders and the narrower span of his ribs, thumbs following the shallow valley of his spine. Beneath his hands, Jensen twitched, not unhappily, and Jared felt his heart clench. He felt oddly sensitized all over, as if it were he who was naked with Jensen's hands all over him, mapping out his body, He was breathing tightly by the time he reached Jensen's waist, but still --
"Well?" Jensen prompted. Jared bit his lip and shook his head, although Jensen couldn't see it.
"Nothing," he said, although it pained him to do so.
"What?" The word cracked like a whip. The next second, Jensen was off the chaise longue and stalking toward the other side of the tent, where, Jared now saw, hung a mirror, though Jared couldn't imagine how it was suspended. Jensen's dressing gown remained where it was, and Jared felt a guilty rush of want flutter in his groin, although Jensen's distress was obvious and Jared felt that, too.
If Morgan had been here, Jared knew what he would have said. Charlatan, and a scathing article written up for tomorrow's Messenger. But Jared couldn't bring himself to believe that Jensen was lying about his powers. In the first place, it was in the interest of a charlatan at least to fake the alleged powers, or else how could they be convincing? And in the second, he had seen Danneel. She was real. He couldn't believe a man could find gems like her and be unable to tell a dud. Jared twisted his hands in front of himself and glanced over at Jensen. "Are you all right?"
Jensen had his back to the mirror, peering at it over his shoulder, which was fine except that it presented Jared with a full and unobstructed view of his front. His beautiful, sin-worthy front, the muscles of his chest and stomach well-defined and statuesque, his dick soft in the crease of his thigh. God. Jared wanted to spread Jensen's thighs and take him like a woman -- or push his legs together and take him instead like a schoolboy, with his dick thrust between.
His sense of personal guilt was made all the worse by the fact that Jensen so clearly had other, more pressing issues on his mind than his own nakedness in front of a perfect stranger. "No," he said, his voice strained and unhappy. "No, no, no. This has never happened before, honestly." He turned eyes of appeal on Jared, who shook his head earnestly.
"Oh, I believe you," he assured Jensen hastily. "If you were going to make it up, you'd do it so it was convincing, wouldn't you?"
Jensen raked his hands through his hair in a gesture of utter despair. "Of course I would, not that I'd know where to begin. I can only think of one reason this might happen and it isn't good." He dropped his hands loosely and indicated the main door of the tent, the way they'd come. "Could you do me a favor and go find Danneel? We need some help here." He paused. "And make sure you come back with her. If I'm right -- which I hope I'm not -- you could be in trouble."
It was curiosity, more than fear for his own safety, that made Jared hurry, but hurry he did until he came upon Danneel in the corridor, in conversation with a young lady. As this didn't seem a time for observing social niceties, Jared simply barreled in and caught her by the arm, nodding his head in apology to the lady. "It's Jensen," he explained. "Something's gone wrong and he needs you. Will you come?"
Danneel's brow furrowed, her lips tightening. "I -- of course," she said, throwing her own apologetic glance to the girl as she allowed Jared to pull her away.
When they re-entered Jensen's tent, he had pulled himself up onto the chaise again, which was something, although the robe was still tossed behind him on the cushions. He glanced over his shoulder as they came in and called out, "Danneel?"
"I'm here," Danneel assured him, hurrying ahead of Jared to take hold of Jensen's shoulders. "What's the matter, sugar?"
Danneel had barely made contact before the drawings began to appear. Big, sweeping, intricate drawings, curlicues and inscriptions spiraling out across Jensen's back in bursts of monochrome and color. Jared made out a circus tent, a tall man, a small girl. Oddly, a pair of spectacles. He blinked, and Jensen paused, catching his breath as if he could feel it. "Do you see it?" he prompted, his voice rushed with anxiety. "Tattoos? Are they there?"
Danneel frowned as if confused. "My -- of course they're there, Jensen; where else would they be?"
Jensen turned a little further, twisting his body to look her full in the face, and then glanced over at Jared. "Ask him," he said, nodding his head in Jared's direction. "We got a problem, Danni." Then, to Jared, softer, "C'mere."
Jared went. He laid his hands on Jensen's shoulders without prompting, this time, and the ink under Jensen's skin began slowly to fade, dissipating until he was the same unbroken pale gold all over. Danneel was watching fixedly, as if waiting for something else to appear, but nothing did. There was only blankness, the empty canvas of Jared's future. Nothing.
Jared's stomach went suddenly hollow. He had an awful feeling he knew what Jensen was thinking when he wondered what might have caused this, and it wasn't good. He glanced up at Danneel. "What do you think?"
Danneel looked at Jensen. Jensen looked back, and Jared could see in their faces the uncertainty. He knew, absolutely and immediately, that this had never happened before. Jensen could not tell his future, and he was the first. He swallowed. "Jensen?"
It was a moment before Jensen spoke. "We need to talk to Misha about this," he said. "I don't -- I don't want to scare you, Jared, but you can probably..."
"Yeah," Jared cut in, before he could say it. "Yeah, I -- if we can get this checked out, I'd be --"
"Yes," Danneel interrupted, reaching out to squeeze his arm. "Don't worry, Jared. It might take a few different routes of investigation -- Misha might have to make some enquiries -- but we'll find out what's going on. And if you need help, we'll help you. Right, Jensen?"
"Right," Jensen said. The anxiety in his face looked different now, presumably because he was aware it wasn't his powers that were the problem, but much of it was still there, as if he felt afraid for Jared, genuinely concerned. Jared let that inkling warm him through the new flood of cold that now mounted in his belly.
"I have a telephone number," Jared offered, "if you'd like it?"
Jensen shook his head firmly. "Come back," he said, and then his hand was on Jared's shoulder, kneading the muscle for a long moment before it slid down his arm, brushed the sensitive inside of his wrist. "Come back tomorrow, and we'll tell you what we've found out. All right?"
"All right," Jared said heavily. He couldn't resist groping for Jensen's hand as it departed, offering something between a handshake and something altogether different, though Jensen didn't seem to mind it. "All right. I'll come back tomorrow night."
The next day at work, Jared was subdued. He felt it was understandable, but obviously he could not explain to anyone else the cause of it. When Mr Morgan dropped by his desk, Jared explained to him, in a flat tone of voice he recognized as quite unlike himself, that the carnival idea had fallen through and that Jared could not possibly write an article about it. Also, he had forgotten the cotton candy. Morgan, apparently realizing there was more to Jared's low mood than he would say, simply patted Jared's shoulder in avuncular fashion and told him not to worry about it. Which was all very nice, but didn't exactly help with the major thing worrying Jared: namely, that his future had not shown up on Jensen's back because there had been no future to show.
On the way back to the circus, he moved with uncharacteristic care. Pedestrians, trolleycars, the occasional automobile -- all of them now posed possible threats to his existence, and Jared navigated them cautiously. When he arrived at Misha's, it was not yet open for the evening, but the gentleman at the door seemed to know Jensen was expecting a visitor, probably early, and let Jared pass.
In Jensen's room, Jared found Danneel and Jensen both in fairly plain and ordinary streetclothes, which for some reason surprised him. Logically, of course, he knew they couldn't possibly go about their regular business in their showclothes -- it was just that it hadn't really occurred to Jared that they'd have any regular business to attend to. Now, they sat either end of the chaise longue, both smiling wanly at Jared as he approached.
"We have a plan lined up," Jensen called out. His collarless shirt was open at the neck, highlighting the pale tan of his skin and the honey-warm hollow of his throat. Even through his nerves, Jared was still (frustratingly) able to appreciate that. He cleared his throat.
"A plan?"
"Traci," Danneel said succinctly. "She isn't with the circus -- Misha doesn't think we need another fortune teller since we've got Jensen -- but she's an old friend, and completely genuine. She reads your palm as a prop, but really she doesn't need the palm at all." Danneel shrugged. "She just sees."
Jared's heart had begun to pound again. "If there's anything to see."
"What? Hey." Jensen frowned, patting the chaise longue between himself and Danneel. "None of that shit. We'll get this sorted out, I promise."
Jared eyed Jensen's hand warily, and Jensen, as if in exasperation, patted the cushion again. "Come sit here with us and wait."
Jared squared his shoulders. There was plenty of room, really, and if he his thigh should be pressed a little closely to Jensen's, then, what of it? It wouldn't be an issue to Jensen, ergo, it shouldn't be one to him. He took a deep breath and sat down.
By the time the outer door opened to admit Traci, Jared had to admit that things didn't quite work like that. Their conversation was as casual as could be expected under the circumstances, but still, Jared found himself more fixated on the slight shifting of Jensen's thigh than upon his stories of his childhood in Iceland, Danneel's descriptions of growing up with Misha. By the time their visitor appeared in the inner sanctum, Jared was only too happy for an excuse to leap off the chaise longue, half convinced that Jensen had been teasing him on purpose. It was ludicrous, but that was how he felt. "Traci?"
The woman turned to him with a smile and held out her hand at an angle that said, unmistakably, that she wished it to be kissed. She was perhaps forty, slender but strong-looking with the most unusual eyes. "Jared," she said, and her voice was rather low and certain, the sort of voice that could have inspired confidence in the most ardent skeptic. "Our friends tell me you have a problem. Why don't you come over here with me and we'll see what we can see?"
Jensen, catching his eye, inclined his head in a gesture of encouragement, and Jared swallowed his momentary flash of insecurity. "All right," he said. Traci smiled, indicating the cushions strewn on the floor, and Jared took the hint and followed her down.
Barely had Traci taken Jared's hand when she said, "Oh."
Jensen and Danneel leaned forward on the chaise. "Oh?" Jensen prompted. "What's 'oh'?"
Traci smiled and shook her head slightly. "None of your business, Ackles." To Jared, she said, "Do you want me to actually read your fortune, honey, or did you just want to be sure you have one?"
Jared blinked slowly. "Uh." The idea of reading his future on Jensen's skin had been appealing, but he suspected that part of it had been completely unrelated to the actual fortune. The thought of hearing Traci spell out, in front of Danneel and Jensen, what she saw held less attraction for him. "I guess you could tell me the gist, if there is one?"
Traci laughed. "A diplomat, I see." She squeezed his hand. "Well, there definitely is one. I see newsprint and nice ties...and an automobile. Oh, and --" she caught his eye and smiled, and there again was that odd nugget of understanding he'd seen in Danneel, in Jensen -- "there's someone for you, Jared."
Jared colored. "Oh," he began, but was saved from the embarrassment of formulating an answer by Danneel's interruption.
"So he's not going to die?"
"Not any time soon," Traci said tartly, getting to her feet again. "Was that what you thought?"
"I had no tattoos for him," Jensen put in, sounding a little lost. "If there's a future to tell, I should be able to show him it, shouldn't I?" He turned appealing eyes on Traci, but she only held up her hands and shrugged.
"Hey -- I'm only the messenger. If you want a repairman for your mechanism, you'd better see if Misha has any other ideas." She reached out to ruffle Jensen's hair. "There'll be some reason, but it isn't that Jared here is going to be sleeping with the fishes, so it doesn't matter, really, does it?"
"No," Danneel conceded, with a shrug, but Jensen looked unconvinced.
"Maybe not," he said, "but still." He sighed. "Not that we're going to be able to work it out tonight. Jared, now that you know you're not doomed, do you want to actually do the circus thing tonight? On the house." He smiled, showing little crinkles at the corners of his eyes that made Jared itch to lean in and kiss them. "Then, if you like, you can come back here when I close up shop at eleven. We could -- talk."
"Sure," Jared blurted, so quickly it was almost embarrassing. "I'd love that."
Jensen grinned back at him sudden and blinding, too, so Jared figured he was all right.
Jared came to Jensen's tent at eleven and stayed until one. Given that the following day was Friday, this was a horrible idea all round and Jared knew it, but it didn't feel like one. Jensen was -- marvelous. There was no other word for it: he had, quite genuinely, lived a life full of marvels, and more insane still was the fact that he seemed actually interested in Jared's tales of his childhood in Texas, his mundane job as a reporter at the Messenger. What might have become a question-and-answer session flowed quite naturally into a lazy conversation, Jensen's presence a long, warm blur against Jared's side, and by the time Jared finally forced himself to get up and go, he was fairly glowing with pleasure all over. Superficially, his skin tingled with quiet want at Jensen's nearness, but the core of the feeling was something more than that, a simple happiness Jared could barely remember ever feeling with another person. Jensen was wonderful. Jared was horribly, idiotically smitten.
Still. This time the night before, he had been convinced of his own impending doom. There was nothing like a near-death experience, it seemed, to put little things like illegal homosexual tendencies into perspective.
They made arrangements for Jared to come back again the following night, in hopes that Jensen might have found out something more about his inability to manifest a fortune for Jared as he'd done for every other person who had ever looked upon his bare back. Jensen would be working, naturally, so Jared had stayed late at the paper to compensate for disappearing early on the Thursday night, and arrived at the circus just as Jensen's showing hours were ending.
When he walked into Jensen's tent, Jensen was still only in the green dressing gown he wore when he was working, which, Jared supposed, was to be expected. What he hadn't expected was to find Jensen alone. He spread his hands, gesturing around the tent at its emptiness. "Hello," he said. "Didn't find any miracle-healers or soothsayers to tell you what your problem is, I take it?"
Jensen laughed and shook his head. "No-o," he said, but he was smiling, more than Jared thought the situation warranted. There was something preternaturally pleased with itself in Jensen's smile, something catlike, childish. Something repressed like a happy secret. "Misha had a few ideas, though."
"Misha?" Jared glanced around again. "Is he coming later?"
"Uh-uh." Jensen shook his head. He was seated on the chaise longue but, this time, facing Jared, and his long bare legs swung idly back and forth. "He told me what to try, but we don't need him to try it. We need to do it ourselves."
A pounding sprang up like slow drums in the pit of Jared's stomach. He dampened his lips with the tip of his tongue and said, "I thought we tried everything?"
Jensen was looking back at him very intently, now, the shocking sea-green of his irises almost glowing in the low light. Slowly, his hand went to his waist, and Jared's breath hitched, sudden and dizzily. "We're going to try again," Jensen said, and Jared didn't think he was imagining the low, husky note to his voice as he unfastened the knot, let his robe fall open. A shrug of his shoulders sent it slithering to the cushions at his back, and Jared found himself frozen, as if rooted to the spot.
"Jensen," he said. He felt insane, as if this were a dream or a waking fantasy come real, the product of too much incense and circus magic. But when Jensen stood up, body proudly pale and bare, it didn't feel like a figment of his imagination. The tiny scar low down on Jensen's ribs, the ventral trail of hair descending from his navel like an arrow to his cock -- these were details Jared's mind would not have conjured, and his heart raced at the implication. Jensen was soft, but Jared could see him beginning to thicken, and it sent arousal thundering through him in a low, heavy beat, cumulative, building.
When Jensen turned around, it was almost a relief. Was a relief, until such time as Jared's eyes dropped below his waistline to the roundness of his backside, the firm muscle crying out to be kneaded and gripped and -- God -- smacked. Jared was more than half-hard, now, beginning to strain against his buttons. Then Jensen said, "Jared -- touch me," and his breath burst out of him on a tight moan he was too late to catch.
He froze, horrified, but Jensen said nothing -- indeed, if anything, only deepened the arch of his back, palms on the chaise longue and backside thrust out a little, and his breath seemed uncommonly shallow. Emboldened, then, Jared stepped forward, set his fingers lightly on Jensen's shoulders, thumbs resting carefully either side of his nape. Jensen breathed out thickly, said, "Well?" although Jared was sure he knew there was nothing -- nothing on his back but Jared's hands, Jared's eyes. Jared's attention.
"Nothing," Jared said in a voice that wobbled dangerously. Jensen tilted his head a little, rolled his shoulders.
"Keep trying," he said, and his voice was palpably low now, something rough and wild about it, some untamed quality that set Jared's skin singing with want. Gently, touching Jensen only with the barest brush of skin, he drew his hands a little lower.
"Like this?"
"Lower." The same low urgency, and Jared could not deny it. Nor, he found, did he wish to. His thumbs traced the vertebrae of Jensen's spine as his fingers feathered over his ribs, into the slightly hollow place below.
"Like this?"
"Yes," Jensen said. "Anything?"
"No."
"Keep going."
Jared could hear himself breathing, now, hot little rasped-out breaths, and he knew that Jensen could surely hear it too. Somewhere along the line, Jared had shifted unconsciously closer to Jensen, so that now the thrust of his dick, barely restrained by his pants, was almost flush against Jensen's backside, but Jensen made no protest. One backward thrust, and they would be touching. Jared bit his lip and dragged his hands lower, over the place where Jensen's kidneys were, into the deep small of his back. Without intent, his thumbs brushed the cleft of Jensen's backside, and Jensen hissed, snapped abruptly backward. "Jared."
God, they were touching. Touching, there, and it felt as if every ounce of sensation in Jared's body had relocated to his cock where it rode Jensen's cleft. Precome spooled palpably from his slit to smear on his undershorts, and Jared could have sobbed with desperation. This was ridiculous, degenerate, but his hand slid around Jensen's body all the same, forming a loose circle around his waist. "Jensen --"
Jensen's twist in his arms was a perfectly logical move, but Jared was incapable of logic at this moment, with all his blood pounding in his dick and his skin on fire and so, naturally, it took him by surprise. Jensen's hands came up immediately to fist in Jared's hair, pinning him in place, and Jared moaned, hips bucking forward half-consciously into Jensen's. "Holy shit, Jared," Jensen bit out, and tugged again, arching his back so that they rubbed together, Jensen's bare cock sliding hotly against Jared's through two layers of cloth.
"Is this the plan?" Jared managed, in a voice gone ragged with want as his palms found Jensen's backside, hauled him in.
Jensen made an inchoate noise, cut off in his throat. "I don't care," he said, and leaned up to press his mouth to Jared's.
It wasn't like a first kiss. Jensen's lips were as impossibly soft as Jared had expected them to be, but they slid hard against his, taking advantage of Jared's surprise to slide open against him so the wet inside of Jensen's mouth caught on the curve of Jared's lower lip. For a moment, it was all Jared could do to kiss back, tentative, mouth moving automatically, and then Jensen pressed closer, tongue curling out to tease the corner of Jared's mouth, and it was as if something in him snapped. His hands came up, took hold of Jensen's jaw, fingers hooked around the bolts of it and thumbs making little circles by his chin, as if to coax his mouth wider. Jensen moaned, and Jared wasted no time in pressing his advantage deeper, sucking on Jensen's plush lower lip, delving beyond to rub the sensitive flat of his tongue over Jensen's.
Jensen offered no resistance. Jared had imagined this, kissing another man deep and hard and matched like this, but the reality of it was gut-wrenching, the way Jensen threw himself back into the rhythm of Jared's kisses, sucked on Jared's tongue. His hands had slid out of Jared's hair, now, and were shoving at his jacket, working at the buttons of his shirt, but Jared barely noticed it over the tingle in his lips, the way every nerve ending seemed to spark as their mouths moved together. It was the sound of it that held him as much as anything, the wet, slick, dirty sound of their tongues sliding over each other, the harsh little whimper Jensen uttered as Jared rubbed his tongue over the rough roof of his mouth. Somehow, he didn't think this could be at all conducive to working out what was wrong with Jensen's tattoos, but when Jensen moaned and hauled him in, all thought of that -- of everything -- fled from his mind.
"Up," Jensen was saying, mouth kiss-bitten and his voice gone brown-sugar-dark, "up." And then he was scrambling up onto the chaise longue, gloriously naked, his cock a dark swell against his stomach, the tip of it glistening. "Jared."
Guiltily, Jared tore his eyes away and fumbled for the edge of the couch himself. "Yeah," he said nonsensically, "yeah, I -- " He toed instinctively at his shoes, knowing they would be nothing but trouble, and Jensen took the opportunity to lean across and unbutton his trousers for him so that when Jared straightened, the cloth slithered down his thighs to land in a soft heap at his feet. His shirt and jacket had been dealt with already; only the undershirt remained, and that came off in one swift upsweep of his arms.
Jensen's groan was more than a little gratifying. "God, you're gorgeous." He held out his arms. "Come here."
Jared wasted no time in obliging. The chaise longue wasn't big enough for both of them, not really, but Jensen spread his legs in a way that urged Jared between them, his arms winding around Jared's naked back and palming him, touching him, gripping him everywhere. Between them, Jensen's dick was a hot, fat pressure in the cut of Jared's pelvis, and Jared couldn't help but grind down, nipping at the soft place below Jensen's ear, the tendon in his neck. "I haven't," he began, but Jensen shushed him, cut him off.
"I know," he said, and his hands slid the whole length of Jared's back to the waistband of his shorts, hooked underneath and hauled them down over the curve of his ass. "I don't care. Good."
There was something in Jensen's voice that was so possessive, fiercely so, that it made Jared's head spin almost as much as the drag of Jensen's abdomen against his newly bare cock, the way the tip of him caught in little sticky smears on Jensen's skin. Jared grit his teeth and rolled his hips, Jensen's thighs and pelvis forming a cradle around him, and Jensen cried out, arched his back, lifted into the pressure. "God," he panted, voice soft and hot in Jared's ear, "I wanted you to do this to me the first time I saw you. " His hand worked its way between them, curled around Jared's dick and jacked it slowly, the slide of it wet and practiced and good. "Later on, we're going to find a proper bed, and you're going to fuck me till I can taste it."
"Oh -- shit," Jared got out, hips hitching into Jensen's hand. "Yes. Yes."
Jensen hummed, this low, drunken, strung-out sound that skittered all the way down Jared's back like static electricity. "Now, though --" He bit at Jared's mouth, kissing him hard and fierce, and then he made to pull away and Jared caught at him instinctively, but he was only turning around, wriggling until he was pinioned face-down beneath Jared's weight. His back was still bare and unblemished, but Jared was too focused on breathing to worry about that.
"You can fuck me like boys do," Jensen told him, one cheek pressed flat against the cushions of the chaise, and Jared groaned, couldn't resist a slow roll of his hips against the cleft of Jensen's ass, his dick smearing sticky and slick between the smooth rises of muscle.
"I can do that," he whispered, shifting awkwardly so his knees were either side of Jensen's thighs, Jensen's legs pressed close together. He pressed two fingers between the lock of Jensen's legs, testing, and imagined for a moment pressing those fingers fully into Jensen's body, into the clutch of him hot and tight. Jensen moaned, Jared's fingers barely brushing his perineum, and he was slick enough, Jared thought, sweat and precome and want, to make this easy. He bit his lip, snugged the drooling head of his cock against the backs of Jensen's thighs, the dark space between. "Like this?"
"Yes," Jensen said, hissed through his teeth, and rocked backward.
Jared slid home easy as a knife through butter, the thrust of his cock carving its own hot channel between Jensen's thighs, the thunder of his pulse a welcoming counter to the rush of blood in Jared's dick. It felt -- God, achingly good, nothing like the midnight grip of Jared's own hand, and Jensen moaned and writhed on the chaise, humping his dick against the cushions as Jared thrust against his perineum, nosed bluntly at his balls. He meant to go slowly, his first few thrusts smooth slides of his cock in and out, but the heat of it surged through his abdomen, making the muscles leap and his mind give itself over swiftly to frenzy. Beneath him, the muscles of Jensen's back and ass clenched and shifted, and Jared ducked his head to bite at his vulnerable nape, suck at the skin of his shoulderblade, hips pistoning faster between Jensen's thighs. "Jensen," he rasped out, "Jensen --" and Jensen moaned again, pulled himself abruptly up onto his knees and then clamped his thighs together once again.
"Like this," he said, hoarse, and his right hand went to his own dick, began to work it frantically. "Jared, like this."
Jared shifted forward on his knees, fitting the pan of his pelvis to the curve of Jensen's backside and oh, God, if it had been good before, it was mindlessly, stupidly good like this, his dick pumping slick and fast and easy between Jensen's legs in near-perfect imitation of the fucking that would come. Not that he needed anything more, with the heat building heavy in his groin, his hand curving around Jensen's waist to slot his fingers between Jensen's so they could jack his prick together.
"Oh," Jensen spat out, tensing, and then the muscles in his thighs pulled taut, clamped down around Jared's dick. "Oh --" He rocked forward jagged and hard into Jared's hand, and then he was coming, the hot wetness of it spilling all over Jared's knuckles. His whole body tightened in the long beat before it relaxed again, and Jared felt the first pulse of his own arousal pulling out of him under the stimulus, the clench of Jensen's muscles around him as he thrust.
"Fuck," he whispered, and his hand came back still stickied to take hold of Jensen's hips, hold him still as his rhythm broke, dissolved entirely. "Jensen -- Christ --" He came like madness, hot and endless between Jensen's thighs, milked dry in a way that left him bloodless in the very best of ways. "Oh, God."
"Mmmmf," Jensen said and, laughing breathlessly, slumped forward onto his face.
The chaise wasn't big enough, really, for cuddling, but it hadn't been big enough for fucking either and yet, they had made do. Jared rubbed one hand reflexively over the small of Jensen's back, neither of them feeling inclined to move. At length, when his breath had returned to him, he said, curious, "Was there a plan, then?" His thumb made little circles on Jensen's skin, but Jared's eyes were on his face. "Or were you just trying to seduce me?"
"I didn't hear any complaints," Jensen shot back, smiling, but he nodded. "Misha had read somewhere that there could be reasons magic like mine doesn't work on some people. Possibly, you're just immune to it, but sometimes it could be that the contact wasn't strong enough, that more --" he had the grace to blush "--um, intimacy was needed. But --" he shrugged -- "it seems you really are immune."
Jared grinned and leaned in to press a kiss to the corner of Jensen's mouth. "But not to your charms," he pointed out. Jensen laughed again and kissed him back.
It wasn't until later, when the chaise longue had finally become uncomfortable enough to make their muscles too stiff to bear, that Jared noticed it. There, mostly concealed beneath his hand at the small of Jensen's back, was a black curlicue, the beginning of a word that disappeared under Jared's palm. Blinking, Jared lifted his hand and stared.
"Jensen," he said, after a moment.
"Mmm?" Jensen blinked at him drowsily, head twisted to look at Jared over his shoulder. "What?"
Jared tapped the small of Jensen's back with a finger. "It, uh. It seems I'm not immune after all." He could feel something like a grin -- a huge, chest-bursting, monumental Leviathan of a grin -- building in the cavern of his chest with his heartbeat, which even now was picking up. "Looks like your magic has other circumstances under which it refuses to work. Either that, or it wanted to be --" he bit his lip " -- quite sure."
"What?" Jensen scrambled off the bed in one motion and stumbled for the mirror. Putting his back to it, he craned over his shoulder to examine the ink that had now emerged, clear and sharp, at the base of his spine. In the reflection, it was backward, but Jared knew already what it said. His fortune was, it seemed, simple enough.
At the small of Jensen's back, in neat Roman capitals, was inscribed the legend:
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
which would have been pleasing enough in itself, and quite enough for Jared. But it was the word below it -- the single, lavishly illuminated word that skirted the upper curve of Jensen's backside -- that had Jared fighting down laughter, a stupid grin, and ill-advised song.
'Jensen', it said, and it was suddenly the most beautiful word in any language Jared knew (or any he did not). Just 'Jensen'.
When he shifted his eyes from the reflection to Jensen's face, he found a smile there that matched the one he himself was resisting, something warm and deep that crinkled the corners of Jensen's eyes, made his teeth flash white in his face. "Me," Jensen said, slow and warm. "I like it."
He held out his arms, and Jared went to him, incandescent.