The Rising Tide 2/5
J2 RPS AU
NC-17
Part 2 of 5
Master post
Art
The captain blows his whistle and the police advance. When they get close enough to reach out and touch, one of the men farther down the line swings his sign and whacks a cop in the face.
Shit, Jared thinks. They knew there could be violence, but he was hoping one of the police would swing first.
“Hold the line!” he yells, feeling like an army officer in the midst of battle. “Stand fast!” He hears his command filter through the crowd, men reminding each other to hold their ground and not retreat. They have to show strength, and more than that, they have to show unified strength. Cowards get nothing.
They have to let the owner know they're a force to reckon with, and they won't back down.
Jared realizes suddenly that the cops have just given the workers something the police captain clearly hasn't predicted - a target. The owner is untouchable in every way. No one with any sense is going to lash out at a floor manager, not if he wants to keep his job. But if you're a worker who feels powerless, who feels taken advantage of, who's overworked, underpaid, and dismissed from all corners - if you're a man who's been treated like a plowhorse - here's a cop, right in front of you, a symbol of everyone and everything that wants to keep you on the ragged edge of poverty and exhaustion. Here's a target for you to take out your anger and frustration on.
It's a brawl now, millworkers against policemen, everyone shouting and swinging and kicking and hitting. Out of the corner of his eye Jared can see someone biting a policeman's ear, and he has just enough time to think This wasn't supposed to turn into a bar brawl before he's distracted by another cop taking a swing at him. This is the largest, most confusing scuffle he's ever been in, but at least it's easy to tell who's on his side and who isn't, and he's never been afraid to stand his ground and hit back if he's attacked.
If the cops want a fight, the millworkers will give them one. He ducks a policeman's swing and hits out in defense, taking some satisfaction in the way the cop grunts and staggers back. Then someone stumbles into Jared from the side, almost knocking him off balance, and he loses his opponent.
He has a disconnected flash of insight as whoever slammed into him grabs him, steadies him, and grins widely before spinning around to tackle another cop. It's not an economic problem - it's a lack of respect. The men in power, the men with money, just don't want to have to show respect to anyone they consider below them. They don't think those people matter.
That's what this is about. If you respect a man and his work, you treat him fairly for it. And the owner doesn't.
But Jared can make him.
The melee finally ends when the police wagons show up, and the cops manage to get enough of an upper hand to start herding the striking millworkers into them. Some men have run off, and Jared thinks less of them for it. Don't they know this only works if everyone stands together? Some of the workers are laid out on the street, too injured to run or to put themselves in the wagons. The cops haul some of them upright and shove them in. At least no one's dead.
Jared is shoved into a wagon next to Misha and Aldis. Misha is bleeding from a cut over his eyebrow and can't stop grinning. He looks jubilant. Aldis, along with most of the other men packed into the wagon, just looks tired.
“We might have lost the battle, men,” Misha says, “but the war is just starting.”
Three separate men tell him to shut up.
“There was a reporter in the crowd before the cops showed up,” Tahmoh says. He's from Ocelo, Jared remembers, and knows a little bit about organizing from his years harvesting grapes. “He asked us a bunch of questions. So we could be in the papers.”
“Good,” Misha says.
“Depends on what he reports,” Aldis points out. “Whose side is he on?”
“That depends on the paper he writes for,” Milo says. “We're not that different from the street reporters, you know. We're at the mercy of the floor managers who are at the mercy of their managers who are at the mercy of the owner. Reporters, the same. His editor answers to another editor who answers to the publisher. The publisher's the same as the mill owner. He controls the purse, so he controls the message.”
Jared blinks at Milo. He thought he knew the guy pretty well, but Milo never said anything particularly insightful during their meetings - he never said much at all - and this is something Jared hasn't considered, this similarity between the various types of workers in the city. He knows everyone down at street level has a boss, and most of those bosses take advantage. He knows there are far more men and women struggling to survive than there are men and women who are comfortable. Wheels start turning in his head.
But Milo's still talking. “If that reporter writes for a paper that's owned by someone who's friends with the mill owner, message comes down to demonize the strikers. If the publisher wants to bring the mill owner down, we get better press.”
“They all know each other,” someone else says. “All the rich men.”
“Yeah, but that doesn't mean they like each other.”
“The publisher could still be on the side of right,” Misha points out, “because it's the right side. If we can control the message - ”
“We need to get other people involved,” Jared interrupts. “Other workers, people like us.”
“We need to take care of ourselves first,” Aldis says. “Get out of jail, try to keep our jobs.”
“You think the cops came because someone snitched?” one of the men asks, and that distracts enough of them from their immediate future that the wagon is consumed with the question of who reported the strike to the bosses, if someone reported it, why he'd do that, and what they can do to him.
Jared isn't sorry for the change of subject, but he wants to think about what Milo said some more. Anyone at the bottom of any economic ladder is in the same place. They're all under someone else's thumb, all held down, abused and misused. The man or woman at the bottom of the ladder, someone's keeping a foot on that person's neck because they can, because it's to their advantage and they don't have to care. Jared knows the labor organizers need to shore up their own foundations first - they need to regroup and replan and keep convincing the rest of the workers that if they stand together they can really get something accomplished - but what if they could show the dockworkers, say, that they not only deserve better but that there's a way to get it? What if his one group of millworkers can train others to bring the idea of organized labor back to their colleagues? What if he and all the other men who walked out today can prove that it works, that if the men at the bottom stand together, they can wrest some concessions to make their lives better from the men at the top?
Misha's not wrong. They did lose this battle. But they know that at least three-quarters of the mill will stand together for better pay and better working conditions, and they know that even if the police did win this round, the strikers made an impression.
“Why are you smiling?” Aldis asks him.
“I have an idea,” Jared says. “It's just a seed, though. I have to think it through.”
“Does it involve turning a reporter?”
“Not really. But you're right that we have to think about ourselves first. We'll get out of jail - “
“Hopefully we didn't all lose our jobs,” someone pipes up.
“Go back to work tomorrow, keep our heads down, make a new plan.”
The gears are turning in his head. The wagon bounces and rattles through the city, its old steam engine clanking and hissing and making a racket. The men crammed inside discuss and argue and tell each other to shut up and ask each other to continue. Jared tries to block them out so he can tease out this new thought.
They're all taken to the central station - “Makes it harder for friends and family to bail us out,” someone suggests - written up, and locked up.
“Great,” Aldis mutters, “now I have a record. My mom's gonna kill me.”
“She knows why you did it,” Jared says. “She'll be proud.”
Aldis seems to think about that. His mother is a cleaner in some rich man's house, hiking up and down the back stairs all day, out of sight of the wealthy, polishing silver and scrubbing laundry and hauling buckets of water to wash floors and, when she was younger, chasing small children and trying to make them behave. She spent so much time watching other people's children that someone else had to help raise hers, and she's far from alone in that.
“She might be proud,” Aldis finally admits, “but she doesn't have the crowns to bail me out. Edwin either.”
“We need to take up a collection for next time,” Misha says, “like we did for Timothy.”
“There won't be a next time,” grumbles one of the men in the cell with them. “You think men want to put their jobs on the line just to get beat up and thrown in jail? We don't get anything out of this.”
“You don't know that,” Matt says. Jared lost track of him during the strike but when the wagons brought everyone to the station, they were all thrown into cells willy-nilly, and Matt ended up in his. “We showed the owner that most of us want to be treated better, and we're willing to walk off the job for it.”
“You mean we're willing to lose our jobs for it. What's the point of striking for a better wage if you end up unemployed?”
To their great surprise, none of the strikers lose their jobs, or even many of their hours. Their wages are just cut. But the men who didn't walk out all get a very small raise, more a token than anything else, and an extra five minutes for lunch.
“That's smart,” Misha tells Jared during their ten-minute lunch break. “Put us all back on the floor together and wait for the tension to rise.” He bites into his sandwich.
“Keeping us around is kind of stupid,” Chad says.
“They're telling us we can strike without worrying about our jobs,” Jared adds, “and that's just going to encourage us to do it again.” The owner had a chance to get rid of the agitators and didn't take it. It doesn't make sense. Jared would have fired them all, if he was in that position.
“No.” Misha chews. “They expect us to fight among ourselves. Anyone who struck can see that the men who didn't all got a raise, and the men who did all got a paycut. The owner assumes we'll destroy the prospect of organized labor from the inside. He won't have to trouble himself to do it. He's poisoning the well.”
Jared's heard some grumbling up and down his line, former strikers who are glad they kept their jobs but angry that their wages were cut. He's glad he's not the only breadwinner in his tiny family, and that they don't have children to support. Jensen is still pissed at him for getting thrown in jail, but at least they won't starve.
But there were articles about the strike in the newspapers this morning. A couple were sympathetic to the workers, most were not, and one had no obvious bias one way or the other. Jared's not sure if they can use the sympathetic press to put some pressure on the owner, but if nothing else, the millworkers who can see that at least someone else is on their side should feel more secure in their choice to strike.
Mr Morgan has an idea for future productions at the Augustus, and that idea seems to be “Take Jensen to a well-funded theater to show him how it can be done”.
Jensen puts on his best suit, uncomfortably aware that his best suit, while good enough for his own ward, isn't quite good enough for a box seat in an uptown theater. They're not even going to a matinee, but rather an evening show, where people tend to dress up and sparkle more. The only decorative thing Jensen owns is a pocketwatch he inherited from his grandfather. He doesn't even have a pair of cufflinks.
Mrs Morgan, who is constantly telling Jensen to call her Hilarie, laughs that no one will be looking at him and he shouldn't worry. She rearranges her lacy shawl to better display her shoulders and cleavage, and the faceted red jewel nestled between her breasts.
Jensen can almost hear Alona sniff “Paste”, dismissing the sparkling red stone, but he can't tell the difference between a good fake and a real jewel - he doesn't think Alona can either - and he's pretty sure Mr Morgan has the money to buy something that extravagant for his wife.
The theater is bigger and plusher and in much better condition that the Augustus, with gold scrolling all over the ceiling and doorframes, burgundy velvet seats with shiny dark wood armrests, intricate designs etched into the glass of all the wall sconces, even lighting, heavy paper programs, and a concessions stand like a fancy bar in a fancy pub. Half the bottles have labels in languages Jensen can't read. He feels decidedly outclassed.
“If you think this is posh,” Mrs Morgan whispers to Jensen, because apparently his staring is obvious, “you should see the old royal theater. Gold for miles and the most unobtrusive machinery you've ever encountered.”
“I don't think I've encountered it here,” Jensen whispers back.
“Just wait.”
Mr Morgan buys him a drink, and he watches as the bartender ostentatiously spins a little wheel on the wall behind him, making several small spheres of ice rattle out of a wide brass spigot into the glass. Jensen tries not to stare. The bartender pours two fingers of whiskey into the glass and hands it to him with a flourish. The balls of ice are all perfectly round, the exact same size, and don't change the taste of his cocktail at all, other than to make it cold.
“The bartenders in the old royal theater don't make a big deal of the ice,” Mrs Morgan tells him, as they move away from the bar. Both she and Mr Morgan have glasses of wine, apparently just as cold as Jensen's drink. “But here they like to put on a little show.”
The bartenders at the pubs Jensen frequents don't make a show of pouring drinks either, but they know their customers don't care. In some places you're lucky to get a clean glass, never mind a cold beer.
The lobby lights flicker, making Jensen look around, concerned.
“Come on,” Mrs Morgan says, taking Jensen's arm and leading him towards the doors into the auditorium. “The show's about to start.”
So that's how the nicer theaters let people know it's time to take their seats. In the Augustus, whoever is working the box office is in charge of herding theatergoers out of the lobby and into the auditorium before the show begins.
The seats in this place are very comfortable, Jensen has enough leg room, and the audience hushes respectfully when the house lights dim. The play Mr Morgan has brought him to is a supernatural drama involving a gentleman murderer, a police detective, a madwoman, a discreet amount of fake blood, a beheading, an elaborate set, a tilting stage, and several “ghosts” flying through the air on wires. Jensen tries to see into the fly loft over the stage to look for a catwalk and the kind of rigging this uptown theater uses, but it's unsurprisingly hidden by the curtain across the top of the proscenium and he can't see anything from his seat. He wants to get back there and check things out, but there's approximately zero reason for anyone to let him.
He sits back in his extremely comfortable velvet-upholstered seat and concentrates on the play. He makes note of the acting styles, the staging, the costumes, the overall design of the production. The lighting takes on a red cast for the beheading and a blue cast for the flashback scene. Jensen wonders how the crew managed that. Removable lenses on the spotlights, or just someone holding a piece of colored glass in front of them at the appropriate times? He'll put Osric and Alex on that. Hopefully won't break anything figuring it out.
The play isn't quite his taste, but he can't deny that it's well-done. He's only heard of one of the actors, but from the quality of the production and the theater itself he assumes the rest of the cast and crew makes enough money to live off this one job. The wardrobe mistress doesn't have to care for the costumes in her off-hours and work a day job to support herself. The crew can devote their whole time to building sets and moving lights and organizing props, and not have to work nights to keep a roof over their families' heads.
“You'd think that, wouldn't you,” Mrs Morgan says during intermission, after Mr Morgan asks how Jensen likes the production so far, and all Jensen can talk about is the money the theater must make. “There isn't much money in theater, unless you're a star.”
“The crew here has a full-time contract with the theater,” Mr Morgan says, “but the cast changes with every production. It isn't run the same way as the Augustus. Don't worry, I don't want to change that. I just want you to see what else is possible in terms of productions.”
“We don't have the money for such elaborate sets,” Jensen points out. “Or the space. I think we can manage colored spotlights, though. That's very clever.”
“I thought so too. They use colored glass for the lenses. It shouldn't be hard to adapt.”
“Would you like another drink?” Mrs Morgan asks Jensen. “You can watch the ice-maker again.” She grins.
“No, thank you,” he tells her. He can't let the Morgans buy him another drink, not after they sprung for a good seat for him at this theater.
“Are you sure?” Mr Morgan presses, and when Jensen nods, he continues “I think I would. Hilarie?”
“Another red, please,” she says. “See if they have an Ocelan.”
Mr Morgan saunters off towards the bar and Mrs Morgan entertains Jensen with stories about the theater and the actors and some of her husband's earliest productions until Mr Morgan returns with fresh glasses of wine. He hands one to his wife.
“I know what you think of the production values,” he says to Jensen, smiling a little, “but what do you think of the play?”
“It's very well-done,” Jensen says. “The acting's a little broad and the play itself isn't really my taste, but the ghosts were scary and the beheading was pretty convincing.”
“We could do that too. It's sleight of hand and lighting tricks and a dummy head. I know you had your heart set on a musical but I was thinking the next production should be a horror drama. People like to be scared, and we can do something impressive.”
Jensen isn't sure he agrees with either of those things, although he's more than willing to try for “impressive”. If he can convince his company to get their shit together in less than three days and execute a near-flawless opening performance, he can figure out colored lights and beheadings.
“And what do you think so far?” Mr Morgan asks Mrs Morgan.
“It's quite good,” she says, sipping her wine. “The beheading made me jump in my seat.”
“We're going to put on a horror show next,” he says with finality. “After the current run. I think the audience will like it.”
“Will there be a beheading?”
“At least two.” He grins and holds out his arm for her. “Shall I escort you back inside, Mrs Morgan?”
“Why, thank you.” She inclines her head, then holds out her free hand to Jensen. “And I shall escort Mr Ackles.”
Her sense of humor reminds Jensen of Danneel and Genevieve. They're all flirts.
Once a month Jensen meets with Mr Morgan to go over the box office returns, discuss the current show (whether it's in production or still in rehearsals), and plan the budget for the next show. Sometimes Mr Morgan comes to the theater. Sometimes Jensen goes to his office. Sometimes they meet somewhere in the middle.
This month is a “meet at Mr Morgan's office” month, and Jensen puts on his best suit and shines his shoes and brushes his hat so he won't feel like a beggar with his hand out when he presents himself to Mr Morgan's secretary. He's always been told (and has always believed) that the more pressed you look, the better service you'll receive, regardless of which industry you're in or what position you hold.
Mr Morgan's office is in the mid-city business district, far enough from the river to be a quality ward but not so posh that Jensen feels uncomfortable. He's wearing the exact same suit he wore to the theater with the Morgans, but somehow he feels less out of place, and more presentable, walking along the sidewalk towards Mr Morgan's building. He glances up to feel the sun on his face and catches sight of an airship gliding serenely over the city. He feels a twinge of pride knowing Jared could have worked the loom that wove the canvas that enables the airship to fly, and a twinge of frustration at both the mill's owner for not treating his workers right for such vital work, and Jared for constantly pushing the issue.
The airship passes beyond the tops of buildings and out of sight. Jensen stops to watch the wrap-around perpetual newsrun over the second-floor windows of the building on the corner, reading to himself as the wooden letters glide along their tracks and around the bend of the building, spelling out current news headlines and weather predictions and reminders about Council business. When he first came here from his hometown, he would watch the newsrun on one building for half an hour, then walk to the next one he knew of, to see if the news was any different. There are several in the business districts, and he learned that the news you see depends on where you are - near the Council Hall and the law courts the news tends to be about recent or upcoming legislation and whatever big cases the Council lawyers have on trial, whereas in other parts of the city you'll see economic or trading news, or international news, and there's one run around a newspaper building that seems to exist purely to share high-drama scandals and gossip.
The technology is above anything the Augustus can afford, never mind the costs of retrofitting the building to accommodate such a thing, but every so often Jensen entertains the idea of doing something similar on the marquee. He'd display the title of the current production and the names of the main actors. They'd keep the display posters and the schedule and current ticket price on the window, but a moving marquee, that would be something else. He'd get metallic-painted letters for nighttime, so they'd sparkle in the marquee's gas lights.
But it's just a dream, a fantasy. Right now he has to content himself with a static marquee and a tall ladder so they can change the titles for new productions. He knows that some theaters have moving displays in the lobbies or out in front of the building, with pictures of the actors and sometimes the production itself sliding in and out of view. Now, as he crosses the street to Mr Morgan's building and walks through the doors and calls the elevator, he wonders what Osric and Alex could do with that idea, if they could rig up something modern and technologically advanced to excite a potential audience. It's not arrogance to say his theater is one of the best in the ward, nor is it overselling to say he has a regular and faithful audience, but it would be nice to give folks something interesting, something to make them think they're in a better class of theater than they actually are.
He doubts he'll ever be able to do any of that at the Augustus, but a man can dream. Why else did Jensen even come to the city in the first place, if not to live out the dreams he couldn't realize back home? How else do men and women raise themselves out of the dark, except by dreaming? How else is the dark even bearable?
Mr Morgan's secretary lets him know Jensen is here to see him. Jensen takes a seat on one of the plush chairs in the waiting room and thinks about moving marquees and rotating displays of images. He thinks about better, more accurate spotlights and trap doors and how difficult it would be to build a platform to raise or lower actors onstage.
In trying to make his case to Mr Morgan, he feels a little bit like Jared must feel negotiating wages with the mill owner. They're talking about budget, after all. The theater has no contingency fund in the event of emergencies, and they can't raise ticket prices very much, so where would they get these extra funds? It's a reasonable question.
But Mr Morgan is the kind of person who will take Jensen to a good mid-city theater to see a well-funded production as a way to give him ideas for future productions in his own place, so Jensen feels secure in mentioning at least the moving marquee or the advertising display as something they should consider.
“Hm,” Mr Morgan says. “I'm not opposed to any of your ideas. Let's think about the moving stage. We could mount some interesting productions with that. The crew's good, aren't they? You know them better than I do - is that something they could build? Can it be done?”
“I think so,” Jensen says, even though he has absolutely no idea if it can or not. He's not an engineer. “I'll talk to the crew today. We'll look under the stage and try to figure it out.”
“Good. Then we'll determine how much we can spend on it. How are the audiences?”
“They're still coming. We haven't had any problems with the spotlights recently, although there's a leak backstage that no one can find the source of.”
“How bad is the damage?”
Jensen shrugs. “Hard to tell. It leaks, then it dries. Then it leaks, then it dries. There are streaks on the wall and the floor's discolored, but I don't know if there are any problems inside the wall. The floor's slippery, though. I don't want anyone to fall.” In fact they discovered there was a leak when Sterling's foot slid across a puddle and almost brought him down, one performance when he was trying to get into position for his entrance.
Sometimes you just have to let the leaks go, if the source is inaccessible or no one has time to find it. But you don't want mystery puddles in a theater. Besides, the longer there's a drip, the more likely the wood is to rot, or the plaster to come off the wall, and the longer they wait to fix it, the more expensive and extensive the damage can be.
Mr Morgan pulls a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer, scribbles something on it, and pushes it across the desk towards Jensen. It has a name and address on it. “If you can't find out where the leak is coming from and patch it, contact him.” He taps the sheet of paper. “He's very thorough.”
“How will we pay for that?”
Now it's Mr Morgan's turn to shrug. “Have him send half the bill to me. The theater will have to cover the other half.”
Jensen folds the piece of paper and puts it in his jacket pocket. The theater can't afford even half a contractor. He'll make Alex look for the leak. It will give him something to do besides mess with the spotlights.
“I'll come see the show this week,” Mr Morgan is saying. “Sit in the back, watch the audience. I'm glad it's doing well. I told you a farce would sell.”
“People like to laugh at the upper classes,” Jensen admits. He hates having to admit it, because he was opposed to doing it in the first place, but The Merits of Mr Marsden, for all its problems as a production, is bringing in the paying audiences.
“I think I've found just the playwright for the next production, the horror. Go to his next matinee and tell me what you think.” He reaches into the drawer again, this time pulling out a few coins and handing them over. Jensen's one misgiving about horror is getting the effects right so the play is genuinely scary, but his crew is pretty good at making a lot from a little. And if he can't find a suitable alternative, horror is what they'll do. Maybe he can get Jared to go to this playwright's current show with him. They'll scrape some coins out of the sofa cushions to cover his ticket.
Jared is all for it - he likes horror dramas - and the show in question is even playing in a theater Jensen knows. It's in a less shabby ward and has pretensions to greatness, expressed in faux marble and flaking gilt paint and faded, if still plush, seat cushions. There's even a rattling, hissing ticket machine behind the window, spitting out printed tickets with assigned seats on demand. The Augustus only has preprinted tickets and general seating, but if Jensen wants to be fancy, he can use a different typeface for each new show.
He takes Jared's hand during the performance, for no other reason than he can. Mr Morgan has sent them to a ghost story, and the first time a ghost appears Jared squeezes Jensen's hand hard enough for Jensen to elbow him in the side.
“Ow,” he hisses.
“It was scary,” Jared hisses back, but when Jensen glances at him, he's grinning.
“It's a good thing I love you.”
Jensen likes this horror drama better than the one Mr and Mrs Morgan took him to, and seeing it in a cheaper theater gives him a more realistic idea of what can and can't be done, in terms of staging and props and sets. There are no beheadings, but the ghosts are pretty good and the audience reacts appropriately.
There's no intermission, which he doesn't mind. Not all of the Augustus's productions are long enough for intermissions either.
“What do you think?” he asks Jared afterwards, as they're walking out.
“I liked it,” Jared says. “It was kind of scary. But you know I like a good ghost story.”
“You think it will play well at the Augustus?”
“Sure, why not? Is Marsden about to close?”
“No, but it's never too early to start thinking about the next show. Mr Morgan is stuck on horror, and unless I can give him a good musical, that's what we're going to do. He liked this playwright.”
“You still want to do a musical?”
“I still want to do a musical. The sets are easier. They're light and fun.”
“Danny can't sing. She'll be pissed if you pick a play you know she can't star in.”
“It doesn't matter. We're not doing one any time soon. It looks like horror or nothing.”
“Don't sweat over it.” Jared grabs Jensen's hand, brings it to his lips, and kisses the back of it. “It'll be great, whatever you do. You know it will.”
Jensen feels arrogant agreeing, but Jared's not wrong. The Augustus, for all its poverty-related faults, can still mount a good show.
“Do you have to be anywhere soon?” Jared asks. “Do you have to go to the theater?”
“They did the matinee without me. If there was a problem I'll find out later. We should get something to eat, though. Why?”
Jared leans close and whispers “I want to do things to you that I can't discuss in public.”
Jensen grins. “I think I can accommodate you.” Food can wait.
If they both start walking a little faster, well, anyone who knew why would understand.
The sky is clouding over by the time they get home, bringing the prospect of rain. They'll leave the windows open a little and get some clean fresh air into the flat. And if the rain is loud enough, they'll be less likely to disturb the neighbors. That's one of the (many) problems with living cheek-by-jowl with so many other people, in buildings with such thin walls - you can hear things you wish you didn't. Jensen and Jared used to be able to count time by when the family in the apartment to the left would yell at each other - they'd start around nine at night, every night, continue for an hour, and take it up again at six every morning - and they knew when the husband who lived upstairs was home because he had a very heavy step and the kids were much louder when he was around. That family moved out several months ago, and the family that moved in is much quieter, aside from the baby crying occasionally. There's a violinist in the building who practices next to an open window into the airshaft, sharing his music with the entire building and the one next door.
Jared and Jensen know every single time the couple across the airshaft has sex with the windows open, but to be fair, if the couple is paying attention at all, they can probably tell when Jared and Jensen are doing the same thing.
Like now.
“You sure you want the window open?” Jared murmurs into Jensen's neck as Jensen's hand trails down his bare back.
“I'm sure,” Jensen murmurs back.
“We'll get wet. The neighbors will hear us.”
“Serves them right for fucking so loudly all summer.”
Jared chuckles.
“They're probably not even home,” Jensen continues. It's the middle of the day on a Sunday, when people who aren't at work are generally at worship or otherwise out of the house. He wiggles under Jared, trying to get his pants off. “A little help?”
Onward!
NC-17
Part 2 of 5
Master post
Art
The captain blows his whistle and the police advance. When they get close enough to reach out and touch, one of the men farther down the line swings his sign and whacks a cop in the face.
Shit, Jared thinks. They knew there could be violence, but he was hoping one of the police would swing first.
“Hold the line!” he yells, feeling like an army officer in the midst of battle. “Stand fast!” He hears his command filter through the crowd, men reminding each other to hold their ground and not retreat. They have to show strength, and more than that, they have to show unified strength. Cowards get nothing.
They have to let the owner know they're a force to reckon with, and they won't back down.
Jared realizes suddenly that the cops have just given the workers something the police captain clearly hasn't predicted - a target. The owner is untouchable in every way. No one with any sense is going to lash out at a floor manager, not if he wants to keep his job. But if you're a worker who feels powerless, who feels taken advantage of, who's overworked, underpaid, and dismissed from all corners - if you're a man who's been treated like a plowhorse - here's a cop, right in front of you, a symbol of everyone and everything that wants to keep you on the ragged edge of poverty and exhaustion. Here's a target for you to take out your anger and frustration on.
It's a brawl now, millworkers against policemen, everyone shouting and swinging and kicking and hitting. Out of the corner of his eye Jared can see someone biting a policeman's ear, and he has just enough time to think This wasn't supposed to turn into a bar brawl before he's distracted by another cop taking a swing at him. This is the largest, most confusing scuffle he's ever been in, but at least it's easy to tell who's on his side and who isn't, and he's never been afraid to stand his ground and hit back if he's attacked.
If the cops want a fight, the millworkers will give them one. He ducks a policeman's swing and hits out in defense, taking some satisfaction in the way the cop grunts and staggers back. Then someone stumbles into Jared from the side, almost knocking him off balance, and he loses his opponent.
He has a disconnected flash of insight as whoever slammed into him grabs him, steadies him, and grins widely before spinning around to tackle another cop. It's not an economic problem - it's a lack of respect. The men in power, the men with money, just don't want to have to show respect to anyone they consider below them. They don't think those people matter.
That's what this is about. If you respect a man and his work, you treat him fairly for it. And the owner doesn't.
But Jared can make him.
The melee finally ends when the police wagons show up, and the cops manage to get enough of an upper hand to start herding the striking millworkers into them. Some men have run off, and Jared thinks less of them for it. Don't they know this only works if everyone stands together? Some of the workers are laid out on the street, too injured to run or to put themselves in the wagons. The cops haul some of them upright and shove them in. At least no one's dead.
Jared is shoved into a wagon next to Misha and Aldis. Misha is bleeding from a cut over his eyebrow and can't stop grinning. He looks jubilant. Aldis, along with most of the other men packed into the wagon, just looks tired.
“We might have lost the battle, men,” Misha says, “but the war is just starting.”
Three separate men tell him to shut up.
“There was a reporter in the crowd before the cops showed up,” Tahmoh says. He's from Ocelo, Jared remembers, and knows a little bit about organizing from his years harvesting grapes. “He asked us a bunch of questions. So we could be in the papers.”
“Good,” Misha says.
“Depends on what he reports,” Aldis points out. “Whose side is he on?”
“That depends on the paper he writes for,” Milo says. “We're not that different from the street reporters, you know. We're at the mercy of the floor managers who are at the mercy of their managers who are at the mercy of the owner. Reporters, the same. His editor answers to another editor who answers to the publisher. The publisher's the same as the mill owner. He controls the purse, so he controls the message.”
Jared blinks at Milo. He thought he knew the guy pretty well, but Milo never said anything particularly insightful during their meetings - he never said much at all - and this is something Jared hasn't considered, this similarity between the various types of workers in the city. He knows everyone down at street level has a boss, and most of those bosses take advantage. He knows there are far more men and women struggling to survive than there are men and women who are comfortable. Wheels start turning in his head.
But Milo's still talking. “If that reporter writes for a paper that's owned by someone who's friends with the mill owner, message comes down to demonize the strikers. If the publisher wants to bring the mill owner down, we get better press.”
“They all know each other,” someone else says. “All the rich men.”
“Yeah, but that doesn't mean they like each other.”
“The publisher could still be on the side of right,” Misha points out, “because it's the right side. If we can control the message - ”
“We need to get other people involved,” Jared interrupts. “Other workers, people like us.”
“We need to take care of ourselves first,” Aldis says. “Get out of jail, try to keep our jobs.”
“You think the cops came because someone snitched?” one of the men asks, and that distracts enough of them from their immediate future that the wagon is consumed with the question of who reported the strike to the bosses, if someone reported it, why he'd do that, and what they can do to him.
Jared isn't sorry for the change of subject, but he wants to think about what Milo said some more. Anyone at the bottom of any economic ladder is in the same place. They're all under someone else's thumb, all held down, abused and misused. The man or woman at the bottom of the ladder, someone's keeping a foot on that person's neck because they can, because it's to their advantage and they don't have to care. Jared knows the labor organizers need to shore up their own foundations first - they need to regroup and replan and keep convincing the rest of the workers that if they stand together they can really get something accomplished - but what if they could show the dockworkers, say, that they not only deserve better but that there's a way to get it? What if his one group of millworkers can train others to bring the idea of organized labor back to their colleagues? What if he and all the other men who walked out today can prove that it works, that if the men at the bottom stand together, they can wrest some concessions to make their lives better from the men at the top?
Misha's not wrong. They did lose this battle. But they know that at least three-quarters of the mill will stand together for better pay and better working conditions, and they know that even if the police did win this round, the strikers made an impression.
“Why are you smiling?” Aldis asks him.
“I have an idea,” Jared says. “It's just a seed, though. I have to think it through.”
“Does it involve turning a reporter?”
“Not really. But you're right that we have to think about ourselves first. We'll get out of jail - “
“Hopefully we didn't all lose our jobs,” someone pipes up.
“Go back to work tomorrow, keep our heads down, make a new plan.”
The gears are turning in his head. The wagon bounces and rattles through the city, its old steam engine clanking and hissing and making a racket. The men crammed inside discuss and argue and tell each other to shut up and ask each other to continue. Jared tries to block them out so he can tease out this new thought.
They're all taken to the central station - “Makes it harder for friends and family to bail us out,” someone suggests - written up, and locked up.
“Great,” Aldis mutters, “now I have a record. My mom's gonna kill me.”
“She knows why you did it,” Jared says. “She'll be proud.”
Aldis seems to think about that. His mother is a cleaner in some rich man's house, hiking up and down the back stairs all day, out of sight of the wealthy, polishing silver and scrubbing laundry and hauling buckets of water to wash floors and, when she was younger, chasing small children and trying to make them behave. She spent so much time watching other people's children that someone else had to help raise hers, and she's far from alone in that.
“She might be proud,” Aldis finally admits, “but she doesn't have the crowns to bail me out. Edwin either.”
“We need to take up a collection for next time,” Misha says, “like we did for Timothy.”
“There won't be a next time,” grumbles one of the men in the cell with them. “You think men want to put their jobs on the line just to get beat up and thrown in jail? We don't get anything out of this.”
“You don't know that,” Matt says. Jared lost track of him during the strike but when the wagons brought everyone to the station, they were all thrown into cells willy-nilly, and Matt ended up in his. “We showed the owner that most of us want to be treated better, and we're willing to walk off the job for it.”
“You mean we're willing to lose our jobs for it. What's the point of striking for a better wage if you end up unemployed?”
To their great surprise, none of the strikers lose their jobs, or even many of their hours. Their wages are just cut. But the men who didn't walk out all get a very small raise, more a token than anything else, and an extra five minutes for lunch.
“That's smart,” Misha tells Jared during their ten-minute lunch break. “Put us all back on the floor together and wait for the tension to rise.” He bites into his sandwich.
“Keeping us around is kind of stupid,” Chad says.
“They're telling us we can strike without worrying about our jobs,” Jared adds, “and that's just going to encourage us to do it again.” The owner had a chance to get rid of the agitators and didn't take it. It doesn't make sense. Jared would have fired them all, if he was in that position.
“No.” Misha chews. “They expect us to fight among ourselves. Anyone who struck can see that the men who didn't all got a raise, and the men who did all got a paycut. The owner assumes we'll destroy the prospect of organized labor from the inside. He won't have to trouble himself to do it. He's poisoning the well.”
Jared's heard some grumbling up and down his line, former strikers who are glad they kept their jobs but angry that their wages were cut. He's glad he's not the only breadwinner in his tiny family, and that they don't have children to support. Jensen is still pissed at him for getting thrown in jail, but at least they won't starve.
But there were articles about the strike in the newspapers this morning. A couple were sympathetic to the workers, most were not, and one had no obvious bias one way or the other. Jared's not sure if they can use the sympathetic press to put some pressure on the owner, but if nothing else, the millworkers who can see that at least someone else is on their side should feel more secure in their choice to strike.
Mr Morgan has an idea for future productions at the Augustus, and that idea seems to be “Take Jensen to a well-funded theater to show him how it can be done”.
Jensen puts on his best suit, uncomfortably aware that his best suit, while good enough for his own ward, isn't quite good enough for a box seat in an uptown theater. They're not even going to a matinee, but rather an evening show, where people tend to dress up and sparkle more. The only decorative thing Jensen owns is a pocketwatch he inherited from his grandfather. He doesn't even have a pair of cufflinks.
Mrs Morgan, who is constantly telling Jensen to call her Hilarie, laughs that no one will be looking at him and he shouldn't worry. She rearranges her lacy shawl to better display her shoulders and cleavage, and the faceted red jewel nestled between her breasts.
Jensen can almost hear Alona sniff “Paste”, dismissing the sparkling red stone, but he can't tell the difference between a good fake and a real jewel - he doesn't think Alona can either - and he's pretty sure Mr Morgan has the money to buy something that extravagant for his wife.
The theater is bigger and plusher and in much better condition that the Augustus, with gold scrolling all over the ceiling and doorframes, burgundy velvet seats with shiny dark wood armrests, intricate designs etched into the glass of all the wall sconces, even lighting, heavy paper programs, and a concessions stand like a fancy bar in a fancy pub. Half the bottles have labels in languages Jensen can't read. He feels decidedly outclassed.
“If you think this is posh,” Mrs Morgan whispers to Jensen, because apparently his staring is obvious, “you should see the old royal theater. Gold for miles and the most unobtrusive machinery you've ever encountered.”
“I don't think I've encountered it here,” Jensen whispers back.
“Just wait.”
Mr Morgan buys him a drink, and he watches as the bartender ostentatiously spins a little wheel on the wall behind him, making several small spheres of ice rattle out of a wide brass spigot into the glass. Jensen tries not to stare. The bartender pours two fingers of whiskey into the glass and hands it to him with a flourish. The balls of ice are all perfectly round, the exact same size, and don't change the taste of his cocktail at all, other than to make it cold.
“The bartenders in the old royal theater don't make a big deal of the ice,” Mrs Morgan tells him, as they move away from the bar. Both she and Mr Morgan have glasses of wine, apparently just as cold as Jensen's drink. “But here they like to put on a little show.”
The bartenders at the pubs Jensen frequents don't make a show of pouring drinks either, but they know their customers don't care. In some places you're lucky to get a clean glass, never mind a cold beer.
The lobby lights flicker, making Jensen look around, concerned.
“Come on,” Mrs Morgan says, taking Jensen's arm and leading him towards the doors into the auditorium. “The show's about to start.”
So that's how the nicer theaters let people know it's time to take their seats. In the Augustus, whoever is working the box office is in charge of herding theatergoers out of the lobby and into the auditorium before the show begins.
The seats in this place are very comfortable, Jensen has enough leg room, and the audience hushes respectfully when the house lights dim. The play Mr Morgan has brought him to is a supernatural drama involving a gentleman murderer, a police detective, a madwoman, a discreet amount of fake blood, a beheading, an elaborate set, a tilting stage, and several “ghosts” flying through the air on wires. Jensen tries to see into the fly loft over the stage to look for a catwalk and the kind of rigging this uptown theater uses, but it's unsurprisingly hidden by the curtain across the top of the proscenium and he can't see anything from his seat. He wants to get back there and check things out, but there's approximately zero reason for anyone to let him.
He sits back in his extremely comfortable velvet-upholstered seat and concentrates on the play. He makes note of the acting styles, the staging, the costumes, the overall design of the production. The lighting takes on a red cast for the beheading and a blue cast for the flashback scene. Jensen wonders how the crew managed that. Removable lenses on the spotlights, or just someone holding a piece of colored glass in front of them at the appropriate times? He'll put Osric and Alex on that. Hopefully won't break anything figuring it out.
The play isn't quite his taste, but he can't deny that it's well-done. He's only heard of one of the actors, but from the quality of the production and the theater itself he assumes the rest of the cast and crew makes enough money to live off this one job. The wardrobe mistress doesn't have to care for the costumes in her off-hours and work a day job to support herself. The crew can devote their whole time to building sets and moving lights and organizing props, and not have to work nights to keep a roof over their families' heads.
“You'd think that, wouldn't you,” Mrs Morgan says during intermission, after Mr Morgan asks how Jensen likes the production so far, and all Jensen can talk about is the money the theater must make. “There isn't much money in theater, unless you're a star.”
“The crew here has a full-time contract with the theater,” Mr Morgan says, “but the cast changes with every production. It isn't run the same way as the Augustus. Don't worry, I don't want to change that. I just want you to see what else is possible in terms of productions.”
“We don't have the money for such elaborate sets,” Jensen points out. “Or the space. I think we can manage colored spotlights, though. That's very clever.”
“I thought so too. They use colored glass for the lenses. It shouldn't be hard to adapt.”
“Would you like another drink?” Mrs Morgan asks Jensen. “You can watch the ice-maker again.” She grins.
“No, thank you,” he tells her. He can't let the Morgans buy him another drink, not after they sprung for a good seat for him at this theater.
“Are you sure?” Mr Morgan presses, and when Jensen nods, he continues “I think I would. Hilarie?”
“Another red, please,” she says. “See if they have an Ocelan.”
Mr Morgan saunters off towards the bar and Mrs Morgan entertains Jensen with stories about the theater and the actors and some of her husband's earliest productions until Mr Morgan returns with fresh glasses of wine. He hands one to his wife.
“I know what you think of the production values,” he says to Jensen, smiling a little, “but what do you think of the play?”
“It's very well-done,” Jensen says. “The acting's a little broad and the play itself isn't really my taste, but the ghosts were scary and the beheading was pretty convincing.”
“We could do that too. It's sleight of hand and lighting tricks and a dummy head. I know you had your heart set on a musical but I was thinking the next production should be a horror drama. People like to be scared, and we can do something impressive.”
Jensen isn't sure he agrees with either of those things, although he's more than willing to try for “impressive”. If he can convince his company to get their shit together in less than three days and execute a near-flawless opening performance, he can figure out colored lights and beheadings.
“And what do you think so far?” Mr Morgan asks Mrs Morgan.
“It's quite good,” she says, sipping her wine. “The beheading made me jump in my seat.”
“We're going to put on a horror show next,” he says with finality. “After the current run. I think the audience will like it.”
“Will there be a beheading?”
“At least two.” He grins and holds out his arm for her. “Shall I escort you back inside, Mrs Morgan?”
“Why, thank you.” She inclines her head, then holds out her free hand to Jensen. “And I shall escort Mr Ackles.”
Her sense of humor reminds Jensen of Danneel and Genevieve. They're all flirts.
Once a month Jensen meets with Mr Morgan to go over the box office returns, discuss the current show (whether it's in production or still in rehearsals), and plan the budget for the next show. Sometimes Mr Morgan comes to the theater. Sometimes Jensen goes to his office. Sometimes they meet somewhere in the middle.
This month is a “meet at Mr Morgan's office” month, and Jensen puts on his best suit and shines his shoes and brushes his hat so he won't feel like a beggar with his hand out when he presents himself to Mr Morgan's secretary. He's always been told (and has always believed) that the more pressed you look, the better service you'll receive, regardless of which industry you're in or what position you hold.
Mr Morgan's office is in the mid-city business district, far enough from the river to be a quality ward but not so posh that Jensen feels uncomfortable. He's wearing the exact same suit he wore to the theater with the Morgans, but somehow he feels less out of place, and more presentable, walking along the sidewalk towards Mr Morgan's building. He glances up to feel the sun on his face and catches sight of an airship gliding serenely over the city. He feels a twinge of pride knowing Jared could have worked the loom that wove the canvas that enables the airship to fly, and a twinge of frustration at both the mill's owner for not treating his workers right for such vital work, and Jared for constantly pushing the issue.
The airship passes beyond the tops of buildings and out of sight. Jensen stops to watch the wrap-around perpetual newsrun over the second-floor windows of the building on the corner, reading to himself as the wooden letters glide along their tracks and around the bend of the building, spelling out current news headlines and weather predictions and reminders about Council business. When he first came here from his hometown, he would watch the newsrun on one building for half an hour, then walk to the next one he knew of, to see if the news was any different. There are several in the business districts, and he learned that the news you see depends on where you are - near the Council Hall and the law courts the news tends to be about recent or upcoming legislation and whatever big cases the Council lawyers have on trial, whereas in other parts of the city you'll see economic or trading news, or international news, and there's one run around a newspaper building that seems to exist purely to share high-drama scandals and gossip.
The technology is above anything the Augustus can afford, never mind the costs of retrofitting the building to accommodate such a thing, but every so often Jensen entertains the idea of doing something similar on the marquee. He'd display the title of the current production and the names of the main actors. They'd keep the display posters and the schedule and current ticket price on the window, but a moving marquee, that would be something else. He'd get metallic-painted letters for nighttime, so they'd sparkle in the marquee's gas lights.
But it's just a dream, a fantasy. Right now he has to content himself with a static marquee and a tall ladder so they can change the titles for new productions. He knows that some theaters have moving displays in the lobbies or out in front of the building, with pictures of the actors and sometimes the production itself sliding in and out of view. Now, as he crosses the street to Mr Morgan's building and walks through the doors and calls the elevator, he wonders what Osric and Alex could do with that idea, if they could rig up something modern and technologically advanced to excite a potential audience. It's not arrogance to say his theater is one of the best in the ward, nor is it overselling to say he has a regular and faithful audience, but it would be nice to give folks something interesting, something to make them think they're in a better class of theater than they actually are.
He doubts he'll ever be able to do any of that at the Augustus, but a man can dream. Why else did Jensen even come to the city in the first place, if not to live out the dreams he couldn't realize back home? How else do men and women raise themselves out of the dark, except by dreaming? How else is the dark even bearable?
Mr Morgan's secretary lets him know Jensen is here to see him. Jensen takes a seat on one of the plush chairs in the waiting room and thinks about moving marquees and rotating displays of images. He thinks about better, more accurate spotlights and trap doors and how difficult it would be to build a platform to raise or lower actors onstage.
In trying to make his case to Mr Morgan, he feels a little bit like Jared must feel negotiating wages with the mill owner. They're talking about budget, after all. The theater has no contingency fund in the event of emergencies, and they can't raise ticket prices very much, so where would they get these extra funds? It's a reasonable question.
But Mr Morgan is the kind of person who will take Jensen to a good mid-city theater to see a well-funded production as a way to give him ideas for future productions in his own place, so Jensen feels secure in mentioning at least the moving marquee or the advertising display as something they should consider.
“Hm,” Mr Morgan says. “I'm not opposed to any of your ideas. Let's think about the moving stage. We could mount some interesting productions with that. The crew's good, aren't they? You know them better than I do - is that something they could build? Can it be done?”
“I think so,” Jensen says, even though he has absolutely no idea if it can or not. He's not an engineer. “I'll talk to the crew today. We'll look under the stage and try to figure it out.”
“Good. Then we'll determine how much we can spend on it. How are the audiences?”
“They're still coming. We haven't had any problems with the spotlights recently, although there's a leak backstage that no one can find the source of.”
“How bad is the damage?”
Jensen shrugs. “Hard to tell. It leaks, then it dries. Then it leaks, then it dries. There are streaks on the wall and the floor's discolored, but I don't know if there are any problems inside the wall. The floor's slippery, though. I don't want anyone to fall.” In fact they discovered there was a leak when Sterling's foot slid across a puddle and almost brought him down, one performance when he was trying to get into position for his entrance.
Sometimes you just have to let the leaks go, if the source is inaccessible or no one has time to find it. But you don't want mystery puddles in a theater. Besides, the longer there's a drip, the more likely the wood is to rot, or the plaster to come off the wall, and the longer they wait to fix it, the more expensive and extensive the damage can be.
Mr Morgan pulls a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer, scribbles something on it, and pushes it across the desk towards Jensen. It has a name and address on it. “If you can't find out where the leak is coming from and patch it, contact him.” He taps the sheet of paper. “He's very thorough.”
“How will we pay for that?”
Now it's Mr Morgan's turn to shrug. “Have him send half the bill to me. The theater will have to cover the other half.”
Jensen folds the piece of paper and puts it in his jacket pocket. The theater can't afford even half a contractor. He'll make Alex look for the leak. It will give him something to do besides mess with the spotlights.
“I'll come see the show this week,” Mr Morgan is saying. “Sit in the back, watch the audience. I'm glad it's doing well. I told you a farce would sell.”
“People like to laugh at the upper classes,” Jensen admits. He hates having to admit it, because he was opposed to doing it in the first place, but The Merits of Mr Marsden, for all its problems as a production, is bringing in the paying audiences.
“I think I've found just the playwright for the next production, the horror. Go to his next matinee and tell me what you think.” He reaches into the drawer again, this time pulling out a few coins and handing them over. Jensen's one misgiving about horror is getting the effects right so the play is genuinely scary, but his crew is pretty good at making a lot from a little. And if he can't find a suitable alternative, horror is what they'll do. Maybe he can get Jared to go to this playwright's current show with him. They'll scrape some coins out of the sofa cushions to cover his ticket.
Jared is all for it - he likes horror dramas - and the show in question is even playing in a theater Jensen knows. It's in a less shabby ward and has pretensions to greatness, expressed in faux marble and flaking gilt paint and faded, if still plush, seat cushions. There's even a rattling, hissing ticket machine behind the window, spitting out printed tickets with assigned seats on demand. The Augustus only has preprinted tickets and general seating, but if Jensen wants to be fancy, he can use a different typeface for each new show.
He takes Jared's hand during the performance, for no other reason than he can. Mr Morgan has sent them to a ghost story, and the first time a ghost appears Jared squeezes Jensen's hand hard enough for Jensen to elbow him in the side.
“Ow,” he hisses.
“It was scary,” Jared hisses back, but when Jensen glances at him, he's grinning.
“It's a good thing I love you.”
Jensen likes this horror drama better than the one Mr and Mrs Morgan took him to, and seeing it in a cheaper theater gives him a more realistic idea of what can and can't be done, in terms of staging and props and sets. There are no beheadings, but the ghosts are pretty good and the audience reacts appropriately.
There's no intermission, which he doesn't mind. Not all of the Augustus's productions are long enough for intermissions either.
“What do you think?” he asks Jared afterwards, as they're walking out.
“I liked it,” Jared says. “It was kind of scary. But you know I like a good ghost story.”
“You think it will play well at the Augustus?”
“Sure, why not? Is Marsden about to close?”
“No, but it's never too early to start thinking about the next show. Mr Morgan is stuck on horror, and unless I can give him a good musical, that's what we're going to do. He liked this playwright.”
“You still want to do a musical?”
“I still want to do a musical. The sets are easier. They're light and fun.”
“Danny can't sing. She'll be pissed if you pick a play you know she can't star in.”
“It doesn't matter. We're not doing one any time soon. It looks like horror or nothing.”
“Don't sweat over it.” Jared grabs Jensen's hand, brings it to his lips, and kisses the back of it. “It'll be great, whatever you do. You know it will.”
Jensen feels arrogant agreeing, but Jared's not wrong. The Augustus, for all its poverty-related faults, can still mount a good show.
“Do you have to be anywhere soon?” Jared asks. “Do you have to go to the theater?”
“They did the matinee without me. If there was a problem I'll find out later. We should get something to eat, though. Why?”
Jared leans close and whispers “I want to do things to you that I can't discuss in public.”
Jensen grins. “I think I can accommodate you.” Food can wait.
If they both start walking a little faster, well, anyone who knew why would understand.
The sky is clouding over by the time they get home, bringing the prospect of rain. They'll leave the windows open a little and get some clean fresh air into the flat. And if the rain is loud enough, they'll be less likely to disturb the neighbors. That's one of the (many) problems with living cheek-by-jowl with so many other people, in buildings with such thin walls - you can hear things you wish you didn't. Jensen and Jared used to be able to count time by when the family in the apartment to the left would yell at each other - they'd start around nine at night, every night, continue for an hour, and take it up again at six every morning - and they knew when the husband who lived upstairs was home because he had a very heavy step and the kids were much louder when he was around. That family moved out several months ago, and the family that moved in is much quieter, aside from the baby crying occasionally. There's a violinist in the building who practices next to an open window into the airshaft, sharing his music with the entire building and the one next door.
Jared and Jensen know every single time the couple across the airshaft has sex with the windows open, but to be fair, if the couple is paying attention at all, they can probably tell when Jared and Jensen are doing the same thing.
Like now.
“You sure you want the window open?” Jared murmurs into Jensen's neck as Jensen's hand trails down his bare back.
“I'm sure,” Jensen murmurs back.
“We'll get wet. The neighbors will hear us.”
“Serves them right for fucking so loudly all summer.”
Jared chuckles.
“They're probably not even home,” Jensen continues. It's the middle of the day on a Sunday, when people who aren't at work are generally at worship or otherwise out of the house. He wiggles under Jared, trying to get his pants off. “A little help?”
Onward!