fic: Cat and Mouse
Title: Cat and Mouse
Rated: NC-17
Genre: Jared/Jensen AU
Word Count: 2,800
Notes: A gift for raths_kitten, a pinch hit for spn_j2_xmas. I took a handful of your likes and a sprinkle of your kinks, put everything into a blender and set it to liquefy. Here’s hoping you enjoy the result, and many apologies for the delay. Also, many many thanks to bertee for being the most awesome of mods. I had no fewer than four false starts on this fic before something stuck. Cheers!
Warnings: h/c, prostitution, slight bloodplay, D/s undertones. I fear it’s not as cracky as the summary might suggest.
Summary: So a vampire and a hooker walk into a bar…
“You’re in the wrong place.”
“What’s it to you?” the human asks. He’s in his early twenties at most, old enough to know better and young enough to still think he’s invincible. A bit of a baby face when he smirks and the dimples come out, but the width of his shoulders and the stretch of his shirt across his chest tell a different story.
The noise level in the bar is starting to drop, conversations shifting to low murmurs. Curious stares are boring into Jensen’s back and he can almost see ears perking up, feel muscles coiling, ready to pounce. This place is a DMZ, a tenuously held peaceful oasis in the middle of what could easily turn into a preternatural war zone. This is where alliances are formed between the Families, where treaties are brokered and deals are made, and Jensen wants to keep it that way.
“Who brought you here?” Jensen asks, maintaining a mild tone. Humans shouldn’t be able to find their way in here on their own. The wards are still in place. There are no guards at the door. Up until now, they haven’t been necessary.
“I brought myself,” the guy says as he slides in closer. Jensen breathes deep, unravels the layers of his scent. Cologne on top to cover up the sweat and come. Not all of it is his. Jensen picks up on four distinct men who have recently left their mark. Underneath the rest of it is the smell of his blood, cloying and sweet, and Jensen suppresses a shiver. The guy’s tiny half-smile is coy, and so is the subtle way he cocks his hip to the side. “It’s cold outside, and this looked like a good place to warm up. Besides, I’m thirsty.”
The bottles behind the bar are dusty, nothing more than window dressing, a small slice of familiarity for the guests here who still prefer that sort of thing.
“Aren’t we all?” Jensen circles around the kid, regretting that he’s recently fed. He brushes his arm against his back, light enough to seem unintentional. Silence. Nothing. Not even a name. Highly unusual. Jensen touches him again, less of a glance this time, opens himself up further. Still nothing. Radio static, zero transmissions. Incredibly unusual.
Jensen takes a deliberate step away. The tiniest shake of his head and the whole place relaxes, feels like a sigh, voices pouring in to fill the void. Jared’s a threat in a room full of predators and he has no idea how close he just came, how lucky that Jensen’s at least a century older than anyone in the room in a culture that still venerates age above all else.
He’s been around for a long time, well before Bram Stoker turned his kind into a metaphor for sex, ages before pop culture took hold, made them into teen heartthrobs with interminable cases of melancholy and skin that sparkles. He came into his own when the plague was still the lead story in the five o’clock news, at a time when everything had been so damn easy for his kind. Death had been everywhere. Jensen misses the constant fires, the panic, and those preciously freakish masks the doctors used to wear, wishes he still had one laying around. Seven hundred years on this planet and Jensen’s never seen anything like this man, hasn’t even heard of it. A creature this rare deserves a few more years to live, deserves Jensen’s attention.
“Jared, by the way,” the guy says. “If you’re gonna grope me, we should at least be on a first-name basis.”
“Jensen.” With that, Jensen ducks behind the bar, knocks the dust off of a glass and fills it with two fingers of bourbon.
“Hey, don’t stop. I don’t mind.” Jared slips up onto a barstool and his smile turns dry, professional. No matter. It’s still a very nice smile. “I don’t mind at all.”
“An ass as pretty as yours,” Jensen counters, “it’s a shame you have to sell it.”
“We all get fucked,” Jared says, and if he’s surprised by Jensen’s insight, he doesn’t let on. “I’d rather get paid for it.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a rolled-up wad of money and throws a ten on the bar. “I guess that’s why I’m in the wrong place, huh?” He doesn’t sound mad, resigned perhaps, but not angry.
It’s Jensen’s turn to reach into his pocket, and he lays a hundred dollar bill on top of the ten before pushing it back across. A few carefully spoken words topped off with a trickle of persuasion would have gotten Jensen this for free, but he’s enjoying the game too much. The sex is almost beside the point. Almost.
Jared stares at the money, chewing on his bottom lip. Finally he ticks his eyes toward Jensen and says, “I’m off for the night.”
“But you’re never really off, are you?”
Jared picks up the glass, swishes the liquor in his mouth for a second before swallowing. “We’re not doing it in the bathroom. I have standards.”
“Of course you do. Follow me.”
Jensen leads them through the bar, acutely aware of the way everyone doesn’t look at them, to a small room in the back, stacked high with crumbling paperwork left by the man who used to own this place. Jared pauses two steps into the room, drops his jacket to the floor and starts to unhook his belt.
“No,” Jensen says, and run his hands along Jared’s bare arms, looking for a glimmer, a spark, anything. Jared’s pulse kicks up a notch, blood coursing through his veins faster in response to Jensen’s touch, but that’s it. “On your knees.”
Jared drops, smooth and graceful, resting on his haunches with his hands clasped between his widespread thighs. His expression is patient, calmly submissive. He’s good at his job. Jensen pulls himself up to his full height and looms over Jared, stalls for a second to admire the view from this angle, the shape of his cheekbones and starburst pattern in his eyes, and then takes a handful of Jared’s hair, so soft and silky as it slips between his fingers. A hint of a tug and Jared comes willingly, nuzzles at his crotch until Jensen’s hard and straining against pants, fingers trembling as he snaps them open and feeds Jared his cock.
Latching onto Jensen’s hips for balance, Jared relaxes the muscles in his throat and sucks him down hard and fast, humming and groaning around Jensen’s cock like he’s the one getting off on this. Jensen closes his eyes against the sensation, throws his head back when Jared pulls off to lap and suck at his balls, runs his mouth up along the underside before sealing his lips around him again and taking him straight down to the base.
The tendons in Jared’s neck are standing out, and he’s starting to sweat, his hair damp around his temples and a delicious flush is turning his cheeks a ruddy, vital color. Jensen traces his cheek, seeks out the shape of his own cock in Jared’s slick, wet mouth, moves down to press two fingers to the side of his right below his jaw. The steady thump of Jared’s pulse is what tips him over the edge and he staggers, has to lock his knees in place as he comes.
Jared sucks him through it, wipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand and grins up at him. Before Jared can get to his feet, Jensen bends over him and kisses his temple, desperate for the smallest taste of his skin. He deepens his voice, infuses it with his willpower and whispers in Jared’s ear, “Forget. Forget.”
~*~*~*~
For all that folklore gets it wrong, there are a few things that it gets right. The steady diet of blood is a given, and so is the aversion to sunlight. They do have a reflection, however, as well as a shadow, and the rumor that they’re highly compulsive has been blown completely out of proportion. Throw a handful of rice or a pile of needles at their feet and they don’t have to count them, but vampires are orderly, neat nicks, and they do like to find patterns in the world around them.
Jensen spends the next couple of weeks learning things about Jared, finding patterns and looking for explanations. He trails Jared from his apartment to his favorite street corners, from restaurants to the convenience store where he gets coffee, every night like clockwork. He watches as Jared’s regular customers pull up to the curb beside him, catalogues the cars they drive and the different characters Jared acts out. The white SUV means that Jared plays shy, effeminate, raises his voice a register or two and swings his hips as he walks up to the car. When the black Mustang pulls up, Jared’s all swagger, a cocky arrogance that makes Jensen want to bend him over any available surface and fuck the smirk off of his face.
Tonight, Jared has broken the pattern. He’s been gone for hours and the night has grown bitterly cold. A misty drizzle is starting to fall and is freezing the instant it touches the ground. Jensen’s checked all of Jared’s normal haunts and now waits outside of his apartment. He will not pace. He’s a centuries-old supernatural being, damn near immortal and possessed of untold power and a massive intellect. He will not pace.
The smell of Jared’s blood reaches his nose before Jared stumbles into view, rounding the corner of his building and collapsing against the rough brick. Jensen’s at his side in a blink, in a fraction of a blink, pushing Jared’s lank hair out of his face. Jared’s face is pale, his mouth is bruised and broken, blood on his chin, more of it dripping from his nose, and for a devastating instant, every shriveled cell in Jensen’s body screams at him to lap at it, sink his teeth into that perfect, beautiful artery in Jared’s neck and drink him dry, end this obsession and put both of them out of their misery.
Instead, he pushes at Jared’s coat, runs his hands along his ribs and finds two of them broken.
“Where are your standards now?” Jensen demands, misdirected anger turning the edges of his vision blood-red. Jared’s struggles are futile against the full measure of Jensen’s strength as Jensen holds him up against the wall.
“Drugged,” Jared slurs, head hanging down. He spits blood. Some of it splatters on Jensen’s hand and it’s like passing a two-days-sober alcoholic a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. “They musta put something in my…” Jared trails off, raises his head and blinks. “What? Jensen?”
Surprise and a certain amount of dread crashes into Jensen. Jared remembers. He shouldn’t be able to remember. Not any of it. It’s a riddle, another goddamn puzzle, but right now Jared’s hurt, collapsing in Jensen’s arms and that’s one thing he can fix.
Jensen wills his fangs to descend, bites into his own tongue, knicks his lips and lets the blood rush into his mouth. He props Jared up with one arm, cups the back of his head and kisses him, pries his tongue between Jared’s teeth and pushes inside. He licks at Jared’s teeth, the roof of his mouth, pulls back and runs his tongue along Jared’s busted, swollen lips. Jared’s reaction is immediate, shivers wracking through his body as it mends, ribs aligning with cracks that sound loud to Jensen’s ears, Jared’s skin knitting back together, bruises fading before Jensen’s eyes.
It leaves Jared breathless, chest heaving and body sagging against the wall. They say that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, and the same could be said about Jensen’s breed. In a last ditch effort, Jensen takes Jared’s face in his hands and swipes his thumbs along the hollows beneath his eyes.
“Forget,” he commands. “Forget.”
The look Jared gives him is shattering. “No.”
Jensen trips a step backward, regains his balance for a split-second and then someone has him by the upper arms. The grip is implacable, undeniable, and a familiar voice says to him, “There you are, darling. You’re coming with me.”
Before he can get his head on straight, Jensen’s pulled three blocks away and in the air twenty feet. He comes to a stop on the ledge of a billboard, Misha sitting cool and composed at his hip.
“Real clusterfuck you’ve landed in, Grandfather,” he says. It’s a term of endearment and respect, but Misha manages to fall short in both regards. “I never thought you, of all people, would attach yourself to a human. A hooker even. You basically wrote the law on familiars, all those lofty ideas about consent and blah blah blah.” He twirls his hand in a parody of a royal wave, rolls his eyes.
“I’m not sure what he is,” Jensen tells him.
“You fucked him,” Misha says, eyebrows shooting up. “Oh, god of course you did. I can smell him all over you.”
Misha presses two fingers to Jensen’s temple and images come flooding across his vision. That scummy hotel room and Jared spread out on the bed beneath him, tanned skin that smelled like sunshine. The push and pull of his tight rim on Jensen’s cock and the way he’d wrapped those long, long legs around Jensen’s waist. The small moment of weakness when Jensen had drawn his thumbnail along Jared’s collarbone, the thinnest scratch that he’d quickly healed with his own blood, and how he’d licked at it, rolled the taste of the two of them combined on his tongue. It had been Jared, not the shy twink or the badass tough guy, or any of the other parts he played to make people happy. It had been just Jared.
Misha breaks contact, shaking his head as if he’s trying to clear the images. “We’re supposed to eat them, not marry them.”
“You’re out of line.” Jensen keeps his voice flat, hopeful that it’ll hide the lie. “He’s immune to glamour. I gave him my blood and I can’t hear him. There’s nothing there. He’s an experiment. A game.”
“It’s pure curiosity. Is that it? A game of cat and mouse?”
“You could say that.”
“Tell me. Which one are you?”
Jensen opens his mouth to speak just as he starts to feel a pull in his core, something almost magnetic. He’s only felt something akin to this once before, and he recognizes it immediately.
“Go underground,” he tells Misha as he rises. “It’ll be sunrise soon.”
He steps off of the ledge, and is a block away when he hears Misha say, “I suppose that answers that question.”
Jared’s standing in his open door when Jensen gets there, safely on his side of the threshold. The link works both ways.
“You can’t come in, can you?” Jared asks.
“I can’t.” Jensen holds his hand up, palm forward, and touches the network of threads woven across Jared’s doorway. Spiderweb patterns that are blue to him, brighter in the place around his hand and completely invisible to the human eye.
“So that much is true,” Jared muses, and thoughtfully curls his tongue around his canine tooth. “I might be young. Made my fair share of mistakes. I mean, who the fuck wants to be a hooker when they grow up, right?” When Jensen stays silent, he goes on, “I might be a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them. I’ve known from the start. From the moment I walked into that bar. Your magic won't work on me.”
"Why? How? Why didn't you stop me before?"
"I've been trying to figure you out."
Jensen thinks back to that first night, thinks about Jared’s steady pulse, his complete lack of fear, both then and now. “You are a fascinating creature.”
“I could say the same thing about you.” Jared lets the door fall open wider to reveal a small studio apartment, the suggestion of a kitchen in one corner and a bed in the other, clothes and books strewn everywhere in between. He heads toward the kitchen counter, clangs around for a second, then says over his shoulder, “Are you coming in or what?”
In an instant, the barricade falls away and Jensen steps over the threshold. At a loss, he says, “Whatever you’ve read about us...I--I’m not a monster. I need you to know that.”
“I know,” Jared says simply, back still facing Jensen. “Trust me, I’ve seen my fair share of monsters. You’re not one of them.” He turns toward Jensen. He’s got a knife in his hand and there are skinny, twin gashes on his forearms, beaded with blood. “Now, on your knees.”
--fin
Rated: NC-17
Genre: Jared/Jensen AU
Word Count: 2,800
Notes: A gift for raths_kitten, a pinch hit for spn_j2_xmas. I took a handful of your likes and a sprinkle of your kinks, put everything into a blender and set it to liquefy. Here’s hoping you enjoy the result, and many apologies for the delay. Also, many many thanks to bertee for being the most awesome of mods. I had no fewer than four false starts on this fic before something stuck. Cheers!
Warnings: h/c, prostitution, slight bloodplay, D/s undertones. I fear it’s not as cracky as the summary might suggest.
Summary: So a vampire and a hooker walk into a bar…
“You’re in the wrong place.”
“What’s it to you?” the human asks. He’s in his early twenties at most, old enough to know better and young enough to still think he’s invincible. A bit of a baby face when he smirks and the dimples come out, but the width of his shoulders and the stretch of his shirt across his chest tell a different story.
The noise level in the bar is starting to drop, conversations shifting to low murmurs. Curious stares are boring into Jensen’s back and he can almost see ears perking up, feel muscles coiling, ready to pounce. This place is a DMZ, a tenuously held peaceful oasis in the middle of what could easily turn into a preternatural war zone. This is where alliances are formed between the Families, where treaties are brokered and deals are made, and Jensen wants to keep it that way.
“Who brought you here?” Jensen asks, maintaining a mild tone. Humans shouldn’t be able to find their way in here on their own. The wards are still in place. There are no guards at the door. Up until now, they haven’t been necessary.
“I brought myself,” the guy says as he slides in closer. Jensen breathes deep, unravels the layers of his scent. Cologne on top to cover up the sweat and come. Not all of it is his. Jensen picks up on four distinct men who have recently left their mark. Underneath the rest of it is the smell of his blood, cloying and sweet, and Jensen suppresses a shiver. The guy’s tiny half-smile is coy, and so is the subtle way he cocks his hip to the side. “It’s cold outside, and this looked like a good place to warm up. Besides, I’m thirsty.”
The bottles behind the bar are dusty, nothing more than window dressing, a small slice of familiarity for the guests here who still prefer that sort of thing.
“Aren’t we all?” Jensen circles around the kid, regretting that he’s recently fed. He brushes his arm against his back, light enough to seem unintentional. Silence. Nothing. Not even a name. Highly unusual. Jensen touches him again, less of a glance this time, opens himself up further. Still nothing. Radio static, zero transmissions. Incredibly unusual.
Jensen takes a deliberate step away. The tiniest shake of his head and the whole place relaxes, feels like a sigh, voices pouring in to fill the void. Jared’s a threat in a room full of predators and he has no idea how close he just came, how lucky that Jensen’s at least a century older than anyone in the room in a culture that still venerates age above all else.
He’s been around for a long time, well before Bram Stoker turned his kind into a metaphor for sex, ages before pop culture took hold, made them into teen heartthrobs with interminable cases of melancholy and skin that sparkles. He came into his own when the plague was still the lead story in the five o’clock news, at a time when everything had been so damn easy for his kind. Death had been everywhere. Jensen misses the constant fires, the panic, and those preciously freakish masks the doctors used to wear, wishes he still had one laying around. Seven hundred years on this planet and Jensen’s never seen anything like this man, hasn’t even heard of it. A creature this rare deserves a few more years to live, deserves Jensen’s attention.
“Jared, by the way,” the guy says. “If you’re gonna grope me, we should at least be on a first-name basis.”
“Jensen.” With that, Jensen ducks behind the bar, knocks the dust off of a glass and fills it with two fingers of bourbon.
“Hey, don’t stop. I don’t mind.” Jared slips up onto a barstool and his smile turns dry, professional. No matter. It’s still a very nice smile. “I don’t mind at all.”
“An ass as pretty as yours,” Jensen counters, “it’s a shame you have to sell it.”
“We all get fucked,” Jared says, and if he’s surprised by Jensen’s insight, he doesn’t let on. “I’d rather get paid for it.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a rolled-up wad of money and throws a ten on the bar. “I guess that’s why I’m in the wrong place, huh?” He doesn’t sound mad, resigned perhaps, but not angry.
It’s Jensen’s turn to reach into his pocket, and he lays a hundred dollar bill on top of the ten before pushing it back across. A few carefully spoken words topped off with a trickle of persuasion would have gotten Jensen this for free, but he’s enjoying the game too much. The sex is almost beside the point. Almost.
Jared stares at the money, chewing on his bottom lip. Finally he ticks his eyes toward Jensen and says, “I’m off for the night.”
“But you’re never really off, are you?”
Jared picks up the glass, swishes the liquor in his mouth for a second before swallowing. “We’re not doing it in the bathroom. I have standards.”
“Of course you do. Follow me.”
Jensen leads them through the bar, acutely aware of the way everyone doesn’t look at them, to a small room in the back, stacked high with crumbling paperwork left by the man who used to own this place. Jared pauses two steps into the room, drops his jacket to the floor and starts to unhook his belt.
“No,” Jensen says, and run his hands along Jared’s bare arms, looking for a glimmer, a spark, anything. Jared’s pulse kicks up a notch, blood coursing through his veins faster in response to Jensen’s touch, but that’s it. “On your knees.”
Jared drops, smooth and graceful, resting on his haunches with his hands clasped between his widespread thighs. His expression is patient, calmly submissive. He’s good at his job. Jensen pulls himself up to his full height and looms over Jared, stalls for a second to admire the view from this angle, the shape of his cheekbones and starburst pattern in his eyes, and then takes a handful of Jared’s hair, so soft and silky as it slips between his fingers. A hint of a tug and Jared comes willingly, nuzzles at his crotch until Jensen’s hard and straining against pants, fingers trembling as he snaps them open and feeds Jared his cock.
Latching onto Jensen’s hips for balance, Jared relaxes the muscles in his throat and sucks him down hard and fast, humming and groaning around Jensen’s cock like he’s the one getting off on this. Jensen closes his eyes against the sensation, throws his head back when Jared pulls off to lap and suck at his balls, runs his mouth up along the underside before sealing his lips around him again and taking him straight down to the base.
The tendons in Jared’s neck are standing out, and he’s starting to sweat, his hair damp around his temples and a delicious flush is turning his cheeks a ruddy, vital color. Jensen traces his cheek, seeks out the shape of his own cock in Jared’s slick, wet mouth, moves down to press two fingers to the side of his right below his jaw. The steady thump of Jared’s pulse is what tips him over the edge and he staggers, has to lock his knees in place as he comes.
Jared sucks him through it, wipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand and grins up at him. Before Jared can get to his feet, Jensen bends over him and kisses his temple, desperate for the smallest taste of his skin. He deepens his voice, infuses it with his willpower and whispers in Jared’s ear, “Forget. Forget.”
~*~*~*~
For all that folklore gets it wrong, there are a few things that it gets right. The steady diet of blood is a given, and so is the aversion to sunlight. They do have a reflection, however, as well as a shadow, and the rumor that they’re highly compulsive has been blown completely out of proportion. Throw a handful of rice or a pile of needles at their feet and they don’t have to count them, but vampires are orderly, neat nicks, and they do like to find patterns in the world around them.
Jensen spends the next couple of weeks learning things about Jared, finding patterns and looking for explanations. He trails Jared from his apartment to his favorite street corners, from restaurants to the convenience store where he gets coffee, every night like clockwork. He watches as Jared’s regular customers pull up to the curb beside him, catalogues the cars they drive and the different characters Jared acts out. The white SUV means that Jared plays shy, effeminate, raises his voice a register or two and swings his hips as he walks up to the car. When the black Mustang pulls up, Jared’s all swagger, a cocky arrogance that makes Jensen want to bend him over any available surface and fuck the smirk off of his face.
Tonight, Jared has broken the pattern. He’s been gone for hours and the night has grown bitterly cold. A misty drizzle is starting to fall and is freezing the instant it touches the ground. Jensen’s checked all of Jared’s normal haunts and now waits outside of his apartment. He will not pace. He’s a centuries-old supernatural being, damn near immortal and possessed of untold power and a massive intellect. He will not pace.
The smell of Jared’s blood reaches his nose before Jared stumbles into view, rounding the corner of his building and collapsing against the rough brick. Jensen’s at his side in a blink, in a fraction of a blink, pushing Jared’s lank hair out of his face. Jared’s face is pale, his mouth is bruised and broken, blood on his chin, more of it dripping from his nose, and for a devastating instant, every shriveled cell in Jensen’s body screams at him to lap at it, sink his teeth into that perfect, beautiful artery in Jared’s neck and drink him dry, end this obsession and put both of them out of their misery.
Instead, he pushes at Jared’s coat, runs his hands along his ribs and finds two of them broken.
“Where are your standards now?” Jensen demands, misdirected anger turning the edges of his vision blood-red. Jared’s struggles are futile against the full measure of Jensen’s strength as Jensen holds him up against the wall.
“Drugged,” Jared slurs, head hanging down. He spits blood. Some of it splatters on Jensen’s hand and it’s like passing a two-days-sober alcoholic a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. “They musta put something in my…” Jared trails off, raises his head and blinks. “What? Jensen?”
Surprise and a certain amount of dread crashes into Jensen. Jared remembers. He shouldn’t be able to remember. Not any of it. It’s a riddle, another goddamn puzzle, but right now Jared’s hurt, collapsing in Jensen’s arms and that’s one thing he can fix.
Jensen wills his fangs to descend, bites into his own tongue, knicks his lips and lets the blood rush into his mouth. He props Jared up with one arm, cups the back of his head and kisses him, pries his tongue between Jared’s teeth and pushes inside. He licks at Jared’s teeth, the roof of his mouth, pulls back and runs his tongue along Jared’s busted, swollen lips. Jared’s reaction is immediate, shivers wracking through his body as it mends, ribs aligning with cracks that sound loud to Jensen’s ears, Jared’s skin knitting back together, bruises fading before Jensen’s eyes.
It leaves Jared breathless, chest heaving and body sagging against the wall. They say that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, and the same could be said about Jensen’s breed. In a last ditch effort, Jensen takes Jared’s face in his hands and swipes his thumbs along the hollows beneath his eyes.
“Forget,” he commands. “Forget.”
The look Jared gives him is shattering. “No.”
Jensen trips a step backward, regains his balance for a split-second and then someone has him by the upper arms. The grip is implacable, undeniable, and a familiar voice says to him, “There you are, darling. You’re coming with me.”
Before he can get his head on straight, Jensen’s pulled three blocks away and in the air twenty feet. He comes to a stop on the ledge of a billboard, Misha sitting cool and composed at his hip.
“Real clusterfuck you’ve landed in, Grandfather,” he says. It’s a term of endearment and respect, but Misha manages to fall short in both regards. “I never thought you, of all people, would attach yourself to a human. A hooker even. You basically wrote the law on familiars, all those lofty ideas about consent and blah blah blah.” He twirls his hand in a parody of a royal wave, rolls his eyes.
“I’m not sure what he is,” Jensen tells him.
“You fucked him,” Misha says, eyebrows shooting up. “Oh, god of course you did. I can smell him all over you.”
Misha presses two fingers to Jensen’s temple and images come flooding across his vision. That scummy hotel room and Jared spread out on the bed beneath him, tanned skin that smelled like sunshine. The push and pull of his tight rim on Jensen’s cock and the way he’d wrapped those long, long legs around Jensen’s waist. The small moment of weakness when Jensen had drawn his thumbnail along Jared’s collarbone, the thinnest scratch that he’d quickly healed with his own blood, and how he’d licked at it, rolled the taste of the two of them combined on his tongue. It had been Jared, not the shy twink or the badass tough guy, or any of the other parts he played to make people happy. It had been just Jared.
Misha breaks contact, shaking his head as if he’s trying to clear the images. “We’re supposed to eat them, not marry them.”
“You’re out of line.” Jensen keeps his voice flat, hopeful that it’ll hide the lie. “He’s immune to glamour. I gave him my blood and I can’t hear him. There’s nothing there. He’s an experiment. A game.”
“It’s pure curiosity. Is that it? A game of cat and mouse?”
“You could say that.”
“Tell me. Which one are you?”
Jensen opens his mouth to speak just as he starts to feel a pull in his core, something almost magnetic. He’s only felt something akin to this once before, and he recognizes it immediately.
“Go underground,” he tells Misha as he rises. “It’ll be sunrise soon.”
He steps off of the ledge, and is a block away when he hears Misha say, “I suppose that answers that question.”
Jared’s standing in his open door when Jensen gets there, safely on his side of the threshold. The link works both ways.
“You can’t come in, can you?” Jared asks.
“I can’t.” Jensen holds his hand up, palm forward, and touches the network of threads woven across Jared’s doorway. Spiderweb patterns that are blue to him, brighter in the place around his hand and completely invisible to the human eye.
“So that much is true,” Jared muses, and thoughtfully curls his tongue around his canine tooth. “I might be young. Made my fair share of mistakes. I mean, who the fuck wants to be a hooker when they grow up, right?” When Jensen stays silent, he goes on, “I might be a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them. I’ve known from the start. From the moment I walked into that bar. Your magic won't work on me.”
"Why? How? Why didn't you stop me before?"
"I've been trying to figure you out."
Jensen thinks back to that first night, thinks about Jared’s steady pulse, his complete lack of fear, both then and now. “You are a fascinating creature.”
“I could say the same thing about you.” Jared lets the door fall open wider to reveal a small studio apartment, the suggestion of a kitchen in one corner and a bed in the other, clothes and books strewn everywhere in between. He heads toward the kitchen counter, clangs around for a second, then says over his shoulder, “Are you coming in or what?”
In an instant, the barricade falls away and Jensen steps over the threshold. At a loss, he says, “Whatever you’ve read about us...I--I’m not a monster. I need you to know that.”
“I know,” Jared says simply, back still facing Jensen. “Trust me, I’ve seen my fair share of monsters. You’re not one of them.” He turns toward Jensen. He’s got a knife in his hand and there are skinny, twin gashes on his forearms, beaded with blood. “Now, on your knees.”
--fin