here

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Ten Stories
Page
Title
Fandom
Description
1
Cover
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Wolflord
SPN: Jared/Jensen
NC-17: Jared thinks perhaps this wolf has been sent by
the gods to test him - and he was never one to back
down from a challenge.
16
An Unexpected Offer
AI:
Adam/Kris
PG-13: Courting scandal since boyhood, free-spirited
Adam Lambert vows there is just one way to save his
childhood friend from a loveless marriage: to kidnap
him!
20
Number Games
SPN: Sam/Dean,
past Jared/Dean.
R: Written for shoofus, a sequel to Lot 607.
28
The Shining of the Stars
Earthsea
PG-13: For three days and three nights, Ged holds the
Door, on Roke. Written for espresso_addict,
help_japan.
38
Casting Bread
SPN: Jared/Jensen
R: Written for the original prompter, a sequel to SinEater.
48
Dragonwatch
Harry Potter:
Snape/Harry
82
The Ackles Clause
SPN: Jared/Jensen
82
Cover
NC-17: Porn star AU. Or at least, porn star Jared and
director Jensen.
meus_venator
143
Sastrugi
RPS:
Pete Boardman/
Joe Tasker
R: RPS. It’s not true, but this one has haunted me for
years.
148
An Occurrence of Dragons
SPN: Jared/Jensen
148
Cover
R: Jared has been studying dragons since he was small.
He's been fascinated with them for what seems like
forever.
meus_venator
181
Morton Hall (The Spark
Notes Werewolf Remix)
The Well of
Loneliness
PG-13.:Werewolf remix. Contains a reversal of most
gender roles in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.
salty_catfish and sister
R: post canon: Harry Potter and the Egg Collectors.
Written for perverse_idyll, help_japan.
Bonus Stories
206
Tea in Black and White
SPN: Jared/Jensen
PG-13: Repost, edited, from blindfold_spn. J1 is a
werepanda and very rare.
213
Slick
SPN: Jared/Jensen
NC-17: Repost, edited, from spnkink_meme. Slick is
Not's totally fucked up little sister.
Credits
225
Credits and Thanks
2
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 7,500
Prompt: J2, captured beta werewolf!Jensen, warlord!Jared, historical
Jensen is a proud beta of the Fire Valley pack. After 25 summers he is still unmated. He bears courtship scars a'plenty, but none
of the alphas of the surrounding packs have been strong or swift enough to claim him in a mating battle. Jensen sets out on a
great journey to find an alpha worthy of his submission, only to be captured by mere humans. Chained, caged and muzzled,
Jensen resigns himself to death; to entering the afterlife dishonored and alone.
Jared is the Warleader of the clans. One of the northern clans deliveres a giant dire wolf as their yearly tribute, a breed that has
not been seen in their territory for generations. Jared, well-known for his kindness towards horse and hound, hand-feeds the wolf
and tries to help it regain its strength. He is intrigued by the glimpses of greater than animal intelligence he sees in the dire wolf.
Jared recalls the epic tale of the hero Bödvar. He defeated the great NorteWulf, but rather than chopping off its head, as he did
other monsters that threatened the clans, he fought and fucked the beast into submission. After that, it was his greatest ally
against the Dark. Jared thinks perhaps this wolf has been sent by the gods to test him - and he was never one to back down from a
challenge.
Notes: written for keerawa, in the animalistic behaviour meme on spn-hardcore. And I really, really owe Doro for the swift postposting edit – thank you.
Wolflord
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
In chorus, the dogs howl. The sledge dogs chained out in the yard and the watchdogs
on the wall, the pampered sleeve dogs of the Distaff Side, the huntsman's terriers and
the kitchen mutts: howling. Every four-legged canine within hearing gives tongue, a
rising, chaotic cacophony that bristles the hair on the back of Jared’s neck and sets
every man and woman in the hall on edge. The sound loosens swords in scabbards,
sends hands to light the primed braziers and torches, and brings the First Year of the
Warrior’s Side to their inexperienced feet. It's only Autumn. Ice is drifting in the
harbour and the cows are already in the byres, but the last ships for the Southern
Lands are still lingering at their moorings and the Watchers at the Wall are not yet
standing double shifts. If the howl warns of Skjald, blood shedders, the ice harriers,
winter’s bane, they’re unseasonably early.
In his great chair by the fire, Jared does not stir. It’s to him the grizzled warriors and
the young First Years look to take their cue, and so, unhurried, unworried, Jared sips
his beer and cocks an eyebrow at the dog standing at his feet.
His team leader, the dog who has led him safely over the ice and safely back for four
years of her life, does not look back. She’s watching the great door, stiff legged and
bristling between Jared’s knees, with an uneasy whine to her voice which means
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neither Skjald nor Friend. In the fireplace, the little terrier yaps as his paws spin the
roasting wheel, and Ghenna crouches back against Jared’s legs even as her voice falls
to a breath. But the Watchers on the Wall are not sounding the horns of the alarm, and
the high, spine-chilling screams of the Skjald cannot be heard over that fading howl.
Whatever is coming, it’s not Winter.
It’s Autumn. Jared’s sword rests by his elbow, not yet on his back. He reaches for it
slowly and deliberately, and around the hall men’s hands fall from their sword hilts
and women loosen their bows. When the great door to the hall opens, it’s to the
reindeer hide bundled, furred shapes of a Sami hunting skein, far from home and
unexpectedly laden.
By the time Ingreaux of the Great Doe River tribe tugs back her hood, the sword
Icebane lies bare across Jared’s knees and his hands rest flat-palmed over her broad
blade, a ceremonial salute from one warrior to another. Ingreaux nods at him, friend to
friend, and then she dips her head, subject to liege. Only then, palm up, does she offer
Jared the sledge. Tribute.
For a moment, when the great door had opened, Jared had thought they’d brought him
furs heaped in an untidy, bloody pile. But as the iced runners of the sledge grind
towards him over the bare stone of the hall floor and he sees the upturned paw
hanging loose, he thinks instead that the Sami have brought him fur unskinned, a great
otter or a grey-pelted summer bear. Although by the hush that runs around the
warriors, by the murmur of curiosity and shock that follows the sledge, he has to be
wrong. Whatever it is strapped down and bleeding, it’s nothing they’ve seen before.
When he can see, even he cannot hide his astonishment. It’s a NorteWulf, a direwolf,
myth made real in his own hall. Ice-runners, cloud-biters, rumoured to be almost the
only creatures that can take on hunting Skjald unaided and win; the giant wolves are
the stuff of a bard’s weaving or a child’s story-dreams. To be brought low, Jared
thinks, this one must have been old, so old it had come south to die, although no saga
Jared has ever heard suggests anything other than the fatal frozen waste of the furthest
North as their home. Beyond the lands of the Skjald, where no human has ever
walked: so far beyond the Wall that for all Jared knows the sun there might shine all
year around and the springs always run fresh and clear.
Even dead, the wolf is an awe inspiring sight. Laid out nose to hindquarters, it
measures Jared’s own height on the sledge.
Only when the Sami bring the sledge to the fire does Jared see, under the thick grey
and white brindled fur, the rise and fall of the wolf’s ribcage. It's alive, this wolf,
although it breathes too fast and too shallow for any healthy beast. Chains bind it
down, the vicious cold of the metal biting into the thick fur and the flesh under, and
the wolf's body has the stiff rigidity of any creature near death. Bloodied and bound,
its muzzle is still and its swollen, closed eyes with their incongruous long eyelashes
do not even twitch. The great dome of its skull is short-furred and elegant and its ears
fall soft against the iced wooden runners. Built for power and endurance, this wolf is
nothing like the lithe, slender snow-wolves Jared’s used to seeing on the ice, with
their light-stepping paws and lolling smiles. This is a direwolf, a NorteWulf, majestic
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even near death, deep furred, heavy jawed, capable of pulling down a white bear alone
or swimming a mile-wide ice-wracked lead without flinching. In all his twenty six
summers, Jared may have seen two direwolves before this one, and those imprecisely,
from afar, and in winter.
He looks up. He says, “Why?”
Even in the warmth of the hall, Ingreaux has not removed her outer parka, but under
three layers of fur and reindeer hide her shoulders lift. “You have enough furs,” she
says.
“So you thought to bring me one with teeth,” Jared says.
The warriors in the hall are almost silent, and Jared can feel eyes follow him as he
walks around the sledge. There’s an iron collar around the wolf’s neck and the muzzle
is bolted around jaws that could span Jared’s forearm and crack it in the blink of an
eye. Blood-scabbed, the fine fur of the wolf’s snout is harsh. In his moccasins, Jared’s
soft-footed and quiet, but it’s only once he's circled the sledge that he realizes, with a
shock that skitters down his spine cold as a shattered icicle, that the wolf is watching
him back through barely slitted eyes. It’s an incurious, dead stare, as if the wolf is
looking past Jared to a horizon beyond the stone walls of the great hall.
They’re strongly territorial, wolves, and they mate for life. By all the tides of its life,
this one should be running far beyond the Wall. It’s four hundred miles too far south
and near death. Under the mat of fur, it’s far too thin, and one of its legs lies at an
obscene angle against the sledge runner.
“How long?” Jared asks.
Ingreaux shrugs. “Seven days.”
He should put it out of its misery. Chained down as it is, the wolf’s head is bent over
the vulnerable throat, but a knife slipped between its second and third ribs will cut
clean and fatal into the heart. But it's a magnificent beast, and Jared’s fingers are
clenched on his dagger as he braces himself and leans forward. Behind him, the fire
flares. Light runs down the line of the blade, and glints from the wolf’s slitted eyes.
It’s watching him, now.
There’s no expectation in those eyes. There’s a dull resignation that knows exactly
what the knife means.
With an effort so great the wolf shakes, it rolls its head. Fresh blood oozes, sluggish,
around the bars of the muzzle and the chains that hold it down strain against the bolts.
Under Jared’s arm, the wolf bares the soft fur of its throat, and waits for death. Just as,
exactly as, a crippled warrior on bloodied ice asks for the mercy stroke. Jared’s
indrawn breath sounds harsh in the quiet. It's a wolf fit for the Gods, this beast, a tale
for the bards in his father's painted halls.
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Slowly, his eyes not leaving the wolf’s, Jared stands up. Sheathes the dagger. He says,
“Fetch the blacksmith. I want those chains struck. Hot water. Linen. Now.”
The wolf shuts its eyes. But it’s still breathing.
Against the dismayed shuffle in the hall, Jared raises his voice. He says, “A toast to
Fenrir, for the wolf’s life.” He puts out a hand for his drinking horn. It’s Gunter who
stands first, but the warriors are swift to follow: Alona with her long plait, Alvez, his
dark skin wrapped in furs even in the warmth of the hall. Mathew, Sven, and from the
Distaff Side his sister Meghan with her long plaits and her jewelled horn and her
household with her.
“Weis,” Jared says shortly, drains the horn, and as the cry of “Heil” goes up, he
smashes the horn into the fire as he would do for any other binding treaty. His oath on
the wolf’s life.
There are long hours, that night and the nights that follow, when he thinks he’ll be
foresworn.
It’s not just the bones, the broken leg and the snapped ribs he only discovers by
accident. Not the spear-thrust in the shoulder that brought the wolf down, nor the
sticky, wet shallow heave of its breath nor the infected sores where the chains held it
still. Nor the bitten out arrow-wounds. It won’t eat, Jared’s wolf. It won’t drink, for all
that its nostrils flare when the boy brings fresh water, the first night. Lying on a pallet
in front of the fire in Jared’s room, the wolf has chosen death.
He thinks it dozes. Sometimes, as he bathes the cuts and changes the dressings on its
wounds, brings bowls of steaming mustard water for its breathing, combs out the
tangles in its heavy coat and assesses the scarred and battered skin under the fur that
speaks soundlessly of years-old and years-long battles, Jared knows it’s awake.
Feverish, half-aware, its presence is as clear to him as his own. More often, it’s
somewhere else, dreaming not as dogs do with their scrambling paws and panted
breath but deep and long and absorbed, halfway already to the warrior’s halls in
Valhalla. Never, never, does it acknowledge by the twitch of a paw or the flicker of an
eye Jared's presence.
He's been his father's second born son for twenty one summers, Jarl in his own right
for four. When Jared speaks, his hall falls silent. When he draws his sword, his
warband unsheathe their weapons and wait on his word, they too his to wield. But the
wolf ignores him as if he's nothing.
It makes Jared angry. Angry, and determined.
The next time the wolf wakes, it’s with Jared’s hand thrust down its throat. By the
sudden, tense stillness of its body, Jared knows it’s awake and aware. When he looks
down, it’s looking back at him, his wolf, filmy dull eyes rolled back. So little left in
them even of the resignation he’d seen three nights before. The wolf could take
Jared’s sword hand off with one snap of its teeth, and for a moment Jared wishes,
fiercely, that it would. Anything other than the resigned, lax loll of its jaw, although
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Jared knows that the moment he moves the wolf will cough up the bread and water
he’s pushing down its throat.
In that moment, he hates the wolf for its passive acceptance of death. A warrior’s
death should be a thing of sagas, not this slow fading on a blood-stained pallet in front
of the fire.
“You bitch,” Jared says clearly, to the green sliver of the wolf’s eyes.
He drags his hand free and slaps, hard, against the wolf’s muzzle. The force of it rocks
the wolf's head against the straw. “You scared little bitch,” Jared says, and does it
again, and he could swear there’s a glint of something - interest, curiosity? - in the
wolf’s eyes.
He’s so angry he doesn’t think. He heaves the wolf over onto its back, heavy and
loose-limbed, leans a knee onto its belly and bends forward. Just as he’s seen an alpha
snow-wolf own his pack mates, Jared fastens his hand around that bared throat and
squeezes, hard. He can just about stretch his fingers to hook in the beast’s jaw and
make it look at him.
“You’re mine,” Jared says, emphasising each word with tightening fingers. “Whatever
you call yourself. I’m your king, wolf, your alpha, your jarl. I own the hair on your
belly and in the food in your gullet and every breath you take.” He stares the wolf
down. Under his hand, the wolf stares back. Jared doesn't look away, doesn't blink.
He's holding his breath, although the wolf's whistles through its compressed windpipe
with a whine that shivers through Jared's skin. Slit-eyed, the wolf watches him back,
and Jared tightens his fingers. There's no fear in him, only an ice-solid determination,
and the wolf knows. It's a long struggle, a very long struggle, this silent duel between
wolf and man.
Jared wins. There is no fear in him to allow otherwise, and in the wolf’s eyes, finally,
he sees a grudging and rebellious acknowledgement. In capitulation, the wolf
wrenches its head further back, the tendons of its throat hardening under Jared’s hand,
fur over sinew, and swallows.
It’s the faintest of motions, that submission, and Jared knows it’s temporary.
But it’s watching him back, Jared's wolf. It sees him.
“You eat for me,” Jared says fiercely. “You eat, you drink, you heal. You’re mine,
you hear me?” He rocks his hand. “You live. And then we fight this out.”
By sunrise, lying on its belly, the wolf is eating from a basin. It claws itself back from
death with a stubborn tenacity Jared can only admire. It's a polite and tidy patient,
shamed by its own mess. A neat eater, grooming itself when it can barely stand, and
occasionally Jared could swear he sees not a beast’s playfulness but a human’s
sardonic dark humour in those eyes.
Awake, the beast does not take its eyes off Jared. It’s disconcerting, that steady
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neutral gaze. Jared's NorteWulf fights its way back onto its feet watching Jared’s
sword arm and the way he places his boots on the plank floor, the heft of his dagger
hand and the breadth of his shoulders. It watches Jared as closely as a man watches
his blood feuded enemy, but is never less than the politest of guests. Whatever it is,
it’s no snow-wolf, this beast. It’s as fully aware as Jared himself, as intelligent, as
proud.
There can only be one Jarl in any stedding. The day the wolf snaps at Jared's hand is
the day he slams his knees in the tender cage of its ribs, jams a stave in its jaws, and
buckles on both collar and chain. It's the first time he sees heat in those green eyes,
staring back at him.
"You should have saved your strength," Jared says, but the wolf twitches away,
hunches its shoulders and turns three times on the pallet, great paws flexing on the
cloth as if the coarse wool burns the pads of its feet. Clamped between its legs, the
plume of its tail shivers, and when it drops down it's with an unsteady, hitched
collapse. It lies oddly tense and shivering.
If the wolf had been female, Jared would have said it was going into heat. It's not.
Neatly furred and carried close to its warm belly, its genitals are as male as Jared's
own. Frowning, Jared stares at the uncommunicative, tight line of the beast's back. He
feels unsettled himself, overly warm and restless. It's a feeling that eases as he goes
out to the hall, but later, as he stumbles back to his room, sober and disconcertingly
unsteady, he's dizzy with heat. His skin itches, too tight for the beat of his heart, his
balls are drawn tight and his cock is as shamingly hard as if he were still in his first
year on the Warrior's Side of the hall. Shuffling and unsteady, he has to prop himself
up on the stonework of the passage to move. His eyesight's blurred, but his skin is so
sensitive the sandstone jars his skin, and his sense of smell is so heightened he can
almost taste the scent of the girl carrying blankets into the hall. She smells ripe, of
flesh and warmth, so enticing Jared's reached out for the soft burn of her bared
shoulder before he realizes what he's done. He doesn't tumble the men or women of
his own Distaff Side, he's seen the trouble it causes in his father's halls, but he burns,
and in that moment he can think of nothing but burying himself in the relief of her
flesh. His cock, sword-proud, weeps: his fingers clutch at her furs. He can hear her
gasp sharp as a crack of thunder.
"Jarl?" It's breathy, disbelieving.
"I want," Jared says, and his fingers are already sundering the fastenings of her cloak
as he rolls them both through his doorway. He takes her, a desperate relief, standing
against the wall, and then again tumbling in front of the fire. It barely sates him.
There'd have been a third time, his cock rousing unsatisfied only minutes later, if she
hadn't whimpered. He was enough himself then to let her stumble away, but not
master of his own flesh: he strips his own cock until the skin of it burns with the
friction of his calloused hands. Again and again, spending onto the stone flags and the
fireside rag rug, until he can no longer bear his own touch. Unbearably roused, his
skin raw, he can hear his own voice whine in his throat.
It's only then, hurting and still hard enough to hammer stone, that he sees the wolf. It's
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straining against the chain, paws scrabbling at the stone, its eyes fixed on his and its
haunches juddering against the pallet. It's as aroused as he is, in heat, frantic.
For the first time, Jared looks in its eyes and sees nothing more than a beast staring
back at him, as powerful in its want as any predator. For the first time, in a wash of
sympathetic lust, he understands the old tales of men fucking beasts, Loki and Slepnir,
Odin and the swan-maidens, Bödvar and the NorteWulf. As if in a dream, he rolls
onto his back, dips his fingers into the goose-grease warming by the fire, and displays
himself for its eyes. Spreads his legs, runs his hand up the jutting strength of his cock,
rolls the head of it in the palm of his hand in shameless display. Deep in its throat,
enthralled, the wolf groans, and for it Jared pleasures himself in the guttering glow of
the fire. With the wolf watching, as he has never done before for any man or woman,
he makes a show of the thing, the flex of his muscles, the heave of his ribcage and the
rise of his hips, the way sweat gleams on his belly and thighs. It’s a display that’s
nothing but power and he knows it, until the moment when he spends, and then, laid
bare and vulnerable before the wolf’s eyes, it’s something else altogether. In the
weakness after, Jared rolls to his belly, creeping forward: his hand is the breadth of a
sword’s blade away from the wolf’s reaching paws and his legs are spread, his ass
aching. He wants, needs, more than the touch of his own hand, he’s empty and
wanting as he has never felt himself yearn before in all the years of his life.
He’s spreading his legs for the wolf.
The thought of it shocks him frozen. He looks up, and the wolf stares back at him with
fire in its eyes, triumphant. It’s not fighting against the chain, now, and as Jared
watches horrified at himself it sits up, as composed as a king on the pallet. Yawns,
carefully composed, although there’s a fine tremor to its skin that sets the heavy ruff
of fur shivering and against its belly its dick rises as swollen and hard as Jared’s own.
But it’s as proud and silent as a votive statue, waiting, as sure of Jared as he is of his
own warband.
He’s no man’s bitch. No wolf’s. Fumbling, furious, Jared slams down the dagger from
his sleeve between them, the blade sparking from stone. His voice is harsh and his
words bitten out, when he speaks. “I did not come a thief or a beggar to your halls,
wolf,” he says. “Trickster.” It’s an insult, and the wolf knows it: its eyes drop.
“Wounded, you fed from my hand and slept by my fire. Harness your spells. You
should be kneeling to me.” When Jared stands, weak-kneed, the wolf backs down. Its
tail is a crestfallen droop, its head low, although it’s still shaking and it moves its
paws as gingerly as if it walked on embers.
“You shame me,” Jared says, and the wolf whimpers, the sound so short it’s almost
throttled in the beast’s throat, as if it had not meant to give tongue. And as if it had not
spoken, Jared walks to his bed, rolls himself in his furs, and deepens his breathing for
the wolf’s ears alone.
On its pallet, the wolf, restless and agitated, does not sleep either. It’s sunrise before
both of them fall into exhausted rest.
Jared pays his debts. That night, as behooves a Jarl, he beds the girl as he should have
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done the night before, making of her body something precious and beautiful until she
lies replete and smiling in his furs. There’s no heat to it, for him, nothing of the power
and need he’d felt under the wolf’s eyes, only pleasure shared. He sends her away
with a skein of silk wrapped around gold, and both of them know it will never happen
again. And if he turns her body to the lamplight and lets the wolf watch the shape of
his hands on her skin, that’s between him and the beast. If his ears are cocked for a
growl that never comes, although the wolf’s eyes are sea-glass green in the dark, the
girl is kind enough not to enquire.
Winter comes. Winter comes not with a howl but with a scatter of snowflakes on a
Western wind and a creeping coverlet of sea ice in the harbour, and the last ship of the
year heaves in its hawsers and turns its prow to the South. On the wall, the Watchers
sharpen their swords and fire their braziers, and in Jared’s hall the Warrior’s Side
tighten their harnesses and foreswear the feasts and toasts of Summer. Winter washes
up ice against the harbour walls, drifts snow against the Wall and brings with it the
hag-ridden, sword-song wait for the loathsome yowl of the Skjald.
When Jared was a boy, no one wintered in the North. The longships sailed in Spring
and fled in Fall, bringing with them the furs and amber and black gold of a summer’s
trading and leaving the frozen land to the snow-beasts and the Skjald alone, ice-bound
and knife-cold. When he became a man, when his father’s kingdom could no longer
hold him, Jared set sail for the North with six ships and a cargo of wood and seed
grain, goats and geese and the hardy black cows of the Orkney Islands, carpenters and
smiths and weavers and herders. With him went the companions of his boyhood,
grown to warriors and sworn to his sword, his sister-queen Meghan and the elderly
bard who had taught him his letters with a tawse in one hand and a stolen psalter in
the other. His mother had watched dry-eyed from the harbour wall.
The first winter had been harder than any of them had dreamed. By the second, they
had built the Wall, and that year they had sent the Skjald screaming from the steel of
their swords. In Summer, the Sami came, and the first ship of the trading fleet sailed
south with the fruits of a year’s hunting and came back with the second settlers,
prepared and joyful. Through Summer, through Winter, Jared forged his kingdom
from the ice and ruled it wisely and well.
In his father’s house, Winter was for sagas and feasting. In Jared’s, it was the season
for war.
That year, the fifth year of Jared’s reign, the Skjald come early and in force, at night.
It is the wolf’s howl that wakes him, deep and urgent, ringing from the walls,
tumbling Jared from his bed and setting his hand to Icebane’s hilt before he opens his
eyes. The chain is tight: the wolf is as tense as an archer’s bow the moment before the
arrow flies, and it’s looking North. The tone of its voice is a clarion call to arms, and
Jared’s shrugging on his stiffened leather parka and dragging on his firskins even
before the Watchers sound the alarm. Sharp in the night air, the warning rises, and the
wolf’s voice rises with the sound of the horns. Icebane slung on his back, his knives at
his belt, Jared races for the door. Over it, his mother’s war axe waits: he snatches it,
flings open the door -
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And looks back. The wolf is silent. It’s not begging. It’s as poised and calm as Alona
had been, the first Winter, the night she and Jared had held the gate alone.
Jared takes two steps back, rolls the axe in his hands, and strikes the chain.
The wolf fights like a demon. It fights at Jared’s side, fierce with hate, steady as a
grizzled veteran, bare-toothed and violently-clawed. Its jaws snap the frozen bones of
the Skjald’s limbs as Jared’s axe hews their misshapen skulls: it tears out their stringy
throats as Icebane rips through their empty bellies. The wolf knows. It leaves no body
whole to rise again at their backs, no bone unbroken, no skin unrent. There’s no
killing blow, for the Skjald. They bleed, slow and almost black: they break, brittle and
sharp in the ice, they do not die. Like Jared, the wolf is careful where it treads on the
beaten, bloody snow, guarding for the buried hand still clasping a frozen dagger: like
him, it’s as watchful for the newly risen dead as the desiccated shadows of the flesh of
men whose souls had fled centuries before. Caught in a battle in which it owes no
fealty, the wolf is as solid at Jared’s side as the closest of his warband, as strong at his
back as his brother had been, five years past. It learns the sweep of his axe and the
swing of his sword, the hamstring thrust of his dagger hand: Jared learns that the
moment when it stills is the moment before it leaps, the urgent yelp of its warning, the
triumphant growl of its victory. That although it can spin on the turn of a die and leap
the height of Jared’s head, only a sharpened blade will cut the clinging Skjald fingers
from its long coat as its pack brother’s teeth must have done, in the far North. Weary,
bloodied, in the last of the battle when the Skjald have been pushed from the Wall and
are beginning to turn back to the ice, Jared turns to grin at the wolf and finds it
grinning back.
Only fire destroys the Skjald. This they learned, almost too late, the first Winter, but
now the barrels of pitch lie sealed and ready, packed in hay against the frost, and the
kindling is stacked in piles the height of a ship’s mast. There’s no shortage of
driftwood on the Western beaches. It saved their lives. Scavengers, bent over, the men
and women of the Distaff side and the Warrior’s Side work together, turning over
broken limbs and shattered, fragmented ribcages, lifting snapping skulls on the point
of a sword and grasping hands on the shaft of a broom, gathering the undead into a
pyre broad and high as the spread of a sail. The wolf watches, fascinated: when the
pyre is lit and the Skjald scream, burning, it shivers with astonishment. Wolves, Jared
thinks, do not have fire. As he would not have done, before, Jared reaches out a hand
and tugs gently at the beast’s ears, soft as thistledown under his fingers. He’s smiling
when it turns its head, grinning, and then like a dog it wags its tail. Twice. It’s an
utterly conscious parody that makes Jared laugh out loud, because the wolf is no more
a household pet than Ghenna a lapdog.
Never again does he chain his wolf. Instead, swordbrother, packmate, he and his wolf
walk the Wall side by side. In the yard, they learn to fight together, teeth as sharp as
Icebane’s edge, axe as powerful as the snap of the wolf’s jaws. From his high chair,
Jared looks down the great hall at the men and women of his stedding, and by his side
and fed from his hand his wolf sits quietly, unfettered. In council, it lies at his feet: at
night, it sprawls in front of his fire. Silent and untiring, it runs by the side of his
sledge, and his dogs learn to respect its presence. Even in the depth of Winter, Jared’s
wolf knows where the ice is thinnest, where the seals will surface, when the weather
11
will hold and when it will break. Two days before the ice-storms scream from
cloudless skies, the wolf will turn for home and with it both dog team and Jarl.
It’s a creature of the North, and Jared is not. But he does not come a beggar to this
strange coupling. The wolf never loses its fascination with fire, and so, the hearth in
Jared’s room is never allowed to cool. Feasting, the wolf will lap from a bowl of
heather ale as neatly as any human guest: it has a weakness for sweetmeats and
candies, and Jared finds himself hoarding honey cakes and dried apples against the
heavy butt of its head against his thigh. Curled in front of the fire, half-asleep, the
wolf will let Jared comb out the tangles in its coat and oil the pads of its feet against
the ice with an unexpected complicity, as if it craves the touch of Jared’s hands as
much as he loves the warmth and weight of its fur against his fingers.
He comes to think of the wolf as friend. Furred, four legged, speechless, but friend all
the same. It’s possible, he thinks, that the wolf likes him too. They laugh at the same
things, he and his wolf. They have the same appetite for sagas, caught up in the tales
of heroes and ages past long into the night. They have the same enemy: they hate with
the same intensity.
But there is little time for sagas, that fifth winter. That year, the Skjald throw
everything they have against the Wall. Walking skeletons with sea wrack tangled
around the bleached white of barnacled bones, Inuit dead empty-eyed and almost icebound inside their tattered sealskin garments, nothing in their hands but obsidian
spears and flint knives, Sami hunters starvation-thin from long-ago journeys. A race
of men Jared does not recognize, broad-shouldered and strong-thighed and naked on
the ice, men who fight bared-handed with their hands and teeth. These, the wolf hates
with passion, shredding pale skin and splintering dense bone with focused intensity.
That Winter, Jared and his wolf sleep lightly when they sleep at all, tumbling into
their shared furs with Jared’s hand still stiffly clenched around Icebane’s hilt and the
wolf’s muzzle stained with the black residue of whatever it is the Skjald bleed from
their long-dead veins. All Winter, the pyre burns, sending acrid, sticky smoke into the
grey of the sunless sky, and the Distaff Side stand watches back-to-back with the
Warrior’s Side.
Jared does not know it, but this is the last stand of the Skjald. Whatever it is that raises
them from their icy graves and sends them to spend their strength against the living in
jealous, murderous conflict, never again will it throw itself in such anger against the
Wall and the men and women of the stedding. While it lasts, though, the fifth Winter
feels as if it will never end, dragging itself out in a haze of exhaustion and blood
spilled on ice, flashing past in moments nothing more than starlight on the blade of a
raised sword and a wolf’s bared teeth before both bite home.
Only when the sun rises above the horizon for the first time, that Spring, does the beat
of the Skjald against the Wall lesson. The Skjald still come, dragging themselves over
the ice limbless and blind to be gathered up and burnt in the great living pyre of the
dead, but Jared can lay down his sword while he sleeps and his wolf leans against his
knees in the hall and begs for stories with proud, pleading eyes.
Spring comes. The Skjald have failed. In the harbor, ice cracks into floes under the
12
heave of the tide, and the wind from the West blows the snow from the shoreline. The
tiny white anemones, first flowers of the year, bloom in the shelter of the Wall, and
Jared and his wolf hunt living prey, not dead. That Spring, in the evenings after the
work is done, blind Bjorn sings the saga of the theft of Birkenfrost, and then the saga
of Micklegard and the Emperor over the Sea, and then he sings the saga of Bödvar
and the great NorteWulf. Five nights it takes, that tale, and through the length of it
Jared sits with his hand fastened around his drinking horn and his own wolf at his feet.
As Jared has promised to do, Bödvar fought his wolf. He fought it, he fucked it - and
there’s a murmur around the hall at the word, unequivocally harsh - and bound it by
its own promise. On his great chair, Jared stirs uneasily, and at his feet his own
NorteWulf sits up, battle tense, eyes fixed on the blind bard. It’s not Jared but his wolf
Bjorn’s white, empty gaze turns to as he strikes the last note from the battered harp
strings and says, this was the first saga of Bödvar and the NorteWulf. There is
another, from the years when they ruled jointly over the Western Isles and won their
freedom from the Orcadian Jarls. “My Jarl,” Bjorn says, “Would you hear it?”
“I would,” Jared says, inexplicably both angered and afraid, and the wolf makes a
half-throttled sound he’s never heard it voice before.
“In these years,” Bjorn says quietly, “The NorteWulf took its second form, that of a
man -”
The wolf leaps for Bjorn’s throat, and Jared leaps for his wolf. Around him weapons
sing from their scabbards and stools clatter to the stone flags of the halls, and Meghan
sweeps Bjorn up and away in the grip of her strong hands and Alona gives tongue to
the high, piercing war-cry of her own people, but Jared does not notice. His hands are
locked around the wolf’s throat and its claws scar his back with terrible strength.
Jared’s wolf has been watching him. It knows the grip of his hands and the weakness
of his left thigh, where a splintered stone spear caught him unawares a moon past, and
when it rolls, it crashes them both against the trestle table just where the wooden
struts will catch at the scar. But while Jared’s wolf has been watching him, Jared’s
been watching his wolf. He knows that the wolf will face unafraid any threat face-on,
but that an enemy at its back will tense every muscle and clamp its tail between its
legs. There are linear, striped scars on the wolf’s hindquarters that can only be the
reminders of fights long past, and Jared’s seen the snow-wolves mate, vicious and
snapping on the ice. Cunning, hurting, he thrusts his thigh hard between the wolf’s
hind legs and forces himself hard against its vulnerable ass and its small, soft-furred
genitals. Under the grip of his hands, the wolf howls like any mindless beast, and its
hind legs claw at Jared’s thighs, scrabbling desperately against his weight, and for the
first time it’s fighting as if it’s truly afraid. It’s twice Jared’s weight and its teeth, held
snapping inches from his face, are the length of his thumbs, but even as Jared ruts
down in an obscene parody of an act he’s only once completed without joy he can feel
the wolf harden against his thigh.
“Change,” he hisses, “Show yourself, wolf. Fight like a man. Or I’ll chain you like the
beast you are -”
Under his hands, skin. Under his weight, skin not fur, smooth and hard in all the right
places, and his fingers are fastened around a human throat and the hard line of his dick
13
presses against another, human and hot and firm as his, and the limbs locked around
his hips are long and smoothly muscled and unfurred. There are hands fastened on his
shoulders, and the eyes that stare back at his own are wide and dark in a strong-boned,
stubbled face he’s never seen and yet, recognizes.
“Wolf,” Jared says, and then he laughs, because everything he can feel, skin against
his skin, muscle and bone and the fine weight of hair not fur brushing against his
knuckles, is both brand new and heart-familiar. Suddenly, there’s a fierce joy in this
fight, and his hands are greedy and possessive in their bruising grip and his dick is an
iron-hard demand. And even as his wolf strains against Jared’s hands, he’s clutching
just as hard with his own. “Wolf, wolf,” Jared groans, and rolls them both on the stone
floor, with one hand sliding down the elegant smooth muscled lines of his wolf’s
human skin to the perfect curve of his haunches. “Tell me your name,” he demands,
staring into those human eyes as his hand tightens around a human throat. Fingernails
dig as deeply into his back as claws, and his wolf’s thighs spread and hitch under him,
and he knows then, he knows his wolf wants him as badly as he his wolf. “Oh my
sword brother, my shieldmate of the long teeth, my heart,” Jared murmurs, the words
soft and meant for one creature alone. “My dear,” he says, and then he lets go. He lets
his hand unclench from that vulnerable throat, rolls them both again so that his own
back is sore against stone and his wolf lies sprawled over him belly to belly. He forces
himself to lie still, spreads his hands above his head, and says, “Does it have to be this
way for you, my brother? Must it always be cruel? Is there no space left for love in
your heart?”
Staring down, his wolf’s eyes widen until the color of them is no more than a sliver
around the black. He’s as tense as an ice-forged blade, shaking, and his teeth bite into
his bottom lip so hard blood springs scarlet from the wound. “You...” the wolf says,
and his voice is low and deep, a growl that shudders through Jared’s skin. “Jarl,”
Jared’s NorteWulf says, and then suddenly he tucks his face down into the crook of
Jared’s neck and says, “Jared. Alpha.” His hands knead at Jared’s shoulders and his
hips rock, unconsciously pleading.
“Shhh,” Jared says, as he would say to any wounded, heart-sore creature, and he
gathers his wolf in his arms and stands, braced against the weight of a man not that
much smaller than himself. His wolf’s eyes are closed, but the men and women of his
stedding are not blind.
“It seems,” Jared says, and smiles with all his teeth showing. “It seems the Sami
brought us a gift greater than they knew.” On the Warrior’s Side, Alona raises her
horn in a silent toast, and Meghan’s grinning at him with a smile as wide and wild as
his own. “Bjorn, tell us. How did that second saga go, that saga of Bödvar and his
NorteWulf?”
Bjorn coughs and clears his throat. “Renowned and wise -” he manages, and is
interrupted.
“There was a hand-fasting before!” Meghan yells. “Jarl, we should feast!”
“Let him bed the wolf first,” Sven shouts, and there’s a chorus of voices offering both
14
enthusiastic encouragement and cheerfully ribald instruction. They’re not shy, his
men and women, and Jared grins back at them predatory and triumphant before he
hefts his wolf in his arms and takes him out to the bed they’ve shared for most of the
Winter.
It’s different this time, when he tumbles his wolf down into the furs. They're not
battle-weary and worn. There's no blood on their skin and fur, no wounds to tend:
Icebane is not sharing their bed. Jared's laughing when he lets himself fall, and his
wolf opens his hands to catch him safe. That night, like Bödvar, Jared fucks his own
NorteWulf, rolling in the furs gentle and victorious by turn. Astonished, clumsily
gentle, Jared's wolf shivers at the touch of Jared's hands and seems to think Jared's
going to fuck him dry and hard like any beast of the field. The wolf's spent twice by
the time Jared's satisfied he's not going to give a moment's hurt, here in his own bed
with his love in his arms, and when the wolf comes on Jared's cock it's with a joyous
howl that rattles the war axe in its cradle and shakes dust from the rafters. Later,
poised, their hands clasped and Jared's body yearning and empty, Jared spreads his
thighs and bites the pillow for his wolf. When Jared's NorteWulf thrusts home, Jared
finds that surrender can be just as sweet as victory.
It’s a long Summer, the sixth Summer Jared Wolfjarl rules in the North. The sun
warms the grain to ripening, and the cows calve easily and give generously of their
milk, and the hunting is easy. That summer, the Jarl and his NorteWulf Jensen
Jaredswolf travel further north than any save the Inuit have ever journeyed, and return
with a sledge piled high with brindled furs of a kind no trader has seen before. Sixteen
ships from the Southern Lands ride at anchor in the harbor and one of them carries the
Southern Queen, meeting at last her children in the land they have made their own.
And that Summer, the blind bard Bjorn starts to write his swansong saga, the tale of
the wolf who was also a man and the man who tamed a wolf.
~*~
All things must pass. Jared’s ashes lie where he lived, in the North, and his wolf’s
with them. But although Jared Wolfsjarl and Jensen Jaredswolf together feast in
Valhalla, wherever men and wolves meet, their story is told, and from the icy wastes
of the North to the Empire over the Sea their names are not forgotten.
15
Fandom: American Idol
Pairing: Adam Lambert/ Kris Allen
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1300
Prompt: Courting scandal since boyhood, free-spirited Adam Lambert vows there is just one way to save his childhood friend
from a loveless marriage: to kidnap him! But Kris Allen is furious. So angry that he challenges him to take their assignation to its
natural conclusion and seduce him. When his inexperienced attempt flares into intense passion, Adam is ruined…and hopelessly,
unexpectedly, in love with Kris. Now the wild and willful Adam must convince Kris that they are a perfect match—in every way.
Notes: written for harlequinkradam. Almost two years late.
Beta: Doro.
An Unexpected Offer
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
“I think not,” Adam says, and lays down his hand. He has won. Again.
The candle flame wavers briefly, sending shadows flickering across the fine bones of
Adam’s fingers and the pierced lace of his cuffs. There’s a diamond pin on each wrist
and emeralds set into his rings, a baroque setting so old fashioned Adam has made the
style his own. Adam’s hands are broad, strong, and although his skin is as pale as any
hothouse debutante’s, Kris knows that on the hilt of a sword or a horse’s rein his grip
is implacable.
As it is on Kris.
He closes his eyes, takes a breath. The room smells of wood smoke and charred paper,
of the sweet heady scent of the peonies on the mantle and the rich Spanish wine Adam
insisted on drinking and the patchouli scented powder of his wig. Kris, unscented,
plainly clothed, sans wig, sans gloves, coat, boots - and under the card table his
stocking’d feet curl nervously against the Persian carpet, damn you Adam - smells,
faintly, of horse. He’s as out of place here in Adam’s library as he ever was in any
overheated ballroom.
“Again?” Kris asks. He opens his eyes to see Adam lean back in his chair, the ruffles
falling away from Adam’s wrist as he raises the wineglass to his mouth. Adam’s eyes
are narrowed, but he’s watching the swirl of wine in the glass, not Kris’ face, and for
that Kris is grateful. Adam sees too much.
Adam says, “I doubt you have much left to lose.” His voice is distant, mildly amused.
He takes a sip of wine, the sack so rich a red that Kris could almost imagine seeing the
color of it sliding down Adam’s pale throat.
16
He swallows.
Adam says, “My dear, by my calculations you are all but beggared.”
Kris looks away. The fire is bright, greedy, and the ashes of his betrothal papers are
long devoured. He says bitterly, “Of your devising.”
“Indeed so,” Adam says. His rings chime against the crystal of his wineglass.
“Sir,” Kris says bitterly.
“Oh, come now,” Adam says, and from the corner of his eye Kris catches the sudden
movement as Adam lays his glass aside and leans forward. “Desist. Am I not your
friend in this as in all else? Can you truly say to me that this... this mockery of a
marriage was your heart’s desire? Kris -” he says, and for a moment he sounds
younger, less sure of himself, something more akin to the boy who shared Kris’
childhood than the man who came back from Paris painted, perfumed and possessed
of such biting wit one barbed aside could make or break any aspiring courtier. “Kris, I
had thought -”
“You did not think!” Kris hisses. “You did not consider, sir, the consequences of
this... this game you are playing. Did you not think to consider that half the ton must
have seen you - us - depart? That by now Lord Cowell must know? Your family? My
mother -” He has to stop. Even as a child Adam was impulsive, possessed of sudden
starts of enthusiasm and flights of fancy, yet never before had his actions been so
destructive. Kris is so angry he can barely think, yet Adam is watching him with a
slow and lingering smile that is almost fond.
“My sisters!” Kris says despairingly. “Have you no thought for them at least?
Whatever quarrel you may have with me, surely by the friendship your father bore
mine you might have spared them the consequences of such an action? If I am ruined,
under what name might they shelter? Who would offer marriage to such tainted
lineage? Is it not enough that you possess my father’s debts? Must you -”
“Stop!” Adam says. He has one hand thrown up, and in the pallor of his face his eyes
glitter green. “Did you but govern your face,” he says, “Your sisters and your mother
would have remained as blind as they must have surely been. One look,” he says.
“One look at your face, Kris. How could I not act when you looked at me with such
despair I could have wept?”
“Is it not enough that you have ruined my name?” Kris spits out. “Must you blame me
for it also? It was not I who took me from my fiancé’s ballroom - my fiancé, sir, the
man to whom in all honor I had promised myself and my father’s estate - not I who
bundled myself willy-nilly into your coach nor dragged my person half a hundred
miles in one single night, drugged and bound -”
“I know you,” Adam interjects. He’s smiling again, leaning back in the chair with his
wineglass again in his hand.
17
“What difference does that make?” Kris says. “When society judges what you have
done - and believe me, sir, I am well aware your wealth will save your good name and
my lack of it damn mine - think you they will say, it was just a prank between friends
and let the thing pass? A game? Sir, it is a game that has ruination written large across
the seal!”
“It is not the wine which brings color to your cheeks,” Adam says, “Yet the rose of it Kris. Am I so foolish? I know your face. Demur all you will, I know how you felt
under your fiancé’s loving hands. He has ever had a cold grasp and well I know it:
think you I could leave you to his mercy when you looked at me as if I were your only
hope? If I could I would have taken you then. As it was -” Adam shrugs, and glances
down at the table where lie Kris’ father’s IOUs, his mortgages, the deeds to the
London house and to the Dorset estates and the Sussex manor that lies not five miles
from Adam’s own house. “It took longer than I would have liked. And then did I not
give you the chance to win back your estates? It is no fault of mine if a year in Town
has not yet polished your skills at table enough to own our game.”
Kris’ hands are shaking. He says, “It is cruel, sir, to offer hope where there is none.”
“There is always hope,” Adam says. “Come, Kris, as you asked, one more game.
Mayhap your luck will prove true this last time.”
Kris says. “You own everything my father willed and more besides. I have nothing
left with which to wager.”
“No?” Adam asks.
He’s not looking at Kris. He’s watching the light swirl through his glass, sparkle from
the cold crystal and warm the rich red of the wine within, and there’s a tilt to his
mouth that Kris remembers all too well. It’s a sly hint of mischief that even now
makes him think, not of last night and this morning, but of stolen apples and wild
horse rides and country fairs, amateur theatricals and midwinter guising. There’s a
part of him that even yet wants to say to the stranger Adam has become, ‘Do you not
remember, we were friends once?’
“My sister’s hand in marriage?” Kris asks. “After you have ruined me? No.”
“No,” Adam says. “Yours.”
A log crumbles in the fire. Somewhere outside the closed door of the library, a
floorboard squeaks, one of the servants retiring late. The wine trembles in Kris’ own
glass, before he raises it to his mouth.
“You must be mad,” he says, with conviction.
“Come now,” Adam says.
18
His smile is broader. He gathers the cards, a battered, dog-eared pack Kris recognises
from long ago winter evenings, and shuffles. His fingers are long, poised as Adam
himself: Kris has ever been envious of Adam’s hands. “What have you got to lose?”
‘My heart,’ Kris thinks, and then has to duck his head for fear Adam could see the
truth of the thought in his face. He says, “If I win, you will give me the deeds? The
IOUs? You allow me to leave?”
“Yes,” Adam says, and deals.
He wins.
19
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Sam/Dean, past Jared/Dean
Rating: R
Wordcount: 3,000
Summary: Written for shoofus, a sequel to Lot 607. Look, guys, I have to tell you. When I wrote this, I thought, okay, yeah, I
can do this, and I thought hm, hang on, isn't this familiar... ? It was. I have inadvertently borrowed an idea from fleshflutter's
utterly brilliant Long Shadows and Gunpowder Eyes, and by the time I realised, it was too late. I'm well aware ideas go around in
fandom, but this one I *must* have got from her, and I'm really sorry to repeat it here. Hers is a far, far better story.
Notes: many thanks to betas bethia_cathrain and Doro.
Number Games
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
“How the fuck do I know?” he says, this stranger, and flicks a glance at Jared that’s
far too composed, given the poised shotgun and the two handguns dragging at the
waistband of his jeans, the smoke outside the window and the shouting. “You got this
fucking stupid slavery system going, you expect people to lie back and take it? Fuck
you.” He’s not even looking at Jared. All his attention is on the courtyard, his boots
braced on the smashed glass of the window and his hands steady on the shotgun.
The gunshots make Jared flinch, dig his fingernails into the wall and lock his knees
against the shockwave. The noise is incomprehensible, impossible to place, a rattling
smash of sound that’s tearing down every reality he’s ever known. Yet his own slave
doesn’t even acknowledge the stray bullets pattering against the outside walls. For
three months the man by the window has been Jared’s new toy, his plaything, naked,
usable. Used. Now he’s someone Jared can’t recognize, this man, this man with the
guns and the narrowed stare and the careless, terrifying composure. It’s a splintered
dissonance Jared can’t understand. He’s shaking. His hands are sticky with plaster
dust and blood, there’s a bullet hole in the ceiling above his head, he still can’t catch
his breath and, absurdly, he’s still wearing his workout pants.
“Just keep your head down. Relax,” JP.607 says, and his voice is amused. “I’d say
think of England, but you won’t get the reference.” The shotgun’s trained on
something Jared can’t see. He’s still clinging onto the back wall as if it is solid
ground. It’s not, it’s shaking, and the floorboards shiver with it, and somewhere
beyond the walls of the courtyard there’s a dull, thudding sonic boom that can only be
seriously heavy duty firepower. He’d like to think it was the Guard, but the senate
house went up in flames four hours ago and the tanks on the street are flying rebel
colors. It’s been two hours since the newsfeeds were cut.
“Just be glad they’re not aiming at us,” 607 says, and there’s the tightest of grins
pulling at the side of his mouth. Jared’s seen him bite his mouth bloody, seen him
scream, heard him whimper. He’s never seen that smile before.
20
“What the fuck’s so funny?” Jared snaps out. “You think there’s anywhere to go? You
think the cavalry’s gonna come? You think I knew this was gonna happen, got some
kind of safe room, some way out of here?”
“Nah.”
“Then what the fuck? You gonna trade me in? Why - why even -”
“Ain’t nothing to do with you,” 607 says. “Don’t flatter yourself, kid.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Nothing,” 607 says. “You reckon this is some kind of revenge? Dude, what you did
was nothing. I don’t care. This ain’t about that. You could say I kind of owe you.”
He’s intent on something outside, tracking. Then he says, quick and sharp, “Duck!”
“... Fuck,” Jared says. He’s on the floor. Where his head had been, there’s nothing but
shattered plasterwork, and the Meissen watercolors he’d squeezed out of his dealer’s
hands are tatters. His collection of East Asian pottery is nothing but gritted shards.
“Little close?” 607 quips. He’s really grinning, tucked down under the windowsill.
His face looks alive, in a way it’s never done before, like he’s actually enjoying this.
“You bastard,” Jared says.
“Huh,” 607 says.
Jared’s never known his name. Never asked. He’d learnt long ago to take his pleasure
from flesh. He’d known that body intimately, the stress and curve and flex of it under
pressure. He doesn’t know it now. The man inside it, focused, violent, is entirely
different from the slave he’s had in every way he can imagine.
He takes a deep breath. It tastes of blood: he’d been caught in the weight room, before
607. He’d been winning, but he’d known then it wouldn’t be enough.
He says, “What’s your name?”
“Late,” Jared’s slave says, crouching up to peer over the windowsill. “And lame.” He
glances back over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Dean,” he says. “Dean
Winchester.”
“You’re not bred,” Jared says, stupidly. His slave has a family name. He’s probably
not even legal. Draeger’s screwed him over again.
“What the fuck does that even mean?” Dean Winchester says. He’s standing up again,
shotgun raised.
“You weren’t born a slave,” Jared clarifies. The rafters crack over his head, and white
dust powders the air. The room smells of cordite and hot metal.
21
“Like it matters.” Two shots from Dean’s shotgun, exact and careful, and a reload as
quick and efficient as the grunts on a Guard recruitment advertisement. “For the
record,” Jared’s slave says. “I’m not from round here. And in -” he checks the watch
on his wrist which, belatedly, Jared recognizes as his overseer’s “- two minutes, I’m
gone. Your pick. You stay here, take your chances. Or come with. Won’t be anything
you recognize.”
“Are you mad?”
“Probably,” Dean Winchester says. He adds, “Sam’s not gonna like you. Just so as
you know.” He’s snatching glances over his shoulder at the middle of the room, and
when Jared actually looks at the floor, there’s a jagged design he doesn’t recognize
drawn out on the floorboards. In a red that gleams, darkening stickily around the
edges.
“You think you’re gonna make it outside?” Jared says. It’s not safe where he is, but
it’s a hell of a lot worse out there. He’s heard the screams.
Dean shrugs. “Not leaving by the door,” he says, and the markings on the floor start to
glow. Unreal. Impossible.
“What the fuck is that?” Jared says, and then ducks again. The floorboards by the door
buckle, and there’s a crack in the lintel the size of his fist. It’s widening.
“Time travel?” Dean says, frowning. “Intergalactic wormhole? Fucked if I know. It’s
gonna get me home, that’s all I care. You coming or what?” He’s racked the shotgun.
The wood’s charring under the lines of... paint, Jared thinks. Paint. Not blood.
Although as he watches one of the lines flickers into flame, and then in seconds the
whole thing is ablaze. Watching it, Dean’s smiling. “Three,” he says. “Two, one -”
~*~
He thinks the roof is falling. Fast, slamming down, and Jared falls and rolls and where
he’d been twisted metalwork smashes down against concrete. It’s an iron bedframe,
rusted, so old the headboard snaps and the legs buckle under the force of the fall. He’s
crashed into the mattress, and it’s bare and hard. “What -” For a moment he thinks the
room’s finally imploded, and then he sees the stained cell walls and the bars on the
door and knows he is somewhere else entirely. Outside, people are shouting, angry
and confused. He can smell smoke. Wherever he is, it’s not home.
“Dean,” someone says above his head, an accent he doesn’t recognize. “Pick your
moments, why don’t you.”
“Lucky I got here at all,” Dean says, quick and hard. “Shotgun or handgun? Riot?
And who the fuck -”
22
Straining his eyes, Jared looks up. Dean’s standing on the mattress. There’s a man
facing him, taller, broader, and He could be looking in a mirror. The man looks like him. Crazily similar: the hair’s
different, the shoulders broader, but the narrow eyes and the cheekbones and the chin
is the same face that looks back at him from his shaving mirror. It’s impossible. He’s
not a twin. He’d have known, surely, he’d have had some psychic clue that part of
him was missing; there’d be a sense of recognition, not this now all too familiar
clench of fear in his belly.
“Who the hell is that?” Dean says, and for a moment Jared thinks he’s as confused as
Jared himself, and then he sees the man by the window, the man who looks like 607.
Dean. Slighter, braced, uncertain in a way he’s never seen Dean look in three months
of sexual experimentation and two hours of entirely unexpected combat.
“Dean, Jensen,” the man who looks like Jared says, dry and clipped. “Jensen, this is
my brother.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Jensen says, and steps forward, his hand held out. “I’ve heard
-” He stops. His voice stops. He says, “Sam?” and his voice is entirely different,
shaken. Horrified.
“I know,” the man who looks like Jared says, the man called Sam. It’s the name Dean
called for, when Jared pushed him far enough for him not to know what he said.
Dean’s Sam. “Save it.”
“Shapeshifter,” Dean says, and the shotgun’s steady in his hands and pointed at the
man who could be his reflection.
“Nah, he was born that way,” Sam says. “Unlucky. Trust me. You keep the shotgun,
I’ll take the other. Oh, and I got it,” he says. “Just in case you were wondering.” He
pats his pocket. It’s orange. All of his clothing is orange. It’s the worst looking piece
of material Jared’s ever laid eyes on, a one-piece overall that must have been designed
by a color-blind tailor with no sense of humor.
“Good work,” Dean says. Slowly. He’s still looking at Jensen. Frowning.
“Yeah. Right. Next time, it’s your turn,” Sam says. “Just saying. And while we’re
confessing our sins here, who the hell did you bring over?”
He can see the shiver that goes through Dean’s skin, as if the man had forgotten he’d
brought company with him. “Jared,” he says. “Jared some long-ass name -”
Jared stands up. He’s had two minutes to get used to this man who could be himself.
Sam, face to face, pales. His face goes tight, in a way Jared recognizes from one too
many late-sessions pounding the keyboard, the kind of anger he’s always taken out on
someone else’s body.
23
“Padalecki,” Sam says. He’s angry. He’s not surprised. The expression on his face is a
furious recognition, but the only time Jared’s ever seen Sam’s face before is in his
own mirror.
“Yup,” Dean says, and for a moment he and Sam share a look that promises later
retribution.
“Guys?” the other man says, Jensen, the one who looks like Dean and doesn’t, Dean
with all his physical confidence stripped away. This one wouldn’t take everything
Jared has as Dean did, stoic and frustrating. This one would squirm and shiver and
yowl. “I think -”
“We’ll talk about it when we get out of here,” Sam says. “I’m assuming yours doesn’t
keep alpacas. Does he bite?”
“You bet your ass we’re talking,” Dean says, and he’s glaring at Jensen. When his
eyes drop to Jared’s, he’s still frowning, and it’s a look that judges Jared and finds
him wanting. “Dunno. He’s got a fair right hook, when you push him.”
There’s a tilt to Sam’s head as he looks Dean over, as if he’s cataloging the bruises
and the blood and the torn linen shirt and the hitched up jeans, and when he glances
down his eyes are narrowed. It’s then that Jared knows, of the two of them, it’s Sam
he needs to fear. It’s just a second, that interchange, but in it Jared sees every single
time he laid hands on this man’s brother from the other side. He’s never thought,
before, of the men he’s fucked out of context, outside the walls of his playroom.
Beyond the touch of his hands and his signature on their papers, they had no
existence. Dean’s smashed that wall. Sam’s going to judge him.
“Sam,” Jensen says.
Sam says, “Yeah.” But he’s looking at Jared, not Jensen. “Later,” he says, and it’s a
promise Jared recognizes. Then he goes for the door.
Dean says, “You two. Follow him. Keep close. Yell if you have to.”
Leaving’s a nightmare. There’s a few seconds, when they get out the door, to catalog
the walkways, the cells, the barred doors, the loudspeakers, and then a folding chair
splinters into the railings beside them. Men are screaming. Dean says, “Sam,
seriously? A riot?” and Sam turns around and grins, dangerously toothy. Then he
runs, and Dean pushes Jared after him with a fist between the shoulder blades.
The only thing that gets them out of there are the guns and a terrifying, casual, bloody
violence. Sam and Dean are a coordinated, lethal team: for the first time in his life,
Jared’s dead weight. Even Jensen - even Jensen, the one man Jared thought he might
have outranked, Jensen’s the person Sam turns to when they reach the first keypad.
Jared’s skills don’t serve him here. On the web, in the financial markets, he knows
exactly what he’s doing. In this mess of blood and smoke and violence, he’s lost, and
it’s only Dean’s hard grip on his shoulder and Sam’s broad shoulders in front of him
that keep him running.
24
Outside’s almost worse. It’s a blank, terrifying emptiness of desert and sky, the only
building the great concrete mass of the prison behind them, the only thing in front of
them nothing. Jared freezes two steps outside the laundry door. It’s only Jensen’s push
that sends him running to the pickup Dean’s already hotwired, and he can’t seem to
stop staring at the sky. Stiff, bruised, bloodied, he’s still staring at it when he falls
asleep, back seat cramped, and it’s still there when he wakes up. Jensen’s asleep in the
opposite corner. Dean’s snoring against the front passenger window. Sam’s driving,
hard eyes in the rearview mirror.
“You wanna tell me where the bruises came from?” Sam says to him, quiet and
vicious. “And the tattoo?”
It’s another man he fucked, far ago and long away. This Dean is someone else. So’s
Jared, stripped of everything that made him who he was. He says, “He brought me
over. He could have left me there.”
“I got that,” Sam says. He flicks a glance at the road, looks back. “Don’t kid yourself
that was for you,” he says, this man with Jared’s face, this man who is infinitely more
dangerous than Jared will ever be.
Jared can’t match those eyes. He watches the desert roll by. Sam drives. Jensen wakes
up, uncurls himself stiffly and stretches. He watches Sam, the same way people Jared
owned used to watch Jared, aware of every movement. Those two fucked, Jared
thinks, unsurprised. He’d have thought the thing circumstantial, the way the field
hands were, but Jensen’s not taking his chances back at the prison and his jawline and
his mouth are exactly the same as Dean’s. He wonders if the law code, here, allows
incest. If it matters. He wonders if this Dean has ever cried out his brother’s name
under his brother’s hands the way he had done under Jared’s.
He wonders what the fuck he’s going to do. He’s wearing everything he owns.
It’s a long day.
Evening sees them camped out in a single hired room. The carpet’s sticky with dirt
and the bed sheets smell musty: there are two beds between the four of them. Dean
drags his brother into the bathroom. Jensen rolls over on the coverlet and either sleeps
or pretends to sleep while Jared, gingerly, insects the clothes Sam had thrust into his
hands. There’s enough cash in paper notes to pay for the room, winnings from some
strange table-based game Jensen had tried to explain. One night. After that, Jared’s on
his own, he knows it by the look in Sam’s eyes.
It’s not the first time. He left his father’s House at sixteen, and he’s never been back.
He hadn’t taken much then, either. A few coins. Some clothes. A little less than he has
now, with the sum of fourteen years’ hard experience under his belt. This world has
the web. It has money markets and exchange rates and a whole new set of
terminologies he’s already picking up and translating. He needs a month, enough
money for the kind of clothes that make bankers take him seriously, internet access
and a bank account. He can get all of these things. He will. A laptop. A desk. A house.
25
A pretty boy, nothing like the man he hasn’t been able to look away from for the last
three months.
Something thuds, hard, against the bathroom wall. Something else clatters, and,
muffled, two voices tangle and over-ride each other. On the bed, Jensen opens his
eyes and looks up, frowning. “You wanna bet they both come out of there alive?” he
says.
Jared’s betting Dean’s only coming out of there with his brother’s fingerprints on his
hips and his brother’s come slicking his ass. He thinks it’ll be the first time, but he’s
not sure. “What’s it feel like, to know you were second best?” he says.
“You tell me,” Jensen says. He’s not surprised. It’s not surprising. Sam’s barely taken
his eyes off Dean. “You think I didn’t know I was only keeping the mattress warm?
Don’t tell me it was any different for you. You’d be lying.”
For the first time, Jared wonders what the odds were, Dean and him. Draegar. The
portfolio, the sale, the way Dean had known exactly where he was going in the
compound. He’d thought he’d chosen Dean. What, exactly, was the probability it was
the other way around? For a moment, he wonders if there’s an infinite variety of
himself - himselves - an infinite variety of Deans, an infinite number of worlds
spinning from each equation. Padalecki, Sam had said, as if he wasn’t the first. The
thought’s dizzying.
He’s misread this situation often enough already. It is what it is, enough.
The bathroom door rattles. Someone yelps. If it’s Dean, it’s a sound Jared’s never
forced out of him, but Jensen snorts in recognition. “Fucked if I’m gonna listen to
those two get off,” he says, sharp, pissed. He’s reaching for his stolen jacket, running
through the pockets for cash, a keycard, dropping a note on the bedside table. When
he glances up, he says, “Stay or go, your pick. But I wouldn’t want to be you, once
Sam’s done.”
Jared’s fingerprints are all over Dean. His House tattoo lies over Draeger’s. There’s
no way Sam’s not going to notice, and by the raised voices behind the door, it’ll be
sooner rather than later. The only time Dean’s ever been compliant is when he’s a
fucked out mess, but Jared’s not betting on Sam having the same characteristics. He
goes.
~*~
There’s a moment, when Jensen slides the key through the lock and opens the door,
when Jared wonders if Sam’s going to be on the other side with a shotgun. But the
passage is empty, and one of the beds is occupied and silent, although the light is still
on.
26
There’s a gun on the bedside table, and Sam’s staring at him over Dean’s head.
Dean’s asleep. Deeply asleep, curved into Sam’s body, relaxed in a way Jared has
never seen him before. One of his hands is tucked into the back of Sam’s neck. On his
shoulder, where the tattoo had been, there’s a new dressing.
Jared’s never had a slave as frustrating as 607. He’s had prettier, younger, more
responsive, eager to please, far better trained. Lot 607 had given him nothing but the
grudging acknowledgement of pain. Whatever he’d done, it hadn’t been enough.
Now he knows why. Quietly, Jared tips his head to Dean’s brother, picks up the bag
that’s been waiting for him by the door, and leaves.
He’s lucky, he thinks, to be alive.
He wonders what that says about Dean.
27
Fandom: Earthsea
Rating: Gen
Wordcount: 5,000
Summary: For three days and three nights, Ged holds the Door, on Roke.
Notes: Many, many thanks to betas bethia_cathrain, doro, Richard and unovis. People, I had real problems with this story. Ursula
le Guin is a superb author, stunning, but in these Earthsea books she's already covered many of the themes that I find attractive to
write. It took, literally, a year before I could come up with something that was an idea rather than a story set on Earthsea, and
even so, if you're familiar with canon, you'll find the beginning of this story is repetitive and that I've dodged canon in one place:
the Doorkeeper's place and name of birth are recorded. I console myself that, for him, that hasn't yet happened in this story.
I am so grateful to espresso_addict for her patience.
It will become obvious that I am much indebted to T.H.White for the idea behind this story.
Written for espresso_addict, for help_japan.
T
he
Shining of the Stars
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
All power is one power. At the end of days there is nothing but silence, and the word,
the last word and the first word: Agnen. Agnen, the rune of ending, which will never
be spoken until the world’s end, and after Agnen, nothing.
Thus, it is taught on Roke where the wizards of Earthsea study their trade: that as a
wizard’s knowledge grows and his power with it, so his focus narrows. To study on
Roke is to be both chained and set free, as a student learns both the span and the limits
of their own power, and the nature of the balance which governs the world and all
powers therein.
From the Master Chanter, students learn the Deeds of Heroes and the Lays of
Wisdom, beginning with the first song, the Creation of Éa. With the Master Windkey,
the arts of wind and weather: with the Master Herbal, the nature of all growing things.
From the Master Hand, the arts of illusion, the craft of juggling, and the minor arts of
changing which any lesser wizard has at his fingertips. More dangerous are the arts of
the Master Changer, whose perilous craft can reshape the world in a name. Of the
names themselves, students learn in the Isolate Tower perched on the northernmost
cape of Roke, where the Master Namer keeps his lists, the true names of every
creature which breathes or has ever breathed. There are listed the names of the rock
and of the earth, and of the sea and the wind and all the currents and tides therein, and
those lists are never ending and never complete. These are the true names of the Old
Speech, which is the language of dragons and from which came the Six Hundred
Runes of Hardic, the source and spring of wizardry. Any witch will know some of
these names. A mage knows many, and might spend his life in the search for more.
Teaching in the school at Roke are also the Master Patterner, of whose craft wizards
do not speak, and the Master Summoner, who deals only in true magic, the
summoning of the forces which set the world and the stars spinning and hold them
steady. This is an art both perilous and dire, to be used only in the greatest of need,
28
and the best and worst of this art, and the most dangerous, are the spells for the
summoning of the living and the dead. This Ged has learned, to his cost.
On Roke too lives the Archmage, and it is from his hands that a student learned in the
arts of sorcery receives their staff, and is acknowledged as a wizard. In these days, the
days before Ged had sailed the Dragon’s Run from East to West and back again,
before the finding and sealing of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, the Archmage was
Gensher. Like many men of Way he was black-skinned and heavy-browed, and his
strengths lay in the arts of defense and of protection. Steady indeed was his eye on the
Balance of the World, in the years after Ged received his staff.
Yet even as the constellation of Ending has nine stars, so too does Roke have nine
masters, and the ninth of these is the Master Doorkeeper.
~*~
He was a small man, the Doorkeeper, and he smiled often, although a wizard might
see that smile only twice in his life, at the entering and at the leaving of the Great
School of Wizardry on Roke. Yet of all wizards the Doorkeeper was the only man
who held in his hands the true names of all who passed over his threshold. It was said
on Roke that the Doorkeeper never forgot a name, from that of the humblest serving
man to the Archmages themselves, whose use-names any child might list, yet the truth
was both different and stranger still.
When Ged returned from the Open Sea, the easternmost sea of the world which lies
beyond Astowell, the last land, it was to Roke that he came at length. Salt-stained and
worn, he walked up through the streets of Thwil after evening fall, and when the
Doorkeeper opened the door to his quiet knock, Ged came home to the Great School
as if he had returned from nothing more than a stroll down to the harbour. To the
Archmage Gensher and to his masters he paid his respects, but spoke little of the
journey that had taken him from Osskill to Iffish and beyond, to those stretches of the
Reaches where few men had ever sailed. Little, save only that he was free of his
shadow. Those few wizards on Roke who knew him remarked on the lightness of his
step and the freedom of his laughter: those who did not seldom marked his
unobtrusive presence. As so many wizards have done since and before, Ged spent his
days in the libraries of Roke and with the lists of Names. To no wizard did he divulge
for what he searched, for his quest was so far-fetched it could have been nothing more
than a mage’s whim.
In truth, Ged’s searching was desultory and easily halted by the drift of a salt-scented
Easterly wind or the merry tumble of sea campion amongst the rocks of the
Northernmost cape of Roke, for in returning Ged brought brought with him the
burden and joy of the knowledge of his own death, and to him these small things were
no longer to be named but to be lived. Often, he would leave his studies to wander
through the oak groves or along the small sandy coves of the island, and often as he
did so he would find the Doorkeeper by his side, as silent and amiable a companion as
the otek who had once sat on Ged’s shoulder. He talked seldom and listened more, the
29
Doorkeeper of Roke, and it was to him that Ged spoke when he spoke at all: of the
maps and genealogies and of the histories of the Islands, of the feathered pattern of
salt spray flung up by the pitching prow of a close-hauled boat, and of the pattern of
jewels stitched to the bodice of a child’s silk dress.
Of the schooling of wizards, too, Ged spoke.
“There are nine masters on Roke,” Ged said. It was morning, a morning of the
fallows, and early enough for the last of the nine stars, Gondoran, to shine still above
the roof tiles of the Council Room, although the sky was already lightened with dawn.
They were walking in the courtyard. Behind them, the fountain played against the
marble of its basin, and the shadows of werelights tricked the leaves and the budding
blossom on the trees into shadowed lacework as fine as any on Kamery. In front of
them stood a doorway, silver runed, but of honest oak.
“Nine masters,” Ged said to the Doorkeeper, “And the Archmage. With all of them
have I studied, saving the Archmage, who does not teach, and you.”
“Are you so sure?” asked the Doorkeeper, smiling.
To him alone of all the wizards of Roke had Ged given his true name, when he had
entered the school for the first time, and of all Ged’s masters only the Doorkeeper
vouchsafed to every student passing into wizardry his own name. Not all wizards of
Roke proved true: many were the paths to power and some were darker than others,
yet the Doorkeeper had never failed in his post, and never had his name been
bespelled.
“Tell me of the door,” Ged asked.
The Doorkeeper said, “I cannot. To understand the door is to be the door.”
“Then let me be the door,” Ged said. He was young in this year, and the accent of his
own home of Gont, which he would never entirely lose, was still strong in his words.
As easily as if he had known and considered the question before it had taken shape,
the Doorkeeper nodded. “Three days,” he said. “Three days and three nights, will you
hold the door. That is enough.”
For a moment, it seemed to Ged as if he had heard those very words before in the
same tone of voice, as if they were not conjecture but something that had already
happened, and when he looked at the Doorkeeper the man watched him back
unsmiling and certain. It seemed a simple thing, the keeping of the threshold of Roke,
but the doorway was a thing of Roke and the Doorkeeper with it, and Ged had long
learned that what appeared simplest of names could conceal the deepest of meanings.
Yet of all things, Ged desired most what was unknown.
He bowed his head.
30
When he looked up, the last of the Nine Stars was shining still over the courtyard on
Roke through the branches of the young trees, although the pale blossom was surely
heavier than it had been moments before and the sky lighter. It was morning yet, he
was lying on his back, and on his chest the Doorkeeper had written the rune Agnen,
the rune of ending, the last rune.
The Doorkeeper was smiling.
Then the sky fell, and took everything Ged was.
In darkness, without air, here, he was nothing. Nothing and nameless. He had no word
for himself, nor for the slow dance of stars so far from Earthsea they had never been
named by wizard or dragon, nor for the clouds of dust and the black emptiness of all
space and time that lay between them. No word for the order of it, no pattern, no
language, no rhythm, silence, silence, and within it Ged flung without chart or
compass. Within that vast emptiness he was utterly insignificant, smaller than a grain
of sand in all the seas that are one sea, as undistinguished as a single blade of grass on
all the islands of Earthsea. He was unraveling. He was unmade, spiraling out,
stretched thin, fog, mist, cloud, vapour, burning up in the light of the indifferent stars.
He could feel himself lessen: Tenar; Kalessin; Lebannen; the Ring, gone, lost, their
names nothing amongst the light of the stars. The line of the beach at Solidor at
midday slipped through his fingers and faded, the pattern of currents around the last
black rock of the Dragon’s Run was smoothed away: he did not know the face of the
King in Havnor nor the true-names of Yarrow’s daughters which he himself had
whispered into their ears. He lost the smell of hazia, burning, and the pattern of blue
dye engrained into a woman’s hands, and the waysigns of the path over the wall
between life and death.
But he had never known these things. These things had not yet happened. Yet he
knew them now in the leaving as he had never known them, and of the things that
came before there was nothing, nothing He was - he was He was. A thrum of chord. A word. He was Ged, the Doorkeeper and the door.
The stars danced, infinitely slow, and the music of their dance was the first word and
the last, inevitable and endless, and Ged was part of the whole, small, smallest,
nothing more than a drop of water in all the oceans of Earthsea, but himself, as every
drop of water and every grain of sand knew its own name.
He stood on the threshold of the doorway on Roke, and the white enamel of the
dragon’s tooth was cool under his hand.
He was between the great gold-studded doors of the throne room in Awabath, a
prince’s ransom in his hands, sick with fear. The cladding on the walls here was
marble, yet beneath it was yellow brick, and the brick was crumbling.
31
He was on a raft, so far beyond the outermost isles that the sea he traveled knew not
of earth nor leaf, poised to dive, caught for this instant between the boundaries of air
and water.
In the doorway of a tomb in Atuan, he was afraid, and the pockmarked iron of the
door he opened was cold against his skin.
For a space of time that lasted no more than the moment between footrise and footfall,
he was there on the threshold, and then he was again on Roke, in the darkness before
daylight.
A man stood before him in the doorway, a wizard Ged did not know and does. This
man was the Master Windkey, although the face he wore was not the face of the man
who had taught Ged the ways of the wind and the tide. He was the Archmage Ged’s
Master Windkey, although here on the threshold he was younger and unscarred and
the staff in his hands was made of Rowan, not the sea drift ash Ged remembers him
owning.
Ged knew this man. He had sat in council with this man, eaten with him, sailed with
him. He opened the door, on Roke.
On Karego-At.
On Atuan.
On the outermost sea.
In a ruined castle on an island whose name was all but forgotten, a dragon stepped
though the ruined arches of a gateway crowded with stone-frozen beasts. The dragon
turned his face to Ged and grinned, and his grin was blackly toothed and amused: the
dragon’s name was Orm Embar.
But Ged does not know this. He did. He knew this dragon’s death. And yet alive, Orm
Embar stepped over the threshold, spread his wings, and flew sere and terrible into the
light of the rising sun.
This was the first night, the last night, on which Ged held the doorway, on Roke.
The stars turned. The tide rode the sea. The moon fell and rose in the sky. Morning
came.
On Roke, men crossed over the threshold, serving men and cooks and gardeners, a
student, a wizard, a merchant. For an instant, as they stepped through the door, just as
the door, Ged knew their momentary lives and their loves and joys and sorrows. Then
they were gone. He saw them only in the moment they walked through the door, no
more, no less. He saw the glint of a trout’s scales in a rush basket and smelled the
sweet, bitter smell of a handful of wild garlic and the sharpness of preserved lemon:
the cook considered fish; the gardener, soil; the student, the quality of time and his
own tardiness; the wizard a shadow of a spell Ged almost knew - and then they were
32
gone. These were fragments, shades across the door, known only in the instance of
their crossing, nothing, nothing. In this the first day, the last day, Ged was stretched
thin. He was every door, every threshold, every windowsill and every chimneybreast
and every boundary. He was an arch of rock on Astowell where the gulls swoop and
skirl in the eastern wind and an ice cave on Hogan Island known only by the seals, an
island off Selidor, a strait, a carelessly looped leather curtain, a door.
On Havnor, a woman, veiled, laughed as she stepped between bedroom and boudoir.
There was a rose in her hand, sweetly scented. Ged knew her son’s true name already:
he had watched her son crowned. A hostler on Semel cursed, between stable yard and
stall: a weaver on Lorbanery carried a tray of silkworms between shed and weaving
parlour, a wizard on Gont let his goats out into the day and looked up to the hills,
thinking of the westerly wind and the scent of pine trees in mist. Every threshold on
Earthsea was held between Ged’s hands, from Hogen Land to Far Sorr, from Astowell
to Selidor, and all the islands and seas that lie between.
On the islands of the Hand, a woman paused in the concealing shade of a narrow
stone doorway, and her hands formed a symbol Ged did not know: the woman
walking towards her smiled in recognition. Then she was gone, but on Pody, another
woman, her hair tangled and knotted and her clothes ragged, made the same gesture to
the weaver who sat at her loom and was answered. On Hille, on Andrad, other women
spoke in a silent language, in words Ged did not know nor understand, but recognised.
Far to the west of Gont, a woman called Anthil who was once a princess stooped,
crawling through a driftwood door hinged with salt-stained leather and mis-matched
nails. On Way, another paused, with a hand held to her back, between the stone pillars
of a field gate. She was pregnant, but the child in her belly was fierce and hungry, and
in the brief knowledge of that moment Ged saw not a child’s fist but a dragon’s
talons. He saw her child take wing.
Under a carved stone lintel, on Gont, a man paused to survey his land: he was weak,
grasping, dissatisfied, and he burned thin with a mage-bound life that was not his
own. Yet Ged knew the slopes and boundaries of the fields this man surveyed, the
wooden houses of his village and the drift of windblown blossom on the cobbles of
the square, and the fountain that ran dry will in Ged’s memory be shyly bountiful. His
too to know were the stone carved dragons of the landgate of Gont Port and the
sounding whales of the wooden temples of the Children of the Open Sea, the moments
of a snatched run of a half-tuned harp on Elini, and a juggler’s patter, between passage
and parlour, on Atnini. The words were Kargish, but to the door and to Ged the
Doorkeeper all languages were one language, all words echoed and resonant with the
one word that was their beginning and their end.
On Orrimy, a clerk unbolted the great studded door of a warehouse whose walls were
as thick as those of the Great House of Roke itself, and the darkness within was
scented with nutmeg and cardamom and saffron.
On a slave ship, wallowing through the Southing Reaches, a child in ragged silk and
emeralds slammed a cabin door: Ged knew her face, knew the hammer of her hand on
the horn of the door of Roke itself and her face in that moment, but in that moment
33
she was no more than seven, fierce and feral as a rat. He knew her name. Then,
between one step and the next, she was gone.
Another child ran across a painted bridge, between houses, in Havnor City. Twenty
feet above the street, he towed behind him a kite painted with hawk’s eyes, and his
thoughts were all of honeycakes and wind, while behind him flags fluttered and
danced from Havnor’s white marble towers. On Wathort, the same wind ruffled past
the palace doorway where the statues struggled from the stone, infinitely slow: Ged
knew the moment when they crumbled to dust, but not the ring of the sculptor’s chisel
set to stone in the moment of their carving.
A ship sailed through the Ebavnor Straits and the Gates of the Bay: this too he knew,
the slap of the waves against wood, the creak of the ropes and the swell of the sail, the
heel of the ship into the wind and the rough voices of the seafarers, the cold-forged
iron of the ship’s fittings and the woven linen of its sail. This place too was a
doorway.
Smallest of dragons, a Harrekki swooped in a flash of golden scales through a
doorway to its mistress’s hand, and the feel of it passing was the same as a whisper of
words in the Old Speech, the language of dragons. On Éa, a scholar shuffled between
rooms, a stack of papers and texts in his hands, and the books he held whisper too of
secrets and names, although Ged heard only the briefest echo of their passing. On
Atuan, the labyrinth in the Place of the Tombs was never silent to a mage’s ears, and
this place too Ged knew, although he had never walked willingly over any threshold
there, wood or stone, red-veined marble or bone, in darkness or his own fading
werelight: yet this place too he knew as he has known every threshold.
The sun set.
This was the first day, the last, and after it, before it, came the second night. Light
faded, was lost, gone into the night, and Ged with it.
There were two doorways on Earthsea which the Doorkeeper did not hold, and one of
them was on Roke, and the other on the border between life and death. Over those, the
dry lands, where no wind blew and no river ran and no rain fell, the stars of the
constellation of the Door shone unmoving and unchanging. Under that barren light, in
the dry lands and silent cities, the dead moved slowly and without purpose or meaning
amidst desolation.
Yet the stars of the Door will set, the wind will blow: the hawk will stretch its wings
over green hills: lovers will be reunited and children run to their mother’s arms. Ged
knew this, this and the flight of dragons, triumphant, over these green lands, although
in that night the Door looked down on barren rock and dust and the silent dead. This
too Ged knew, the path the living climb to leave the dead lands, and flinched from the
knowing of it and, weary, knew it still.
On Earthsea, the stars turned. The tide rode the sea. The moon fell and rose in the sky.
Morning came. Day dawned, and Ged leaves the Door, and took up again the
Doorkeeper’s mantle on Earthsea.
34
This was the second day. As the door was, Ged was aware of every door, but on this
the second day, he was on Roke.
The Great House of Roke had only two doors which allowed men to pass from the
school outside: the back door of horn and ivory, and Medra’s Gate, the garden door of
uncarved oak black with age, which led to Roke Knoll. Between these two, there were
many doors: the door between the Court of the Fountain and the Council Room: the
low, arched doorway that led to the Chanter’s Tower, the barred, spellbound door to
the Room of Shelves and all the doorways therein: the doors between kitchen and
buttery and Hearth Hall and refectory, the doors of the sleeping cells and gardens and
healing rooms. Here too, was the single door to the Isolate Tower where the Master
Namer worked amidst his lists, that of Otter’s House, and the Immanent Grove, and
this last was the second of the doors on Earthsea over which the Doorkeeper had no
dominion.
Over all the doors within the School itself, he did. So, as easily as the wind blowing
through an empty house, under the Doorkeeper’s watch the wizards of Roke passed
and repassed, the students, the serving men and cooks and gardeners, the masters and
the Archmage, all of them known and named. Even the mice and the library cats and
the small creatures of the woodland, the Doorkeeper knew. Of them all he knew the
moments of their joys and sorrows, their triumphs and the day of their deaths. Of none
of these men living, save one, did he know the day of their arrival on Roke.
This boy, this boy who knocked on the door. He was dark-skinned and small, and his
hands clutched on the roll of clothes were clumsy, too big for his frame, and his feet
shuffled on the pavement. When he spoke, it was with the accent of Venway.
Ged knew this boy’s name, could remember him a man, barrel-chested and powerful,
laughing, a yew staff of his own considerable height in his hand. The boy who will be
that man told the door his true name, but the door already knew. It opened at Ged’s
thought as easily as clouds heeling to the wind, as easily as the naming of a child,
although Ged the Doorkeeper knew this man grown, a wizard in the fullness of his
powers.
Ged opened the door. The shade of the great door at midday was a bar of shadow, and
the boy crossed over it and entered, as every boy before him will enter, the Court of
the Fountain where the Archmage waited. As Ged will wait, when he is Archmage.
He knew this courtyard when it was wild-blown and deserted, the trees dead and the
fountain dry, the tiles slipping from the roof of the halls and chambers and the
Chanter’s Tower cracked and listing. He knew this courtyard deserted, the Isolate
Tower empty, the library left to the mice, rain rotting the oak shelves and the desks.
He knew the laughter of dragons.
All this was to come. In this moment, the Great School was bustling with students and
wizards and the hall rich with the scent of roast meat and apples and gravy, the library
was full of books: werelights played over the angled rooflines and amongst the
branches of the trees, and there was no wind a wizard had not called.
35
It was night, the third night and the first that Ged held the door on Roke. The moon
rose and fell and the tide followed, the stars wheeled, the clouds fled the sky. The
wind blew cold and salt-scented from the sea, rustled the leaves of the young trees in
the courtyard and startled the ordered fall of the fountain into drifting spray.
Ged was the door. He was the stars in the sky and the rune and the word, the threshold
and the crossing of it, the beginning and the end, greater and smaller than any name
he had been or was yet to be. He was the door: he was himself, and he was content.
This much he knew.
The stars turned. The tide rode the sea. The moon fell and rose in the sky. Morning
came, the dawn of the first day and the last day Ged held the door, on Roke.
His hand was on the door, and under his left hand the ivory of the dragon’s tooth was
as warm and familiar to him as if it was bone of his bone, and under his right the
inlaid patterns of the thousand-leaved tree stirred and drifted, as if touched by a wind
he could see.
The door opened.
He was looking at himself, walking through the courtyard, on Roke. Sunlight
patterned the leaves of the trees over his face and that of the Doorkeeper at his side,
filigreed the paving stones and the worked masonry, scattered the water of the
fountain into momentary brilliance.
The Doorkeeper said, “Three days and three nights. That is enough.”
Ged saw himself bow his head.
~*~
He is lying on his back, and on his chest the Doorkeeper draws the rune Agnen, the
rune of ending. Ged looks up. The sun has just risen. It is morning, on the first day of
the fallows, and the last of the nine stars of Ending, Gobardon, shines yet above the
tiles of the Council House. Time trickles through his fingers and is gone: it has not yet
happened. The door is closed. He looks up.
A moment ago, three days ago, the Doorkeeper had smiled. He is smiling still.
“You are not yet named,” Ged says, wondering, as time passes through his fingers and
is gone, has passed, has not yet happened, will never happen: the three days he held
the door, Lebannen, Tenar, the pathways of the dead, all the names he will come to
know of men not yet born and women not yet met. The door closes, closes, is closed.
36
“I have borne many names,” the Doorkeeper says. “But only in the beginning will I be
named.”
37
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: R
Wordcount: 4,000
Summary: Written for the original prompter, a sequel to Sin-Eater.
Original Prompt: Jensen gets kicked out of the insular fundamentalist community he was raised in, with nothing but the shirt on
his back and the unshakeable belief that he is now going to hell. He's wandering, bewildered and almost mute with shyness on the
streets of the some bleak southwestern town when Jared finds him and takes him in.
Casting Bread
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
On Sundays Jensen puts on his best shirt, ironed, and his neat, new, cotton khakis,
and polishes his boots. His socks are matched and unholed, and his underwear is
clean. The first time, he’d worn a tie, but Jared, painfully, had not laughed at him.
On Sundays, Jensen locks up his room, his own almost-bare single room with the
clean walls and clean sheets and clean furniture, and goes outside. The house where
he lives has a yard, walls, and a drive with gravel, and every Sunday so far Jared’s
truck has nosed in through the gates and stopped for Jensen. Jared tries to remember
to text before he leaves his own house, which Jensen has never seen for real, but
sometimes he forgets. He always apologizes. Jensen, really, doesn’t care. He will be
waiting for Jared on the doorstep, every Sunday, long before the noise of the truck’s
engine reverberates along the street.
They go for brunch. Jared wears jeans, t-shirts, sneakers, cowboy boots. Often, he
hasn’t shaved. He fiddles with things, when he isn’t driving: cutlery, menus, his
watchstrap, the absurd scarf he wore for three Sundays in a row in the heat of an LA
summer. When they were filming, Jared had looked Jensen in the eyes and laughed.
Now, he looks down, looks away, laughs with the waitress - although it’s a loud,
actor’s laugh - and when he smiles at Jensen his expression is small and guarded.
Jensen thinks he’s lucky to have Jared’s smiles at all. He has no expectations. It’s
easier to convince himself, every time, that this will be the Sunday Jared forgets to
come.
He hadn’t expected Sundays at all.
“What the hell are you going to do with him when we finish shooting?”
“Hey, Padalecki, haven’t you found a good home for that puppy yet?”
38
“There’s a couple of paps by the fence, Jay. You might wanna get Phil to drive you,
yeah? Get the kid to duck.”
“I don’t get it,” Chad says, tilting dangerously sideways, although his bottle of sour
beer is religiously upright. “You and him.”
Jensen doesn’t get it either. His world has expanded so fast. Newspapers, television,
films, cars, funfairs, parties, the internet. But Jared’s is so much bigger. Every time he
thinks he’s got something worked out - Jared’s hand holding his, walking down the
street, like it’s nothing, like it’s normal, like it doesn’t make Jensen feel small and
safe and big and proud all at the same time - something else smashes him apart.
“... Jared?”
“Just look away, baby.”
“But she’s married,” Jensen says, utterly confused.
“Yeah. I know. So’s he. You never saw them. Fuck, no, just... don’t say anything if
you have to say anything at all, yeah?”
Jensen nods.
Jared’s world is almost inconceivably strange. There’s parts of it Jensen doesn’t like makeup. Paps - paparezzi. Motel coffee. He’s not sure about Chad, but Chad’s Jared’s
and that has to be respected. There’s parts of it he loves: moving pictures with sound.
Take out. The heavy thud of Jared’s heartbeat under his hand, in bed. But it’s so
crowded he’s amazed there’s room for him in it at all, and when the whispers start,
he’s not surprised. He’s too young. Too stupid. Jared has an image, PR, fanservice “What if the fans find out, Jay? Look, it’s all very well bringing some townie onto set
here -” (and Jensen does bridle at that one, because he’s the one who gets Jared onto
set on time, makes sure there’s always coffee and candy, color codes the scripts, holds
Jared’s sunglasses and his water and his iPad and his iPhone – “Shit, kid, what did we
do without you?”)
(“Thanks Jen.” And Jared’s smile.)
“- but what when you get home? Jay, he’s... what are the fans gonna say if they find
out you’re boning some teenager?”
The fact is, Jensen is young and looks younger. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t
sound like (look like, walk like, talk like) Jared’s co-stars or his friends. He’s no idea
how to cope in this strange, secular world with its emphasis on money and food and
its over-loud, over-fast conversations.
“Baby, you don’t need to change. You’re perfect just the way you are,” Jared tells
him. He sounds slow and a little puzzled. Its night, their time. Jensen’s time. Jared’s
curled up against him in their motel bed, Jensen’s hand in his hair.
39
“Jared -” Jensen says, and stops. Jared’s done so much for him already. It’s not that he
thinks ignoring the issue is going to make it go away - shooting ends in a week’s time
and Jared has never even mentioned Los Angeles - just that, if he said nothing, he
could have these last few days for himself. When Jared’s gone, then he’ll think about
what happens next.
Time, unaccountable in those first few days when Jensen’s world was upturned and
remade as strangely as any miracle, becomes a thing of numbers. Small shining
moments. Jared’s smile, Jared’s voice, the exact configuration of the moles on his
back, the shape of his fingernails, the angled copper glint of the stubble along his
jawline first thing in the morning, when the sun slants in through the gap in the stiff
curtains. The last day of shooting was a Sunday. Jensen will remember that, later.
“Jen?”
“Nothing,” Jensen says.
Chad flies down for the wrap party, but Jared’s last scene overruns and he ends up
sitting on the trailer steps with Jensen, waiting. Three weeks before, Jensen would
have slipped away into the washroom, props, or the seat behind the plastic palm tree
in craft services. Now, he’s too tired to move, even with Chad’s shoulder butted up
against his.
“So what’s the story?” Chad asks. “Jay still driving back to LA?”
Jensen pulls at the label on his craft services Evian. Bottled water. It still seems
absurd.
Chad asked him a question.
“He likes the truck,” Jensen offers.
“Huh. You ready for a thirty hour road trip with the world’s biggest walking
stomach?” Chad says. “Don’t let him eat burritos for breakfast - what?”
“LA?” Jensen says.
“Yeah?” says Chad.
Jensen blinks. Chad stares at him. “LA?” he says. “Big city? Bars? Girls?” He pauses.
“Where Jared lives?”
There’s nothing Jensen can find to say to that.
Chad looks away. He takes a drag off his cigarette, and throws it down beside the
steps. Later, Jensen will deposit the butt in the trash.
“I thought you were looking at college courses.”
40
“I am,” Jensen says. Carefully, out of the corner of his eye, he’d even looked at the
community college with its crowds of brightly clothed students and towering windows
and busy car parks. On Jared’s laptop he’d looked at courses - basic literacy. Basic
numeracy. It hadn’t taken long before he worked out that his schooling equated to
nothing. He wasn’t going to get points for knowing Leviticus by heart. He’d already
realized he was almost unemployable.
He’s been on his own before. He’ll cope. He’ll think about it after Jared.
“Jared’s...” Chad says, slowly. “He’s kind of excited. He’s got this idea that he’s
gonna be the cool dude in the convertible, picking you up after class. Letter jackets.
Buddy Holly stuff. He started early, you know? Never had the teenage daydream.”
Jensen doesn’t understand a word. It must show.
“If you’re planning on cutting loose,” Chad says, “Do it now. Before he gets too far
in.”
“Jared’s...” Jensen swallows. “He’s looking at colleges in Los Angeles? For me?”
“Yeah?” Chad says, as if this is not news to him at all.
“In Los Angeles?”
Chad turns around. “What the hell did you think he was going to do? Drop you back
in the street? This is Jared we’re talking about. Bleeding heart central. Dude, he’s had
his PA researching churches.”
Jensen swallows. Hard. He doesn’t duck his head. He lets himself have a moment to
think about that - Jared. For him. Jay. And then he says, “I’m not stupid. He can’t.
He’s - all those girls,” Jensen says, because he has discovered Google and there has
been picture after picture of Jared, looking happy, with girls. Small, dark haired girls
with big smiles.
“Huh,” Chad says, and nods. “Big gay epiphany. News to me.”
“Newspapers,” Jensen says. “Fans. Perez - Perez Hilton. Deadspin.”
“You think he hasn’t thought of that?” Chad says.
“Can’t,” Jensen says. “He likes. Acting.”
“You’re right there,” Chad agrees. He lights another cigarette, thinks. “This religion
thing,” he says. “This cult. It’s like an addiction, right? The way Jared talks about it,
no phones, no internet. Scary.”
Jensen waits.
41
“Way I see it,” Chad says. “There’s two things going on here. One. Jared like, likes
you. I dunno, he’s got the hots for your big gay smile. Whatever. And he kind of feels
responsible for you, what with the dumpster thing and the church thing. But, kid,
you’re right about what it looks like. He’s not gonna be drowning in scripts with you
around.”
“Let me think,” Chad says.
Two days later, FedEx, he sends the brochures and the application forms. Jensen picks
them up from reception - just like he’d picked up Jared’s scripts - and drops them on
top of Jared’s bags. He sits on the bed, and waits.
“Is this really what you want?” Jared says. Later. He’s read through everything three
times, turning the forms in his hands, and Jensen’s sat so still he has pins and needles
in both feet.
No.
“Yes,” Jensen says, breaking a commandment, cold all over.
“Fine,” Jared says.
It’s a half-way house. It has group meetings and life skills classes and counselors. It
has Matt, who picks Jensen up from the overwhelming nightmare that’s LAX with a
smile and a sign with Jensen’s name sharpied on it, just like the blocking signs on set.
It has Amelia, who left two children behind when she got off the bus on Mulholland
Drive and didn’t look back, Peter, who can’t raise his voice above a whisper, and
Stevie, who is cheerfully acting out, which equates to smoking by the back door and
keeping his beer under the bed. It has day release classes which Matt frowns over,
because Jensen doesn’t have a single qualification to his name and doesn’t know what
he wants to do. It has a room Matt says he can decorate exactly how he wants, but
Jensen can’t imagine what posters he might want to put up. It has the laptop and the
cell phone which were waiting for Jensen when he arrived, the ones that made Charis,
who does cooking and I.T., whistle and grin.
On Sundays, it has Jared.
“So, I guess,” Jared says, that first Sunday, when Jensen had been shaking so hard
he’d had to bury his hands between his knees and bite his lip. “How’s it going? They
looking after you?”
He isn’t looking at Jensen. He’s watching the road, but his hands are white-knuckled
on the steering wheel. He looks tired. He’s wearing jeans, a hoodie, sunglasses:
Jensen can’t see his eyes, but he’s frightened to look.
“’s okay,” Jensen manages.
“Matt says you’re going to college,” Jared says.
42
“Um,” Jensen says, and winces. He wishes he was more like the girls who held
Jared’s hand on the red carpets. He wishes he was one of those girls.
Jared’s mouth tightens. Then he says, “What do you want to - fuck it,” he says.
“We’re going for pancakes.”
They go for pancakes. They go to a diner on the corner of some street somewhere,
busy and warm, and they have to wait for a table and there are so many options on the
menu Jensen pushes it back across the table and this time Jared’s kind and doesn’t ask
him to choose. Jared says, “Real maple syrup!” And, “Thanks, honey. Just keep it
coming, will ya?” And, “That good, huh?”
Half way through the stack, Jensen says, “Thank you for the laptop. And the cell
phone.”
“I figured you could use them,” Jared says.
Jensen says, “I don’t know your number.”
That’s the moment when Jared looks up and smiles. It’s his small tight smile, the first
time Jensen sees it, and although he doesn’t know then that this is as much of the old
Jared as he’s going to get, it makes him smile back. “Pass it over,” Jared says, and
does something complicated with the buttons. “There you go.”
“What...” Jensen says, bemused, blinking at the screen, and then Jared spends an hour
and three more cups of coffee talking him through downloads and texts and apps and
mp3s and speed dials. Then he drives Jensen back to the house, and although Jensen’s
ma - although Jensen’s been brought up to mind his manners, when he opens his
mouth to say thank you nothing comes out. It’s all tied up with the mess of hurt and
want and I wish I could make you laugh and I wish I was good enough....
“Same time, same bat channel?” Jared says. Then he says, “Same time next week?”
Jensen nods.
Later, Jensen manages whole conversations about essays and American history and
how awesome Walt Whitman is and how Matt suggested learning to drive and –
“Jared, are you paying for me?” He hadn’t even thought about it until Stevie’s grant
ran out.
Shrugging, Jared says, “Two coffees and breakfast ain’t gonna break the bank. You
can take me out to dinner sometime. When you’re teaching.” Jared’s got it into his
head that Jensen’s going to be some college lecturer or something, just because the
college keeps bumping him up grades and he’s discovered he likes tutoring. It makes
him feel good, that moment when someone suddenly understands an idea they’ve
been struggling to learn.
“At the house,” Jensen says.
43
Jared’s eyes flick away to the window. “It’s tax deductible,” he says.
Jensen studies harder. He looks up what people earn, teaching, and he asks Matt how
much Jared’s paying. Every week. Even if... even if he works harder, hard enough, it’s
going to be two years before he can graduate. Another year for teacher training. Matt
says, “Sure. You can move out. You want Charis to start running through renting
places?”
“I need a job,” Jensen says. It’ll take time out from his studies. He can sleep less.
Jared says, “Babe -” He pulls a face. The word slipped out. It’s the first he’s said it
since - Since. “I get that you’re finding your feet,” he says, “And I know what it’s like
to want to be independent. But there’s nothing wrong in letting someone give you a
helping hand every so often. Just... I want to,” he says, and he says it quietly.
The next Sunday, in the parking lot at the diner and with Jared’s hand already on the
door, Jensen, dry mouthed, says, “Wait.” He can’t even look Jared in the face. He
reaches out his hand. There had been a time when this had been easy: he can hardly
believe it, now. He puts his hand, flat, on Jared’s thigh. Under denim, Jared’s warm,
and his muscles are tense. Jensen licks his lips and says. “You could. If you wanted.”
This used to be easy. He can remember this being easy. He can remembering getting
on his knees for Jared - with Jared - and both of them laughing so much he’d got
hiccups.
Jared says, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” His voice is high, but he
hasn’t moved.
“Probably?” Jensen says, and tightens his hand.
“No,” Jared says.
That day, neither of them find much to say. Jensen doesn’t expect Jared next Sunday,
although he waits in the driveway, the way he does every Sunday. He hasn’t got
anything else to offer. Matt comes out to find him raking the gravel in his best chinos.
“Jared’s PA called,” Matt says. “The flight was delayed.”
Jensen nods, and rakes gravel.
Next Sunday, Jared’s PA says he’s in New York. Next Sunday, it’s a charity
fundraiser for a non-kill shelter. The comparison’s so ironic it hurts.
Jensen checks his phone so often he sleeps with it under his pillow.
Then, Chad comes. Chad comes on a Tuesday. Jensen’s at college, arrives back
flustered with a backpack full of books and papers and two sets of notes to do and an
essay on American responses to the Irish Famine - he’s upped his course load again.
Matt says, “You’ve got a visitor,” and there’s a moment - “No!” Matt says, and then,
“I’m sorry.” Later he’ll say, “He waited two hours for you.”
44
“Hi?”
“Oh thank fuck, at last.”
He’d sit down, but he’s got his backpack and his phone and two books and “If you really wanted to screw him up -”
He must go pale. His legs are definitely wobbling: he has to hang onto the door, and
Chad has to realize there’s something wrong because quite suddenly Jensen’s sitting
down on the couch with his head between his knees and he can’t remember how he
got there.
“Honest, no, I didn’t mean it like that, he’s okay,” Chad says, and pats Jensen
clumsily on the head. Then he says, “Jen. I think... I think I made a mistake. So did
you,” he adds, “Just to be fair.”
“What’s wrong?” Jensen says to his knees.
Chad sighs. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he says. He’s not doing anything.
“Chad.”
“He’s not sleeping, he’s not eating, and he’s definitely not dating,” Chad says. “It’s
been four months. I think you should move back. In. Whatever. Because he’s sure as
hell not happy without you.”
Jensen says, miserably aware of three absent Sundays, “He doesn’t want me.”
“Balls,” Chad says. “Have you seen him? You know he’s got fourteen different
pictures of you on his noticeboard? You know he turned down a role with Donovan Donovan! - because they were filming in Canada? You know he actually owns that
damn diner, now? There’s diversifying your portfolio and then there’s sheer
sentimentality - oh Christ. I’m not explaining the stock market. Ask my broker. Point
is, he wants you back, and I think you should go, and seeing as how it was down to
me you’re here in the first place, I guess I’m stepping up.”
When he’d got out of the truck, that last Sunday, Jared had slammed the door so hard
Jensen’s ears had hurt. For the first time, Jared hadn’t waited, he’d walked straight
into the diner, his shoulders tense and his stride short and tight. He hadn’t even smiled
at their waitress.
“I tried to blow him,” Jensen says, beyond shame. “He wouldn’t let me.”
“Oh you are fucking kidding,” Chad says, and sighs. Then he says, “Are you sure you
were doing it right?”
“What?”
45
“Do you have Wi-Fi?” Chad asks.
Later, as Jensen watches wide-eyed three naked bodies on the screen of his own
laptop, Chad will have a hand over his face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he’ll say.
“You know I’m all about the girls, right?”
“That has to be photoshopped,” Jensen says doubtfully.
“I don’t think it is,” Chad says, peeking, and groans.
“But it’s not...” Jensen says. He can’t explain. It’s not the twisted poses or the
intrusive eye of the camera that bothers him, it’s the way people don’t really look at
each other. He and Jared... they hadn’t... “Baby, just give me your hand. Oh fuck,
sorry, yeah, that’s right... ” They hadn’t done anything close to the contortions on
screen, but what they had done felt so very much more intimate.
“You know this is just sex, right?” Chad says, and Jensen thinks he understands, but
then Chad says, “Everything comes down to dick in the end.” It seems to be his whole
strategy, but Chad’s known Jared a lot longer than Jensen has. And Jensen’s got to
believe in something.
“Like, he... ” Chad frowns. “He pays for this place, right? And whatever it is you guys
do on Sundays? And, dude, I spent a day trawling around every computer store in LA
for this baby. It’s this transaction, right? He pays up and you put out and everyone’s
happy.” Chad waves his hand at the screen, where someone is doing something
unspeakable to some very pink plastic.
Jensen thinks of Jared slamming the door to the truck and stalking into the diner, the
braced lines of his back and his bowed head. He thinks Chad’s wrong. But that
doesn’t mean that Jared really wants... more.
Still, he makes Chad take everything. “It’s like Ruth and Naomi,” Jensen says, as
Chad frowns down at him. Jensen’s sitting on the kitbag Jared bought him when they
were filming. His laptop’s leaning against his knees. They’ve had to borrow a box
from Matt to put his books into, and altogether that’s more belongings than he’s ever
owned in his life before. The lights are on - “Motion sensitive,” Chad says - but
beyond the porch the driveway is in darkness. There are other houses, Jensen had seen
them once they’d got through the gate, but he can’t see them from here. He’s on his
own.
Jared’s house is whitewashed, and big. Bigger than Jensen.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Chad says. “Because this wasn’t the plan.
And he’ll kill me if anything happens to you.”
“I’m fine,” Jensen says. There’s a guard at the gate, and he can run. Fast.
46
Chad thumbs his phone. “Call me,” he says. He’s put his number in Jensen’s phone,
right next to Jared’s and Matt’s and Stevie’s... there are twenty eight people who want
Jensen to have their phone numbers. He’s never called one of them, although he keeps
thinking about how it would work. “He won’t be long.”
Jared’s not. It’s less than an hour later, when Jensen hears the truck turn into the drive.
He knows the tone of every gear shift. He’s nervous enough to press his hands
together between his knees, but he keeps his head up and his eyes open as the truck’s
headlights angle across the porch. There’s a moment when he thinks the truck’s not
going to stop, and then it does. The door slams, but Jensen’s still squinting against the
headlights.
Against the lights, Jared’s a silhouette, just as he was when he was an angel.
“Chad,” Jensen says. “Chad brought me. I wanted. He said. I can be. I can be good,”
Jensen says. “I’m learning. I can do bills on the internet, Charis showed me. College
isn’t going to be long. Then I can get a job. And Chad showed me porn. I can be,”
Jensen says, and takes a deep breath, still looking up. “I can be anything you want me
to be. And I’m sorry -”
Jared’s on his knees. The laptop crashes down onto the steps. He’s reaching out: his
hands are warm and strong on Jensen’s back, his chest big and warm, his hair ticklish,
and he’s holding on tight. “Babe,” he says, and clears his throat. “Babe, you don’t
have to be anyone else.” He’s dropped his head into Jensen’s shoulder, the way they
used to sleep. “I thought you wanted -”
“I do want,” Jensen says. His fists are tight in Jared’s jacket. They can’t get any
closer. “I want you,” he says fiercely. “Like Ruth, I want. Don’t ask me to leave you,”
he says.
“Never,” Jared says. One of his hands is fastened in Jensen’s hair, the other wrapped
around the waistband of his jeans. “Never.” Then he snorts into Jensen’s shoulder.
“Well, you got the bit about my people being your people right,” he says. “Chad.
Really?”
“He was kind,” Jensen says. Then he says, “I don’t mind. About the newspapers. I can
pretend. I can be your secretary. I don’t want to... red carpets,” he says. “Interviews.
You don’t have to be out for me,” he says, it’s a new word, he learned it in college.
Jared laughs. He says, “Babe, the whole damn world’s gonna know you’re mine. You
got me?” When he stands up, he pulls Jensen up with him. He says, “Forever.
Whatever. Ruth. You promised.” He could be making a vow, he’s so emphatic. But
when he kisses Jensen he’s not reverent, he’s starving, and Jensen’s right there, just as
profanely hungry.
But he’ll never think of Jared as anything other than sacred.
47
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Snape/Harry
Rating: R
Wordcount: 14,000
Summary: Harry Potter and the Egg Collectors.
Notes: Many thanks to beta bethia_cathrain.
Written for perverse_idyll, for help_japan.
D
ragonwatch
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
“... Dragonwatch got off to a flying start this year with some unexpected early
footage from the crew up North. This was taken from the ferry.”
The screen is blue. Bright blue, shading into white; the clouds are little more than
gossamer thin wisps. Only shakily in focus, a thin, black arrowhead cuts through the
heart of the image. The camera steadies and focuses, still too far away to distinguish
detail, but close enough to see the sharp, slender outlines of wings and body, the silver
glint along the edge of back and wings. The dragon’s neck is stretched out, its tail
longer than the skinny length of its body, and it soars rather than flies, wings stretched
out and motionless in the blue of the sky. Five seconds of footage are long enough to
hear the heavy thud of a ferry’s engines and the slap of water against steel, the
muffled shouts of people unseen - “Hey!” “Look - over there -”
“Well,” the Look North presenter says, “A good start there for the Dragonwatch crew.
Tune in on Monday for the first of five programmes from Hoy, as the Dragonwatch
team of Harry Potter and Amir Singh hope to catch groundbreaking footage of the egg
hatching. Beautiful, isn’t it, Jane?”
“Certainly is, Tony. Now, from St James Park -”
~*~
Hermione had warned him to take sensible shoes and waterproofs, and Ron had sent
him an ominous bottle of Smelliot’s All Purpose Flying Insect Repellant (pink, with a
forbidding black label that warned external use only, not applicable to reptiles,
mammals or mythological beasts, all disclaimers valid, do not attempt to refund,
Smelliot’s can be contracted only through Fewt & Gobbett, solicitors) but Ginny had
just said, don’t forget to send postcards. She’d said it with a smile in her voice, and
Harry had smiled himself, because it had been four years now and finally it felt like
they were actually able to talk to each other without Ginny bringing up (Harry
winced) a certain very flexible world-champion Beater (post-separation, pre-divorce)
or Harry referring bitterly to Ginny’s sudden enthusiasm for real tennis.
48
“I won’t forget,” he’d promised, and made the automatic check at the calendar on the
wall where Albus’ match schedule was underlined in red and James’ lecture tour dates
waved cheery little flags. The clock on the wall told him Albus was in Manchester,
James in Boston, and Lily in the library at Hogwarts, although the clock was less
forthcoming on whether she actually was revising or just chatting.
“Don’t assume an owl will get through,” Ginny said. “Magic up there can be really
chancy.”
“I’ll use Muggle post,” Harry promised. “And in any case, it’s only a week.”
“Floo me when you get back,” said Ginny, “Bring me some oatcakes. And some
cheese!”- and her head winked out of the empty fireplace.
Harry had found himself whistling as he packed, not just his oldest robes and his
walking boots, but an elderly sowester Mrs. Weasley had dragged out of a trunk for
him, two snappish umbrellas with duck-billed handles, and enough spare pairs of
socks to make a small raft, should the ferry sink. His work robes, hexed to impeccable
neatness, went on top of the copies of The Dragon-Spotter’s Handbook and the
brown-specked, battered copy of Sea-Dragons: Habitat, Habits and Homilies he’d
managed to borrow from the British Wizarding Library. Squeezed down the sides of
his battered kit bag went his dress shoes, his mobile phone and laptop chargers, his
binoculars and the stereoscopic telescope with the interchangeable lenses Ginny had
bought him for Christmas, his wash kit and his Hogwarts Old Wizard’s Association
tie rolled around his press pass, several pens and a couple of unsplittable quills, three
bags of single lake salted caramel frogs and a small packet of Mulligan’s Raspberry
Liquorice tea, just in case - the bag was heaving at the seams. Sighing, Harry
remembered the days when he had set out without anything but his robe and his wand,
and set off for St Pancras Station.
At Bathelmy St Mary’s, Amir had struggled onto the train sweating and flushed with
his black hair pushed up into exasperated spikes and the camera cases bobbing along
behind him in an unsteady caravan. “Anthea was on the phone,” he said, and Harry
gave a sympathetic smile. Amir’s wife was a foreign newswitch who somehow
managed to travel through every hot spot in the wizarding world unscathed. She had
the reaction times of an auror on red alert, but Amir still worried.
“Where is she this time?” asked Harry.
“Tashkent,” Amir said. “Blasted Chimeras. If they only mate once every fifty years,
why do they have to do it now? Mum was hoping Anthea’d be here for Holi this
year.”
“Chimeras?” Harry said. “Wouldn’t you rather be there? I mean, Sea Dragons, they’re
great, but they’re not exactly fire breathing shape changers.”
“Are you kidding?” Amir asked, managing to sit down among a precariously balanced
pile of boxes labeled, “Fragile” “This Way Up” and “Beware, live lens-grinder
49
inside”. “Anyone can shoot Chimeras, dude, all you need is flame-proof armour. This
is the first time anyone’s ever shot Sea Dragons on the nest, you know? When Tony
offered me the job I couldn’t say yes fast enough.”
“Thanks,” Harry said. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to come.”
“Yeah, well,” said Amir. “We had a great time last year. I mean, everyone’s seen
Crups, right? But getting those night time shots was something else - and the babies
were so freaking cute, those little button noses and their tiny paws... You didn’t do too
bad, either,” he said, and flashed Harry a grin. “For an old guy. I thought you were
just on board for the laughs, I mean, Harry Potter, you’re having me on, right? But
you did OK.”
“Cheers,” Harry said.
“For your first time,” said Amir, and grinned again. “Could have used some work on
your timing. How many times did we do that first intro again? Sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” Harry said. “Almost as funny as when you fell into that cow pat.”
“Dunno why I want to risk filming with you again,” Amir said, and reached for the
Tupperware box on top of the camera case. “Samosa? Mum sent supplies.”
“Get in,” said Harry, grinning, and took two.
~*~
The train took them to Scrabster, where they spent the night in a small hotel on the
pier head before taking the Stromness ferry. The boat was bigger than Harry had
expected, a vast steel cavern packed with lorries and cars and containers, tourists and
returning Islanders. A few of those were witches and wizards, no more trusting the
chancy apparition conditions than Amir and Harry, and he caught more than one
glance of recognition. But, twenty-six years after Voldemort’s death, Harry (who had
noticed three more grey hairs in his fringe that morning) was far more comfortable
now with being recognised than he had been as a teenager. He smiled, nodded and
signed an autograph for a small girl in a sparkling T-shirt who wanted to know if it
was true that Crups never ate their vegetables.
“Crups love vegetables,” Harry said firmly, which was not entirely a lie and made the
girl’s mother smile gratefully.
Amir elbowed him in the ribs.
“They eat strawberry leaves!” Harry said defensively. Being a parent had...
occasionally rearranged his priorities.
“Only if there’re slugs on them,” Amir said, and they went for coffee.
50
The restaurant was on one of the upper decks, a wide room with windows that looked
out onto the wood-planked surround of the sundeck. Waiting for Amir, Harry, looking
out at the surprising blue of the sky and the glint of sunlight on the white-painted rails,
found that some habits did die hard. By the time the second person had started
pointing and shouting, he was halfway through the fire exit, wand in hand, every
sense on alert.
“No, over there -”
“Up! Ben, get the bino -”
“Never seen one -”
Harry spun round, wand at the ready, looking up. The sun was so bright he blinked for
an instant, blinded.
Beside him a low voice, with the lilting accent of the Islands, murmured: “Haven’t
seen one of those for sixty years.”
“Hold this,” Amir said abruptly, and shoved the light meter in Harry’s hands as Amir
himself struggled with the camera tripod. “And keep your eye on that dragon!”
“My grandfather used to talk about seeing them dance,” the old woman next to Harry
said, very quietly. “It’s lovely to see them come back.”
Amir, squinting, screwed the camera down with frantic haste, one hand already
tapping away at the keyboard.
Looking up, Harry found himself holding his breath.
Above his head, far away in the deep blue of the sky, a single Sea Dragon flew. It was
slender, its thin, pointed wings cutting through the sky in a deep glide, utterly
dissimilar to the way bigger dragons had to flap their way through the air currents. Its
scales looked black, but the bright spring sun highlighted the lines of its back and tail
in silver, and as it turned its head, the horns glinted red. As Harry watched, it banked
steeply sideways, slipping effortlessly on a thermal, and then headed, arrow-straight,
south and out of sight into the hazy white of the clouds over the mainland.
“Got it!” Amir said.
“Oh, well done,” Harry said automatically.
“You weren’t even watching,” Amir said. “Come on. Give me that back.”
“Hey,” Harry protested.
“The meter. Oi, watch -”
51
Amir grabbed at the precious waterproofed camera as two men barged through the
sundeck doors. They were both in a hurry, camera bags open and binoculars in hand.
“Where is it?” one of them mutters, “If we missed it because you had to have the last
sandwich -”
“Watch out,” Amir said, as one of the men swung round and his camera bag nearly
tangled the tripod legs.
He got a seriously dirty look. “Bloody -”
“Warren, get over here!”
They stumbled away, staring at the sky.
“Nice,” Harry said. “Twitchers?” He had one hand steadying the tripod as Amir
packed the camera away.
Shrugging, Amir said, “Dunno. Rude, though. Hope we don’t see them again.”
But when they had lunch, the two men were sitting behind them, maps spread out over
the table, a battered laptop open on the side. They had their heads bent over a dogeared notebook, and Harry, his old auror’s instincts prickling at the dark mutter of
their voices, murmured a quick Aucupius with his wand held under the table.
“... make sure to buy ropes in Scrabster...” He heard, muffled: the spell was clearly
patchy. “... and don’t forget the box this time, we can’t afford another wipe out.”
Then one of them says, distinctly, “Innes says it’s a 5a very severe, but the guidebook
says the last stretch is a probable 6. Joe Brown did it in the sixties, of course, but -”
“What is it?”
“Climbers,” Harry said, and concentrated on his soggy cheese and pickle sandwich.
By the time they’d eaten lunch, the sea mist was coming down, clouding the horizon
and hiding the entrance to Scapa Flow, and the sun deck was damp with drizzle. But
Harry dug both umbrellas out of his kit bag, and he and Amir hung over the railings,
watching the long, low shape of the mainland come out of the mist. Stromness, where
the ferry would dock, was a long, low stretch of grey stone houses huddled into the
slope of the hill behind, the beach in front of it stony and seaweed strewn. Cormorants
sat, blackly hunched, on the tumbled concrete blocks of the Second World War sea
defenses, and overhead, unseen, gulls yelped and shrieked. The air was cold and
damp, smelling strongly of fish and the sea.
“Fleet must be in,” Amir said, as they swung into the bay and saw the moored fishing
boats bobbing up and down in the tide. Against the misted greys of the sea and the
hills and the houses, the vivid green of the nets and the striking reds and oranges of
the floats used to buoy them were almost startling. Most of the boats were empty, but
52
the occasional waterproof-clad fisherman raised a hand as the ferry went past. “Fresh
crab for supper.”
“Pizza,” Harry said firmly: he still had very bad memories of the abalone Amir had
made him try, one night in Torquay, on last year’s Crupwatch.
“Italian,” Amir bargained. “Hey, look, it’s those guys again. Are they in a hurry or
what?”
Luggage stacked at the gangplank already, Warren and Steve were standing
awkwardly at the rail. Warren, at least, looked almost too hefty to be a climber, his
muscular, black-haired arms bulging out of his camouflage jacket and his thick neck
rolling over the collar, but Steve was whip-thin beside him. Both men were intent on
the approaching dockside, where a row of taxis waited for passengers who had come
by foot. Despite the conversation he’d overheard, Harry still prickled with unease: he
didn’t like the tense, closed-in way both men stood, or the way Warren’s hand was
fisted in his pocket....
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” Harry said, and shivered in the sudden gust of wind from the sea.
They stayed in a little white-washed hotel that overlooked the harbour, and
compromised on fish and chips eaten warm from their wrappings, the rich, warm
smell of vinegar and tomato ketchup wrapping around the cold salt of the sea.
Unwilling to waste the evening, they ate sitting on a bench facing the black waters of
Scapa Flow, and in front of them riding lights of the moored fishing boats shone white
and red, and all around the bay the tiny gold lights of the coast road and the islands of
Graemesey and Hoy swung and glittered in the darkness. It was mid-March, and in
London the yellow and purple crocuses had flowered long ago and daffodils crowded
the parks, but here in the North the tiny gardens were bare stone and the flowerpots
outside the houses empty: the wind from the sea was damp and cold and the nightdark sky clouded and heavy with rain. Nevertheless, it occurred to Harry, bunching
his hands in his pockets against the wind and waiting for Amir to finish the last of his
chips, that here, far away from his failed marriage and his too-quiet flat and his grown
up children, he was happy.
“Pint?” he said.
“Sure,” said Amir.
~*~
In the morning, they gathered up their boxes and bags and wandered down the quay
again to catch the boat to Hoy. It was smaller by far than the Stromness ferry, lowriding, little more than a platform for four cars. On one side, there was an ungainly
wheelhouse and on the other a small passenger lounge with leather seats and yellowed
53
newspapers, stacked with luggage, but Amir and Harry leaned over the railings and
watched a seal wait for scraps from one of the fishing boats, in sunshine. The sky was
blue, the wind warm, and the sea sparkled and glittered in sunshine: it was easy to
imagine that they were in some different country, where the rules of magic had
changed, where one could wander round a corner and meet a friend one had not seen
in years, unsurprised.
“There is magic in the air, here,” Amir said softly, Amir who had only the barest trace
of magic himself but whose mother was a full-blood Manushya-Rakshasi with a skullstrewn altar under her spice rack.
“It’s different,” Harry said. He’d already tried a simple Leviosa and seen half the
fishing boats in the harbour tug at their moorings: his duck-billed umbrellas had
become unexpectedly snappish and he’d had to wrap them in his robes to keep them
quiet. “Hermione warned me not to try magic. There are witches and wizards up here,
of course, but most of the spells are Norwegian. She offered me a book, but it’d take
years to learn what works. Better not to try, I don’t want to mess anything up.” His
new mobile hadn’t worked, either, blinking uncooperatively at him when he’d tried to
text Ron, but he’d dropped the four postcards he’d written in the pub into the postbox
and hoped for better reception on Hoy.
“Oh no,” Amir sighed. “Aren’t those...”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and watched as Warren and Steve marched up the quay, loaded
with bags. “Wonder what they’re doing.” There were coils of rope, brightly coloured,
on top of the rucksacks.
“The Old Man?” Amir suggested. “It’s famous. There was a televised climb of it,
years ago.”
“That’s the stack, right?” Harry said. “I was hoping we’d get to see it.”
“Tony will have our guts for garters if we’re staring at rocks on the other side of the
island and the eggs hatch,” Amir said.
“Maybe after,” Harry said, watching as the climbers dragged all their luggage into the
lounge. Neither of them bothered to look outside, and Warren pulled out the same
notebook from his pack and started to study it, frowning. He had an old scar on his
neck, three parallel lines curling up from his coat collar to the lobe of his ear. Harry,
staring, wondered what kind of accident caused that kind of scar. It looked like a
thestral’s claws, but most magical injuries could be healed without trace....
When Warren looked up and caught Harry’s eye, his face flushed. He stood up, bent
over in the low-ceilinged lounge, and drew his finger across his throat in an
unmistakable Muggle threat.
Harry looked away, shaken. He had no fear the man would actually hurt him - the
wand that had somehow become grasped in his right hand would take care of that, no
54
matter how awry his magic - but it was an unexpected reaction. It was only a scar.
What on earth had upset the man so much?
When he looked back, the thin one, Steve, was ducking out of the doorway.
“Hey!” he said, and he was looking at Harry. “Hey, look,” he said. “My friend wants
to apologise. He’s a bit jumpy on boats. Childhood trauma and all that. He didn’t
mean it, OK?”
But Steve’s smile was thin and a muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth, and when
Harry glanced into the lounge Warren was staring blackly back at him.
“Thanks,” Harry said stiffly. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Right,” Steve said, and stared back at Harry for a moment before he ducked back
into the lounge.
“What was all that about?” Amir asked, shocked. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, puzzled and a little worried. “I’ll tell you later, OK?”
The ferry pulled away from the quay into the small sparkling waves of Scapa Flow,
but for Harry some of the pleasure had gone out of the day. He pulled his sowester
close against the sea wind, and stared at the dark, low shoreline of Hoy and its two
rounded hills, wondering why the two climbers had come to the Islands.
It was a short trip. The ferry pulled in first to the little stave on Graemesey, dropping
off a small group of tourists, and then pulled into the short stretch across to North
Hoy, chugging across the water to the old wooden pier. It was almost deserted, the
quayside boathouse boarded up for the winter and the concrete slabs dirty with the
spring storm’s thrown up wrack, but a car was waiting on the slip and above, where
the road ran, a tall man with wind-blown black hair leaned against a Land-Rover.
“That’ll be the guy from the Trust, Richards,” Amir said. He had the binoculars out.
“Do you want to get our stuff?”
“Let them go first,” Harry said, waving to the boat’s pilot, and they watched as
Warren and Steve loaded themselves and their baggage into the waiting car. Reluctant
to risk another Leviosa, Harry and Amir dragged their own boxes and kitbags up the
ramp towards the waiting Land-Rover.
“What d’you reckon,” Amir said, panting. “Bet they’re the ones that booked that
cottage...”
“At least we got somewhere,” Harry said, and looked up, and stopped.
The man leaning against the Land Rover was Snape.
He couldn’t be.
55
He was. The hooked nose, the sallow skin, the shape of his shoulders, the hair, the
fear and hatred and despair that crashed over Harry in one appalling, obliterating
wave, the clench of his hand around the wand in his pocket and the sudden, sickening
lurch of his stomach. Snape. Snape - and for all Harry had spent twenty six years of
his life trying to make up for the fact that Snape had all along been on his side, in that
moment he was fifteen again and vicious with despair.
“Snape’s dead,” Harry whispered to himself. “He’s dead.”
But the way the man turned his head to look down at them, the arrogant rise of his
eyebrows and the sharp angle of his chin - that was Snape.
Before he knew what he was doing, Harry had his wand in his shaking hands and was
pointing it up the slipway.
“Harry!” Amir said. “What -”
“Really?” the man leaning against the Land Rover sneered. “What did they teach you
at school?” He stood upright, leaning into the wind, and pulled his hands out of his
pockets. They were empty, and he wore, not a wizard’s robes, but a pair of raggededged jeans and an ancient fisherman’s sweater. “A singularly useless threat. Do not
attempt a single spell,” he said softly, although his voice carried, sharply assured, to
Harry’s ears. “Or you will find it rebounding in ways you do not expect and assuredly
have not anticipated. Put that wand away!”
It was an order as sharp as any Harry had heard at Hogwarts, and he found himself
dropping his hand and his wand with it, staring, utterly confounded, at the man in
front of him.
Snape was dead. Snape had died at Hogwarts, twenty six years ago. Snape had died,
horribly, and in his last moments had given Harry the key to defeating Voldemort...
“Mr. Potter, I presume?” the man at the top of the slipway said, a sardonic smile
playing at the corners of his thin lips. “And Mr. Singh. What a pleasure it is to make
your acquaintance. Do feel free to take your time: I have little else to do but await
your convenience, after all.”
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Amir muttered under his breath, and then. “Harry. Give
me a hand here, will you?”
Shaking, Harry bent down and picked up his kitbag and the camera box. There had
been no recognition in that fine-boned, arrogant face. Nothing in those black eyes to
suggest that Snape recognised Harry. Nothing.
‘But of course’, Harry thought, with a sudden thrill that stopped him ten feet from the
Land Rover. ‘He doesn’t know who I am. He gave me all his memories.’
56
Harry looked up. Snape - it was Snape, had to be Snape, there was no mistaking the
bony brace of his shoulders under the jumper or the way his hair fell from that
widow’s peak, although it was streaked with silver now and blew freely in the wind.
He must have made himself a decent shampoo at last, Harry thought on a ridiculous
spurt of laughter.
“Was there something amusing?” Snape asked, stone faced. “Something I missed? Do
tell,” he sneered, and his black eyes bored into Harry’s just as they had done years
ago, when he was still Harry swallowed. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Well then. Are you proposing to wait there all day, or shall we proceed?” Snape
asked. “We do not have all day.”
But Harry couldn’t move. Harry was thinking, ‘He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know
any of it, the last battle, the choices he made, the way we think about him - he doesn’t
know he got that Order of Merlin, he doesn’t know about Albus - he didn’t come to
my wedding,’ Harry thought, and then blinked, astonished, because his wedding had
been and gone years ago: his divorce was four years old.
“Harry,” Amir said, exasperated.
“Sorry,” Harry said. “Sorry, I was -” He hurried to give Amir a hand loading all their
gear into the back of the Land Rover, reluctant to turn his back on Snape as he went.
The hair was different, surprisingly sleek. The skin looked better, older, of course, but
the lines of it were relaxed and there was a softness about the eyes that was entirely
new.
“Shall we go?” Snape said. “Or would you prefer to finish your inspection?”
He was really glaring now, paler, although colour pinked the edge of his cheekbones.
He hadn’t lost his sharp tongue.
“No, it’s fine, sorry,” Harry said again, scrambling to follow Amir into the front
bench seat. “You just.. you look like someone I know,” Harry said weakly.
“Who?” Snape snapped, turning so quickly he must have risked whiplash. “Who?”
“Just... not someone I knew well?” Harry said, shocked. “I mean, I really didn’t know
you at all, just...”
“Know you?” Snape shouted.
“Harry!” Amir said. “Mr. Richards? Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m
starting to feel seriously uncomfortable. Do you think you guys can give it a rest for a
bit, at least until we get to the cottage and can sort it out?”
57
For a moment, Harry and Snape stared at each other. Then Snape turned his head
away, started the engine, and backed the Land Rover up onto the road. He said stiffly,
“My apologies, Mr. Singh. Although it is not common knowledge on the island, I
suffer from selective amnesia. An old accident, but severe, and it is the associated
injuries from that accident which prevented me assisting you with your luggage.
Given Mr. Potter’s response... I was inclined to think we might once have been
acquainted.”
“We were,” Harry said shortly.
“I gather this was not an acquaintance welcomed by either of us,” Snape said. He had
himself in hand, now, the flush had faded from his cheekbones and his voice was
level. The edge of a scar showed above the rolled neck of his jumper.
Harry’s hands were still shaking. “No,” he said.
“Then let us not discuss it,” Snape said imperturbably, and sent the Land Rover
onwards with a screech of gears and a rattle from the back that Harry thought sounded
horribly like the camera case, falling.
~*~
“... and don’t forget that from tomorrow we’ll be taking a peek at the first pair of Sea
Dragons to nest in Britain since 1936. Tony, what’s the news from the Dragonwatch
team?”
“Well, as you know, Jane, there are only nineteen breeding pairs of Sea Dragons in
the world, and one of them is found right here in Britain. The exact site of the nest is a
closely-guarded secret, but initial reports suggest that there is at least one egg in the
nest and quite possibly more. We’ll find out more at eight o’clock on Monday, when
the Dragonwatch team sends their first report. Talking of eggs, politician -”
~*~
“On your left,” Snape said imperturbably, “You can see the remains of the Lyness
American Air Base, dating of course to the Second World War. As we cross over the
causeway we’ll pass the road to Hackness Battery, a remnant of the Napoleonic Wars.
You may think,” he said, “The Orkney Islands far removed from conflict, but the truth
of the matter is that war left these lands as battered and torn as any London Blitz.”
Snape’s voice was steady and calm, a deep, lulling rhythm that nevertheless grated on
Harry’s nerves. He squirmed in his seat, knocked his knees off the dashboard and
accidentally elbowed Amir in the ribs: he felt fifteen again, uncertain and threatened
and on edge.
58
“Stop it,” Amir hissed.
“The beach on your left is one of the few sandy beaches on Hoy, and the second of the
two crofts was once owned by writer Henry Williamson.” Snape sighed. “Tarka the
Otter,” he added, “A novel now less well known outside the Islands than it once was.”
The road was rough with frost-cracked tarmac, pitted and gravel edged, and it wound
around the island in sweeping curves and abrupt corners, clearly built to respect field
boundaries. On the wheel, Snape’s long white fingers petted and stroked the Land
Rover through the bends, coaxed it over the dips and bridges. He touched the wheel as
he must have done a broomstick, once, and Harry wondered if Snape’s magic still
held true here on the Islands, if Snape had learned to adapt to this new world, if
Nagini’s bite had changed him in any way other than the scar whose tail-end crept up
above the turtleneck of Snape’s jumper and curled to an end under his ear. Snape’s
fingers were white now, not just pale but a clear bone-white, unstained....
“Cantick Head,” Snape said dryly. “Do forgive me if I leave you to reconnoiter the
cottages on your own. I shall return in an hour, at which point we shall proceed to the
nest. You should find the key under the doormat.”
He’d pulled the Land Rover to a halt on a small patch of tarmac, and on the right a
line of low, whitewashed cottages turned their windows to the sea. Abruptly, six feet
beyond the Land Rover’s wheels, the land dropped to the sea: they’d climbed steeply
up from the bay, and Harry suspected that the cliffs were as rocky and ragged as the
outcrops behind the cottages. The sea roared, out of sight, the crash of waves against
rock startling after the gentle lapping waves of the bay.
But the view that had both Amir and Harry arrested in their seats was the great red
and white thrust of the lighthouse. Towering above their heads, battered and stained, it
still stood proudly facing out to the North Sea, and forty feet above their heads the
great glass reflectors spun and winked as they must have done for years.
“Whoa,” Amir said.
And before he could stop himself, Harry said, “Can we go up it?”
Snape turned his head, arched an eyebrow. “Reckless, Mr. Potter,” he said.
But Harry, who had expected contempt, suddenly realised that the glint in Snape’s
eyes was not derision but amusement. It shocked him, made him essay the smallest of
grins in reply, and Snape looked at him for one long moment before he looked away
and slid out of the Land Rover, all lithe, limber lines, nothing like the hunched crow
of Harry’s school days. Without looking back, he set off down the hill to the beach,
disdaining the road and instead striding over the heather. The wind blew his hair into
a dark pennant, and his hands were thrust in his pockets.
“Glad we straightened that out,” Harry said wryly.
59
“What the hell was that?” asked Amir. “Harry, mate, I didn’t sign up for some kind of
pissing contest, and we’re stuck with this guy for the next five days. What gives?”
“I knew him once,” Harry said. “Sorry. It was... unexpected. Look, I’ll talk to him,
OK?”
Right. Talk to Snape. Yeah, that was bound to go well. “Let’s get this stuff sorted,”
Harry sighed.
The cottage they’d rented was small and smelled of old wellingtons and the sea, but
the thick stone walls and small windows promised that, once they’d got the fire lit, it
would be warm enough. Downstairs, there was a tiny kitchen, with the three boxes of
groceries they’d ordered already stacked on the peeling linoleum floor, and a dark
little living room with three crooked bookshelves and a stack of jigsaws - the Queen’s
Coronation, a remarkably pink Disney Princess and a shuffling parliament of owls
who winked and fluttered across the battered cover. Up the narrow stairs, there was a
tiny bathroom with a shower, and two bedrooms tucked under the eaves, dormer
windows looking out to the lighthouse. The bed linen was crisply clean and smelled of
lavender, the bathroom was stocked with bright crystal bottles of soap and shampoo,
and down in the living room the fire in the stove was already laid.
“It’ll do, right?” Amir said, dropping his bag on the bed with the patchwork quilt,
which meant Harry got chenille. “Still, I wish we’d got that cottage in North Hoy. It’s
gonna be a hell of a trek with the cameras.”
“Maybe Snape can help,” Harry said absently, squinting sideways through the
window to catch Snape’s tall figure walking along the shoreline.
“Who?” said Amir.
“Snape,” Harry said, and then blinked. “Richards. I mean Richards.” His hands had
fastened around the windowsill, clung there. Snape had stopped; he was looking out to
sea, one hand holding back his hair as he stared at the horizon. ‘He’s a different man,’
Harry thought to himself. ‘He doesn’t even remember... ’
It should have felt like a relief. But, unaccountably, Harry thought of Snape’s
memories, of the fierce love he’d carried all his life for Harry’s Mum, of the equally
fierce resentment and hatred he’d felt about Harry and the almost inconceivable
courage with which Snape had fought Voldemort for so many years, and he
wondered. Did Snape feel diminished? Did he know something was missing? What
was he, without that over-riding purpose? Harry at least had had Ginny, after the war:
Ginny and his children - and the clench of tenderness in his heart when he thought of
James and Albus and Lily was familiar and precious - and Ron and Hermione and the
Weasleys, and his job. Snape had had nothing.
“Well, let’s hope your Mr. Richards knows some form of Leviosa that actually
works,” Amir said, “Because I really don’t fancy carrying this lot over those hills.”
60
By the time Snape returned, they’d got the camera and the harnesses and all the rest of
the equipment ready to go. They were completely dependent on Snape: he was the
sole warden on site, and The Sea Dragon Trust had purposely not sent any
information about where the nest was sited. Kicking his feet against the sofa, Harry
hoped that he hadn’t messed things up, regretted that knee-jerk pointed wand,
wondered if Snape would burst in through the door and send them home. He really
should have thought first: Amir would never forgive him if they had to go home
empty-handed.
But when Snape arrived, he knocked sharply on the door and waited on the doorstep.
The door was open: Amir yelled, “We’re ready,” and Snape ducked through and stood
looking at the pile of equipment, frowning.
“I suppose neither of you thought to secure a levitation spell in Stromness?” he asked.
“No. Fine.”
Harry didn’t even see him touch a wand: his hands were motionless, one curled
around the edge of the door and one at his side, but suddenly the boxes were bobbing
in the air.
“Come on then,” Snape said, and gave Harry’s walking boots a brief glare. They were
new, and Harry cringed a little. “The days are still short.”
It was not surprising that Snape set a storming pace up the cliffside path. His long legs
strode easily over the rocks and tufts of heather, the nodding sea poppies and the tiny
creeping feverfew clumps with their miniature red flowers. Behind him, in a windbuffeted, jostling line, the boxes of equipment followed, and behind them Amir and
Harry struggled breathlessly to keep up. There was no breath left for talking, even
after the first half-mile when Snape had turned around and waited for them, one hand
tapping impatiently at his side, and then walked a little slower. It still took an hour to
walk to the nest site, and when Snape finally drew to a halt and let the boxes settle on
the heather, all Harry and Amir could do was fling themselves down, panting.
“I did not sign up for a marathon,” Amir said, “Couldn’t we have picked something,
you know, urban? Foxes, maybe?”
“My dear Mr. Singh,” Snape said, “Do you imagine foxes the equal of Thelessa
Draconis? Look up.”
Harry looked up, and beside him Amir drew in a breath through his teeth.
Two feet in front of their boots, the cliff edge flung itself dizzyingly down to the
jagged black rocks of the shoreline, waves crashing over the battered stumps of pillars
and arches and cracked outcrops. Spume darkened the base of the great stack in front
of them, but from half way up the black rock was speckled with the bright yellows
and pinks of wildflowers, and grass clung tenaciously to every crack and shelf,
blowing wildly in the wind. But the sight that arrested both of them was the two black
sea dragons that spun around the stack, wingtip to wingtip, twisting sinuously in the
wind. They were whip-cord thin, elegant as greyhounds and fiercely winged as a
61
peregrine falcon, but no falcon could have played in the undercurrents and updrafts as
they did, sweeping down to spin over the waves and twining around the stack in a
wild and beautiful choreography. The mere tilt of a wing edge sent them soaring: the
flicker of a tail could turn them into spinning tops, whipping through the spray, until
they both spiraled slowly up into the sky, only to dive again with heart-stopping
speed.
“The smaller one is the male,” Snape said quietly. “The nest is ten feet from the top,
tucked into the crack on the right.”
But neither Harry nor Amir could answer. They were transfixed by the pair of sea
dragons. The only photographs either of them had seen were blurred and indistinct,
and the drawings in Harry’s book did not manage to convey the sudden, intense
sensation of presence. And Harry, watching, noting absently the red horns, and the
silver glint to the black scales that suggested the same metallic scales as most larger
dragons, could not help but feel that these dragons were aware in a way no other
dragon he had seen had been. It was almost as if they were laughing at the waves,
taking such joy in wind and wave and their own mastery of both, that he watched with
a lump in his throat at their joyous freedom.
Eventually Snape said, “If we are to return before dark, I would suggest you
commence.” But his voice was still quiet, and he too watched the dragons, all the lines
of his face relaxed but for the laughter-lines at his eyes, where he squinted into the
wind.
Reluctantly, Harry and Amir began unpacking the boxes, still stealing glances at the
pair. There was a pre-fabricated hide for the camera, which they set up first, and then
the camera itself had to be assembled and focused on the nest, the long-life Muggle
battery and the remote control wired in. It was exacting work, and the sun was already
sinking in the sky by the time they had the whole of it in place. Only then did Amir
relinquish the viewfinder and say to Harry, “You wanna see what we’re here for,
then?”
Harry had almost forgotten the egg. But now he peered eagerly at the screen, careful
not to hit the wrong key and wipe Amir’s settings - he’d done it once, in Cornwall,
and never again - and in front of his eyes the nest came into focus. It was surprisingly
large, a mess of driftwood twigs and seaweed and fur, and over the top of it he could
just see the rounded, dark speckled edge of the egg “Whoa!” he said, stumbling back.
A dragon’s mouth, all yellowed teeth and red tongue and gaping throat, was not what
he had expected to see. And when he looked up, the female had curled around the nest
and was looking straight at them.
From this distance, it seemed to be laughing.
“They do that,” Snape observed. “Now. Shall we depart?”
62
“Don’t you want to see?” Amir offered.
“I sincerely doubt any Muggle invention -” Snape said, and then Harry thrust the
viewfinder under his nose and he shut up.
~*~
All in all, it was such a surprisingly good end to the day that Harry invited Snape to
hang around while they set up the video feed, and to his astonishment, Snape agreed.
He sat perched on the edge of the sofa, sipping Harry’s raspberry liquorice tea, his
hands curved around the warmth of the cup and his face sharply interested. Without
the derision Harry remembered from his schooldays, the sardonic gleam of his eyes as
he watched Amir and Harry struggle with the wires and screens in the confined space
of the lounge seemed both familiar and near to friendly, and almost without realising,
Harry began to relax.
So when Snape finally set his teacup down with a decisive click and said, “So. Mr.
Potter. Perhaps you would now care to elucidate upon our previous acquaintanceship,”
Harry was completely unprepared. He had two wires in one hand, the other was
holding up the base unit while Amir crawled underneath it, and he was trying to keep
one eye on the flickering, blurred images on the screen while mentally scripting the
series introduction he would have to record in the morning. At least they had internet
access, cable, but still good enough to send the film “What?”
“I am many things, Mr. Potter, but I am not a coward,” Snape said. “Nevertheless, do
forgive me if I find your readiness to reach for your wand at the sight of my face more
than a little disconcerting. I am prepared to wager we do not share the same memories
of our past acquaintanceship. Tell me, what could cause you to resort to threats on the
mere sight of my face, and yet invite me into your home?”
“Cottage,” muttered Harry, his heart sinking.
“Semantics,” snapped Snape.
“Fine,” Harry said. He sighed, looking down at the wires in his hand. “It’s not quite
the moment,” he offered.
“On the contrary,” Snape said. “I at least feel more comfortable when both of your
hands are occupied. I find your wand hand remarkably undisciplined, given the
unpredictability of any spell you manage to cast.”
“Fair enough,” Harry said. But he hesitated, still not prepared to look at those astute
black eyes. How much could he tell Snape? How much would he actually want to
know? How much did Harry want to actually relive?
63
“Mr. Potter,” Snape said. “Twenty five years ago, I came to myself in a hospital bed
on Stromness, completely unaware of who I was or what I had done. By the nature of
my injuries, I surmised that whatever had occurred in order to bring me to that place,
it was something to do with the war. I have not cared to know more. But I find...”
Snape looked away then, and his hands, clean, the long bones so close under the skin
that when they tightened shadows barred his flesh, clenched once and relaxed.
“Tell me,” Snape said.
“I can do better than that,” Harry said. “I can show you.”
~*~
“Do you think he’s going to be all right?” Amir whispered.
“I don’t know,” Harry hissed.
They were standing in the doorway of the lounge. In front of them, lying on the sofa,
Snape resembled nothing so much as a carving of a knight on a tombstone. He was
frozen stiff, his beaked nose and his toes pointing to the ceiling, his back rigid and his
hands crossed over his chest. His hair had fallen back from his face and lay over the
thin cushion, and his eyelashes lay motionless on his thin cheeks. He was barely
breathing.
“Harry,” Amir sighed.
“I know,” Harry said. “How was I to guess...?” Laid out on the sofa, Snape looked
curiously vulnerable, younger, stripped of all his defenses, his viturperative tongue
and his scornful mind and all his potions and spells. Harry remembered Snape in his
grey nightshirt, and flinched: that man, mocked, seemed so far from the image he had
constructed for Albus, the man he had thought he had come to terms with and yet, had
brought him to draw his wand like some untried recruit....
“Bother it,” Amir said. “I’m going to bed.” He turned and went up the stairs, the steps
creaking under his boots.
Downstairs, Harry, hesitating, drew down the blanket from the back of the sofa and
covered Snape up, looking down at that blank, ascetic face. “Sorry,” he whispered.
Then he too went upstairs.
~*~
He was startled awake, on edge already, by Amir calling his name.
64
“Harry! Harry! Get down here!”
“What?” Harry yelled, dragging on his jeans and his shirt and where the hell were his
clean socks and ow the floorboards were cold - “What?”
“Come and look at this!”
‘Oh my God, Snape,’ Harry thought, on a rush of memory, and thudded down the
stairs two at a time. But the sofa was bare, the blanket folded neatly and left on the
cushion, and the kitchen empty: Amir was on his own.
“Where’s Snape?” Harry said.
“What do you think this is?” Amir asked. “Dunno. Look.” He was staring at the
screen; the infra-red of the camera’s night vision setting giving the rock curious,
shaded edges, as if it was heated. “There!” he said, as the screen went black for a
couple of seconds, and then cleared.
“Battery cut out,” Harry said. “Was Snape here when you got up?”
“No, look,” Amir said. “I think it’s a boot. I think someone was walking - Harry!”
But Harry had gone. Down the beach, on the tideline, Snape’s tall figure stood
looking out to sea.
Harry ran.
He stumbled, twice, over the heather and fell once, over the rocks at the edge of the
beach, and about halfway along the sand he remembered that he wasn’t twenty
anymore and slowed to a dignified walk, and then looked again at Snape’s tall, lonely
figure and thought of the children when they were small, how he and Ginny had been
so careful to protect them from the horrors of the war and how it had felt when first
James, and then Albus, had left home, when neither he nor Ginny would be there to
bandage their knees and spell their bruises, and how Snape had been smashed into his
own past without a single person left who could offer any comfort - ‘How could you?’
Harry thought to himself, ten hours too late. ‘How could you?’
He had been so stupid, so careless “Potter,” Snape said, turning around from the sea and fixing Harry with a steady,
amused glare. “Your coat.”
It was inside out, which explained why he was still struggling to get one arm in his
sleeve. “Bollocks,” Harry said crossly, and tore it off and shook it out and jammed it
back on, and Snape was laughing at him silently the whole time. “I thought,” Harry
said, on a rush. “I was worried, I -”
65
“I believe Mr. Singh has something to tell us,” Snape said, and nodded back to the
cottage, where Amir stood outside the front door waving and yelling. “Shall we?” He
was already walking.
“But -” Harry said, stumbling over his untied bootlace and having to drag up the sock
bunched around his ankle. “But -”
“Oh come now, Mr. Potter -” Snape said.
“Harry,” Harry said.
“Harry,” Snape said, on a glinting sideways glance. “Am I so weak? Do you
underestimate me so much? Am I not the man you feared so deeply -” his eyes
narrowed, threatening, and his hand came up, and Harry stopped bolt-still “ - I have
had twenty years to come to terms with any and every permutation of my past you
could imagine,” Snape said quietly, and smiled. Thin, a sparse, small lift of the
corners of his mouth, but a smile. “I am content.”
He spun round, as fast as he had ever been at Hogwarts, and set off up the slope
without looking back. His back was straight, his head high, and his hair whipped
backwards just as dramatically as his robe had done, ten years and more ago.
“You bugger,” Harry said, and followed.
~*~
“Egg collectors,” Snape said, sharp and definite.
“Oh, come on,” Amir said. “Maybe it’s someone out for a midnight stroll.”
“By the nest?” Snape said. “No one on the Island would go near. It can only be
outsiders, and I assume this is neither you nor... Harry.”
“You’re right,” Harry said shortly. “What do we do?”
Beside him on the sofa Snape huffed. “Do you think we are so unprepared?” he said.
“There is such a maze of spells on that rock that a wizard would have to be Houdini
himself to negotiate their release. I do not fear any spell yet made on the islands.”
“They’re not wizards,” Harry said. “They’re climbers.”
“What?” Snape said.
But beside him Amir whistled. “Of course,” he said. “The lovely Warren and Steve.
That’s why they had all that luggage. Bastards.”
66
“They were on the ferry,” Harry said, hurried. “Talking about climbing. The two men
the taxi was waiting for, on the slipway. They’re staying on North Hoy.”
“Muggles?” Snape said. “Climbers?”
Amir was nodding. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We didn’t realise.”
“How could you,” Snape said, “When I myself did not anticipate - I must go,” he said,
and stood up, fast, and snatched his cloak out of thin air, striding to the door.
“What -” Harry said, leaping to his feet. “Where -”
“The nest!” Snape hissed, and was gone.
Left alone, Harry and Amir looked at each other.
“Well,” Amir said.
“Well,” said Harry, and looked down at the mess of cables and the mobile camera and
his own muddy boots. “Best get walking.”
It took them an hour to struggle up to the nest site, and the mobile camera seemed to
get heavier with every yard. The day had dawned bright and was now cheerily sunny,
the sky a clear, clarion blue and the clouds in it tiny white wisps scudding along in the
breeze, and both of them were sweating five minutes into the climb. By the time they
came up to the spot where Snape stood, looking at the nest, they were flushed and
panting.
“Any change?” Harry huffed. “What’s happened?” He peered at the nest. The two
adult dragons were nowhere to be seen, and his eyesight was not good enough to pick
out the curve of the egg.
“The egg is still there,” Snape said quietly.
“It looks the same as it did yesterday,” Amir said, stabbing at the keyboard. “Doesn’t
seem to have moved.”
“Maybe... we were wrong?” Harry said.
“I don’t think so,” Snape said quietly, and pointed at the track in front of their feet.
There, crossing and re-crossing, were the footprints of two men, the tracks cleanedged and fresh, and beside Snape’s foot lay a tufted piece of cord, scarlet threaded
with yellow. “I believe they may have reconnoitered the nest last night.”
Harry’s hand went for his wand.
“No!” Snape said explosively, and then, quieter, “Do not risk it. There would be
consequences neither you nor I could predict. The egg is safe for now.”
67
“But we have to do something,” Harry said.
“You will wait here,” Snape said, and then he turned round and nodded, short and
sharp. “On guard. I must make some calls. I will be back.” On an instant, he had
whirled past Harry and was gone, almost running down the track.
“Oh shit,” Amir said, and then, “Well. Might as well shoot the intro, then.”
~*~
“Good evening,” Harry’s voice said, as the camera shot panned over the cliff edge and
down onto the waves crashing against the rocks, “And welcome to the first report
from this year’s Dragonwatch. We’re coming to you tonight from the Island of Hoy,
on Orkney, where for the first time -”
“Second,” Snape said.
“Cut,” said Amir wearily.
“Good evening,” Harry’s voice said, and on screen waves heaved and thudded against
the edge of the cliff. “And welcome to the first report from Dragonwatch. We’re
coming to you tonight from the Island of Hoy, on Orkney, where a pair of breeding
Sea Dragons are attempting for the second time to hatch their young -”
“Only one egg -”
“Cut,” said Amir.
~*~
“So,” Harry said. “Let me get this right. You’re proposing to spend the next however
long it takes camping up here, without even a kettle -”
“I would not ask any other Islander to stay overnight,” Snape said sharply. “Cows
require milking. Hens require feeding. The requirements of crofting may be beyond -”
“When we already know they’re likely to come at night,” Harry said. “I’m staying
with you.”
“You will not,” Snape said. “I am not a child, Harry Potter, to be protected from the
consequences -”
“I owe you,” Harry said.
68
Humping the musty sleeping bag lent to him by one of the farmers Snape had called
on for help over the heather, he nearly changed his mind. The blue sky had clouded
over, and the low, grey clouds had started to drizzle. Rain dripped steadily down the
collar of his sowester and soaked his boots, less waterproof than advertised - the
charms were clearly as unreliable as ordinary spells - greying out the horizon of both
sea and shore. He’d left Amir on the sofa with the telly and a vintage copy of
Instructions for Wizards and Witches Serving in the US Armed Forces, Orkney, 1942,
which at least had a basic summary of applicable spells but could not be risked in the
rain.
It was the third trip he’d made today, and his feet were sore, but as Harry came up to
the canvas tent Snape and the man from the croft at Lyness - John - had pitched, he
realised that the dragons were asleep on their nest. They curled around each other in a
glistening basket weave, tails intertwined, hanging down, and their heads were close
together, their eyes closed, and for a moment Harry thought ‘they’re so cute’, and
‘how could anyone’ and alongside both of those thoughts was a deep pang of envy
and resentment, because there were two of them, a couple, mated, together, and he
and Ginny had tried so hard at the end and failed.
“Tea?” asked Snape, deep-voiced and quiet.
“Please,” said Harry.
They shared the watch, but nothing happened.
~*~
“Welcome back to Dragonwatch,” Harry’s voice said, a little tired and hoarser than it
had been the day before. The camera shot was focused on the nest, the rain-dark curve
of the egg glistening. “We’re coming to you from Hoy, where Britain’s only pair of
Sea Dragons are nesting on an isolated cliff. We’ve got some amazing shots to show
you today, because just about midday, the egg started to rock on its nest. Both parents
stayed really close, but -”
“Exciting news there from Dragonwatch, Tony.”
“You’re absolutely right, Jane. Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow.”
~*~
Amir watched that episode of the series alone on the sofa. Harry was asleep. But at
nine, Amir woke him up with a cup of coffee, and Harry fastened on the head torch
and scrambled up the track in the dark to the tent where Snape was already waiting, a
pair of infra-red binoculars in his hand and the dented, wheezing Siberian samovar
steaming at his elbow.
69
“Any news?”
“Nothing,” Snape said. “Margaret Rutter reports that your friends have not stirred all
day,” he said. “And while the Trust has reported both to the police, there is no news as
yet of who they might be.”
“Right,” Harry said. “What about the egg?”
“I have observed nothing since sundown,” Snape said, and set the binoculars down.
He looked, Harry thought guiltily, tireder and older than he had done yesterday, the
lines by the side of his nose a deeper groove and his eyes faintly shadowed, but the set
of his mouth was firm and his back still straight. For a man of... Snape must be nearly
sixty, Harry thought with a sense of shock, and then remembered that he himself was
nearer fifty than forty. Wizards were longer-lived than Muggles, but Snape had never
seemed other than old to a teenage Harry. Now, though, they were both firmly
middle-aged and worn with it, one of them with children: the war was long past....
“Did you ever imagine what would happen,” Harry asked Snape, “After the war?”
Snape snorted, and looked out of the tent door, towards the nest. “There was no after
the war,” he said.
“What?” said Harry, astonished. He could not imagine the Snape he had come to
know without a plan or a failsafe for every occasion. Two. And probably a rack of
potions up his sleeve.
“I did not expect to survive,” Snape said bluntly. “Tea?”
“But you -”
“Tea.” Snape growled.
Harry shut up.
He didn’t fall asleep for the first part of the watch, the one Snape took, but lay in the
darkness watching the faint angles of Snape’s profile at the tent door, outlined by
starlight. He couldn’t have imagined, twenty five years ago, the man that sat crosslegged three feet away from him, the man who had taken every blow his past had to
offer and accepted it, the man who had effectively given up magic to look after this
barren spot of land for the last twenty years. But the Snape Harry knew now was not
the Snape he knew then, battered and weary and malicious and so brave Harry’s
breath still caught in his throat thinking about what Snape sacrificed. He was quieter,
softer, his tongue still sharp but its barbs muted. He’d laughed, in the afternoon, when
both adult dragons had started back at the first rock of the egg, and Harry had found
himself glancing over to share that laughter. And Snape, laughing, had been a
revelation; the way his eyes crinkled and glinted, the strong curve of his neck, and his
hands - Snape’s hands had always been beautiful, whatever the rest of him -
70
‘Shit,’ Harry thought, and rolled over, staring determinedly at the canvas and trying
not to think about the flush of warmth on his skin.
~*~
“What if,” Snape said, as if he was continuing a conversation and not starting one.
“What if we’re wrong?”
The grey light before dawn was just creeping into the tent, and the grass outside the
door glistening darkly with dew. Outside, the persistent, early-rising seagulls
screamed and hooted, plundering the bay before either dragon stirred from their nest.
“What do you mean?” Harry asked. He stretched out a hand and flicked the samovar
on: they were both awake, although he hadn’t known that until Snape spoke.
“Should we not,” Snape said. “Offer them the benefit of the doubt? Nothing has
happened. Neither man has returned, and the egg must hatch soon. Yet the police -”
he says the word so doubtfully, but Amir had liked the policeman who had come over
from the mainland. “The police have their names on record, and the Trust has alerted
other organisation: there is a watch out for both of them of which they must become
aware. What if we are wrong?”
“I think...” Harry said slowly, and then, “When I was young, I wanted everything to
be black and white, you know? I didn’t have time for doubt. I couldn’t afford it. But
now I’m older -” Harry said, and thought of the mess he’d made of his marriage, of
the day he’d turned his resignation in, tired and weary, of sitting in the pub one
afternoon and listening to Tony talk about the new series he was planning and
wondering if he could do something completely different and alien, of his children,
growing up, no longer entirely his but their own people with their own lives - “Now
I’m older, nothing’s so easy. Hang on, I don’t mean that. I mean, it’s more
complicated, not just black and white, there’s so many different angles to everything ”
Snape was smiling.
“I think what I’m trying to say is that we can only do the best we can,” Harry said
firmly, and then, more anxiously, “Does that help?”
“You are asking the wrong man for reassurance,” Snape said, but his mouth was still
up-tilted.
~*~
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“So, Tony, things are really hotting up on Hoy with the egg rocking in its nest. Do
you think we’ll see the hatching today?”
“I don’t know, Jane. Don’t forget that this is the first time Sea Dragons have nested in
Britain for a very long time - we really don’t know how close the egg is to hatching,
although the film that’s come out of today’s events looks more than promising. Let’s
hope Harry and Amir have some good news for us on today’s Dragonwatch at eight
o’clock this evening. I know I’m looking forward to seeing that egg hatch.”
“Me too, Tony, Me too. Now, in other news, protesters at the gates of car giant -”
~*~
“What’s that?” Harry hissed, poking Amir in the ribs.
“I don’t - umph,” Amir said.
Given that Snape currently had his hand slammed over Harry’s mouth, Harry could
not reply. He blinked up at the sharp angle of the tent canvas instead, thinking ‘shit’
and ‘what was that’ and that Snape’s hand was surprisingly soft and smooth....
Then something clinked, outside, and Snape’s hand tensed before he drew it back.
The tent was charmed, some spiky, guttural indistinct invisibility spell the Lyness
crofter had muttered, giving Harry a suspicious glare as he did, but all three of them
lay silent and unbreathing, listening.
“Have you got the -”
The voice was so close Harry started, and Snape’s hand gripped his shoulder again,
tight.
“Don’t drop it! Here - this’ll do. Pass me the spike.”
“Fucking seagulls - there’s shit all over these rocks.”
“Shut up and find the clamps - no, not that one, the red one -”
Beside Harry, Amir rolled over, very carefully, and leaned up on his elbow, reaching
for the torch. Snape was shuffling by the entrance, pulling his boots on: Harry
checked that his wand was still in his pocket and then sat up. The tent door was open,
but he could see nothing but stars and grass.
“They don’t breathe fire, do they?”
“No. Get the box. Let’s go.”
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More muffled clanking noises from outside, fading: Snape ducked out of the tent
entrance, and Harry followed, dragging on his sowester.
“Right,” Amir whispered. “Give me an hour - I’ve got the list. Don’t do anything
stupid before we get back, OK?”
“Good luck,” Harry said.
They’d already worked out where it was safe to switch the torch on: Harry watched it
bob down the track, and hoped that Amir wouldn’t sprain an ankle on the way down.
Then he turned back to Snape, who was standing far too close to the cliff edge where
the ropes ran down, peering over.
“Should we let the ropes go?” he whispered.
“They haven’t reached the bottom yet,” Snape murmured back.
“Are you sure?” Harry asked.
“Of course -”
Up on the stack, one of the dragons screamed, shrill and thin, and then the other, a
high-pitched alarm that woke every seagull and sent them swirling into the night sky,
wheeling confused around the cliffs. One of the dragons lurched into flight, diving
down to the sea, and the other sat on the ledge and howled, forsaken and miserable.
“What happened?” Harry shouted.
“The spells!” Snape hissed. “They must have had -” He was teetering on the edge of
the cliff now, scanning the sea.
“Don’t get too close -”
“I have no intention of -” Snape said, turning around, exasperated, and then, horribly,
behind him, Warren’s head and shoulders loomed over the cliff edge.
“Look out!” Harry yelped.
But it was too late. Warren had grabbed Snape’s ankle, jerking him off balance: there
was a moment when Snape flailed, suddenly ungainly. His arms windmilled, his foot
kicked in the air and his head went back - and then, awfully, he began to tip and fall
over the cliff edge.
“Snape!” Harry screamed, racing forwards. “Snape!”
But he was too far away. But the time he’d even started to move, Snape had gone.
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Sickened, Harry stared at the spot where Snape had stood - Snape had survived
Voldemort, he shouldn’t die now, here, it was ridiculous - while his stomach tied itself
in knots and his fingernails bit into his hands. It seemed unreal, impossible Then Warren heaved himself up over the cliff edge, dusted his hands and said, “Good
riddance.”
It was at that moment that Harry realised just how handicapped he felt with a useless
wand. And Warren, looking at him, smiled, all teeth and broad lips and wide
shoulders and big hands, hands that had tossed Snape over the cliff edge as if he was
nothing “Oh, what have we here?” Warren asked, walking forwards, and behind him a second
head, smaller, came over the cliff edge and another pair of grasping hands. “Two of
you?” Warren was still smiling, a horrible, flat gash in his face.
Harry reached for his wand, backing away. He threw a quick glance behind him, just
in case Amir and the crofters were in sight, and pulled it out, pointing it at Warren and
Steve.
“Oh, look,” Warren crooned. “We’ve got a wizard on our hands. Do you know,
wizard, what happened to the last man to cast a mainland spell on Hoy? He’s still
singing from the rafters,” Warren said, and lunged forward.
He was eight inches taller than Harry and fifty pounds heavier. Harry dodged, ducked
and managed a quick Protectum that did nothing more than turn the heather pink in a
five foot radius and grow a pair of horns on Steve’s head. In the dawn light, Steve
seemed strangely hunched: he must have the box on his back.
“The police are coming for you,” Harry shouted, trying shuffle backwards through
heather that clung to his jeans and tripped his feet. “You won’t get away!”
“Really,” Warren said, his arms sweeping closer and closer. “But we’ll get you first.
Then we’ll get the egg.”
Circling around the cliff edge, Steve was creeping behind Harry. He’d be caught
between the pair of them.
“Flipendo!” he said desperately, and Steve glanced up in disbelief, snatched the
glittering dolphin’s head hat off his head and flung it over the cliff.
“It’s not worth it just for the egg!” he shouted, sickened at the thought of Snape’s
broken, smashed body at the foot of the cliffs.
Warren roared with laughter. “Really?” he said. “Really? Have you any idea how
much this is worth on the black market -” Then his voice changed. “Grab him, Steve!”
he shouted.
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Harry spun round, but Steve was there, his hands thrust out to push Harry back over
the cliff “I wouldn’t,” Snape said, clearly, steadily, and Harry heard something slide into place
with an ominous thunk.
Steve froze.
Slowly, carefully, Harry looked back.
Snape stood behind him. He was wearing, not his jumper and jeans, but his wizard’s
robe, and in his hands was a shotgun, loaded, cocked and pointed at the egg collectors.
And behind him were five crofters, two of them with pitchforks and one with a
blunderbuss, and Amir, looking tired but determined, and, standing very straight and
official in a dress uniform with medals, the nice young policeman who had come over
from the mainland.
Things went very much smoother from that point on.
~*~
“Great excitement today over on Hoy, where the Dragonwatch team of Harry Potter
and Amir Singh managed to foil two egg collectors. For the full story, and live reports
from Stromness, we’re going now to the Radio Orkney studios where presenter Carol
Thorson has the latest news. Carol, what happened?”
“Good evening. Tony, it seems that the Sea Dragon Trust have been aware for some
time that the dragons were under threat. The Dragonwatch team and the Trust warden,
helped by the Island crofters, were keeping a twenty-four hour watch on the site, and
last night an attempt was made by these men - notorious collector Warren Stravinger
and his associate Steven Pell - to steal the egg. The attempt was thwarted by your
reporters, Harry Potter and Amir Singh, assisting Trust warden Sebastian Richards.
We have these pictures from the site.”
Slowly, the camera panned over the brightly coloured ropes, still hanging from the
spike, and then, dizzyingly, showed the long fall down to the cliff base.
“Is there any news from the nest, Carol? How close did they get to stealing the egg?”
“Although Orkney police have not yet made a statement, rumours from the Island
suggest very close indeed. However, these images from the nest itself show the egg
still in - whoa! Did you see it move?”
“I guess our little dragonet’s still in there! Carol, glad to have to you with us. And stay
tuned for tonight’s Dragonwatch - clearly some amazing events on Hoy at the
moment. That’s at eight o’clock, on -”
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~*~
It was Snape who got the egg back in the nest, as swiftly and carefully as he could,
with a wand Harry had never him use before and his mouth pressed tight with
concentration. Then there was only the long, long wait, as they watched the distressed
adult pair wheel around the nest, clumsy, vocal with yelps and chirrups and long,
howling cries. It was twenty minutes before the female landed, and they were all
holding their breath. It was entirely possible that the dragon would reject the egg and
send it crashing down onto the rocks below, the dragonet in it no more than food for
the gulls.
She sniffed. Sniffed again. Her tail curled up, her wings down, and she shot a glare
over to where they stood on the cliff edge that was vicious even at seventy feet. Then,
finally, she curled around the egg, tucked her head under her wing, and slept.
By the time they’d finished making statements and explaining, watched Warren and
Steve march off across the heather escorted by crofters and the policemen, and tidied
up, it was time to make the next broadcast. It was more rushed than either Harry or
Amir would have wished, but they sent it off and then Harry phoned Tony and had to
spend the next two hours explaining and spelling out names and promising that, no,
the egg was fine, the next broadcast would be fine, they were fine, no one was
throwing them off the islands....
Amir had crawled into bed, setting his alarm for eight. “I might as well rest now,” he
said. “One of us is going to have to watch the monitor overnight, and I’d rather it was
me. No disrespect, Harry,” he’d said, “But I still remember the badger.”
Harry had blushed, and caught Snape’s eyes, suddenly intent, and Amir, the traitor,
had explained the whole situation with the barman and the Babycham and the
unfortunate timing and the camera, and Snape had laughed. Which wasn’t the most
comfortable thing to have at the back of Harry’s mind, sitting on the sofa with the
man he was very sure he had a middle-aged crush on (it was the hands. And the eyes.
And maybe something to do with the war) with four hours of egg watching by
monitor to endure.
But it was Snape who said, “Barman?”
And Harry, as he had never done before, found himself telling Snape the whole thing,
the horrible, slow erosion of his marriage, the tennis, the Beater, the newspapers and
the inevitable divorce, the children - “You know, we called Albus after you,” he said,
surprised, remembering that he hadn’t mentioned. And Snape had sat back, his eyes
wide, and so Harry had had to talk about Albus and Quidditch, with which Snape had
seemed to keep up rather well, and then Teddy and James and Lily. There had been
photographs.
76
So when Amir had come stumbling downstairs, and Harry got up and stretched his
aching muscles and said, “I’d love a bath. A really big one,” it had seemed almost
natural for Snape to say, hesitating, “I have one.”
Harry had followed Snape down to the little croft on the bay that turned out to be his
without a moment’s hesitation. It had seemed almost natural for Snape to be heaping
towels in his arms and pointing out the bottle he could use and the ones he was not to
touch on pain of death, and Snape’s bath was commodious and steamingly hot. When
he got out, dry, dressed, there were crumpets and honey waiting for him in front of the
fire, and a steaming teapot with his own raspberry liquorice tea.
Replete, content, Harry had sunk back into Snape’s surprisingly comfortable armchair
and looked at the fireplace, where Snape sat with a book in one hand and the other on
the tiny, fluffy cat that seemed to live with him.
“That was perfect,” Harry said. “Thank you.” He yawned.
“I could lend you a bed, too,” Snape said, not even looking up.
Harry said - Harry opened his mouth and closed it and thought twice and secondguessed himself, and then said - “Does that offer include you?”
“What?” Snape said. He hadn’t looked up, but his hands had closed on the book.
“It’s not important,” Harry said. “But I’m here, and I’m offering. Just in case. It
strikes me that -” He was babbling.
Snape looked up. “Potter,” he said, and his eyes were dark, but his cheeks flushed in
firelight. “Potter, are you... suggesting...” He swallowed. “What I think you’re
suggesting?”
“Yes,” Harry said, and stood up. “Come on,” he said.
And Snape did. Stood up, and walked, very slowly, over to Harry: stood over him and
looked down, that intent, curious stare that Harry had seen so often over the last week,
and then he took Harry’s face in his hands and bent his head.
“I always did like green eyes,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Harry said, reached up, and pulled Snape’s mouth down to his.
He had not expected the sheer force of it, the hunger, the way Snape opened him up
and turned him inside, left him panting and breathless and clinging to Snape’s
shoulders.
“Never thought...” Snape said, the tone of his voice wondering, and broke that thought
on a kiss that snatched at Harry’s mouth and then turned astonishing tender. His hands
were gentle, at first, and then not.
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“Can we,” Harry asked, panting, his shirt half-on and half-off and Snape’s hands busy
at his waist. “Please. Bed.” He wanted more than a quick tussle on the floor. This was
Snape.
But Snape sighed and his hands fell away. He looked down for one fragile second,
and the touch of his hand against Harry’s face was fleetingly warm, and then he
turned and walked up the stairs. He didn’t look back. Harry, following, was almost
tiptoeing, as if he was not meant to be there. He slowed, tried talking through every
reason this was a bad idea and every reason it was a good one, stopped with his hand
on the doorknob of Snape’s bedroom and took a deep breath. Then he ducked inside.
The room was small, and crowded. Still uncertain he was welcome, Harry stood in the
doorway, staring at the low ceiling, the little dormer window where the evening night
is still softly pink, the white walls and the stacks of books and the bed with its heapedup blankets and crushed pillows and Snape, curled up and watching him back out of
black, black eyes. The sheets were drawn up to his chin, and his hands clenched in
them, as if he was as unsure of Harry as Harry of Snape. But one eyebrow quirked,
and Snape’s eyes looked Harry up and down, ruffled hair (scar) to bare feet and back
up.
“Well, get in then,” Snape said. “If you’re coming.”
~*~
Harry woke up to a thundering knock on the door. The sheets were rumpled, he was
stiff all over and only some of it in a good way, and Amir was shouting his name.
On the other side of the pillow, Snape’s black eyes, astonishingly soft in the morning
light, stared back at him. Harry smiled, uncertain.
“Best answer,” Snape said, and rolled away onto his back.
“Harry!” Amir yelled. “I’m coming in! Are you decent?”
“No!” Harry shouted.
Snape winced. “There’s a dressing gown on the door,” he muttered.
“This isn’t the way I wanted it to be,” Harry said.
“Harry!”
“I’m coming!” Harry shouted, and grabbed Snape’s robe, belting it on. “What?” he
yelled, standing at the top of the stairs and staring down at Amir, who was standing in
Snape’s living room festooned with every camera they owned.
78
“It’s hatching!” Amir shouted, and then, realising that Harry was actually within
earshot. “And Hermione says, text her - we’re all over the news.”
“What, really?” Harry said, and turned round to tell Snape, but he was already
ducking out of the bedroom, dressed, with every hair smoothed into place and his
boots already on. He looked as if nothing had happened, as if Harry had never laid a
finger on him, never ran his hand up Snape’s thin back or curled it into the hair at the
base of his neck. Never felt Snape’s hips press, sharp and heavy, into his belly or felt
Snape’s cock roll, heated and pressing, against his own thigh “Stop it,” Snape growled at him, and went straight backed down the stairs.
“I assume you have replied to Miss Granger -” he started.
Harry raced back into the bedroom and fumbled and dragged his way into his own
clothes.
“Go you,” Amir whispered to him, as they followed Snape up onto the hill once again.
“Didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Neither did I,” Harry said, honestly, watching the way the wind caught Snape’s hair
and blew it around the bones of his face. He hadn’t known Snape would be like that,
all bones and urgency and power, until he wasn’t, and then his hands had been so very
gentle.
“Dude,” Amir said, and jabbed him in the ribs.
“It’s not like that,” Harry said awkwardly, and speeded up.
Amir was right. There was a small group of people crowded into the tent, peering out
of the flaps and staring at the viewfinder - Amir had moved the fixed camera out of
the hide, yesterday - and on the ledge the egg was rocking precipitously within the
nest, hairline cracks spreading out over the speckles. By the time they’d got the
mobile cameras set up, the cracks had spread, and Harry could almost see the judder
as the dragonet inside beat at the shell.
“What d’you reckon?” said the nice young policeman, whose name was actually
Mervyn and whose mother came from Hackness. “Fifteen minutes?”
“Ten,” said John.
“Fifteen,” Amir said absently, and “Hand me that meter, Harry - what the fuck is
that?”
Over the top of the rocking egg, something flickered. It was thin, and shone gold in
the light of the sun, stretching and expanding, spiked. It looked like - and then, curling
curiously over the curve of the egg they’d been watching for the past four days, came,
tiny, exquisite, the head of a baby dragonet.
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“There’s two of them!” Amir shouted. “Two! Harry, get that meter, now!”
And that, of course, was the moment when the first egg cracked. Straight down the
middle, the two halves falling open, and from between them, black as its parents, wet,
howling, the second baby dragon. Its wings spread, talons stretched wide, its tail
flailed, and it flung up its head and yowled as loudly as a steam engine. In seconds,
the gold dragonet had curled its own neck into the air and was howling too.
“Oh my God,” Mervyn said.
John said, openmouthed, “Well, that’s a turn up for the books.”
Bending over his cameras, Amir clicked frantically, and over the nest the two adult
dragons wheeled and swung, chirping, until one dived down to the sea and came back
with a fish the size of a saucer.
And Harry flung his arms around Snape and hugged him.
Snape hugged back.
After a moment of absolutely astonished, petrified shock, his hands closed around
Harry’s back, his back curved into Harry’s arms, and although his eyebrow was
somewhere near his hairline, he was definitely smiling.
“They’re real!” Harry yelled into Snape’s ear.
“Of course they are,” Snape said.
~*~
The sun was shining as brightly as it had when they’d arrived on the island, and Scapa
Flow was almost flat in the faint breeze that blew from the mainland, but Harry
kicked at the equipment boxes and stumbled into the lounge to fling himself down
onto the seats. He felt leaden-footed and leaden-headed, miserable, and although he
was going home to the comfort of his own (empty) flat and all the pleasures of takeaway and freshly brewed coffee he didn’t have to make (although Snape had done
that, the second morning after the dragons had hatched, brought it up to Harry in a
china mug with biscuits) and half a dozen interviews and the network were suggesting
a book and “Amir,” he said, stumbling over the boxes they’d stacked so carefully, the film and
the external drives and the notes, and grabbing his sowester -”I’m really sorry. I’m
staying.”
“What?” said Amir, “Harry, you can’t, we’re -”
80
The ferry was already four feet from the pier. Harry took a running jump and landed
on his hands and knees, and then face-planted violently as his kitbag hit him on the
backside.
“E-mail me!” Amir yelled.
Rolling over and levering himself up, Harry waved back. “I will!” he yelled. “Thanks!
Don’t work too hard!”
He felt, suddenly, as if he was exactly where he was meant to be: he bent down and
picked up his kitbag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked unhurriedly up the slip to
the Land Rover and the man leaning against it, waiting. The sun was warm on his
back, and he was smiling.
81
82
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen. Jared/OMCs (Jared/Misha, blink and you’ll miss it)
Wordcount: 26,000
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: fanfiction.
Summary: Pornstar AU. Or at least, pornstar!Jared and director!Jensen.
Due warning - there is no porn-related angst in this story.
Notes: Many, many thanks to beta Doro.
I am also seriously indebted to Jeffrey Escoffier (Bigger than Life) as well as John Dececco and John R Burger (One-handed
Histories).
The stunning, stunning cover to this story was made, so generously, by meus_venator.
The Ackles Clause
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
2005
His hands are cold and sweaty on the statuette as he peers out past the lights, but
Jared’s got a grin on his face wide as the Pacific. His mom’s out there, his big brother,
his manager Ally and his producer Sara; the makeup girl who did his first pro shoot
and the guy he did it with. A few guys he’s done shoots with. Jeff’s smiling, Ally’s
ecstatic and Sara’s got the nomination for best studio tucked into the world’s smallest
sequinned handbag. But this category, his category, this is the one that matters to
Jared. Best Newcomer. For him, it’s the key, the kind of attention and
acknowledgement he's wanted since he’d seen his very first AP film - the first AP
film - a pirated, stumbling video tape he’d had to watch with the sound down and the
bedroom door barricaded.
He’d been fifteen.
Right now he’s twenty-two, legal, clean, licensed, and as of two minutes gone,
officially the Best Newcomer of 2005. Tuxedoed and high on nothing more than
excitement, on stage.
“I get to say something?” Jared says, consciously, pleasantly ironic, and a ripple of
laughter runs behind the lights. He tries to look behind them. It’s not just his family he
wants to see. “I guess... Eh, guys, thank you. I’d like to say, I kinda owe this to my
manager, Ally. And Sara - you guys know Sara, yeah? – ’cause if it hadn’t been for
these two ladies I wouldn’t be standing here tonight. And my mom’s here, so thank
you, Mom, I really appreciate that you’re here, and I guess this isn’t what you
imagined for me, but bless you for understanding. All the guys I’ve done shoots with,
this year - I’ll be in the bar later, yeah? But mostly thank you to you people for voting
me this. I love you.” The clapping has already started, and the MC is pointing at his
83
watch. Jared takes a deep breath and half a step forward.
“Jensen Ackles, will you shoot a movie with me?” he asks, grinning, and that’s when
the cheers start.
2006
Different tuxedo, longer hair, and this time it’s Jeff flanked by Sara and Ally on the
SG Studio table. Jared’s not a newcomer anymore. He’s done some kinky shit this
year and he’s proud of it: he loves the afternoons Sara and he spend in a crowded
office, running scenes and ideas. He’s done watersports, role-play, frat boys, location
shoots: he’s got a blog, he’s on MySpace and Facebook and he’s done a few
conventions, although he thinks he’s never going to get used to the look in a guy’s
eyes when recognition hits. There’s a small line of products with his name on it, and
he’s kind of enjoying that bit, hands-on.
"Hey," Jared says. He narrows his eyes, but he still can't see past the footlights. "Gotta
say, I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed right now. Best anal, best short scene, best top?
You people sure know how to make a guy feel wanted, and I can't tell you how much
I love you for it. This one's for all the guys on film with me - Ryan, Paul, Shaun, Mal
- see you later, yeah? And for my manager, Ally, and Sara and everyone at SG. Love
you guys. Thank you so much."
He waits for the clapping to start; a few whistles. "Jensen Ackles," Jared says. "You
didn't call. But I'm still yours, man - wanna shoot a movie with me?"
This time there's more laughter than cheers.
2007
"Have to say, guys, this is no less cool ’cause it's the third time I've been here," Jared
says. "Thank you so much. Really. That you keep voting me these awards - wow. But
you know I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Sara and everyone at SG - I'm not really
this pretty live, y'all! - and my manager, Ally. Love you, babe. And of course
everyone I've filmed with this year - that's Michael, DeShaun, Del, Misha, Kristof thank you so much." He pauses. He’s a little wearier this time around. A little older.
He’s not burned out, just....
"Ask him," Sara yells.
"Jensen Ackles," Jared says. "I guess you lost my number, huh? I'm right here. Get in
touch, man."
The cheers sound the same, but this time his smile’s wry around the edges.
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~*~
There are half a dozen after-show parties in town, from the Vanity Fair porn
extravaganza with the dancers from the Moulin Rouge to SG Studio's bash at the
Marriott. Jared's done the show face thing and the press flesh thing, and his face hurts
with all the smiling, and his feet are sore from their once-a-year dress shoes. He's
buzzed and exhausted at the same time, too high to sleep, too done with other people
to want company. It's 1:00 am, he's swapped his shoes for boots and his tuxedo for a
shirt and jeans, and his trophies are lying on Sara's bed back at the hotel. For the first
time in two days, he's on his own, sitting at the end of a nearly empty bar with nothing
more than a beer. CCR’s playing low and sweet through the speakers, and the only
other people in the place are the two off-duty cops in the corner, a guy in a suit
tapping away at his palm pilot, and the barman.
They all look up when the door opens. It's January in New York and there’s snow on
the ground, but the man who walks in is wearing nothing more than a pair of jeans
and a T-shirt held together with thread and safety pins. He's young and blonde and
prettily muscled, and almost automatically Jared thinks, bottom, loud, shaved. The
thought doesn't even register as sexual. Jared can’t remember the last time he fucked
someone off camera, just for fun. He’s hot, blondie, and by the way he looks Jared upand-down with a widening grin, cruising, but Jared gets paid to fuck twinks on
camera, not off it, and right now he wants his beer more. It’s only by habit that he
checks out the guy who comes in afterwards. The one with the boots and the jeans, the
padded coat and the Burberry muffler and Jesusfuck he’s gorgeous.
The guy is smoking. Like, burn up the screen smoking. Like, be still my beating heart,
get down on your knees and wrap your mouth around my dick now smoking. It’s like
they’re on the Footloose set: Bryan Adams is singing, and Jared feels like he’s crashlanded without a parachute. Like the bell tolled once and nevermore for this man, this
man with the mouth and the eyes and the feel of him like Jared knows him inside out
and upside down and not at all.
He doesn’t even look at Jared, the man coming in the door with Jared’s heart in his
hands. He’s unwrapping the muffler, head bent, eyelashes down. He’s got bow legs
and a wide legged stance and broad shoulders, and there’s a careful, conscious
assurance about the way he walks that’s half high school jock and half big city butch.
Working at the knot of his muffler, his hands look strong, his fingers broad at the tips,
and his fingernails are manicured. He’s the small town football star no gay teenager
dares notice in public, the actor on the daytime soap with the fanclubs and on-line
bulletin boards, a safe and unreachable dream.
With an urgency so shocking his hands are white-knuckled on the bar and his knees
weak, Jared wants to fuck this man into next week. Next year. Or the other way
around. He’s got no context for this: the line of the guy’s hips says he’d bottom, the
easy brace of his shoulders says top. Lowered eyelashes say sub, but the quick hard
assessment of the stare that pins Jared to his stool and jolts him right down to his dick
says, beg me for it real nice and I just might.
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Jared would. Sweet Jesus, if that’s what it took, Jared would get down on his knees
and run his mouth dry. There’s a moment when he thinks it’s going to happen, when
the atmosphere between them is so intense he’s shivering and the eyes he can’t look
away from are as wide and dark as his own must be. He knows those eyes, that face.
He’s seen this man before.
Then the guy at the door looks away. Walks up to the bar like there’s nothing going
on, asks for a beer, his voice so low that Jared can’t hear it, unbuttons his coat and
pulls out his cell phone.
Jared can’t let go of the bar. His mouth is hanging open, his dick’s trying to strangle
itself in his jeans and his toes are curling in his boots. He’s never wanted anybody so
badly in his life: the feeling is as sharp as a knife to the guts.
“Hey, man.”
“Wha’?”
Jared blinks. He’d forgotten there was anyone else in the bar. But it’s the twink,
blondie, the one with the T-shirt, tucking himself up too close to Jared’s barstool to be
casual or overheard.
“Looking kinda lonely there. You wanna talk?”
“Huh?” Jared manages.
“That’s real smooth,” blondie says, and he’s smiling to take the sting from the words.
It’s almost familiar. Before he went pro, before Sara, when he was still doing web
cams and shorts he’d fucked more sassy LA wannabes than he can remember. He
always did prefer the ones that answered back. Typecasting. Jared’s a big guy, and
there’s one hell of a market for oversized tops and barely legal bottoms. It’s not really
Jared’s thing, but if it was, blondie would be almost perfect. Almost like he’s made up
for the role. Tonight, it’s the last thing he needs.
“I’m Michael. Mike.”
Jared says, “Hi,” and doesn’t smile back.
Leaning against the bar, Mike’s body language is easy and open. “So I’m guessing
you were at the awards?” he says. “I recognize your face. It’s hard not to.”
“Yeah,” Jared says, manages to pull together half an appreciative nod in the interests
of fan service, and goes back to staring at the guy down the bar.
“Two awards,” Mike says. “And your studio. That’s... kind of hot.” He’s got his
elbows propped on the bar, hips canted up and legs apart. Eyes half-lidded and dark.
Everything about him says willing and able.
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Jared could care less. “Thanks,” he says absently. He’s waiting for the guy down the
bar to look up. Please.
“So...” Mike says, long and low, with a question at the end of the word that’s as much
an offer as the pout of his lips around that drawn out O.
Dragged back, Jared says, “Sorry, dude. I’m just not -” then he registers the glint in
Mike’s eyes. It’s amused, far more aware than his pose or his mouth suggests. He’s
older than Jared first thought, and his jeans are designer and the watch on his thin,
tanned wrist is Swiss.
“Do I know you?” he asks.
“You could do?”
“The camera ain’t running and I’m not on the clock,” Jared says. “You’ve got stuff
going on for you, dude, and you know it, but you’re not my type and I don’t think I’m
yours. What gives?”
Mike blinks at him for a moment. Then he turns around, reaches for his beer, lets his
shoulders loosen, and suddenly he’s not posing. He’s just another guy at the bar at the
end of a very long day.
“Thought I’d be just what you’re looking for,” he says, but the words are amused
rather than regretful.
Jared can’t stop his eyes sliding back down the bar.
“Oh, really?” Mike says quietly, and now he’s got laughter threaded through his voice
and his eyes are curling up at the corners. He doesn’t even look in his early twenties,
now. For real, he might be older than Jared.
“Sorry,” Jared shrugs, apologetic, because his mama raised him better and he’s
always tried to do his best by his fans. The guy at the bar, though, that’s personal.
“Funnier than you even know,” Mike says. He’s still grinning. “Look, I know him. I’ll
introduce you if you want. That good?”
“Hell yeah,” Jared says, and uncurls his hands from the bar so carefully he can feel
every muscle unlock. His dick throbs once, unreasonably optimistic. It’s been so long
since he’s even tried to hook up, he can’t think how to do this. He can’t even
remember if he’s got lube. Right now, Jared’s got nothing on him, not even a wallet.
There’s a roll of notes in his back pocket, and his cell phone tucked by his room key.
That’s all. If anything happened. If sex ever happens. If people really do ever fuck
each other for real these days, if it’s not some celluloid fantasy meant to appease the
lonely. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to say. You’d look good on my dick
is not going to cut it while the cameras aren’t watching. And Jared’s thinking
breakfast along with the first skin flick he’ll have directed as well as headlined. He’s
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thinking telephone numbers and how it’s gonna suck that he’s based in LA. He’s
thinking jetlag and Sunday mornings with the funnies and maybe a dog. He’s
screwed.
There’s a raised eyebrow waiting for him. “I guess you know,” he says. “I’m Jared.
Padalecki.”
“I know,” Mike says. “C’mon. You wanna meet the man, now’s your chance.” He’s
already turning to walk down the bar.
When he moves, the guy at the bar looks up, a quick flicker of his eyelashes that
registers exactly where Mike is and what he’s doing. They know each other. It’s that,
you’re okay, set for the night, call me later look. It takes no more than a second, and
the guy’s already leaning back to his beer as the afterthought of that glance flicks over
Jared.
Jared’s staring back. That mouth. Eyes. He wants this guy naked with an urgency he
hasn’t felt since nudity became a mandatory clause on his paycheck. Three practiced
motions and he could run his thumbs up the line of buttons, rip that crisp white shirt
off with the coat, and strip the man bare.
It’s got to show. The guy’s eyes widen. He swallows, the bob of his Adam’s apple
jerky and vulnerable, and Jared’s dick twitches in sympathetic recognition. He’ll take
that mouth any way he can, fingers, dick, tongue. Wants to sink his teeth in the
cushioned curve of that perfect lower lip and see what it looks like bruised and
swollen. Wants to know what they’re going to sound like together, for real, the way
Jared sounds when he’s alone with his hand on his dick, breathy and quiet. Wants this
guy to look at him and see him, Jared himself, the man behind the muscles and the
smile and the dick that’s a latex mold on every sex shop counter. There’s a moment
when Jared thinks, on a swell of amazed, gleeful relief, that he can see the same
startling recognition in the face of the man looking back at him, in the nervous duck
of his head and the way he looks up from under his eyelashes and the bite of his teeth
in his lower lip.
Then there’s nothing other than flat out panic in those eyes. Grabbing his cell phone,
clutching the neck of his coat as if he can hide behind it, head down, the hot guy at the
bar makes a break for the door. He moves so fast, it’s obvious he’d be running if he
had an ounce less pride.
He’s straight, Jared thinks, felled by shock. He’s gotta be straight.
Maybe it’s something Jared did wrong. Maybe he’s too tall, too old, too big “What did I -”
But Mike’s staring at the closing door with exactly the same bemused expression on
his face that Jared’s got to be wearing.
“Ain’t that a thing,” he says, so quietly Jared has to strain to hear him.
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Jared’s hands are still shaky, so it’s Mike who buys them two shots. Turns out the
man works for a studio in New York, not on camera, which explains why Jared
doesn’t recognize him. They hang out, winding down, exchange war stories and
phone numbers, and it’s three in the morning by the time Jared rolls into bed.
It’s only then that Jared realizes every question he’s asked has been politely and
expertly fielded. He doesn’t know any more about the guy at the bar now than he did
when the man walked in, flipping Jared head over heels right back to the years of
raging teenage hormones and ridiculous dreams.
He hasn’t even got a name. And Mike doesn’t answer his texts.
~*~
Sara calls him into the office at 3:00 pm on a Wednesday in July. It’s LA. Before he
gets the car door closed, Jared’s sweating, and he makes a run for the air conditioned
haven of the studios. By the time he gets inside, his polo shirt’s damp and his jeans
are sticking to his backside, although he’s not scheduled to shoot today and no one
else is going to mind the sweat marks.
There are three gold-plated dildos masquerading as paperweights on the countertop,
but the woman behind them has the exact same pursed expression as his junior school
librarian. She’s not smiling.
“Hey Marianne,” he says, “How’re you doing?”
“Got a big pile of mail for you, JP,” Marianne says. He’s going to get her to crack her
makeup if it’s the last thing he does. It’s his mission in life.
“Like the hair. You get it colored?”
“Nope. She’s waiting.”
“Aw,” Jared says. “C’mon. You love me really. What does she want?”
“Can pretty well guarantee it’s exactly what everyone else around here wants,”
Marianne says.
Jared grins. “You love my pretty ass!” he says. “It keeps you in haircuts. And
cookies,” he says, and Marianne glares up at him from under the teased bangs of her
newly red hair.
“I’m going,” he says, hands up. “Watch me go. I’m so gone.”
He takes the corridor to Sara’s office, walking between the familiar awards and the
glossy photographs and the signed posters. Inside, the room’s small and cramped,
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crowded with unstable stacks of DVDs and video tapes and film canisters and books
and clippings. Sara works in a messy, creative jumble so different from her organized
authority behind the camera, Jared has to readjust every time he opens the door. In
habits, the director and the producer could be two separate people.
Behind the desk, Sara’s smiling. It’s an odd smile, a little tight around the edges.
There’s an envelope in front of her, so clearly placed to be seen that a shiver goes
down Jared’s spine.
“That the test results?”
“Those are confidential and you know it,” Sara says, taken aback.
So it’s not the clinic. “Sara. Please?”
“It’s not the test results, Jared, you know you’re clean. Sit your ass down. I’ve got
something for you.”
“I’m not doing GQ,” Jared says, relaxing. “Ties make me itch.”
“I know. There’s something else we need to talk about. It’s good though, so don’t
loom.”
Jared sits. Sara stands. She’s got the envelope in her hands. Wanders through the piles
of DVDs to the window, looks back.
“Do you remember the first time we met? You and me and Ally? You were still wet
behind the ears, and I thought, not another one, and then you said you needed your
lawyer to look at the contract and sent it back with the Ackles clause? And I signed
it?”
“Sara,” Jared says, his shoulders tensing.
“I never thought you’d need it, babe,” Sara says. The smile’s still trying to spread
over her face, but her eyes are serious. “I got this today. I’m sorry it took so long to
call you in. I wanted to make sure it was legit.” She shrugs. “It is.”
She passes over the envelope. It’s postmarked New York.
Jared can almost hear his own heartbeat shiver. He wants this so badly, has hoped and
wished for the chance so often, it’s almost like he’s experiencing the moment as deja
vu. He knows how he’s going to feel. He knows what’s on the paper. It’s like it’s
happening in retrospect, a detached memory: he’s dreamt this moment so often that
when it actually happens he feels unreal.
The envelope’s been opened, but that’s normal. Everything that goes to the studio is
screened before Jared ever sees it, and usually that’s a good thing. Right now, he has
to force himself not to snatch the envelope from Sara’s hand, and he feels so fiercely
possessive he’s astonished himself. He can’t look Sara in the eyes for the surge of
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resentment that tightens his throat. It’s not fair that she saw this first.
Under his fingertips the heavy-weight paper is smooth, and his name and the studio
address are handwritten in an angular, black-inked script. The nib of the pen has
indented the paper, as if the person writing was impatient. Or angry. Jared’s hands are
not steady, easing the papers from the envelope. There are three or four printed sheets,
a compliment slip, and a business card that falls to Sara’s desk which reads Michael
Tovanni, administration manager. Ackles Productions.
When Jared unfolds the pages, after the first second when he could barely dare read
the words, he knows what he’s looking at is an insanely detailed contract. For one
shoot. For Jensen Ackles.
He’s wanted this since he was fifteen. A year ago, he would have whooped with joy.
Now Jared looks up, the paperwork heavy in his hands, and Sara’s looking back at
him, and they’re both thinking about the last two films AP released, the detached
faces and the harsh lighting and the script that was nothing more than grunts and
slaps. It works, it’s hot, of course it is, it’s Ackles, but Jared fell in love with the slow
slide of skin against skin and actors who smiled at each other on film.
“I’m still signing,” he says.
“Yeah, I know,” Sara says. She looks down, flexes her hands, and the wedding ring
on her finger glints in the afternoon sunlight. “New York’s only a plane ride away.
Call me, I’ll come. You know I will.”
“I know,” Jared says. “Thanks.” When he smiles, it’s a small, tight smile, and he reads
the contract word for word twice over with Sara at his elbow and Ally and his lawyer
on speed dial.
~*~
By the time the concierge calls, Jared’s bored. He’s been in the room half an hour.
He’s unpacked, inspected the familiar, iconic skyline through the plate glass windows,
and stopped himself from pacing nervously between bed and door. Instead he’s curled
his socked toes into the heavy silk comforter, propped his back against the eight
pillows, and he’s watching daytime soaps on a screen bigger than the one he’s got at
home in LA. There’s nothing to do until tomorrow (9:00 am, dry reading, whatever
that means) and for all New York has spread itself in multi-hued, hustling, dirty glory
below his window, Jared’s done the tourist thing before and he’s nervous and
exhilarated and itching to get started.
When the phone rings he snatches it off the cradle.
“Padalecki.”
“Sir, we have a delivery for you in reception which requires a signature. Are you
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free?”
Jared is. He stumbles out of his room and waits impatiently for the elevator, and five
minutes later he’s signing for a thick manila envelope he can’t resist opening on the
spot.
It’s a script. Thirty pages of script. With dialogue.
It’s tough, but Jared saves reading it until he’s back on the bed. He hasn’t
seen a script this long
since he gave up on acting classes. It has conversation, character building, plot:
nothing he’s familiar with from the industry and all of it fast paced and snappy. With
notes. In the margins, between the lines, someone has added annotations in almost
illegible, tightly controlled black handwriting. “Block here,” Jared reads, lying on the
comforter with pages drifted around his elbows. “65°, ck lighting, wide angle, F#20
filter...” He hasn’t got five pages in, no one’s fucked, and his own Sam’s just about to
open the door to his room (PACE waterfront dorms, ask Mike, permit?) before he
realizes he probably wasn’t meant to read this. He thinks, ‘This isn’t my script. These
are not my notes.’ It’s not as if someone has photocopied the wrong copy, either,
because the words are handwritten.
Jared reads it anyway. He’s familiar with the camera directions and the lighting
notations. He’s worked on the same things with Sara, once she knew that he was
interested. But what he’s not familiar with is the scope of an Ackles shoot. There are
at least three cameras on set, a lighting stage, location shoots, wardrobe notes and
score reminders, occasional sketches and doodles. He’s fascinated. Even at the point
where Sam fucks Rick for the first time, Jared is far more interested in the acerbic, dry
commenting on the side – “JP, hands,” he reads. “No ass shot, Boys in Toy Town, T
on top.” It’s true. He’s always been uneasy about the camera zooming up his ass, and
he kind of likes it when he gets to lie back and let the bottom do the work, but he
didn’t think he was that obvious and he’s never met another director who knew his
preferences before they even started. It’s impressive, makes him wonder if Jensen
Ackles - but Ackles must have seen his films. Must have analyzed his films, and the
thought’s scarier and hotter than it should be, because this is work.
When he gets to the end he’s got a good idea of which cameras are going to be where,
and that he’s going to have to concentrate on the line learning front. “JP?? Poss.
prompt cards? Check autocue,” the notes say, and Jared huffs and reminds himself,
he’s an actor, they don’t know him, he can do this. But he can’t remember the plot and he has to laugh, because that’s not something he ever thought he’d hear himself
say about a porn film. Leafing through the script all over again for the dialogue, Jared
likes what he’s reading. Sam’s words feel natural in his mouth. He says them along
with the script, imagines what he - what Sam - is going to do and feel. Then he puts
the script down, and looks out the window, unseeing. He’s conscious of nothing more
than an overwhelming sense of relief. If the script stands, Jensen Ackles has written a
story that’s nothing more than boy meets boy, boy fucks boy.
It’s nothing like the last two films the director’s shot. It’s actually disconcertingly
similar in feel to the very first film he’d ever made, the one that Jared’s still got. The
one he’d had to have converted to DVD himself, because no connection he or Ally or
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Sara had ever made, distributor, wholesaler, collector, had ever listed that first film. If
Jared hadn’t hung onto the original, battered video cassette, he’d never have known
Auberge existed.
Like that original, this one’s about two college boys who meet and fall in love over
the course of a long, hot summer. There are moments in it that Jared already knows
are going to be tender in a way he’s only ever seen in an Ackles film. It’s what he was
hoping for, but it’s been so long since he’s had to do anything on camera but turn up
on time and get his dick out, he’s as nervous as he is excited. He’s going to have to
act. “Eh, Jay,” Jared says to himself, wry. “Up your game, boy, you wanted this.”
Then he puts the script back in the envelope, pulls on his jacket, and heads to the
studio.
He doesn’t know what to expect. He’s shot in more cheap motels than he can
remember, fly by night offices, warehouses, and industrial units on anonymous
estates. After she moved, Sara based SG Studios in an old firehouse just off Santa
Monica Boulevard, and most of her shoots are in-house, but novelty sells and Jared’s
dragged his ass all over LA.
Ackles Productions has a suite of offices in a high-rise so new the door staff smile and
the elevator is eerily silent. The lobby is glass, and unlocked. He pushes the door open
cautiously, but the woman behind the desk looks up and smiles. “Jared? Jared
Padalecki?”
“Hi?” Jared says, and then, “I -”
“You’re even bigger than you look on screen!” she says, and then she blushes.
“Whoa, I’m sorry, that was really inappropriate. You’ll be wanting Mike. This way.
I’m, er, Kate,” she says over her shoulder. “I do paperwork. There you go.”
She’s still a little pink, but the smile she gives him is almost frighteningly maternal.
She’s got to be twenty at best.
“Thanks,” Jared says. Through the open door, he can see a man in a skinny black suit
talking emphatically into the smallest cell phone he’s ever seen. The suit’s new, but
not the hair or the hands. He recognizes that face.
They’ve met before. In a bar, in January, after the NAVGAY awards. Jared
remembers a ripped T-shirt, a dirty smile, and an unanswered text. Maybe, several.
He’d never mentioned which studio he worked for, the man who’d tried to hook up
after the awards and didn’t mind when Jared wasn’t interested.
Mike. Michael Tovanni, the name on the door. The name on the card with the
contract. There’d been more going down in that bar than one hot guy meeting another.
Mike must have known exactly who Jared was. If they’d hooked up - he could second
guess himself to infinity. He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, here. But he’s
angry. He feels manipulated, pushed: he stalks forward and slams the script down on
the desk. “Was that an audition?” he demands.
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Spinning around, Mike’s expression is nothing but shocked surprise. It’s two frozen
seconds before he mutters, “Gotta go,” and snaps the cell closed. “If it helps, you
passed,” he says apologetically, and then he’s all rueful, wry charm, the mask of it
pulled on just as it had been when, raw, Jared had sat in a bar in New York and
watched the one man he’d ever wanted just for himself run out the door.
“So who was the other guy?” Jared forces out. “Competition?”
Mike looks away. From the doorway, Kate claps her hands. When Jared glances back,
she’s leaning against the door frame, grinning.
“Dude,” Mike says. “That was Jensen.”
It’s like being hit by a sledgehammer. “You’re fucking kidding me,” Jared says,
before he can stop his mouth. Then he sits down. He has to; he’s a little wobbly
around the knees. He thinks, Jensen Ackles. Jensen Ackles. The guy with the mouth
and the eyes. The guy Jared imagines he can touch, sometimes, when he’s jerking
himself off over some tanned LA body he’s only going to see once. “I thought he had
a beard,” Jared says. “I thought he was old.” Jensen Ackles can be no more than three
or four years older than Jared. Then, Jared says on a rush of unexpected, spine
tingling curiosity, “Was he checking me out?”
Mike says, “That was the third time you’d asked him live on stage. You think he
wouldn’t know?”
“Huh?” Jared says, and remembers, that was the plan. “Never really thought he’d
notice,” he says, still shocked. “I mean, he, I -” he grinds to a halt. That was Jensen
Ackles? “He... He was there because of me,” Jared says, stunned.
There’s a wicked glint in Mike’s eyes as he looks Jared up and down. “Oh, he was.
He knew you. Just don’t... Honey, we’re not the kind of place where you earn your
credits on your knees, okay? Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably not.”
“Whoa,” Jared says. And then, “You could have warned me.”
“If you’d screwed up, you wouldn’t be here,” Mike says. He looks at Kate, and that’s
a we know something you don’t moment.
That look sends a twist of pure sexual curiousity hot and dark through Jared’s belly.
“What, so...” Jared says, and then he swallows his words. He’s not going to mess this
thing up before the cameras even start rolling. He’s really not. “So,” he says, "Do I get
to be introduced this time? Because I’m pretty sure you sent me the wrong script and I
think this one’s his.” He flourishes the envelope as evidence.
“Thank God,” Kate says, and snatches it out of his hands. “He’s been going nuts.
Bless you.” And she’s gone. With the script.
Jared blinks, and stares at his empty hand.
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“The read through’s tomorrow,” Mike says. “You’ll meet him soon enough. You
might want to restrain your enthusiasm. He’s not shy, just,” he pauses. “That’s why it
was me you met in the bar.”
“Right,” Jared says.
“It wasn’t anything you did,” Mike says. “And no hard feelings, either. Him or me,
and I hope you too. Which would be a good thing, because once you start shooting,
we’re going to get real well acquainted. Wardrobe, props, it’s all my department.
D’you have any idea how hard it was to find a pair of four inch pink stilettos in your
size?”
“That’s not in the script,” Jared says.
“I know,” Mike says, sly and grinning. “But it could be.” Then he stands up, looking
at Jared’s face. “Seriously. No. It’s all jeans and jackets. Designer stuff. A sweet pair
of cowboy boots. You’ll like it.”
“Hm,” Jared says. “Because it’s been really nice meeting you.” But he’s smiling. The
Ackles Productions team isn’t what he’d expected at all. It’s almost familiar, the same
give and take he gets at SG with the guys he’s known for years. He kind of likes it. If
it wasn’t for the, the Jensen factor. He hadn’t planned on that one. Not at all.
“Texas boys,” Mike says, which is odd because most people don’t pick up on the
accent, these days. “You’re gonna be the death of me. Look, it’s all good, okay?
We’re really looking forward to working with you. And that was a cool thing you did
with the script - I’ve got - no, it’s gone - here, have mine. Ignore the stuff about plaid,
okay? Jensen nixed it this morning. Get it back to me tomorrow, I need those notes.”
“Now get?” Jared says.
“Yeah,” Mike says. “There’s a lot of you in my office, Jared Padalecki, and I need to
chew some distributor balls. You’ll have me all day tomorrow, cross my heart.”
“Thanks for the reassurance,” Jared says. He stands up and heads to the door, and then
he hesitates. Ducks his head, goes for plausible denial. “Have you guys got a
restroom?”
“Down the corridor. On the right.”
“Thanks. Tomorrow. No stilettos.”
He’s expecting to see the usual promo shots and awards on the walls, but the corridor
is bare and just a little intimidating, with polished brass plaques on the real wood
doors and a carpet Jared’s sneakers brush through in expensive silence. The plaques
on the doors read: John Easterby, Director of Photography; Martin Lambert, Special
Effects; Studio One; Studio Two; Timmy Chiara, Dressing Room; Jared Padalecki,
Dressing Room.
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Whoa.
Yeah, he likes that.
Studio three; Kate Ramone, Administration. No Jensen Ackles, not yet, although the
corridor stretches on and Jared’s starting to feel uneasy. It’s not that he’s stalking or
anything. Kind of, they’ve met before. Just because Jared wants, badly, to see if six
months have made a difference, if the same sexual charge will resonate between them
now as it did in a bar in January, doesn’t mean it’s actually okay to go looking for the
man without even the excuse of the script in his hand.
But the restroom door’s wedged open, and the hallway’s discordant with noise,
something metal banging, hard, against something else.
After the lobby and the corridor, Jared doesn’t find it surprising that the restroom’s all
designer fittings and carpets and sparkling porcelain and glass, moisturising lotion in
branded bottles, white towels and ambient light. It’s a beautiful room, and pristine it
would be boutique pretty, picture-perfect.
But it’s filthy. Something here’s gone messily wrong. There are puddles on the floor,
the tiles are muddied with grease and rust-red water, and the panels are torn out from
under the basins. By the door there’s a well-used, open toolbox and inside there’s a
man working on the pipes, flat on his back on the tile floor. He’s not wearing overalls.
He’s wearing boots, worn soft, polished black leather lace-ups, and a pair of faded
blue jeans ripped and damp at the knees, and a greyed out Led Zeppelin T-shirt that
clings in all the right places.
There’s a reason plumbers are a well-used cliché in porn. Knees up, boots planted on
the tiles, back arched, flat bellied and beautifully muscled with an intriguing bulge in
his jeans, the man’s gorgeous. And like any faux householder in need of nothing more
than a big dick and a good hard fuck, Jared edges closer. He’s surprising himself.
He’s had gorgeous. Gorgeous has got down on its knees and downright begged for
Jared’s own dick, bent over for him in more positions than he can remember.
Depilated, buffed, tanned, groomed to perfection, gorgeous is so normal for Jared it’s
routine.
But this man isn’t artificially tanned. There are scars on his knees and stains on his Tshirt. He’s not shaved, but his pits are sparsely furred and engagingly damp with wellearned sweat, and there’s something disconcertingly tender and intimate about the
pale skin of his underarm.
It’s a surprise, the moment when Jared thinks about running his fingers up that bared
skin, about what it would taste like under his tongue. It’s not his thing. He doesn’t do
casual sex any more than he does relationships. He knows exactly how to make a guy
look well-fucked for the cameras, or fucked over, or whatever the flavor of the day
should be, but off camera Jared likes his space. He hasn’t even thought about hooking
up since he’d stood in a bar in New York and Jensen Ackles had walked away from
him, and before then... he can’t remember, it’s been so long. But, here, his body
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surprises him with its instant unscripted response. His balls are tightening, his dick’s a
moment away from hardening, and unexpected arousal shuffles him from foot to foot
on the tiles.
Nothing is going to happen. Just because he could name five different movies off the
top of his head that start with this identical setup doesn’t make it real. He’s a porn
star. He does it for money, not just because he can, just because the urge to lick his
way across that flat stomach, bury his thumbs under those sharp hipbones and push
between those bony, unevenly tanned knees and strong thighs is almost irresistible.
The sex he’s thinking about is a fantasy played out in Jared’s head, not on screen, but
it’s no less unreal.
When the man coughs, sound cuts through image. “Mike?” It’s an authoritative voice,
and Jared likes the way it resonates against his skin, muffled and deepened by the
echo from behind the paneling. “Pass the wrench? The one with the tape on the
handle.”
He could walk away. He probably should. He doesn’t. Just as he’s done for his father
and his big brother, years ago, in Texas, Jared sorts through the tool box and pulls out
the one wrench with the taped up handle and passes it over. He has to fumble it under
the counter (smooth, Padalecki, real smooth) in a move that leaves him kneeling in a
puddle of dirty water. Vicious, hollow clanks echo from underneath the basins. A
screwdriver is waved vaguely in his direction: he takes it and drops it on the tool box.
There are more clangs. Under the grey T-shirt, muscles bunch and strain as the man
works. Jared’s hand would just about cover a belly that’s endearingly not ripped, just
a little soft over muscle. He could curl his fingers under that well worn belt, his
thumbs over a package that looks satisfyingly well shaped. The view’s more than
worth his damp knees.
He’s already got an image in his head of how this could go, fast and scrabbling. He
hasn’t even seen the guy’s face. It’s not usually that important. It is now.
A particularly loud bang banishes that thought. Every muscle in the body Jared’s
watching tightens. Then his fantasy plumber snatches himself out from under the
counter, swearing viciously, and after him there’s a fine fountaining spray of water
that gets Jared, fairly exactly, from hair to crotch. It’s surprising how wet water is.
“Ah fuck, sorry.”
“S’okay, it’s fine,” Jared says and, blinking, looks up.
He’s got water in his eyes and his sight is blurred. But he recognizes that mouth, and
those cheekbones, and the dark line of those stupidly attractive eyelashes.
Jensen Ackles does his own plumbing. Also, he’s just as ridiculously hot and as
crazily familiar as Jared remembers.
“Padalecki?”
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It’s shock Jared can hear in that voice, tighter and sharper than it was two minutes
ago. “Hi,” he says weakly, pulling at what had been a crisp Paul Smith shirt, thirty
seconds ago. Now it’s skin-tight and stained. This isn’t his best first impression.
Second.
“You weren’t. Due.” Jensen Ackles tries talking with his hands, when he runs out of
words. He’s wide-eyed and slightly pink. He’s disconcertingly disconcerted, and as
wet as Jared, his T-shirt clinging to his chest and shoulders.
“Hadn’t you better -?” Jared waves one hand at the free-falling water spray and
brushes droplets from his face with the other.
“Shit, yeah, but you -”
“I’m not gonna melt,” Jared says. “What was it, the valve? Shoulda turned the water
off first, dude.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Jensen says, looking down at the spreading puddle.
Water is still falling over Jared’s face, dripping down his shirt and soaking his crotch.
Jensen’s hair is slick and his eyelashes damp. His mouth’s just as hot as Jared
remembers, but his hands, broad and grease-stained and bruised across the knuckles,
are hotter.
“It’s okay, you can swear at me,” Jared says. “No one loves a smart ass.”
“Right,” Jensen Ackles says, and grimacing, ducks back under the counter. One hand
gestures emphatically: Jared drops the wrench into it, dripping, and enjoys the view.
It’s awesome. More than good enough to make up for the clammy stretch of his
clothes and the ache in his knees.
Fixing the leak takes a good five minutes, during which Jared learns that Jensen
Ackles has a filthy mouth and is surprisingly flexible for a guy on the other side of the
camera. Jared keeps his hands to himself, resists the urge to offer advice, grunts
approval when the water stops, and by the time his director rolls out from under the
counter he’s wrung out his shirt and found a mop.
“There’s no need to do that. You’re not here to clean the floors. Or help fix the
plumbing. I got it.”
Jensen’s got a smear of grease over his nose. His eyes are wide and waterlogged, his
hair and eyelashes spiked and damp. He’s got freckles. Freckles. It’d be cute, but he’s
not smiling. His mouth’s held tight, there’s a frown line between his eyes, and he
looks so distant that for a moment Jared wonders if the whole thing was some sort of
practical joke. Maybe it’s some other talent Jensen wanted. Maybe he hadn’t realized
Jared was the man in the bar. Maybe Jared’s taking the next flight back to LA with his
tail between his legs and that would be a hell of a shame, because even now he could
almost touch the tension between him and his director and although it’s nothing he’s
ever felt on screen he’s pretty sure it’s everything to do with sex.
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He can’t say that. He stumbles over you’re fucking gorgeous and swallows, anything
else I can help you with? He manages, instead, lame, “I kind of thought you’d be
older.” Then he takes a deep breath, and says, “Can we do this all over again? You’re
Jensen Ackles. I’m Jared. I’m a big fan. And I thought you should know you’re the
best thing that’s happened to me all day.” That one comes with a smile, wide-eyed.
It’s only half acting. Jared’s knocked sideways, off his game.
But dumbstruck’s a good look on Jensen. There’s a moment when Jared has to
backtrack, but no, there’s nothing he said that Jensen can’t have heard before from
half a million fanboys. It’s just that Jensen can’t seem to look higher than Jared’s
mouth, and he’s... he’s blushing.
“Er, towels?” Jared says gently.
“Yes,” Jensen says. “Yeah. Towels. Right.” He’s not moving.
“Maybe in the dressing rooms?” Jared prompts, and if there’s a running fantasy in his
head that involves naked, shower, and Jensen’s dick in his mouth he’s never going to
admit it before at least three shots of tequila. He’s a professional, he can zip it up.
“Yeah,” Jensen says again, and shakes his head. “Look, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t
expecting, you - towels. Yeah. Wardrobe.” He backs away. And Jared gets it. He can
be a clumsy, slow idiot sometimes, but he’s not stupid. There’s a flush on Jensen’s
cheekbones, and his eyes are dark, and he’s fumbling with the wrench, and it’s exactly
the way Jared felt in that bar in New York. The way he feels now, his dick hard in his
wet jeans and his chest tight and his skin itching.
Just to check, Jared undoes the top button of his shirt. Then, the second. Jensen’s eyes
drop with the movement, and he shivers.
Oh thank the sweet Lord, he’s not the only one. With a flash of heat that’s almost
adolescent, Jared’s inner teenager is rejoicing. Unless he’s badly wrong, Jensen
Ackles thinks he’s pretty, too. There’s a quick answer to this one that involves getting
naked, fast. There’s a longer answer that starts with this is a really bad idea, storms
through breach of contract, and ends with blacklisting. But it’s not about the contract.
It’s about the set of Jensen’s mouth, pressed so tightly a muscle ticks in his jaw, and
the way his eyes flick up so quickly when Jared moves. His mouth gives nothing
away. His eyes are so vulnerable Jared reaches out his hand. He’s not sure what he’s
going to do, but touch has always been as much part of his language as words.
Jensen flinches.
For real. Jensen flinches, and the moment of it, the thought, freezes Jared utterly still.
He doesn’t even drop his hand. It’s suspended between them, motionless. He opens
his mouth. He’s got nothing to say.
“What?” Jensen snaps. He’s taken a step backwards. Two. He’s almost backed up
against the basins. Jared steps back himself, carefully, giving the man space. “What is
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it?” The words are short and sharp.
Jared swallows. He doesn’t know this man. It’s not simple anymore. He feels like he’s
already lost a game he didn’t know he was playing. And Jensen’s not helping. He’s
glaring back, his hands stiff, his eyes narrow. He’s on the edge of saying, get out, and
Jared’s in too deep already. He can’t let Jensen throw him out. He can’t.
He says, hesitant, “Towels?” because he really is dripping and Jensen’s soaked from
his boots up.
That’s the moment when Jensen pulls himself together. It’s like watching an actor pull
on a character. His shoulders straighten, his face hardens. He looks five years older,
and distant, and suddenly he’s the guy who’s going to be telling Jared where to stand,
what to say and when to come for the next two weeks. In Jared’s mind, the film he’s
been running curls up and burns.
“Yeah,” Jensen says. “This way.”
Jared doesn’t even let his eyes drop, following. Not that he’d be looking anyway. That
would be really inappropriate. And Jensen’s shoulders are tense and his voice tight
and higher and clipped, tour guide neutral, and Jared wants to know what the hell he
did this time and knows he can’t ask.
“Wardrobe’s this way. There’s stuff.”
The room is packed with metal racks and clothing, labeled. There’s a tag for Sam
Jared wants, badly, to investigate, but Jensen is pulling down towels from a rack and
he needs to be dry more.
Ackles Productions doesn’t stint on soft furnishings. The towels are fluffy, soft, and
white, and Jared manages to dry off without making it too obvious he’s watching
Jensen. He really is soaked. His shirt’s a lost cause, and his socks are soggy and
wrinkled in his sneakers.
“If you want a shower,” Jensen says, “there’s a dressing room with your name on it.
Mike will kill me if I rob out wardrobe, but I’ve got some clean sweats.”
“I’d sure appreciate it,” Jared says. His shirt’s off and he’s starting on his jeans. It
doesn’t occur to him that this might be taken the wrong way until he glances up and
sees Jensen’s face. Jensen’s hands are still, caught in the towel draped over his hair,
and under it his eyes are vivid and dark and his mouth is parted.
Jared doesn’t stop. He slows down, adds a shimmy that’s pure showmanship, and
hides his grin under his hair when he hears Jensen’s breath catch. He works hard on
his body. It’s kind of nice to know it’s appreciated. And it’s not like... it’s real. It’s not
like he’s going to touch.
A toweling robe smacks him hard in the chest. It’s held there, Jensen’s weight behind
his hand. “Don’t. I get that you’re pretty with your clothes off,” Jensen says. “But
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around here no one wants to see your bits unless the cameras are rolling.” He lets the
robe fall.
Jared looks up and grins, sly. The words are just sitting on the tip of his tongue,
despite the edge to Jensen’s voice. He’s not gonna say them. This is Jensen Ackles.
Wet all over, a little pissed off, a little turned on. He’s a Texas boy, just like Jared,
and one of these days Jared’s going to hear that story over a couple of beers,
somewhere where the music is good and the beer is cold. He’d look good on his
knees, Jensen. He’d look good spread across Jared’s bed, back in LA. And that’s a
thought that’s new, and it’s showing.
Jensen says. “Look, do I have to pull rank? ’Cause I have to tell you, dude, if I
thought you were going to slut around on set you wouldn’t be here.”
“Gotcha,” Jared says equably. “I hear you.” He looks Jensen in the eyes for a moment,
honest, because he’s not about to screw his dream job over Jensen himself, and Jared
wants to be in an AP film more than he wants to be in Jensen. Although he wouldn’t
say no to both. Just so Jensen knows, he adds, “Would it help if I said it was just you?
I don’t play around. I don’t want to. But you’re... dude, you know what you look
like.”
He can hear the hiss of the breath Jensen pulls through his teeth. But all Jensen says
is, “Fine. Just -” he looks away. “Shower,” he says. “There’s a dressing room with
your name on. I’ll be in my office.”
‘Huh,’ Jared thinks, and puts the robe on. His own name is embroidered on the
pocket. It’s a nice touch.
When he comes out of the shower there’s a pile of sweats, clean, on the dressing table.
A pair of silk socks, and the knitted boxers with them are still in their wrapping.
Coffee, which is above and beyond and Jared sips it gratefully as he pads down the
corridor to Jensen’s office. The door’s open. Jensen’s on the phone. He’s dry, and his
T-shirt reads I’m not a porn star, I’m a pornographer. Waved at the chair, Jared sits
down.
It’s obvious AP’s got problems with a distributor. Jensen’s got a sharp tongue, a sharp
wit, and a great line in restrained sarcasm. It’s kind of scary hot: it takes ten minutes,
but by the end Ackles Productions have screwed another 2% out of the deal, extended
credit, and a sweet nonfulfillment clause that Sara would give her eye teeth to have.
And when he clicks the cell off, Jensen punches the air in triumph like a schoolboy,
before he remembers Jared’s on the other side of the desk.
It’s a little sad watching him sober. Jared waits, putting on helpful and obliging and
friendly, which isn’t actually that far from the truth, apart from the fact that he’s still
half-hard and he’s not on the clock.
“So,” Jensen says.
“Look,” Jared says. “You’re crazy hot and I’d have to be blind not to notice. But I get
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that it’s not your thing. And it’s odd for me too, you know? So I’m sorry if I came on
too strong and I promise, no trouble on set. I’m not gonna make eyes at the camera or
grab your butt in the elevator. This shoot matters to me. I’m not going to fuck it up for
you. Promise.”
When Jensen ducks his head for a second, Jared’s pretty sure that’s a smile he’s
hiding, but when he looks up his face is stern. He says, “See that you don’t. I haven’t
got time for anyone screwing around on set, and there’s a return ticket to LA in my
desk with your name on it. Don’t mess up.”
“I heard you,” Jared says, and he’s doing his best to ignore the thrill that’s slithered
down his spine and the way his dick’s half hard again already. He doesn’t do this. His
dick’s paid for and signed over, it’s got no business nosing after someone Jared’s
never going to have and doesn’t get paid for fucking. He says, “I’m good with that. I
swear, you won’t notice a thing.” He thinks, ‘But if you ever change your mind, I’m
right here,’ and he thinks that thought’s private until he looks up and meets Jensen’s
eyes. Ouch.
But Jensen huffs out a laugh that’s more shock than amusement. He says. “Not gonna
happen. Let’s just put it down to not mixing business and pleasure and leave it there.
I’ve called you a limo. You good to go tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Jared says. “Thanks,” he says.
There’s nothing on Jensen’s desk but a screen, a keyboard and a wireless mouse.
Empty, the polished wood seems wide, and Jensen sat behind it is a long way away.
His mouth’s tight, his eyes are so pleasantly neutral Jared can’t read them at all, and
his hands are flat on the desktop and motionless.
But Jared hadn’t been imagining it, that moment when Jensen looked back. He just
hopes he can forget. He doesn’t need an even bigger crush on his director than the one
he’s already got. So he jams his hat on, sticks out his hand and shakes Jensen’s (nice
firm grip, not too hard), wheels around and marches out with his head held high.
Smile for the camera, Jay.
~*~
He tries. He really does: he’s not here for the - and he has to snigger, because hell no,
he didn’t get into porn to save kittens and stop thermonuclear meltdowns and he
doesn’t know anyone who did. Jared got into it for the free dick and ass and the dosh,
same as everyone else, and because Jensen Ackles shot a film that made sex on
camera look so fucking gorgeous Jared still gets a lump in his throat and a twitch in
his dick thinking about that scene. So rewind, yeah, Jared’s here for the sex, but he’s
honest about it, turns up on time, gets off, goes home. Pays his health insurance and
his mortgage and his taxes, donates. Doesn’t treat his partners like tricks, doesn’t trick
with his partners, doesn’t trick. Full stop.
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Doesn’t make any difference. He’s still face-down on the bed, humping his own hand,
wincing and stopping and starting all over again, just a little, just to take the edge off
so he can get to sleep. He could be filming tomorrow: he can’t come, he shouldn’t
come, but he squeezes a little harder, two fingers wrapped under the head of his dick
and a thumb pressed into his circumcision scar. Jensen’s got square hands, workman’s
hands, broad fingers, filed-down flat fingernails, gripping clumsy and a little tighter
than Jared would touch himself Fuck.
Jared snatches his hand away and rolls over in bed, staring at the ceiling and breathing
hard. His toes are curling, he wants to push his ass into the mattress and spread his
thighs, wonders if Jensen doesn’t shave his pubes as well as his pits. He’d be dark
haired, strong wiry short hairs, smell of sweat and musk, and Jared doesn’t know if
the man would laugh or whimper stroked against the grain. He licks his lips, wants to
taste salt and skin, can almost feel the soft fur of the hair on Jensen’s inner thigh on
his cheek and the prickle of stubble against his nose. Jensen’s jeans were old enough
to have worn thin over his balls, round and full, and he’s broad-shouldered, powerful:
his dick’s going to be thick and heavy and Jared’s mouth is watering, his hand splayed
on his stomach and inching down to tug at his own.
Fuck.
He sits up, punches the pillow into shape, lies down again. Rolls over. Rolls back.
He’s got the kind of hard-on that isn’t fading away: it nags, stands up and waves
cheerily, rocks against Jared’s belly when he moves and scrapes damp-headed against
the sheets. It’s a deal breaking contract ripping monster of a hard-on and he’s not even
being paid for the thing, but it’s still signed, stoked and ready to roll: property,
Ackles. Productions.
~*~
“Sleep well? Hotel okay for you?”
“Great,” Jared lies. “Thanks for the limo yesterday,” he says.
Kate must have got up at zero o’clock, because the frizzed curls she had yesterday are
frighteningly sleek today, but her smile’s wide and happily surprised. “Thanks,” she
says. “Good to see you back. So he gave you a script, yeah? You got it with you?”
“Sure,” Jared says, like he didn’t check twice in the elevator and once again in the
lobby.
“Good,” Kate says, and then she says, “I hear you gave Jen a hand with the leak,
yesterday.” She’s still smiling, but one eyebrow’s gone up and her face is brightly
curious.
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“Yeah,” Jared says. And then, “Did he... did he say anything? About me?” God, he
might as well be in high school.
“Only that you know one end of a wrench from the other,” Kate says, “And believe
me, that’s a good thing.”
“Oh,” Jared says, and he knows his mouth’s turning down at the corners and he can’t
help it, not that he thought Jensen Ackles would be writing his name with little hearts
around it anytime soon.
Kate pats his hand. “Don’t worry too much, okay? And today’s just a dry read - lots of
stuff can change before we roll. If there’s anything you’re not sure of, say so, yeah?
He’s really a total pussy cat, he’ll be fine. I mean it. Go on through.”
Jared thinks, that doesn’t help. He didn’t mean to, but he jerked off to Jensen Ackles’
hands last night and came to a heart-clenching image of his own come clinging to
Jensen’s lowered eyelashes. Now he’s wondering if Jensen would arch his back under
Jared’s hands the way his mother’s cats purr and preen.
But he says, “Thanks. See you later!” with the broadest grin he can sum up.
Kate waves him off with another smile. “First on the left!” she shouts after him, which
means Jared has to do an abrupt about-face and nearly bumps into Mike and the tray
of mugs he’s holding. Jared didn’t sleep well. It makes him clumsy.
“Sorry!”
“Hey, Jared, good to see you. Get the door for me?”
“Is that coffee? Because, man, I gotta tell you, I love you so much right now. Really.
Like -”
“Help yourself. Check. Coffee for Jared. Not gonna be a problem. If Kate’s not got a
brew on Jensen will have. Just don’t tell him I said that,” Mike says, grinning.
“I heard you,” Jensen says.
Jared whips around so fast he nearly drops his mug. Then he says, “Hey?”
And Jensen shakes his head. He’s got a tiny little amused smile that’s brand new for
Jared. He’s got a black button down that looks expensively soft, and a different pair
of jeans, just as comfortably worn as yesterday’s, the same boots, and he’s wearing
glasses. Glasses!
Jared had no idea he had a thing for glasses. But, clearly, he does, and oh God he is so
screwed, because he’s not just imagining taking them off, he wants to see Jensen’s
hand groping for them in the morning, and the bedside table he’s mauling is Jared’s
own, and Jensen’s hair is messy and there’s a pillow crease on his cheek and Jared
wants.
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“Jared,” Jensen says. This Jensen, buttoned up and prim and in control. “C’mon in,
pull up a chair.”
“Thanks,” Jared says, looking down into his coffee as he sits and hoping the color in
his cheeks can be put down to steam and not the kind of flustered embarrassment he
thought he’d left behind with high school.
“I ought to...” Jensen starts, his own hands cupped around a steaming mug, “Look.
I’m sorry about yesterday. You didn’t catch me at my best, and I might have come
across too strong.”
“Justifiably irritated?” Jared says.
“No,” Jensen says. “That’s not it. We’ve never worked together before, and I know
things are different elsewhere. But we’ve always run a clean set here.”
“Not a problem,” Jared says. “At all. I’ll just sit here and, uh, observe. Learn. If that’s
okay with you. And, dude, I’m sorry about, well, if I hadn’t...” Drooled all over you.
“Okay. Fine,” Jensen says, and nods. He starts to say something else, but the door
opens, and that’s definitely relief that crosses his face as he stands up. “Dave! Phil!
How’re you doing?”
“Jensen, my man!” Dave, Jared thinks. Tall, burly, stubbled head and stubbled chin:
he’s wearing sweats and a hoodie, which makes Jared think that he might have taken
this dry reading too seriously in his loose jeans and the new shirt Sara bought for him
and made him pack. Phil’s smaller, younger, but just as dark and just as stubbled, with
a broad grin and laughter lines around his eyes. East Coast talent. It’s one hell of a
generalization, but they’re both older and hairier than the guys Jared’s used to
shooting with. Dave and Phil switching in the script, and it fits: Jared’s seen them
both before. Jensen shot them for Hallows, AP’s last film, and Dave at least has been
in three or four others for the studio as well. Nothing else, they’re AP exclusives, and
judging by the backslapping and exclamations of, “Yeah, right out in the boondocks”
and “This new Swiss stove, man, you’ve got to come over” in a British accent, they’re
Jensen’s friends as well.
Jared gets his script out, a little intimidated. He lays it out, prods at the corner, and
looks around while he’s got the chance. The table’s solid antique pine on a modern
steel frame, freshly polished, the chair comfortably padded. There are bottles of water
and notepads and pens, a couple of bowls of candy. A whiteboard and markers: no
screen. It looks like a conference suite, this office, deep brown carpet, cream walls,
and framed certificates on the wall - hell, that’s a couple of cinematography citations,
one for music (music?) and one for excellence in the art of Ikebana, which explains
the orchids on the table. He blinks.
“Kate’s,” Jensen says, unexpected. He’s back in his seat, and opposite, Dave and Phil
are looking at Jared with the same friendly curiosity he feels about them.
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“I was kind of expecting the NAVGAY awards?” Jared says, and everyone bursts out
laughing.
Pointing a finger in Jensen’s direction - Jensen laughs with his hand over his mouth,
almost shy - Dave manages, “Jen here... back of his old garage, for fuck’s sake...”
“Barbeque,” Phil adds in. “He had them under a dust sheet.” He’s the one with the
British accent.
“I sent you for charcoal!” Jensen says. “Did I say, make out in my garage and while
you’re at it pull the shelf off the wall? Did I hell.”
“You set us up!” Dave says.
“Riiiight,” Jensen says. “So, Jared, these two reprobates are Dave and Phil, and
they’re gonna be our lecturer and his TA. Guys, this is Jared, and he’s our Sam.”
“SG Studios, right?” Dave says. “I loved that beach movie you guys did, kind of
modern retro? That was sweet. Hot, too.”
“Really?” Jared says. “We weren’t sure - we wanted that Boys in the Sand feeling,
that kind of mystical, anything goes look? But natural light, man, I swear we spent
half the day waiting for the sun. It worked for you?”
“Absolutely,” Dave says. “Loved that moment when you come out of the water.
Superb.”
Jared laughs. He says, “It was February. The water was fucking freezing.”
“We didn’t notice,” Phil says, with a sly, mischievous grin. “Jen said -”
“Hey, Timmy!” Jensen says. Loudly, looking up to the door. “Timmy, c’mon in, sit
down. Mike, you’re late.”
“You want more coffee or what?” Mike says. “Don’t argue, I have the cafetiere.”
“Guys!” Timmy says, arms flung wide. “We’re back!”
He’s little, skinny, his hair spiked platinum blond and his pants hipster thin: his ears
are pierced right up to the tips and his bare arms sleeved in Japanese chrysanthemum
tattoos. He was in Hallows too, and now he’s Jared’s partner. Rick. Jared stands up,
awkward, smiles: he’s never quite got used to the moment when he meets someone
he’s going to be fucking in the next... half hour, half day. Five minutes, on the worst
shoots. Sara’s great about it, but Jared’s met guys when he’s already hard for the
camera or a week before at casting, and it doesn’t get any less weird either way.
He’s putting his hand out when Timmy screams. “Jared! Jay-man, you’re here!”
“Uh -” And that’s as far as Jared gets with that one, because Timmy’s hugging him.
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Timmy’s head just about comes up to Jared’s shoulder, but for a skinny little guy he’s
wiry with muscle and he hugs hard.
“Jensen, can we keep him?” Timmy says, leans back, and grins. His hands aren’t
wandering, his grin’s broad, but he’s not letting go and when Jared sneaks a glance at
his director Jensen’s starting to frown. Jared’s stuck: he’s got no idea what’s okay,
what he’s supposed to do.
“Dry read!” Phil yells from across the table. “Put him down. He’s new.”
“Timmy,” Jensen says, with an edge of authority in his voice that makes Jared’s back
straighten.
“Dude,” Timmy says, and lets go. “I cannot tell you how good it is to see you here.
This lot, they’re all tired and jaded, and I said to Jensen last time we wrapped, Mr
Director God, get me something good to play with next go around, someone pretty,
and you know? He did.”
Timmy’s grin is wide and wicked and Jared likes it. He says, smiling “Glad to meet
you.”
“I like my back scratched, I do my own prep, and you’re fucking gorgeous. We’re
gonna have fun,” Timmy says.
“Just so you know,” Dave says, “He screams. Wear ear plugs.”
“Fucking right,” Mike says.
“I hate you all,” Timmy says, still smiling, and drops into his seat.
“And we’re done,” Jensen says. “Guys, good to see you again. I’m sure you’ve all
read the script, so let’s get going. You need to know I’m looking for connection here,
so you two get to do whatever it is you do anyway, and Jared, Timmy, you’re young,
you’re horny, and you’re balls deep in love. I want butterflies, okay? So, opening -”
“Butterflies?” Timmy says.
“Butterflies,” Jensen says firmly. “Right, we’re on campus, it’s spring, the birds are
tweeting, and Jared, you’ve just seen the most gorgeous guy you’ve ever set eyes on
in your life. Opening scene. Mike?”
“Hey, Sam,” Mike says. “Wait up!”
“Oh shit, is it me?” Jared says.
~*~
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“Way to go, dude. Not bad at all.” Dave’s smiling.
“Really?” Jared says. “Because I haven’t done this for years, and I was kind of
thinking maybe not with the...” He stops.
“Jen! Jay here says Sam doesn’t do kinky!”
“That’s not -” Jared says, clutching onto his coffee, “No, I didn’t -”
“What, the bit at the hotel?” Jensen says. “Kate didn’t like it either. What would you
do instead?” His head’s on one side, serious, eyes on Jared’s.
“I guess... you want to show that it’s something real, right? It’s that - I’m not sure
that’s Sam’s thing? Maybe something simpler. Like that moment in Auberge when -”
Jensen’s suddenly, absolutely, still. His eyes have widened, darkening. Jared’s stuck
mid-sentence, watching the color drain from his face.
“Auberge?” Mike says. “I don’t know that one?”
Jared says, “It’s French.” Then he’s hurrying, stumbling over the words. “Sorry. Sara
brought it back from Paris for me. I think it’d translate as A Room and a Bed,
something like that?” He’s lying. He is so lying, and Jensen’s watching him wideeyed and unbreathing. “So I think maybe something small? Holding Rick down,
maybe? Let me think about it. Mike,” he says. “Any chance I can see Sam’s clothes?
Just to get a feel for what he’s gonna look like?”
“Sure,” Mike says. “We got five. Store’s this way.”
‘What the fuck was that?’ Jared thinks, following Mike down the corridor. It’s not
like... Auberge is as vanilla as it gets. Two guys, one room. Three scenes, thirty
minutes of film, fixed camera: it’s only the lighting that makes the film memorable.
That and the first boy, the shape of his back and his hands. Yet Jensen’s face looked
as horrified as if he’d shot a snuff film and Jared had caught him mid-scene, and Mike
hadn’t even known the film existed.
“So, this is what we’ve got,” Mike says, and then he says, “Look. I’m not Jen’s BFF
and fuck knows he doesn’t need someone else messing around in his business. But I
know you guys met yesterday and I’m telling you now, lay off. Jen doesn’t need that
kind of shit.”
“I heard you,” Jared says. “I heard him too.” He feels cold. It’s fine - it’s not fine, but
he can live with rejection, that’s okay, he can deal - but if Jensen’s pissed enough that
he’s getting Mike to warn Jared off, that’s serious. ‘Keep your eyes front and your
head down, Jay,’ Jared tells himself, and tries not to think of Jensen’s face, that
moment when he’d backed up against the washbasins as if he didn’t want Jared within
five feet.
“Make sure you’re listening,” Mike says, and turns around to the rack. “So. This is
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Sam when we first meet him...”
~*~
“’Kay, guys,” Jensen says, “We done? Dave? Mike?”
He gets a chorus of nods, and Timmy’s already pulling out his cell and texting.
“So, bright and early. Y’all know where you’re going, yeah? Kate’ll have fair copies
for you tomorrow and I promise we’ll start slow. Timmy, do not get laid tonight.
Jared -”
“Once!” Timmy says, looking up with a quick grin.
“Glad you heard me. Jared, you got a minute?”
“Sure,” Jared says, and sits back down. Jensen looks... abstracted, and Jared’s
stomach muscles tighten and he has to roll his shoulders to shake the tension out. He
wasn’t that bad, was he? Bad enough to be written off before he’d even started? Had
he been too loud, too invested? Jensen had seemed to be on board with discussion, but
this wasn’t SG.
He says, “If you’re gonna write me off, say it now.”
“What?” Jensen says, the word sharply shocked. “No. No. Jared. I was just going to -”
He stops, looks away. Opens his mouth and closes it, looks back, says slowly, “I was
going to say, I liked the way you read Sam. Thanks.”
“Oh,” Jared says. “That’s good, right?” Except that it’s not what he thought Jensen
was going to say. He waits.
“Yeah,” Jensen says. Then brightly, smiling, “You’ll be fine. See you tomorrow.”
He’s gathering up his paperwork, checking his watch, head ducked down.
Jared says, slow, letting the smallest hint of a drawl slip into his voice, “Was there
something else?” Then he thinks, shit, and says, “Not, not - look - oh God, I’m so crap
at this -”
Jensen looks up. He says, crisp, “If you’re asking if I want your mouth on my cock,
the answer is no. I don’t fuck my actors, Jared. I was under the impression we’d
covered that one.”
“That wasn’t - look, I would, okay, I totally would, but that wasn’t - wow. Did I really
say that?” Jared says. “I did, didn’t I? You must think -” He’s definitely blushing
now. “Just - no. Forget it. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. See you tomorrow. If -”
There’s a smile curling around the corners of Jensen’s mouth, under his hand, and his
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eyes are crinkling at the corners, but he’s shaking his head. “Out,” he says.
Jared goes.
He calls Sara that night, same as he did last night. Talks her through the dry run and
the debates, how Jensen got them to read through the scene and then workshopped the
dialogue, how they’d looked at locations and choreography and staging. He’s never
been so well prepped for a film he didn’t work on from the start, and he really likes
Jensen’s inclusiveness, the way he’d listened and taken notes and reworked the text,
and he likes - likes a little too much - the moments when Jensen had shut down a
discussion that was getting out of hand or moved them on. He’s got this kind of quiet
authority that “Jared,” Sara says. “Jay.”
“He’s fucking gorgeous,” Jared says miserably.
Sara, the bitch, laughs.
He has to call her back. “No, look, can you do something for me? Next time you
check the house, can you pick up the DVD and FedEx it over? It’s the one in the blue
case, right at the bottom of the shelves? Auberge.”
“Yeah,” he says. “The one I tried to track down.”
~*~
They won’t be shooting the first scene until tomorrow, but Jared still preps as
carefully as if he was, checks there are no stray hairs, exfoliates, moisturises, wears
his clothing loose enough not to leave a mark on his skin. His nails are filed smooth,
his hair gleaming, and he’s vain enough to know he looks good for a kid from Texas
who’s always been too tall and too loud.
Or a kid who’s moved around so much he’s not quite sure where he comes from.
Sam’s a little younger than Jared, a little less sure of himself, quieter. Sam kissed a
girl in sixth grade and another, uncomfortably, at someone else’s sixteenth birthday
party. He’s known he was gay since he was thirteen, but he’s never told anyone, not
even the one person that matters ‘Huh,’ Jared thinks. He’s trying to visualize Sam’s parents, his smiling Mom and his
gentle, supportive father, but he can’t see them. They’re unreal. Sam’s so much
clearer in his head, alone: not lonely but... used to being on his own? That’s not quite
right either. There was someone for Sam, a teacher, an aunt, someone closer... Jared
doesn’t know. But Sam. Sam’s not lonely, he’s got friends, he’s enjoying his courses,
it’s just that....
“Main gate good for you?” the driver says.
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“Great. Thanks,” Jared says, and uncurls himself from the back seat. There’s a man he
doesn’t recognize who waves him down and signs him in, checks his ID and takes his
photograph and gives him a security badge and his new script. Beyond the gate
someone else directs him onto set, where someone else takes him into a brightly lit
room for makeup. The girl dabbing foundation on his nose is a final year student.
“Yeah, Mr Ackles is a friend of my Prof.,” she says. “He went to film school with her
husband. Most of the students are in today, and it’s not just because... he does guest
lectures?” she says, and blushes.
Jared laughs, only a little wry. He says, “Yeah, I know.”
“And it’s not like... He doesn’t date,” she says. “So, you know, a girl can dream. Also,
Raj and Wills moon over his movies, so when the offer came up...” She shrugs.
“Are you just here today?” Jared asks.
“Nope,” Rusty says, sorting through brushes. “Lean back. Close your eyes. Two
weeks, full shoot. Don’t worry. It’s a closed set tomorrow, not even the film studies
students get in. Most I get to see is some bathrobes if I’m lucky. Oh, and I get to be
crowd. There’s a scene in a bar, I think? And another one in the hotel, and the last one
on the bridge?” She stops, does something with spray. “Keep your eyes closed... yeah.
That’s it. You can look.”
Jared does. He tries to think of something to say, fails, and Rusty laughs, a sweet little
high-pitched run of a chuckle. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re meant to look like you.
It’s in the specs.”
“Phew,” Jared says. “Because, yeah. That’s pretty cool,” he says, and likes that he
made Rusty smile.
They’re at the front of the campus, set up on the asphalt by the lawn. There are two
cameras and the stills photographer, a full lighting set, a crowd of people fiddling with
wires and tracks and coffee and laptops, and Jensen looking as if he’s been there for
hours, his hair ruffled under his New York Giants baseball cap and a clipboard in his
hands. He’s talking to a cameraman, smiles, nods, moves on to the sound crew and on
the way stops to chat with one of the students wielding gaffer tape. He looks
unhurried and confident, although Mike’s trying to direct three assistants with clothes
while holding a cell phone conversation. “Look, we’re shooting now,” he says, and
“Hi, Jared. Raj, can you get him Sam’s scene one costume? Blue label. No, I mean it,
I’m on set, I can get you the figures in an hour...”
Jared takes the hanger with Sam’s jacket and jeans and the box with his watch and his
boots, and one of the assistants - in a PACE University sweatshirt - points him to
another room. He changes, careful with the makeup, and there’s a locker with a key
for his own clothes, although Dave’s left his jacket on a hook and there’s a copy of
Fever Pitch on the bench with a Strand bookmark and Phil’s name on the inside
cover.
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When he heads back to set, they’re filming. It’s the conversation between Dave and
Phil that establishes both characters, Phil’s TA and Dave’s tenured Professor. For a
big man Dave looks surprisingly cuddly in a natural wool cardigan. Phil’s hoodie and
jeans are generic student code, but he does a great line in frustrated attraction. Dave is
stubbornly blind, although somehow he manages to convey layers of amusement and
half-flattered doubt. They’re both great, steady, reliable, and the two shots and shot
reverse shots are done in an hour and a half. Then there’s the ten minutes Jensen takes
to film the texture of Phil’s hand against the heavy wool of Dave’s cardigan, and the
light through the aspen tree shading the campus lawn, and Jared watches with a halfforgotten grin on his face because that, that right there, that’s why he fought for the
Ackles clause in his contract.
Jensen’s good. He’s straightforward, he knows what he wants, and when he needs to
explain, it’s clear and concise. There’s a throwaway grin to the camerawoman and a
joke that makes Dave and Phil crack up on camera, and Jared can’t look away.
Something about the way Jensen stands, his easy confidence and the shape of his
hands, the way sunlight gilds the short hair at the back of this neck to gold and strikes
his eyes green: it’s attractive, a slow burn of sexual awareness that Jared can feel curl
through his belly, but there’s something about trust in there too, and that he didn’t
expect.
Mike leans over Jared’s shoulder and says, “That’s you,” and Jensen says, “Cut, great,
can we set up for three, please? Anyone seen Jared?”
“Hey,” Jared says, letting his voice carry.
Jensen turns round and smiles. He must have a million different things on his mind,
but there’s a moment when that smile is all Jared’s, and it’s warm. He knows he’s
smiling back, too soft, has to look away to hide his face. He wants to run a hand
through his styled hair and only manages to stop himself just in time. Rusty threatened
dire consequences, and Jared’s made his fortune on the strength of both balls.
“Okay,” Jensen says. “Okay, this is what I need you to do.”
~*~
The shot with the extra playing the friend is fine, the one that introduces Sam. But
Jared stares at Timmy for an hour. He stares limpidly, hungrily, shyly: he waves,
manages a slight tightening of his fist, he has his bag on his shoulders and off, he
thinks about dating, he thinks about weddings, he thinks about the best fuck he’s ever
had. (For the record, DeShaun, Wet and Wild. They laughed all the way through the
shoot.) Jensen’s still not happy. He’s had his baseball cap off and on and off again and
under it his hair’s been clumped into exasperated spikes and there’s a frown line
between his eyes that’s just getting deeper.
“It’s not you,” he says. “I don’t know. It’s not right.”
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“Ten minutes, Jen,” Mike says.
“Yeah yeah,” Jensen says. “How do you feel about one more shot?”
Jared nods. He’s stopped asking what Jensen wants. He’s done it every way the
director could think of, and Jensen’s still asked for more.
“It’s just not... fuck, just do what feels right,” Jensen says.
Jared nods, and walks off yet again across the campus lawn with Sam’s bag in his
hands. He’s walking slowly, head down. Right now, Jared’s almost as unsure as Sam.
It’s day one. If he can’t produce the goods, Jensen could still call someone else, and
Jared’s just spent an hour on a shot that should have taken five minutes. He lets the
bag drag his shoulder down and kicks his feet a little, ill-tempered. What the hell does
Jensen want anyway? Blood? Because it’s sure as hell not Jared. Not a hint, not a
whisper: he could have been naked on set and Jensen still wouldn’t bat an eye. He
must have been so wrong about Jensen looking back; he’s such a klutz, wanting
someone who’ll never want him....
“Cut,” Jensen yells. “Hell yeah, Jared. Attaboy.”
“- what the fuck?” Jared says. He blinks. Timmy’s giving him a fist pump from across
the lawn, which is at least better than some of the faces the guy’s pulled in the last
hour, and the second crew’s already packing up.
“Can we have some help over here?” Mike yells, and there’s a rush to the catering
table and Jared’s still bemused and blinking. He looks around for Jensen, but his
director’s looking at the replay on camera, hand shading the screen and his face
together.
He doesn’t know what he did right. He’s got no idea. He wasn’t even thinking about
Timmy. But Jensen glances up and gives him a thumbs-up, he’s starving, and that’s
good enough for now.
~*~
“Hold still,” Rusty says.
“Sorry,” Jared says, still craning to watch Jensen talking to Dave and Phil at the bar.
They’re standing close together, and Phil’s laughing, sexy little laughter lines at the
corner of his eyes, and for all Dave’s arm is slung over his shoulders it’s Jensen he’s
looking towards. They have barbeques. They’re friends. Maybe they have friendly
threesomes.
“And don’t frown,” Rusty says. “I’m nearly done. If you didn’t sweat so much...”
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“Sorry,” Jared says again, apologetic.
The morning was crap, but the afternoon’s fine. Jared doesn’t even have to work at
Sam’s bemused, overwhelmed headspace: he’s short enough on dating experience
himself to find Timmy’s exuberant come-on confusing and attractive, and Timmy’s
mercurial, predatory Rick is beautifully done. It’s almost fun, and they bag the shot in
twenty minutes. Dave and Phil’s coffee shop is almost as quick, and then it’s a quick
shift into the dorms, Mike tapping at his watch and the second lighting team finishing
up the wires and gaffer tape with amazing speed. Jared goes for coffee, catches up
with Phil at the counter and manages to convey how impressed he is without, he
thinks, sounding like a complete idiot. Except when he finds himself with his hands
full - “Take that one to Jen?” Phil says. “I gotta catch Mike, either these boots go or I
do, he swore he had the sizes from last time.”
“Sure,” Jared says, and takes both cups over to the dorm.
Jensen says nothing more than mumbled thanks, but the way his hands fasten around
the cardboard mug and the way he drinks with his eyes closed is telling. He’s got
stubby, dark eyelashes, thick enough that if Jared ran his finger over the line of them
they’d spring back, resilient. He might have a thing about Jensen’s eyelashes. It’s
absurd.
He nearly flinches, when Jensen’s eyes snap open. There’s a moment when they stare
at each other, and there’s two feet between and Jared knows he’s too close and still,
damn it, wants to get closer. He steps back instead, head down, like he was on his way
somewhere else, but Jensen’s still frowning. Then his chin goes up and he says, all
director, “Right. Stay sharp, we’ve only got permission to film if the place is
unrecognizable, so don’t move outside your marks. Don’t forget, Timmy’s the one
with the experience, but you’re topping. Show it.”
“Sure,” Jared says.
“Nothing below the waist,” Jensen warns.
“Sure,” Jared says, and does exactly what he’s told. He and Timmy roll around the
wall, inside their marks, kiss enthusiastically for at least a quarter of an hour and
slightly less enthusiastically and a little more painfully for the same amount of time
again. The first couple of minutes Jensen directs, sotto voice, “Yeah, Timmy, arch
your back a bit, drop your shoulder, Jared, let’s see those hands...” but just about the
point where Sam pins Rick up against the wall he stops, so Jared reckons either
they’re doing something right or Jensen’s giving up in disgust. He’s still not quite sure
which one it is when they’re done and moving over to Dave’s office, which actually
belongs to Rusty’s Professor and has a cool poster of Clint Barton on the wall. The
first crew’s already set up, Dave and Phil are ready to go, and Jensen’s saying, “’Kay,
Dave, remember you could lose your job over this one...”
Jared goes for more coffee, gets two, slides the second under Jensen’s nose and steps
back in a hurry, and this time gets a confused, grateful smile that stops almost as soon
as it’s started. He doesn’t say anything, he’s already turning away. No pressure. He
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doesn’t need validation. He doesn’t need Jensen to tell him he’s doing a good job, he
really doesn’t.
“Thanks,” Jensen says, and “Good work. That last scene.”
Jared, flushed, doesn’t trust himself to speak, nods.
He’s done for the day. He could go, but he’s got nothing waiting on him but an empty
hotel room and a blank screen, so he cancels the car and tucks himself up with
tomorrow’s script and his coffee and watches Dave and Phil glower and flirt over the
desk. They’re both amused: there’s a moment when Phil adlibs and Dave bursts out
laughing and Jensen has to call cut in a strangled voice that means he’s just as
entertained.
“Hey,” Timmy says quietly. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
“What?” Jared says, “No, you’re fine, what...?”
“Just meant to say,” Timmy says, “Good shoot. Thanks.”
He looks a little more sober in his own street clothes rather than Rick’s clubbing gear,
but Timmy’s face, for all his cheerfully obscene jokes and wicked sniggering, is
serious. On set, he’d been professional and friendly, as involved as Jared had been.
Easy to work with.
“Thanks,” Jared says. “You too.”
They sit and watch Dave and Phil for a while. Or, at least, Timmy’s watching Phil
wriggle in his seat and flutter his eyelashes with a soft grin on his face. Jared’s
watching Jensen.
“You know they met on set, right?” Timmy says. His voice is... Timmy’s been brash
and forthright all day, and he’s got a store of filthy jokes that had sent the whole crew
into horrified laughter more than once. But his voice is soft, now.
“No?”
“Mm mm.”
Jared’s still watching Jensen. They’re not filming. Jensen’s framing shots for the
camera. He wants a close up of some papers on the desk... the tree seen from the
window... Phil’s hand on the edge of the desk. His face is abstracted, concentrated,
but there’s still a quick grin for the camerawoman and a sly smile for Dave, and Jared
can’t look away.
“Look,” Timmy says. “Jay. About Jensen.”
“I get it,” Jared says, and sighs, because this is getting old. “You’re gonna be the third
person to warn me off and that’s not counting the man himself. Just take it as read,
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okay? I get he’s not interested.”
“Uh, no,” Timmy says, and Jared does turn around, then. “That’s not what I was
going to say. I think you should go for it.”
“What?” Jared says.
Timmy blinks at him, innocent blue eyes and mischievous smile. “He’s hot.”
“That’s it?” Jared says. “Just because... no. I mean yes! But. The guy is not
interested.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Timmy says. “And, honestly? You’d be doing us all a favor if you
fucked the starch right out of him. You wait. You thought today was rough, you
should see him at the end of the shoot.”
“Pretty sure that’s not on the menu,” Jared says.
“Sure,” Timmy says, deeply ironic, and quirks an eyebrow. He’s got a pointed,
expressive face, and right now he looks both amused and expectant.
“Oh, please,” Jared says. “Not gonna happen.”
It’s sharp, the look Timmy gives him, and Jared shuffles his feet and takes another sip
of cold coffee just to have something to do with his hands. But Timmy doesn’t call
him on it, just shakes his head and says, “Huh. Lucky for you, I’m a sure thing.”
Jared has to laugh.
~*~
There’s a parcel waiting for him at reception. It’s Auberge, the familiar blue case
well-padded and the address in Sara’s handwriting. He calls LA to thank her, spends
one half hour discussing the set and another on Sara’s new film, and then he sits on
the edge of the bed and looks at the DVD in his hands. It’s been years since he saw
the film, but he can still remember the shock of the first time, the realization that porn
could mean something more than images to jerk off over. There’s nothing about the
film he remembers that explains Jensen’s reaction, and Jared wonders if he’s got the
right film, if Jensen was thinking of something else, if the test cards got muddled or
he’d read the captions wrong. It’s been, what, two years since he last saw this film?
Three?
He turns his laptop on, sets it at the bottom of the bed, and drops the DVD into the
tray.
There’s nothing more than the black and white screen that reads AP, and then there’s
the bed, the two boys, and the window. He’s always thought it was a motel room, but
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after PACE he wonders now if it was Jesus fucking Christ.
“Fuck, stop,” Jared yells at the laptop, lunging at the keyboard, hitting all the wrong
buttons and freezing the screen and then whiting it out and where the hell was, oh
yeah, come on, come on. Black screen, bed, and - freeze.
That boy.
That boy with the pale hair, the one with the thin shoulders and the wicked grin and
the mouth Jared got off to most of his senior year. That boy, the one he fell in love
with, a little, before he learned that porn isn’t real.
It’s Jensen.
It’s Jensen ten years younger, looking like... ah, fucking hell, looking like a porn star.
Pretty baby twink, the kind that wants it and gets it or doesn’t want it and gets it
anyway, hard. Back arched up and ass in the air, legs spread, head turned up. Hair
dyed, longer than it is now, flopping over his eyes, although still razor-short on the
back of his neck. Slighter, although there’s the promise of strength in the width of his
shoulders and the size of his hands, one of them fisted on the pillow and the other
gripped onto the side of the bed. He’s saying something, although Jared’s never
known what: with the DVD frozen his mouth is half-open, quirked up at the corner. In
a moment, the other boy will move from camera right towards the bed, run a hand
down Jensen’s spine, casual, proprietary, and settle between his legs. This shot,
though; this is Jensen on his own, pale skin against the deep blue of the sheets, banded
shadows from the blinds at the window across the clean lines of his back. Jensen,
smiling, relaxed. Easy and confident in his skin.
He doesn’t look like that now. Confidence, yes, he has that. An efficient
professionalism. But he’s guarded, tight. No one touched Jensen today. No one
clapped him on the shoulder or flung an arm over his shoulders, although Dave and
Phil are casually affectionate with each other and Timmy, the way people are when
they’re physically at ease with each other. Here though, on screen, he’ll stretch out his
body against the sheets like a big cat, curl into touch, shiver and roll and pant. Here, in
the camera’s eye, he’s happy.
“Oh God,” Jared says, and he’s got one hand on the screen as if he could reach out
and touch the boy Jensen was, ten years ago. “Oh God.” He’s suddenly, blisteringly
conscious of every time he's got off to the curve of Jensen’s ass, the way he laughed,
the way he’d taken what he wanted, so eager and unashamed. It’s an intimacy that’s
one sided and shockingly personal, something entirely different from watching
himself or someone he knows in the industry on screen, willingly performing for the
camera. He doesn’t know - and oh, fuck, he’s hard: he’s flushing hot and cold, he
wants to run the whole DVD slowly over and over again and he wishes he’d never
seen the thing. It cuts too close to the bone. He wants, with an awful, frightening
clench in his belly, this boy, this man, wants so bad and knows it’s never going to
happen. He doesn’t want an unreal celluloid image instead and yet, this is as close as
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he’s ever going to get, and the temptation is there to own the image in a way he can
never, doesn’t want to, own the man.
And there’s a part of Jared that thinks, greedy and arrogant, I can have him now. As if
it makes a difference, this film. As if because Jensen did porn, he’s easy, and that’s so
not true: it’s not true for Jared, and for Jensen, uptight, controlled, it’s got to be even
less so. Yet Jared can’t help the eager push of his dick against his sweats or the way
his hands stroke over the screen, the way that he wonders if Jensen would arch into
Jared’s hands the way, on camera, he arches into his partner, if Jared too could make
him bite his lip and smile at the same time, eyes clenched shut, if he’d come for Jared
with his head thrown back the way he does on screen.
And Jared’s got at least two inches on that guy where it really counts. He’s not an
xtube superstar because of his dimples.
Maybe Jensen likes small and skinny.
He sure as hell doesn’t want Jared. The whole discussion’s stupid. Epically stupid.
Like, stupid piled on stupid.
Jesus, Jay, get your hand off of your dick.
~*~
“Man, did you storyboard this?” Timmy asks. “Because even when we shot that pile
of shit for Stu -”
“No I did not,” Jensen says. “Do you have a problem with the way I’m directing this
shoot, Tim? Because you can walk out that door right -”
“Chill!” Timmy says, rolling his eyes. “Jen. Two dudes. Bed. Camera. It’s not rocket
science. I sure as hell know what I’m doing and so does he. You just do your hand
waving bit, we’ll do the rest.”
“Did you miss the memo or were you incapable of reading it?” Jensen says. “I am
directing this movie. If I want you to fuck in a frilly apron you’ll damn well -”
“Uh, hey, guys?” Jared says.
Jensen whips around. He’s flushed, his eyes bright, hair messed into spikes. He’d
looked like that last night, ten years younger, spread out on someone else’s bed. His
mouth is half-open with shock and Jared wants to smear his thumb over the plump
curve of it, push inside, deeper, wet and hot, and he’s suddenly dry mouthed and short
of breath and Jensen’s staring at him wide-eyed, as if he knows. As if there’s
something already started between them that’s only going to end when Jensen’s
fucked out and coming dry on Jared’s dick.
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Then Jensen snaps shut, mouth, hands, shoulders, and snaps out, “Your call time is
nine. Not half past eight. Not ten. Nine.” He’s not shouting, but he’s pissed, his eyes
narrowed and his mouth firm, and Jared’s knees go weak and his eyes drop and,
damn, that’s the flip side. He’d fucking beg for Jensen’s dick in his mouth. He’d go
down for it right now, hands behind his back, mouth open, he’d be so damn good. It’d
be the best apology ever.
He’s drawn in a breath to say please, eyes wide, before he remembers it’s not real,
and he’s wise enough then to keep his big mouth shut. He doesn’t know what his face
looks like, but it’s got to be reasonably spectacular because Jensen’s not looking
away, and he looks... not angry. Rueful, now.
“Ah, hell,” Jensen says, scrubs a hand at the back of his neck, and then says, “Sorry.
Tim, sorry. I know you know what you’re doing. Jared...”
“Dude,” Tim says, “I get it. Jay and me, we’re gonna burn up that screen for you.
There’s gonna be steam coming out of the cameras. I am so hot for that big dick, I am
wet already. We will be awesome. Awesome!”
Jensen rolls his eyes. He says, “I hear you,” dry, droll, but he’s looking at Jared, and
one eyebrow’s just a little more arched than it was.
“What he said,” Jared chokes out.
Damn it. He’s not doing amateur porn on a webcam, here. He’s a goddam
professional with the goddam screen credits to prove it. He’s the guy who fucked
Misha Collins into a drooling, quivering mess and got him to shut up. (Mostly.)
Men have mewled and whimpered for Jared’s dick. Seriously. On set.
“I’m sorry if -”
“You’re fine,” Jensen says. “You’ll be perfect. Your Sam... Jared, he’s not quite what
I had in mind, but I like him. A lot. And Timmy’s got a point there. If I start telling
you what to do, it’s gonna mess up what you think Sam would do. So. Hands-free
directing.”
Jared takes a moment. He looks at the wall of the corridor, unhelpfully blank, and
then at Jensen’s face, and then at Timmy’s, and thinks of Jensen’s voice, muttering in
his ear. Second-hand porn. Jensen’s voice, any way he can get it. He says, “Dude,
I’d... I’d kind of like that? Otherwise it’s like... I can take a guess at how Timmy’s
doing, but not you. And it’s your film. Can you manage, I don’t know, some kind of
commentary?”
“Aaaand he leaps, he catches, he shoots...” Timmy’s grinning. “Score!”
“Yeah,” Jensen says. “I can do that.”
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~*~
The whole crew wears robes. Not lying, Jared walks onto set and everyone there Timmy, one cameraman, one sound guy and his assistant, the stills guy, one
camerawoman and Jensen - they’re all wearing big fluffy white AP robes with their
names embroidered on the side. Jensen’s even wearing fluffy slippers and white
athletic socks, the kind with the stripes around the top. It’s crazy. It’s like....
“Did you guys forget to tell me this was a group scene?”
Jensen’s already looking around. “What?” he says, and his face is honestly bemused.
The robe’s belted tight, but his wrists are showing, his ankles, unexpectedly fine, and
the solid muscles of his calves and the strong dark hairs on his legs. His knees are
endearingly bony, and it’s even more obvious he’s bowlegged: it’s cute.
“The, uh, the...” Jared gestures. Luckily for his professional reputation, his dick thinks
cute is hot. Jensen in something that could be stripped off with one good pull at a
loosely tied belt. Yeah, he’s on board with that one.
“Uh, yeah?” Jensen says, and looks down, pulling a face. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” Jared says honestly.
The camerawoman flashes him a grin. “Equality, dude,” she says.
Oh fuck. “Does that mean you’re...?”
“Nah, that’s just us,” Timmy says. “Although if you asked nice they would. Jen,
you’d go bare for Jay-man here, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m... no,” Jensen says. “No.”
“Damn,” Jared says, and he thinks it’s under his breath but Jensen glares at him hard
enough to make it obvious he was overheard.
“We are not derailing this movie over bathrobes,” Jensen says. “Are we clear?”
“Uh-huh,” Timmy says, and Jared nods.
“Right. We did walk through, and Timmy, we went through this again last night.
Jared, are you good to go? You happy with Sam here - don’t play it too straight, yeah?
It might be his first time but this guy is not naive.”
“I’m good,” Jared says.
“’Kay. I know we covered this in the contract and Kate ran you through it at walk
through, but let’s go again. Cut means cut: you stop. I don’t care if your balls are
bursting, you stop. And if you don’t there’s a fire extinguisher by the door with your
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name on it, and we’ll use it. Condoms under the pillow, lube in both drawers, water
down by the headboard. Play safe, guys. Timmy, Ace is spotting for you, Jared,
you’ve got me. Yell, wave, you want out, we’ll stop.”
“If the fire alarm goes,” Jensen says, and Timmy starts sniggering. “You get yourself
the hell out of here in a safe and secure fashion and you take a robe with you. If you
forget, one of the team will provide you with one. Are we clear on this point?”
“Yes,” Timmy says.
“Yes,” Jared says.
“So,” Jensen says, and then he sighs and looks down and balls his hands in the
pockets of his robe. Then he looks up, serious. “Guys, I am stoked for this scene. You
guys looked awesome on the rushes, absolutely great, and I know you can pull it off
this time too. Timmy, I don’t need to tell you you’re hot, dude, you know it. Jared...”
Yeah, he’s hung. It’s not like his screen cred hangs off his dick or anything.
“Flash that smile, yeah? You are scorching, dude.”
“Really?” Jared says, warm all the way through.
“Yeah,” Jensen says, and grins. It’s wicked, that grin, sly and knowing. It curves up at
the corners, promises things that are messy and sticky and hotter than any one grin
should have the right to own.
Jared’s doomed. His heart misses a beat, his dick jerks against the toweling, and he’s
opening his mouth before he hits brain, engage which is always....
“Good to know,” he says, and he can’t, he does, ouch, he looks Jensen up and down,
once, slowly, like it’s allowed. Like he could walk both of them over to the bed, like
the cameras are there for Jensen, like he could run his hands up and under that robe
and strip Jensen down and tumble him onto the mattress, make him laugh, make him
whimper, make him scream, make him smile the way he did in Auberge. No fucking
breaks, no script. His dick, Jensen’s ass, his hands, Jensen’s mouth, and oh God he’d
kill to hear Jensen beg for his dick for real. Looking like he does now, his eyes wide
and dark and that flush creeping along his cheekbones and over his chest, looking like
he would, like he really would say yes, say, God, yes, Jay, fuck yeah, get in me. For
real.
Timmy curls a hand around Jared’s shoulder and says, “Man up, Ackles.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” Jensen says, short, and turns his back.
“Fuck,” Jared says, with feeling.
Timmy’s voice is amused. “Told you,” he says. Then, “Good to go?”
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“Yeah,” Jared sighs. “Sorry,” he adds.
“Eh, don’t mind me,” Timmy says. “Kind of entertained, over here. Plus, I like Jen,
you know? Watching him tie himself up in knots in a good way rates mega bonus
points in my book.” He grins, swift, pretty. “Gets you going. And dayam, do I want to
ride on that dick before he gets a ring on it. C’mon, big guy. Sock it to me, ’kay?”
~*~
Jared tries. It doesn’t work.
Oh, he’s there. His hands, his dick. But for the first time he’s horribly aware of every
layer that goes into himself on screen. Jared the porn star, the guy with the big grin
and the big dick. Sam, with his half-fascinated appreciation, a little more detached
than the boy should be, like he’s quantifying every move against some other standard.
Jared playing Sam, trying to get into Sam’s headspace, half there, half watching. It’s
Sam’s hands petting Timmy’s back, but it’s Jared watching himself being Sam, and
for the first time ever on camera he’s not just putting on a show for the punters and
checking angles and making sure his hands don’t get in the way, he’s absolutely
aware of both cameras and the sound guy. The rustle of the sheets, the way Timmy
moves, Jensen’s absolutely silent presence just out of his eye line, his own confusion.
It’s not fair to Timmy, doing his damnedest to act for both of them, and it’s not fair to
Jensen’s film, but Jared’s just going through the motions and he knows it. Everything
he does is an echo of something he’s done on some other set on some other film,
repetitive and tired. He struggles through, ticking off the motions, false groan, false
face, porn star pout, empty and ridiculous. Acting out isn’t helping: he just feels
worse. It’s not Sam on screen, it isn’t even Jared. It’s some other puppet, flat and
characterless.
He’s wasting screen time. He looks up, looks for Jensen, ready to call the whole thing
off, and Jensen says behind him, “Jay.”
He stops. Eyes closed, head thrown back and tilted to that voice. He can feel sweat
break out over his shoulders, goose bumps down the line of his back.
“Yeah, that’s it. Jay. You’re good. I gotcha.” That’s Jensen’s hand on his back, got to
be, broad, warm. “Jay, we’re gonna try something else. Pull out, ’kay? Get your hand
on your dick for me? Condom off.”
On the bed, Timmy rolls over, piles up the pillows, watches.
“Stay still,” Jensen says, low, “Don’t move. Hand on your dick, Jared, slow stroke, let
the camera follow... yeah, that’s it. Again, slower. Again. Yeah, that’s good, like it.
Pull up a bit, let’s see your balls, Jesus dude, smooth, if you waxed I don’t even
wanna think about it. Love it. Hand down... yeah, yeah, gorgeous. Go on. Slow, just
for me. Shit, yeah, beautiful.”
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Oh hell yeah does he want Jensen to watch. Jensen wants slow, Jared can do slow,
easy strokes, little twist to the top, hand off to one side, look. Look at me. Hard for
you, Jen, and Jared curves his arm and his shoulders and his back into the stroke,
bends his knees, and groans. He’s more turned on than he’s ever been on camera
before and Jensen doesn’t move, four fingers and one thumb and the palm of his hand
flat on Jared’s back.
“Yeah, yeah, good, love it, c’mon Jay, show me that dick - you wet yet? You wet for
me, Jay?”
He is now. Little blurt of precome that makes him shiver: he touches his fingers to it,
licks them off, showy, and Jensen’s hand tightens.
“Fuck. Fucking gorgeous, Jay. Do that again.” Edge to Jensen’s voice.
There’s a white thread of precome over Jared’s fingers, stretching out, sticky wet over
his thumb. Hand off, he lets it thin, slow, feels it break, mouths at his fingers like
they’re Jensen’s dick, mouth open, eyes closed. Salt on his tongue.
“Show me what you can do. Make me want it, huh? C’mon Jay.”
Timmy’s rolling back over on the bed, grinning. Not the person Jared wants, but the
one he’s going to fuck, showtime for the man behind him. There’s a condom pushed
into his hand: he rips the packet open with his teeth, rolls it down eyes closed with his
finger and thumb, pretty picture for Jensen.
“Jen? Gonna let your boy off the leash?” Timmy’s voice, low, but Jared’s listening for
someone else.
“Aw, Tim, you hurting over there?” Wicked, dirty tone to that voice. “Show me.
You’re on. Roll those hips for us. Work for it. Nice ass, kid, wriggle it for me, arch
that back... great. Awesome. Keep going. Jared, you wanna step in here?”
Head tilted away from the camera, Timmy drops him a wink and slides his knees an
inch or two further apart, but it’s the push of Jensen’s hand in the small of his back
that makes Jared line up and push in, real slow, one hand over Timmy’s back and the
other well back, out of eye line. The mobile camera’s right up there, and Jared’s
watching it, knowing Jensen’s watching the same thing, his dick pushing into
Timmy’s ass, tight ring of muscle giving way for him, pretty pink stretch, yeah, Jen,
I’d fuck you so good, better than anyone else you’ve ever had, just watch. Pull out,
slow, and Timmy’s trying to push back, failing. You’d want it just as bad, Jen, swear
to you. Watch. Slow slide back, heat around his dick almost as hot as Jensen’s hand
on his back, and Timmy’s head is back and he’s panting, hands fisting in the sheets.
Could be you, Jensen. Could be you under my hands, this moment. Careful, Jared
stays where he is, smooths down Timmy’s back, pets him, imagines freckles and
broader shoulders. Has anyone ever done this for you, Jen, fucked you hard and made
you want it that bad? Could do that for you, Jen. Could be that guy.
He’s not that guy. He’s Sam, fascinated, enthralled, but not... no. Not in love. Sam
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knows love, a deep well of want that’s older and darker than anything he’s got to offer
Rick. But it’s good, here, between them, now, with Jen’s fingertips still branding
Sam’s back.
Jared takes a deep breath, bends down, braces a hand on Timmy’s shoulder, and taps
two fingers. Wanna play? You good?
“Go for it,” Timmy says.
Jared does. Lovely long strokes, beautiful rhythm to it, nailing that ass every damn
time. Timmy writhes and begs for him, sweet, instant response: Jen would be tougher.
Jen would have his jaw clenched, not a whimper, would make Jared work for the
groan Timmy gives up instantly. Jen would smack Jared’s hand off of his dick,
privilege not yet earned, but Timmy just shivers and moans and clutches at the sheets.
“Up,” Jensen says, his voice low and harsh. “Pull him up, Jay. Let’s see him. C’mon,
kid, yeah.”
Pulled up, Timmy comes up off the bed in a lovely long line that drapes his back
against Jared’s chest, thighs spread, head back, and Jared doesn’t miss a stroke. He
needs both hands now to hold Timmy’s hips just where he needs them, but Timmy’s
got his own hand on his dick for the camera. He’s shaking, fingers gripped hard,
milking precome.
“Gonna come for me?” Jared hisses, loud enough. “Gonna come on my dick? C’mon.
C’mon.”
Timmy does. Curls up with the force of it, hand flung out, come stippling his belly,
his chest, high and fast, and he does scream, a banshee shriek that makes Jared wince
even as he’s starting to grin.
“Attaboy,” Jensen says behind him, and then, “Cut, damn it, cut, get that camera off
me.”
Careful, Jared pulls out, easy, gentle, lays Timmy down on the bed and keeps a hand
on him, but it’s Jensen he turns around to see. Jensen with his eyes blown and his dick
tenting the front of the robe, bottom lip swollen like he’s had his teeth there.
Jared doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to, wanna fuck you now has got to be written
all over his face. It’s Jensen who looks away. Then, he looks back. He’s got guts: he
must know what he looks like.
“Thanks,” Jared says. Thanks for the hand, the voice. Thanks for letting me know I’m
not on my own, here. Holds Jensen’s eyes, nods.
Then he turns back to Timmy, gives him a grin and a friendly pat. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Timmy says, slow and low. He’s still smiling. “You wanna do your bit? I’m
not moving. Not for the next two weeks.”
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“Jensen?” Jared asks.
“Give us five?” It’s the sound guy, Kleine. They’re shifting the static camera, angling
down.
“Sure,” Jared says, and reaches for the water by the bed, passes it to Timmy. Waits.
Pulls on his robe, sits on the edge of the bed, watches Jensen fuss with the cameras,
waits some more. He could do with coffee. He could do with a hug, right now. What a
fucking stupid thing to get paid for doing. He pats his own dick in consolation.
Thinks, idly, this is the last time I’m gonna do this. Wonders without even thinking
about it where that thought came from, watches Jensen some more. Pats Timmy’s
ankle, guilty, because it wasn’t Timmy he was fucking and that’s just plain rude.
“You doing okay?”
“Honestly?” Jared turns around, gives Timmy a tired smile. “Not sure. Ask me when
we’re done. But you were great. Thanks.”
Timmy pulls a face. “Yeah,” he says.
“Sorry I faded out on you,” Jared says. “It wasn’t you.”
“I know,” Timmy says. Unscrews the water, tips the bottle up, drinks. “Appreciated
the effort, though,” he says.
“Jared?” Jensen says.
Jared whips around.
“You want five minutes?”
Jared looks down. He’s still mostly hard. “Nah,” he says. Looks up, big eyes. “Gonna
come give me a hand?” he asks.
“Dude,” Jensen says, and shakes his head.
“C’mon,” Jared coaxes. Runs a hand gently along the length of his dick, feels it heat
and fill. “Please.”
He doesn’t expect anything to happen. But Jensen does move, walks forward. Stands
for a moment looking down, frowning, and then sits on the bed. Curls himself against
Jared’s back, teasing warm brush of toweling and his legs crooked up by Jared’s hips.
He says, “Angle?” and his voice is low and heavy in Jared’s ear.
“You’re clear,” the woman with the fixed camera says.
“Go,” Jensen says, and his hand finds its place on Jared’s back, his chin tucked into
Jared’s shoulder. He’s weighty, heated, and his breath smells of coffee, and Jared’s
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smiling as he jerks off, honestly, just the way he’d do it at home, the way Sam would
do it, and Jensen watches every stroke.
~*~
He doesn’t presume. He showers quickly, efficiently, dresses, thanks Rosie and the
sound guy and the camera guys and makes his apologies all over again to Timmy, and
then he finds Jensen. His feet drag on the carpet. Worst case scenario? He’s dropped
from the film. He never sees Jensen again. No different from six months ago, although
Jared... he’s not that man, that man that stood up at NAVGAY. He feels raw, stripped
bare, uncertain. It’s all new, this fixation, this aching desire to be with this one man
and the failure to be with any other. He’s never messed up so badly on set. His back’s
cold, where Jensen’s hand had been.
He doesn’t go in the office, just leans against the door and waits. Jensen’s dressed,
button down, jeans. His hair’s still wet. He’s frowning over a sheaf of papers.
“Hey.”
Jensen’s eyebrows come up first, then his eyes. He puts the pen down.
“You want me to leave?” Jared asks, quiet. “I don’t even know,” he says. “I’ve
never...” He has to look away, suck in a breath through his teeth. “I don’t want to
screw up for you,” he says. “But that was a piece of shit, man. You can get someone
else.”
“I don’t think so,” Jensen says. He smiles, a tight curl to the corner of his mouth,
ironic. “It’s good film, Jared.”
“Right,” Jared says tightly. It’s good film because Jensen had to fucking hold his hand
all the way through the shoot, and that’s not cool. He’s got to be on the ball for
tomorrow’s scene, and he’s not. He’s so fucking scared he’s going to screw it up
again.
Jensen’s got his head on one side. He’s frowning, thinking, and Jared wonders
miserably if this is the moment Jensen does think twice. There are any number of
guys younger and prettier than Jared and most of them would work for free if it got
them on an Ackles set. He’s not even sure why Jensen picked him.
Then Jensen says, “It’s not the way I planned it. But I’ve been thinking about Sam.
There’s something about the way we shot that first scene with Timmy, and today...
like Sam’s... eh,” Jensen says. “I wanted to make this boy meets boy movie, you
know? But I’m starting to wonder if I’m making something different here and that’s
not a bad thing. You and Timmy. You got sparks all right, but...”
“It’s not like Sam doesn’t care,” Jared says. “But it feels like... he knows it’s not real?
I didn’t want to say,” he says. “I know that’s not what you wanted to shoot. When I
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read the script I thought -” He stops.
“What?”
“I thought you wanted to remake Auberge.” Jared says quietly.
There’s a moment when he thinks he really has put his foot in his mouth. But then
Jensen ducks his head, shakes it, a reluctant grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. “I
guess I asked for that one,” he says, almost to himself.
“Hey,” Jared says. “I get that you don’t talk about it, I know Mike doesn’t know, it’s
not like I’d mention it on set or anything, I swear -”
“I know that,” Jensen says.
“But you must have been, what, eighteen? People change. What you thought then, it’s
gonna be different now, and Sam’s not... he doesn’t feel like that boy? He’s older.
More... more lonely. He doesn’t trust people the way the kid in that film does. It’s not
the same. Not that - I mean, I messed up today, but, I kind of get Sam -” Jared grinds
to a halt. Jensen doesn’t need to hear this. He wrote Sam.
“Okay,” Jensen says. “I’m listening. And for fuck’s sake, stop propping up the door
and come inside.”
After half an hour, Jensen makes coffee. An hour later, they’re both of them on their
knees in the storeroom, searching for DVDs to illustrate what they’re talking about,
laughing, and it’s nearly midnight before Jensen says, “Jay, no, we’re shooting
tomorrow, we’re not watching another one, I don’t care how much tension there is in
the setup. Go home.”
Sprawled out on AP’s incredibly comfortable couch, Jared just blinks at him. There
are two pizza boxes and four mugs and a half-empty bucket of popcorn on the table,
and Jensen’s all loose, relaxed, his sweater off and balled up under his head and his
smile soft. Jared doesn’t want to go anywhere.
He says, “Can sleep here, can’t I? Blankets in the store. Saw ‘em.” He yawns,
unselfconscious. “Comfy.”
“You’ll regret it,” Jensen says, but he’s still smiling.
“Will not,” Jared mutters, closes his eyes ostentatiously. “You can stay too,” he
suggests. “Won’t lay a finger on you. Not even thinking about it. Just. Like the way
you smile.”
“Huh,” Jensen says.
Jared doesn’t remember anything else until Mike sticks a mug of coffee under his
nose in the morning. Jensen was wrong. He feels awesome. Sure, his neck’s a little
stiff, and a shower’s going to be a good thing, but he made Jensen laugh last night,
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made him sit in the half dark and talk about shooting Auberge, about the way the
camera works, about Sam and Rick and then about shooting the first films for AP and
how he’d set out wanting to change the industry. Jared pointed out that he had, and
then backed up his argument with clips, and Jensen had been smiling and demurring
and modest until Jared backed him into a corner and then he’d come out swinging.
Good times.
“You wanna tell me what happened last night?” Mike says quietly, and he’s so
amused Jared sits up before he makes grabby hands for the mug. And then freezes.
Jensen’s curled up asleep on the rug. Like Jared, he’s wrapped in AP’s blankets, but
he’s curled up tight as a caterpillar, only his ruffled hair and his eyebrows showing,
and even as Jared watches he snuffles a little and buries his nose further down. He’s
so damn cute. He looks so young, like this.
“We were talking,” Jared says softly. “It got late.”
“Uh-huh,” Mike says.
“About the film,” Jared says. He fortifies himself with coffee, blinks down at Jensen,
sleeping. He can’t help, damn it, the smile that creeps across his face. It’s ridiculous.
He’d had fun last night, goofing around like he was still in high school, and Jensen off
the clock had a wicked, dirty sense of humor and the kind of comic timing a talk show
host would give their right hand to own. He’s... he’s something special, Jensen
Ackles.
“Nothing happened,” Jared tells Jensen’s friend. “Nothing important.”
“Right,” Mike says.
~*~
Two hours later, he’s turning back the coverlet for Timmy to slide into bed with him.
The pillows are fluffy, the sheets some ridiculous thread count, and the mattress
reassuringly firm, but the static camera’s blind eye is bent over both of them and the
light’s intrusively bright. Jared’s stupidly grateful for the sheet. He kind of feels
overexposed, uncomfortable, and half of it’s him and half of it’s Sam, waking up with
the wrong guy.
“’Kay?” Timmy says, looking down.
Jared smiles. He stretches out his arm and Timmy curls beside him, a false intimacy
that both of them can feel. Relax, Jay, Jared tells himself. It’s just film. It’s just a
shoot. You can do this. It’s what they pay you for.
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Mostly, though, they pay him to bang the hell out of some other dude. Not this, this
sweet, faux, lovey-dovey early morning cuddling.
“So,” Timmy whispers. “Rumor has it you and our great director had a hot date last
night.”
That’s not helping. Jared looks up at the ceiling, mutters, “It wasn’t like that.”
“No?” Timmy says, and makes himself comfortable against Jared’s shoulder. He’s
lighter than Jensen would be, bonier, too thin, too... not. “C’mon,” he says. “You
write my epic true love out of the film, you cut my scenes...”
“What?” Jared says.
“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” Timmy says. “We lost the hotel, dude. He wants to shoot
some arty thing where you stare out the window and moon after the one that got
away.”
“Oh,” Jared says. “Sorry.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Timmy says. “Still pays. Shame about the handcuffs, though.
So. What’ve you got, Jay? Does he put out on a first date? Is that ass as hot as it
looks?”
“Guys,” Jensen says, dry. “We can all hear you.”
“Jen,” Timmy says, shifting up on an elbow and glaring over the sheets, “If you
turned down the padacock, you’re -”
“That’s enough,” Jared says, and puts his hand over Timmy’s mouth.
“Thanks,” Jensen says. “Timmy... I love ya, kid, but not right now. Get your head in
the game, ’kay? And Jay... keep it together, yeah? Okay, three, two -”
Jared’s cell phone rings.
“What the fuck,” Jensen says, as the crew groan. “Who the hell - Jared. Jared, get back
in that bed. Jared -”
“No, seriously, I gotta,” Jared says, scrambling. It’s his personal phone, the one that
would have been in the locker if he’d been back to the hotel and like, worn what he
was supposed to and, hell, rung Sara last night like he meant to and - “Check in,” he
says, and manages to catch the last ring. “Sara, hey, s’me, I’m sorry, everything’s
fine, I swear, I forgot last night, there was this thing with Jensen...”
He stops. Looks around. Everyone is staring at him. Everyone.
“Gotta go,” Jared says, and snaps the phone shut. Jensen’s staring at him, his eyes
widening. But it’s the camerawoman, Bridget, who says, “Check in? Like, that’s your
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safety call?”
Jensen’s going white.
“Yeah,” Jared says miserably. “Look, can we... sorry. I’m really sorry, okay? I didn’t
know you guys were going to be... After Hallows...” Hole’s getting deeper every word
he says.
“Fine,” Jensen says. “Fine. Now. Can we shoot?”
~*~
But it’s Mike, not even in the room, who corners Jared after his second shower of the
day. “Can I talk to you?” It’s not a request.
“Yeah,” Jared says, and follows Mike through into his office. Closes the door, and
waits.
“So,” Mike says, and he’s a long way now from the blonde twink who tried to pick
Jared up in a bar in January, uptight, shoulders hunched. “So... look, it’s not that... sit
down,” he says. “I’m going to talk about Hallows. And Angel.”
“It’s not like that,” Jared says quickly. “I mean, I know you guys now, I know Timmy
and Dave and Phil, I know you’re not gonna...”
“Strap you up in a gimp suit and drop you off the pier?” Mike says. “Hell, I don’t
blame you. If you’d said to me two years ago AP’d be doing hardcore I’d have
laughed in your face. So would Jen. But it’s... Shit,” he says. “None of us would have
chosen to make those films. We did them because we had to. And don’t ask me why,
because that’s Jensen’s business and if he wants to tell you, he will. But you need to
know that... it’s not his thing. And there’s no way we’d drop anyone into something
like that without knowing it was something they were into. Hell, half of those guys
were from Dave’s bike club, and most of them are straight. Maybe most of them,”
Mike says, and smiles, just a little. “So... yeah. Ask him about it, if you have to. Just,
take it easy on him, yeah? It’s not a good memory.”
~*~
He’s not shooting for the next three days, that’s all Dave and Phil, the long, slow build
up that’s typical of an AP film. Most of it’s on location, back at PACE, and strictly
speaking Jared doesn’t have to be there at all, but he is. Mostly, he’s just making
himself useful, back pockets stuffed with pens and a jack knife and a sewing kit and a
site cell phone, liaising between the site staff and the unit, fetching Jensen’s coffee
and shoving it into his hands. Porn groupie, he thinks, and laughs at himself, but it’s
worth it for Jensen’s uneasy, smiled thanks over the cardboard mug. And the moment
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when he bawls out one of the lighting guys for an unstable boom, and watching him
set up the scenes, and the totally cute habit Jensen’s got of taking off his baseball hat,
raking through his hair and then jamming it back on again. Jared’s got no idea why
that one in particular makes his heart clench every time, but it does.
It’s not just Jensen. He’s learning so much from the AP crew, the sheer
professionalism of Jensen’s regular camera team and his lighting guys, the way Mike
organizes the set and his volunteers, Rosie... even the catering crew, who turn out to
be Milly and Laura, college friends of Kate’s. At night, when he talks to Sara, it’s
about the way Jensen works, and although Sara’s listening both of them know SG has
neither the size nor the resources to film the same way.
On Friday night, he goes out with the crew. It’s a tiny, dark cellar bar over on Third,
with a glorious selection of artisan beer and a soundtrack of quiet, aching blues.
Mike’s there, Kate, Dave and Phil are slow dancing in a corner, Bridget’s doing shots
with the two guys from Wardrobe - Raj and Wills - and Jared gets caught up in a
conversation about nationality and porn, identity, what’s legal where, and finally,
whether Jack Wrangler really topped all the time, which is about par for the course on
an after-shoot evening. It’s only when he’s standing at the bar for his second round
that he realizes Jensen’s there too, propped quietly against the bar with his cell phone
out.
“Hey,” Jared says, four bottles of beer down and counting, a pleasant buzz that means
his grin’s probably a little a wider than it should be.
“Jared,” Jensen acknowledges.
“Jensen,” Jared says happily, and for a moment he just grins down, big, stupid klutz
that he is, but he’s lucky enough to be exactly where he wants to be right now.
“Jensen,” he says. “Jen.”
Jensen huffs. “Jared,” he says, “How many-”
“I wish you liked me,” Jared says. “It’s kinda sad. I like you so much.” He blinks
down, and he’s sober enough to look at Jensen’s eyes, widening, not his mouth. “I’ve
wanted to make a film with you for so long,” he says. “You don’t know. And I’m
here, and it’s awesome, you must know that, right, but I wish...”
“I do like you,” Jensen says.
“Good,” Jared says. “That’s good, right? ’Cause I kinda feel like I should be
apologising to you all the time. Like, I’m sorry I fucked up your script, and I’m sorry
I screwed up everything I’ve ever said to you, and -”
“Jared,” Jensen says. “Shut up.”
“Shit,” Jared says. “Do I need to apologise for that too?”
Jensen’s shaking his head, but he can’t stop the rueful smile that’s tugging at the
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corners of his mouth.
“So,” Jared says. “So... are we talking? Because I missed you, dude, not like I want to
be BFF’s or anything, because that would be kind of creepy, but, if you wanted to,
maybe, hang out, or I’m totally up for watching stuff with you, or maybe pizza - you
like pizza, don’t you? Everyone likes...”
“Am I talking too much?”
“Maybe,” Jensen says.
“Sorry,” Jared says, opens his mouth, and closes it again. He ducks his head, leans
against the bar, and watches Jensen drink his beer.
It’s kind of nice, being quiet.
~*~
“Jay, that’s my office.”
“I know,” Jared says, and smiles weakly at the security guard. Jensen’s hanging off
his shoulder like a limp dishrag. A very pretty one, all pink and flustered and smiling,
but, still, limp.
“I work here.”
“Yup,” Jared says, and tries to drop Jensen on the couch. He’s got reason to know it’s
more than adequately comfortable. Jensen, though, isn’t having any of it: he clings,
hangs tucked into Jared’s hoodie, head bent into his chest. “C’mon. Jen,” Jared says
helplessly, because really, this isn’t where he meant to be at the end of the evening
and he’s sure it’s not where Jensen meant to be either, but Jensen’s not helping his
case by cuddling in like an overgrown kitten. “Leggo,” he says. “Please. I’m gonna go
get stuff.” But he has to curl Jensen’s fingers off one by one, and the pout is almost
irresistible. Jared... ‘Jay, no,’ Jared thinks. ‘No.’
He does not manage to resist the way Jensen clings to him when he returns,
triumphant with blankets. “Thought you weren’t coming back,” Jensen says, muffled,
and Jared can’t help running a hand through his hair. “Thought you’d gone,” Jensen
says, and there’s an ache to the words that makes Jared pull him in tighter, cuddle him
closer, cradle Jensen’s head in his hand and wish for... a bed. A few windmills to tilt
at, a dragon, a suit of armor.
He’d make for a damn grubby knight.
The last thing Jared thinks before he goes to sleep is, this is going to be awkward as
fuck in the morning.
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But it’s not. It’s kind of awesome. Jensen in the morning is sleepy, disorientated, and
cute as fuck with his unfocused eyes and bedhead, just like Jared imagined. And he’s
a cuddler. Jared’s almost certain Jensen doesn’t even know that’s Jared’s chest he’s
curled up on, and by the time Jared’s managed to untangle their legs and roll Jensen
into his own blanket, Jensen’s almost asleep again anyway. He goes out for coffee and
bagels and snacks and Advil - and while he’s buying, a couple of toothbrushes and
some toothpaste - and comes back to find Jensen just about awake enough to hug his
Americano with the fervent grip of an addict. Luckily, Jared’s bought two. And by the
time Jensen’s managed to work out where he is and with whom, Jared’s got a stack of
DVDs and a plan.
It’s a good plan, involving the couch, the kind of black and white movies where
everyone wears all their clothes all the time, and a resolution not to discuss anything
to do with work. Unlike many of Jared’s plans, it actually works. And when Jensen
wakes up for real - about fiveish, and Jared makes a mental note never to suggest
shots on a work night - it’s kind of too late to do anything except order in and set up
the Wii.
It must be midnight when Jared puts down the controller and lets his hand ghost over
Jensen’s hair. He’s sprawled out on the couch: Jensen’s propped up against it, his
head on the cushion that’s tucked against Jared’s thigh. It’s so comfortable it’s almost
domestic, like they’ve done this before and they’re going to do it again, like in a
moment Jensen’s going to turn his head and smile and Jared’s going to give him a
hand up and then they’re going to go to bed together, curl in all warm and snuggly,
and then wake up in the morning and do it all over again.
Jared wants that.
Instead, he says, “Can we... it’s none of my business. But. Something happened,
didn’t it? When you shot Hallows and Angel? Can I ask you about it?”
Jensen closes his eyes. His hands tighten on the controller, but on screen, disregarded,
his character crashes out of the game. There’s a moment when Jared thinks, ‘Shit,
plan B...’ and doesn’t have one... and then Jensen says, “You’ve seen Auberge, right?”
“Yes,” Jared says.
“Okay,” Jensen says. “So. That other guy, that was Stu. Stuart. He’s... shit. Stu...
Auberge was his idea. Filming it, that was all me, but the idea, that was Stu. He loved
it. He would have... hell, he would have shown the thing in Times Square if he’d ever
got his hands on the film. And... Hell, Jay, I don’t know. It was kind of cool, that kind
of exposure. I mean, seeing yourself on screen? That’s a kind of affirmation you’re
not gonna get anywhere else. You must know. But... there were guys I didn’t know
coming up and saying... stuff,” Jensen says uncomfortably.
“I know,” Jared says.
“But. I kept thinking about how I could do it better. I wanted to make movies, not just
porn. And filming costs - we needed film stock, we needed - Christ, we were starting
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from nothing. If I knew then what I know now, we’d never have got off the ground.
But it was Stu’s money behind AP, when we started. And that was okay, because... it
was okay until it all fell apart. Then he wanted his money back, and he wanted... hell,
he wanted us to make the kind of films he was interested in. So I made them, gave
him the rights, sold the house, paid him off... it was like, the most extended divorce
ever. But he got what he wanted. I hope...” Jensen says, and his lip curls. “I hope he’s
happy with it. I got AP. It was... it was bruising,” Jensen says, and rolls his head back
against the cushion, eyes closed.
“You guys were together a while?” Jared says, and his hand is on Jensen’s hair again,
soft. Jensen doesn’t seem to mind, even rolls a little into the curve of Jared’s palm.
Jensen snorts. “First boyfriend,” he says. “Stupid, huh?”
“Could’ve worked,” Jared says. “You didn’t know.”
“Fucking right, there,” Jensen says, and snorts. “He must have had every twink in NY
through our bed before I - shit. Shit, Jay, just - I didn’t say that. It never happened,”
Jensen says fiercely, and he’s moving, curling up on himself, all tight shoulders and
hurt. “Just -”
“Eh,” Jared says, and he’s off the couch, on his knees, wrapping Jensen up, holding
him close. “Jen. Jen,” he says helplessly, and he’s so fiercely angry and hurting for
Jensen and protective and miserable and hopeless and kind of scared and shamingly
happy that he gets be the guy holding Jensen right now.
“I don’t do this,” Jensen mutters, head down, hand fisted on Jared’s shoulder. “I am
stronger than this. Fuck him. Fuck -”
“Babe,” Jared says. “I know you are.”
“Don’t babe me,” Jensen says, fiercely watery.
“’Kay,” Jared tells him. “You’re the boss,” he says, and holds on.
~*~
The fallout’s rough. Jared kind of expects it, because he woke up alone, and Jensen’s
not the kind of guy that likes losing control. By the time he gets to wardrobe three
separate people have warned him off, and Mike takes one look and says, “What the
hell happened? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Jared says uncomfortably. “Nothing. Talked. I thought he was okay.”
“Fix it,” Mike says, and shoves him back out the door with a T-shirt two sizes too
small. Jared’s too rattled to change.
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Even Dave, in for his voiceovers, only gives him a sympathetic look and a clap on the
shoulder, which worries Jared so much he completely fails to read through that day’s
script alterations. So it’s one hell of a shock when he arrives on set to find that they’re
not, as he had assumed, filming him looking moodily out of the window and thinking
of whoever it is Sam really wants (somehow, Sam’s dream boy looks awfully like
Jensen) but back at the hotel.
“I thought we weren’t shooting this one?” he asks, lost.
“Did you think we were shooting horny housewives?” Jensen says, clipped. “There’s
a script, Jared. Read it.”
“Sure,” Jared says. “But -”
“But what?”
“Nothing,” Jared says, and shuffles behind Bridget to scan the pages, and, oh fuck, it
is the scene in the hotel he thought Jensen had written out five days ago. He’s not up
for this. He hadn’t even expected - shit, shit, shit, Jared thinks, and tries to remember
if he checked for stray hairs and pimples this morning before or after he’d - fuck jerked off in the shower. Again. It’s entirely possible he’s literally not going to be up
for this. For the first time in his professional career he thinks longingly of Viagra,
which is not going to happen on half an hour’s notice on an AP set - he might not
have read the dailies, but he has read the contract. He’s really not in the mood, right
now.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jensen yells at one of the costume crew,
“Do the words closed set mean anything -”
“Hey,” Timmy says.
“Hey,” Jared offers, and waves the script miserably.
“I know,” Timmy says. “Dude, I didn’t know either. Found out this morning.”
“Me too,” Jared says, and has to add, “Tim. Look. I’m gonna try, but I had no idea we
were scening today. I’m really sorry, it’s not you -”
Tim’s laughing. He says, “You’re not the only one who had a fun weekend. I am not
looking forward to today, and neither is my ass. Take it easy, ’kay?”
Jared snorts. “Be lucky if I can get it up at all,” he says.
Snide, cutting, Jensen says, “I was under the impression you were professionals. You
wanna let me know now if I’m wrong?”
He’s all buttons today. Black shirt, done up right to the neck, black jeans, black boots,
narrowed eyes. This isn’t the man who slept in Jared’s arms: it’s the man who let him
wake up alone.
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“What the hell is your problem?” Jared asks.
“Maybe I just can’t get the staff,” Jensen says.
“Fine,” Jared says, tight lipped, and looks at Tim. “We gonna do this?”
“Yup,” Tim says, and looks at Jensen. “Jen, you owe me for this one,” he says.
Jensen doesn’t even nod.
It takes them an hour to get naked. Seriously. “Cut!” Jensen yells. “Tim, elbows.
Jared, get your hands out of the way and keep them there. Mike, where the hell did
you get that shirt? I said khaki. In what world does khaki translate to blue? Get it off.”
“Cut. Jared, you’re meant to be an actor. Please try for a little enthusiasm. Tim - cut it
with the wisecracks. You’re not funny.”
“Cut. Is this amateur hour on xhamster? Did I ask you to - why do I even bother?
Take five,” Jensen says.
“Oh thank fuck for that,” Timmy says, sighs, rolls his eyes, and looks at Jared. “Will
you talk to him or shall I?” he says.
“Guys,” Bridget mutters, “It’s not you. You’re doing fine. Want me to get Mike to
have a word?”
“I think he is,” John says. He’s the other cameraman, quietly efficient, the man who
translates Jensen’s ideas into film, and Jared’s never seen the man rushed or upset.
But he’s angry now, pale and tense. “This isn’t the scene we were supposed to be
shooting,” he says.
Over in the corner, Mike’s got Jensen cornered against the wall. The set of his
shoulders is nothing but furious, but Jensen’s snapping back, mouth pursed, chin high.
Mike throws his hands in the air. Jensen shakes his head, sharp and negative. Mike
turns around, looks at Jared, says something that has Jensen rolling his eyes and
pushing away.
“Places,” Jensen yells, striding forward. “I said five, not twenty!”
“Jensen?” Timmy says, taking one for the team. “Jen, I don’t think -”
“Whose film is this?” Jensen says. “Can we just get this over with? Now?”
“Jen,” Jared says carefully, “This isn’t working today. We can’t give you what you
want. Is there something else we can do, come back to this tomorrow fresh?” It’s
going to cost AP money, he knows, but the atmosphere on set is poisonous and Jensen
must be aware.
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“I don’t think you... Jesus, Jared, just get on with it, will you?” Jensen says, and he
sounds so very tired.
Jared says, “No.”
“What?” Jensen says.
Jared says, “No. I didn’t sign up for this, Jen. Neither did Timmy. Whatever it is
you’ve got stuck in your head -”
‘Shit. Shit,’ Jared thinks, and looks at Jensen. Really looks at him, the white-knuckled
grip of his fingers on the clipboard, the closed-in brace of his shoulders and the
awkward turn of his head, the shadows under his eyes and the thinned, tight line of his
mouth. The man he’s looking at is nothing like the confident, laughing Jensen he
knows from the first week of shooting. Jensen looks haunted.
“What the hell happened?” Jared says. “Is this - don’t tell me - fuck, Jen, what are you
doing to yourself?”
“What?” Jensen says again, and his eyes are widening, and the clipboard’s coming up,
defensive, and Jared He’s been known to have occasional flashes of brilliance. He says, “Jen. You can’t
sabotage a relationship you haven’t even started.”
And Jensen looks away.
Jared’s right. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he says, and moves forward.
They’re ten feet from the bed and Jensen walks backwards the whole way. He
fumbles with the clipboard, drops it, snatches his baseball hat from his head, opens his
mouth to say something and closes it again, and Jared tackles him around the waist
and tumbles them both down. Neither of them are lightweights: they bounce, limbs
entangled. He swears Jensen squeaks, but Jared says - and he’s smiling now, he can’t
stop smiling - he says, “I get to kiss you now, right?” and does, before Jensen can say
no. Cups Jensen’s face in his free hand and tilts it up, bends down with his eyes open
and fits his mouth against Jensen’s so very carefully, so gently. “Is this okay?” Jared
says, against Jensen’s mouth, dips in again. “Tell me it’s okay, please,” he says.
“Jay,” Jensen says, on a gasp.
Jared kisses him again, just because, watches Jensen close his eyes and open them
again, and that’s Jensen’s hands on his back tugging him down and Jensen’s legs
wrapping around his hips and dear God, he didn’t know, no one told him anything
could feel like this. His heart’s pounding, he wants everything, now, bare skin to bare
skin, no cameras, no illusions, Jensen. “Can I?” he asks, and then, “What do you
want? Jen, please -”
He’s not used to being manhandled in bed, but Jensen shoves him over and climbs on
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top just fine, his mouth reddened and his hair spiked and his hands tugging at the
buttons of his shirt. His eyes - Jensen doesn’t seem to know where to look, Jared’s
chest, his mouth, his eyes, his hands: he’s reassuringly heavy, solid, real, and Jared
stares up in mazed, happy disbelief as Jensen strips off his shirt and unbuckles his
belt.
“You,” Jensen says. “You’ll do fine.”
It makes Jared laugh, but his hands have already ripped open the belt from his robe
and are covering Jensen’s own shaky attempt to strip down. “I’ve got you,” he’s
saying. “Don’t worry. Don’t -”
That’s the moment when Jensen gives up on his own jeans and takes a firm,
possessive grip on Jared’s dick. “Jesusfuck,” Jared yelps, arching helplessly off the
bed into Jensen’s hands, because nothing, nothing has ever stopped his breath and
burned into his skin like that before. His balls are tight, his dick’s so hard it hurts, and
he’s, damn it, no, Jared thinks, teeth clenched, every muscle strained, no He comes. Ten seconds after Jensen lays hands on him for the first time, Jared comes
harder than he’s ever done in his life before, devastated. He’s almost wailing, sucking
in air, come stippling his chest and Jensen’s hand, and he can’t stop. The aftershocks
are fierce: he’s shaking, dragging Jensen down, and holding on as tight as he can.
“Jen,” Jared says helplessly, panting. “Can’t. You.”
“I’m kinda flattered,” Jensen says, dry, into Jared’s ear, but his own cock is hard and
wet against Jared’s hip and his thighs are shaking.
“C’mon,” Jared manages, and heaves Jensen up until he can squeeze his own hand
around Jensen’s cock and, clumsy, uncoordinated, gets in three whole strokes.
Jensen gasps, almost silent, “Coming -” and does.
It makes Jared laugh. Makes him curl as much of himself around Jensen as possible,
hold him close, whisper, “Sorry,” and “I’ll do better by you, I swear,” and “Want you
so much, you don’t know.” And Jensen holds on just as tight.
“Er, guys...” Timmy says, hesitant.
“Tim,” Jensen says into Jared’s shoulder. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Sure thing, boss.” It’s Bridget’s voice, deeply amused, but even while Jared’s
untangling the sheet and pulling it up the door opens and closes, and he can hear the
lock engage.
“That,” Jensen says quietly, “Wasn’t...”
“I had it all planned,” Jared says regretfully, shuffling so he can look down and meet
Jensen’s eyes. “Like, after filming. There was going to be dating. I had a list.”
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Jensen’s smiling, soft. He says, “We can do that.”
“And I’m still not shooting this scene,” Jared says. “Live with it. Unless it’s gonna be
you.”
Rolling over, Jensen blinks up, still smiling, eyes still a little dazed, mouth soft.
“Okay,” he says.
“I mean,” Jared says, “If you need the cameras, that’s fine, I can do that, but... you’re
gonna say yes to anything right now, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” Jensen says.
“Cool,” Jared says. “Because I want everything. Like, kissing in the rain and holding
hands at the movies and weekends and waking up in the same bed. I want to lick my
come out your ass and I want to be there when you write the next script and I want to
know your mom’s cookie recipe and... Jen?” Jared asks.
Jensen’s looking down, but his hand’s pressed over Jared’s heart, heavy and warm.
“Jen?”
“Trying to find the words to ask you home,” Jensen says.
“Yeah?” Jared says.
“Yeah,” Jensen says, shrugs.
“Get your coat works?” Jared offers, smiling. “Don’t look at me, man, I don’t do this
either.”
“Okay,” Jensen says. They stare at each other, a long moment. He’s as scared as I am,
Jared thinks. Worse.
“Right,” Jensen says. “Get your coat. Pasta good for you?”
“Anything,” Jared says.
“Don’t...”
“’M not assuming,” Jared says. “And you should, before... I kind of want you,” he
says. “Badly. You should know.”
Jensen laughs, then, dry. “I kinda think that’s only fair,” he says, and by the look in
his eyes he’s thinking exactly the same thing as Jared. But Jared wants more than a
quick fuck on a porn set. Wants to offer more. He says, “Take me home first?”
Jensen does. There’s an entirely embarrassing few moments that involve a very quick
shower, far too much stifled laughter and a high five from Mike that Jensen doesn’t
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see, a formidable list of things to be done Kate already seems to have covered, and
then, at last, they’re walking down the steps to the street, and when Jared sticks out
his hand, Jensen takes it.
Jensen lives in a rented room just north of Central Park: it takes a crowded hour to get
there, and Jared spends the subway ride in a daze, Jensen standing with him, shoulder
pressed against shoulder. He fits.
“This isn’t... I had to sell the house,” Jensen says. “For Stu. As well as shoot those
two pieces of shit.” He’s got a wall full of modern art, floor to ceiling bookcases, and
a screen too big for the room. There are still boxes in the hallway, a pair of scarlet
stilettos, two umbrellas, and a fedora. A cupboard full of old toys, an Atari, three
different video cameras, two electric guitars and a Marshall amp. There’s an acoustic
that looks well-loved on a stand in the corner.
“But you got AP. That’s good, right?” Jared asks. He’s curled up on the couch, glass
of wine in his hand, and Jensen’s bare feet are heavy against his thighs. He’s got one
hand on Jensen’s ankle and he likes the way the light plays with the color of Jensen’s
eyes and the faint, disbelieving smile that creeps onto his face when he looks at Jared.
“Yeah,” Jensen says. He looks down at his own glass, tips it and swirls the wine. He’s
got dark eyelashes, stubby, strong. “Just wanted you to know. I don’t owe anything
now. No strings. Just... Stu’s the only guy I’ve ever slept with,” he says. “So -”
“Okay,” Jared says. He puts the wine glass down. “I guess... babe,” he says. “You
know... porn’s not real. It’s never going to be as good as it is on screen. I’m not that
guy. If you’re looking -”
“I’m not looking for anything,” Jensen says. “I mean. This is crazy, right? I don’t
even know what I’m doing here, this is, Jay, I don’t -” His eyes are wide.
“C’mere,” Jared says. “C’mon. I’m a big guy, I can take you. And don’t take this the
wrong way, ’cause you’re fucking gorgeous, but I couldn’t get it up right now if you
were paying me double. So c’mon over here and give me a hug.”
There’s a moment when he thinks he’s crashed and burned. Then Jensen shrugs,
shuffles gingerly along the couch with his wineglass still in his hand, until Jared takes
it away and tugs him down. No kisses, not yet. He tucks Jensen’s head into his
shoulder, holds on and breathes, and Jensen clutches onto his hoodie and breathes
with him. There’s nowhere else Jared would rather be.
Eventually, Jensen mutters into his shoulder, “I’m not going to stop making porn.”
“I know that,” Jared says. “I am. That side of the camera, anyways.”
He can feel the shock of it, but the next thing Jensen says is, “I’m poor.”
There’s a defiance to the words that’s more than amusing. Jared says, “I’m not.”
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Jensen says, “I top. Sometimes.”
“I have no problem with that,” Jared says. “At all.”
Jensen says, “I like New York.”
“We’ll work something out,” Jared says. He’s really smiling now, and he can feel the
rounding curve of Jensen’s cheek, ducks his head and rests his chin on Jensen’s hair.
“I want a dog,” he offers. “I’m gonna want dinner. And breakfast. I eat a lot. It’s a
good job I’ve got money.”
“I want to finish this film,” Jensen says. “But I can’t... I was so fucking jealous,” he
says, muffled.
“So we change the script,” Jared says. “Sam’s in love with someone else anyway.”
“Yeah?” Jensen asks, equable. He moves, looking up.
Jared kisses him then, gently. A promise. “So am I,” he says.
~*~
2008
“Hey,” Jared says, and then he has to stand there for what feels like five minutes until
the audience stops cheering. He shuffles from foot to foot, looks at the statuette, gives
Jensen a wave and watches him blush, taps the microphone, makes shushing motions
with his arms, taps the microphone again. Jensen looks amazing in a tuxedo. He’s so
fucking beautiful, Jared’s boyfriend, he’s unreal.
“Guys,” Jared says. “Guys. C’mon. This is the last time I’m gonna get one of these, so
hush up, will ya? Thanks.”
Then he says. “So. I gotta thank you. This film... you’ve seen it, right?” He’s
expecting the laughter this time, waits for it, grinning. “Yeah, I know,” he says. “We
kind of cut most of the sex, so the fact you liked it enough to give us best film and you
gave me this baby again, that means a lot. Thank you. And I’ve got to thank Dave and
Phil and the crew from AP, and Timmy, they’re all down there if you want to catch up
in the bar, and Sara and Ally for letting me do this. Ladies, thank you,” he says, and
he smiles down at Ally and Sara sitting either side of his mom and dad, all four of
them looking crazy smart. “I gotta tell you,” he says, “Jen says I have to mention the
new film, so I hope y’all like it, ’cause we had a blast. But...” he says, and he looks
down at everyone at the tables, his friends, his two companies, his manager, his
family, the crazy, gorgeous guy he somehow managed to hang onto, and he knows
he’s never been happier. “But, you guys. Scariest day of my life, I swear.” He pulls
the box out of his pocket, hangs onto it. He’s been terrified all day he’ll lose the thing,
that Jensen will - he takes a deep breath.
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“Jensen Ackles,” Jared says. “I love you. Marry me?”
142
Fandom: RPS. Coldfic.
Pairing: Pete Boardman/Joe Tasker
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1,000
Disclaimer: fanfiction.
Summary: RPS. It’s not true, but this one has haunted me for years.
Warning: major character death.
Notes: Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker were two of Britain’s finest climbers. They died together in an attempt on Everest’s
unclimbed North-East ridge in 1982: The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature was established in their memory.I
should mention that most of the material in this story comes from recorded conversation or other people’s writing. Sources are
listed below.
Beta: with many, many thanks, unovis.
Sastrugi
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
nilas - thin elastic crust of gray-colored ice formed on a calm sea; characterized by a matte surface, and easily
bent by waves and thrust into a pattern of interlocking fingers
Sometimes Pete thought that all you needed to know about Joe were the seven years he spent training
for the priesthood in a Jesuit seminary. “I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do,” Joe says, with his
wicked, half-hidden grin.
The first time Joe meets Pete’s mother Rose, he blows a projector fuse in her house, dripping melting
plastic over her dining room table. They’re preparing for Changabang. It’s Joe’s second attempt: his
previous partner returned injured with frostbite. On her face he sees the question, “What will you do to
my son?” Even then, he’s not sure.
mitivit - ice crystals floating on top of an ice fishing hole
They meet in the Alps, retreating from snowfall. Joe wrote, “I sensed a kindred spirit”. He courted Pete
with unclimbed faces and shadowy lines. Pete was diffident, diplomatic. Faced with reality, he’s
uncompromising. Joe recorded their first climb: he was the one who was uncertain. It’s Pete whose
climbing was authoritative. They argued, reached the summit in tense silence, made a desperate retreat
together. Six weeks of forced confinement united them.
A girl complained resentfully to Joe, “The thing about you two is you don’t need to talk to each other.”
Pete offered Joe room in his house. Joe accepted.
graupel - precipitation, usually of brief duration, consisting of crisp, white, opaque ice particles, round or
conical in shape
It’s the seventies. Days of risk-taking on the rock are followed by devil-may-care revelry careening
between Llanberis, Derbyshire, Glen Coe: parties, grass and bottled beer and greasy breakfasts. Joe
wrapped in a sleeping bag on the floor, a mummified caterpillar. He’s physically affectionate, Joe,
saying with touch what he cannot with words.
He doesn’t touch Pete, but he watches.
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Joe wraps his sandwiches in Playboy center-spreads, has a girl in London, another in Derbyshire. In
parties, at bars, he jockeys for Pete’s attention, his stories more outrageous with each telling.
He is not a safe choice.
Pete watches back.
verglas - a thin coating of ice on terrestrial objects, caused by rain that freezes on impact
The situation is unreal, a delicate tiptoe on the verge of insecurity. Madness. Don’t look down.
Joe says, low voiced, “I still wanted to touch you, all that evening. Was that wrong?” He sounds
uncertain, Joe who is usually so direct. “I didn’t mean this to happen.”
He has his hands thrust into the pockets of his sheepskin coat, his head bent. Fun is closely linked to
fear: the first move is always the worst.
Pete writes, later, “Here there could be no victors or conquered...”
Joe snorts, relieved laughter. “Right. We might as well try for a bit.”
hard rime - Opaque, granular masses of rime deposited chiefly on vertical surfaces by a dense super-cooled
fog
In a bar, Joe says, “If I hadn’t been a mountaineer I would have been a spy. All that tension, imagine
the adrenaline! And so many secrets!” His eyes slip sideways. Pete buries his face in his beer.
Their folly is private.
Pete says to Hilary, “I’m not honest. I lie and show off.”
Unpacking Joe’s luggage, returned from Everest, Maria will find a packet of letters from a woman in
London. She burns them and weeps. Hilary remembers dancing with Pete in Chamonix, after the snow,
themselves alone.
Pete will say, “Ever heard of double standards, Tasker?” and laugh.
black ice - sometimes called clear ice, refers to a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface
Joe says, “If I think about this...” His hands, so resolute on rock and ice, pluck at the edge of the
sleeping bag. It’s cold enough at 20,000 feet for their breath to freeze on the tent fabric. In the morning
it will flake away, crackling paper-thin crystal shards.
“Don’t think,” Pete says. He has decided Meetings with Appropriate Men is not light reading on a
mountain.
“Sometimes I wonder why I can’t be content with an ordinary life.” Joe sounds disgruntled.
Pete writes to Hilary, later, “What is important is that you are alive and so am I.”
aufeis - (German for "ice on top") is a sheet-like mass of layered ice that forms from successive flows of
ground water during freezing temperatures
Joe’s house is warm and muddled, layered Indian rugs, a log fire burning, an improbably complex
stereo. Yet he packs neatly, in increments. Toothpaste, pitons, Walkman, boots, crampons, padded and
144
bagged. His relationships are as cleanly divided as his climbing gear. Women, friends: layers like tissue
paper. Joe does not deal in platitudes.
Pete says, “The next time I go on a two-man expedition, it’s going to be a two person one. I’ve had
enough of tough guy talk and cold toes. I’m going to find a nice young lady and go to the tropics.”
“You do that,” Joe says.
firn - ice that is at an intermediate stage between snow and glacial ice
Joe writes, “I wonder whether our penances and frequent deprival of physical pleasure did indeed
benefit our souls and make us better people.”
Exasperated, he’ll say to Pete, “I’m not looking for a wife, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know,” Pete says. It’s not long after that he meets Hilary: Joe, Maria. Pete wrote, “Although I could
not blindly forget, I had to leave most of my past behind.” He thinks of mountains as magnificently
indifferent: he feels older, more vulnerable. He writes, “Either risks were easier to take, or I was less
aware of the dangers.”
They leave for Everest.
névé - permanent granular ice formed by repeated freeze-thaw cycles
Pete: “I was in the shadow, and sunlight streaming from the ridge drew me upwards, gasping with
excitement and straining against the invisible reins of thin air.”
“What time d’you think we should turn back?” Joe asks. He grumbles, “There’s never enough time.”
But he writes, “There exists range after range of elusive, difficult objectives. Irresistibly one is drawn
back. If not to Everest, to other summits. The pain is forgotten and the dream remains.”
Pete, diligent, keeps a diary: Joe, notes.
Chris Bonnington wrote, “The fifteenth May dawned clear, but windy. Pete and Joe fussed around with
final preparations.”
sub lim-a-tion - the process by which ice, a solid, converts directly into a gas, becoming water vapor in the air
“See you in a few days.”
“We’ll catch you tonight at six.”
“Good luck.”
The North-East Ridge of Everest soars, a vast flying buttress, up from Raphu La. It’s a pinnacled,
serrated edge. They’re four days out from Advance Base, two days from the summit, low on food and
fuel. At six o’clock, the radio malfunctions. At nine, they can still be seen, two small figures.
Then they’re gone.
“I look at myself and I don’t know how I got here,” Joe says.
“Wish I was home. I need to get on with my book,” Joe says.
Pete doesn’t answer.
145
In 1992 a Kazakh/Japanese expedition also reached the end of the Pinnacles, and on their way to join the original route they
passed a body in the snow at the side of the second Pinnacle, just beyond where Adrian [Gordon] and I had last sighted Pete and
Joe in 1982. They photographed the body, and from the clothing we could tell that it was undoubtedly Peter Boardman. He was
lying in the snow, almost as if he had fallen asleep
Chris Bonnington, 1992.
Sources:
Bonnington, Chris and Clarke, Charles: Everest, the Unclimbed Ridge (1984)
Bonnington, Chris: The Everest Years (1986)
Boardman, Pete: The Shining Mountain: Two men on Changabang's West Wall (with material by Joe Tasker) (1978)
Boardman, Pete: Sacred Summits: A Climber's Year (1982)
Coffey, Maria: Fragile Edge (1989)
Coffey, Maria: Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow (2003)
Tasker, Joe: Everest the Cruel Way (1981)
Tasker, Joe: Savage Arena (1983)
146
147
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: R
Wordcount: 15,000
Prompt: Jensen is an old dragon, and he's lived on his mountain through the rise and fall of many a civilization. He's more
history and myth then anything else at this point, and Jensen is alright with that. Sometimes he will walk out amoung the people
to get a feel for the new century, his human guise doesn't look as old as he actually is. He especially likes to go to the University
to see what the latest scholarship in "dragons" is, it's fun to see what's wrong. Jensen sees that the "preeminent" dragon scholar is
working at the University and decides to go for a visit. He wasn't expecting after all this time to find a mate.
Jared his been studying dragons since he was small. He's been fascinated with them for what seems like forever. There have been
tales of an old dragon who lives on a protected mountain somewhere close to the University, who some times will grant
audiences to the interested. Jared so wants to meet him.
Notes: Many, many thanks to beta Doro. Written for the Animalistic Behaviour meme on spn_hardcore.
The gorgeous cover to this story was made by meus_venator – I love it.
An Occurrence of Dragons
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
The coarse string binding the parcel has matted into knots, but Jensen resists the
temptation to snap it with the twitch of a claw. Instead, he unpicks each tangle
carefully, coiling the string before he smooths out the oilskin and, under it, the
crumpled brown paper wrapping. There’s a folded note on top of the books, and he
runs his fingers over the thin notepaper before he puts it carefully to one side.
The books themselves smell of book, that indefinable, instantly recognizable mixture
of leather and rendered size and lampblack print, and Jensen’s nostrils flare at the
taste of it against the back of his throat. He has to look away for a second, breathing
lightly: he’s never forgotten nor forgiven himself the charred pages of Sunderson’s A
Treatise In Favour of The Education of the Unfranchised. When he looks back, his
hands are already fastened around the first volume, his fingers inching under the
calfskin of the cover to the smooth, uncut paper underneath.
After the first few long, drawn-out and travel-worn exchanges, Padalecki’s had
learned his preferences. Seventy years later, and Jensen can guarantee that while he
may not know beforehand exactly what they’ve sent, he’ll find the books useful,
challenging, or beautiful. It’s provident to keep a sharp eye on what happens below
the wooded slopes of his mountain, and Padalecki - his son - his grandson - sends
treatises and pamphlets on politics both within the country and without. He sends
explorers’ diaries and inventers’ patents, catalogs of art exhibitions and magazines of
fashions at which Jensen can only marvel, amused. He sends almanacs, periodicals
and scholarly journals - the Metallurgist’s Journal, the Alchemist’s, the Purgatorial
Papers (bunch of charlatans) and the Annals Draconis. He sends the University
magazine, to which Jensen has subscribed for each of his seven degrees, and the
Beltane Quarterly, because Jensen would appreciate the warning if the Druids ever do
succeed in any branch of thaumatology.
148
On this occasion, the parcel contains An Explanation with Illustrations on the New
Arts Of Glass Blowing, Letters of Engelbert XIV, three volumes of A Short History of
the Trade Routes Between Tashkent and Smyrna, Together With Botanical and
Geological Illustrations and Hester Hume, which appears to be the tale of an
improbably endowed heiress told in three hundred pages of rhyming stanza. Along
with various newspapers and broadsheets, and a couple of scurrilous cartoons - has
the University Magister really become quite so thin? - the parcel also includes a note.
Jensen unfolds it with care. Across the page, a vividly green dragon spouts orange
flame. Its eyes are an improbable blue, its tail oddly kinked, and there appear to be
three claws on one hind foot and four on the other. Across the bottom of the page, an
unsteady hand has written: Jared Padalecki, age 6.
Smiling, Jensen smooths out the paper and pins it up above his desk, where it joins
thirteen previous efforts. The youngest Padalecki’s handwriting is definitely
improving, although his grasp of anatomy could be better. Jensen picks up his pen.
Master Padalecki, he writes. I am sending you a copy of Milthorpe’s Bestiary, perusal
of which should assist in further efforts....
~*~
Dear Jared,
While I find that Milthorpe is more than acceptable on the proportions of larger
beasts, should you wish to define the nature of domestic creatures, Theodora
Milsom’s The Care and Feeding of Common Familiars may well be of more use. I
enclose a copy. Be so kind as to show this to your father before use, lest he feel the
need to supervise your reading, although please do inform him I would not
recommend any attempt to incise pages. I gather the pawprint is deliberate? Sooty
appears a fine and intelligent cat indeed.
Dear Jared,
Please convey my compliments to your father on the acquisition and safe despatch of
a fine fourth edition of Traver’s Vulcanology. I notice that in his additional forward
the author mentions editing one or two points, but does not mention that he has
removed the entire two-page commentary on the speculative uses of dracoignem. Did
he not see the Abernathy’s paper in Vol 3, Issue XII of the Annals Draconis?
Abernathy’s point regarding the metallurgy of the ceremonial regalia of the current
royal line has never been successfully refuted nor disproved. While it is true to state
that negative evidence cannot prove....
Jared,
Please ask your father to obtain for you a copy of Boswell’s Universal Dictionary,
and in addition a ream of good quality paper. Payment, of course, from my account.
149
In the meantime, please do forgive my misattribution of your last drawing: Sooty is, of
course, a most excellent canine.
Would you be so kind as to ask your father if the annual edition of Annals Draconis
was included in the last delivery? Although it appears to be missing, I am reluctant to
accuse my courier if the printers have once again been slow.
Jared,
My compliments on your excellent family: that is a most prodigious hat your Aunt
Alice appears to be wearing. The cherry blossom is wonderfully delineated. I cannot
but notice that your artistic efforts may be aided by the provision of better paper and
a wider palette. Please ask your father to supply accordingly. Funds will be released
via the usual method. Thank him also for the provision of Annals Draconis, slightly
slimmer than expected but a welcome addition to my library.
Jared,
Dragons are as real as you believe them to be. Do not allow common misconceptions
to cloud your thinking. I am also inclined to believe your schoolmates misinformed on
matters of reproduction, but your father is better informed than I on this subject: I
suggest you consult.
Master G. Padalecki,
Over the course of the last few years it has occurred to me that your son Jared might
well benefit from a course of study at the University. Should extra tutoring be
required, please feel free to call upon the usual accounts. Consider it a worthy
repayment for the admirable drawings currently displayed in my study.
On a different matter, I cannot help but notice the omission of Annals Draconis in the
last four deliveries. Has the editorial committee run into difficulties with the printer
again? I would be much obliged if you could ascertain for me the current state of
affairs. Should difficulties prove monetary....
Jared,
I would certainly recommend the study of metallurgy above humanism: the latter
course appears purely theoretical. Should you wish to hone your arguments, I would
suggest philosophy, although take care at this stage to select a teacher prepared to
discuss all major schools. A broad base of knowledge will serve you better when you
come to specialize. Equally, I would not suggest abandoning the field of mathematical
argument prematurely: a grasp of pure logic will never go amiss. From the brief notes
you sent in your last letter, I assume you are following the Nicodemean model, and
have enclosed a small volume which may be of some help.
The drawings you sent with your last letter were most intriguing. From your
footnotes, I gather you and your father are now sharing your house with two kittens,
three dogs (my compliments to Sooty for his forbearance), a koi carp and a peacock.
150
Estimable as your protective inclinations are, I am convinced that the carp cannot be
content within the confines of a bathtub. The fish are hardy, and perfectly capable of
surviving the winter if deep water is found. I would suggest the bathing pool beyond
the first set of rapids. Do not fear the fishermen: carp are intelligent creatures.
I am surprised your neighbors have not yet throttled the peacock. I would suggest an
isolated monastery. The Levictine order do not consume creatures either feathered or
scaled.
Jared,
By all means continue with your study of philosophy. I was astonished to learn the
requirement dropped from the University undergraduate syllabus. The substitution of
Genealogical Studies is bemusing, but I hope harmless.
I was sorry to hear that the citation of Milthorpe’s Bestiary was struck from your last
paper. The man was incapable of recognizing a dangerous beast when he saw one,
but his diagrams were largely taken from life and his conclusions meticulous.
Nonetheless, given that your place at University is not yet certain, I begin to feel you
should choose your references carefully.
I fear I may have been too liberal in some of the volumes sent, but I had not realized
the extent of the change in emphasis within the academic structure. Jared, take care.
Now is not the moment to be labeled radical. The time for that is after you have won
your scholarship.
On a related subject, I would certainly recommend a Smyrnian white over a
Terebithian red. The high tannin content of the latter, as you have undoubtedly
discovered, leads to a most unpleasant awakening. Should you wish to govern your
tongue in public, however, a diet of small beer will not fail you. Pray do remember
that you are as yet underage, and do not embarrass your estimable father.
My dear Jared,
A full scholarship is no less than you deserve. My dear boy, congratulations. I have
no tiresome advice to pass to you: you have shown yourself fully capable of taking
every advantage of the opportunities offered already. I know you will make your
father proud. Please, do not embarrass me with gratitude. Any assistance I might
have offered has more than been repaid by the opportunity to witness the education of
a fine mind.
Jared, you mentioned that you would like to travel before the start of the Autumn
term. Although I would of course welcome your visit, my home is isolated. Perhaps
later.
~*~
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My dear Jared, Well aware as I am of the demands Jared. It has been two years since Jared, I am concerned Crumpled, charred, still smoking, the third unfinished letter sits on Jensen’s desk and
stares back at him. “Damn the boy,” he mutters. “He’s busy with his studies. He has
friends of his own age. He’s married. He’s old enough.” But Jensen’s fingernails,
hardening, score into the arms on his chair and a thin trail of smoke spirals to the
ceiling, elegantly ringing both the stuffed albatross and winged figurehead hanging
from the rafters.
He knows better than this. Humans live such temporary lives. Paper, for all its
fragility, is longer lived than the most robust of scholars. On his bookshelves he has
books nearly as old as himself: one or two of the scrolls, cushioned in their cedar
boxes, may even be older. Jared’s green dragon, carefully framed and propped against
Jensen’s writing case, will outlive the artist.
Jared Padalecki, age 6
He’s twenty-two now, Jensen’s boy. If all has gone well, he’ll graduate this year,
standing in the Great Hall of the University where Jensen has stood before him, head
bared before the Magister, cap in hand. Jensen had been there when that hall was
built.
If he is anything like his grandfather, the boy will be tall. But Jensen has never before
thought to ask. He could be fair, dark, slender or muscled: he could have his
grandmother’s eyes. He has his grandfather’s curiosity, the bright, quicksilver mind
that challenges Jensen’s own and has made watching the youngest Padalecki grow a
pleasure. It’s little enough Jensen has done, sent some books, given the boy, he hopes,
a span of tolerance beyond the strictures of the University. Jared’s not his
responsibility.
It’s nearly ninety years since he had last stood in the Great Hall, long enough for
everyone who had known him then to be dead and gone. And it’s Spring. Spring has
always itched at Jensen’s wings, at the skin between his shoulderblades and the beds
of his fingernails. Spring is when Jensen looks down from lazy drifting glides around
his mountain and remembers the taste of salt spray and the rush of a sea wind under
his wings, what it felt like to hold an army poised in the palm of his hand and the
moment, the first time, when he and Klaus had sent electricity crackling from pole to
pole. In Spring, sometimes, he finds himself at the mouth of his cave singing to the
moon, restless, his tail twitching and his wings mantled.
There’s a knapsack hanging on the study wall, the straps strengthened for flight and
the leather still oiled and supple. He has a pair of good boots, some clean shirts, a
comb, a toothbrush. Enough gold to buy himself a kingdom, should he wish. It’s six
weeks, by horse, from the city to his mountain.
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He can fly the distance in two days. He does.
~*~
The city is overwhelming. It’s urgent with humans, noisy, stinking, crowded. The
streets are narrower than he remembers, the houses with their overhanging stories
toppling into the light, the gutters running with waste. In seventy years, the city has
split between rich and poor. The houses in the river quarter and the grassgate are
battered and mis-built, the people hustling between market and city gates hurried and
unsmiling. Pushing through them in curtained litters or on horses bred for size, the
rich are bulky with furs, glittering with jewels, arrogant and unseeing. Above the line
of the old city wall whole communities have been destroyed, the museum, the public
baths, razed to ground: here the streets are broad and the houses blind-side to the road,
great mansions surrounded by walls topped with razor wire. The road to the
University has become an avenue lit by gas lamps and patrolled by the city guard,
where Jensen remembers it as a lively thoroughfare of shops and taverns and cheap
student rooms. Now, the city disorientates him, leads him astray with its confined
skies and threads of unfamiliar scent and half-heard conversations. It crowds him
against the walls of strange buildings, bemuses him in the mass of strangers. He can’t
get his bearings. He’s lost. It takes him most of a day to find his attorney, the rest of it
to find a lodging that can provide a clean bath and bed.
If anything, the city makes him more determined to find the youngest Padalecki. It’s
too easy to lose things here: possessions, friends, oneself. He can see the floundering,
washed up against doorways and in the corners of alleys, dressed in rags, begging.
There are no beggars in the street where the Padalecki family live and work. It’s not
the friendly, lively street Jensen remembers, with the printers and the cartoonists and
the bookbinders. The shops have changed. They’re taller, haughtier: the shop fronts
are closed and the windows blind. Doorways have uniformed doormen, bowing inside
cloaked women wrapped in velvet and furs. Only the Padalecki shop remains the
same, with its bow windows and red-painted front door. Seeing it, Jensen breathes a
sigh of relief that hisses dangerously close to heat, and quickens his step. He’ll walk
inside, and the young Padalecki will be behind the counter, maybe with a sweet girl at
his side, perhaps with his first - second - child in a cradle. He’ll have left the
University with no regrets. Jensen will peer down at his fourth Padalecki, maybe this
time a girl with her great-grandmother’s slanted, sharp eyes, and know that in a year
or so there will be a parcel with a blotched, colorful drawing The door is not just closed but bolted. The windows are shuttered. The sign hangs
drunkenly askew from its cast iron bracket. The two men by the door are not
customers. The uniform is new, but the stance unmistakable. They’re guards.
Before he can be noticed, Jensen moves back into the shadow of a gilded wooden
perfume bottle the size of a barrel. Florenzo’s is renowned across the city for the
sweet smell of his fragrances, and also the size of his ego, if the advertising’s true:
Jensen, pressed against painted fluting, can hide most of himself in comfort. He
153
watches, as a couple of students argue at the bookshop’s door, and are turned
disbelieving away: as an elderly, thin woman in battered robes tries to argue her way
inside and is escorted down the street still protesting.
“Magister’s orders,” he hears the guard say, bored and - doesn’t she realize? consequently dangerous.
“But Bulcher’s commentaries!” she says. “His references -”
“Try the library,” the guard says. “Don’t come back here.”
“But -”
She’s gone, hustled up the street.
“You were looking for Padalecki’s,” a woman says quietly, at Jensen’s elbow.
He turns around slowly. Her voice is hardly more than a whisper. She’s not looking at
him. But she’s tall, beautifully groomed, uniformed: she has to work on this street.
“Are you a friend?” he asks, equally quiet. “What happened?”
“You’re new here? The usual. A couple of raids. Some outstanding debts. The boy
struggled, after his father died. By the time he got back after the court case, the
Magister’s seal was already on the door. That was two days ago.”
Jensen has to breathe deeply, once, twice, against the urge to spread his wings and
rake out his claws. It’s a story he’s heard before. But not here, not in this city, not in
his University. Not happening to his own Jared, the child who sent him dragons, the
man whose happiness and curiosity made his letters so very precious.
“Where is he?”
“You’re not the only one looking,” she says. She slants him a sideways glance, takes
in the good linen of his shirt and the sturdy, workingman’s leather of his boots. He’s
not wearing his scholar’s cap, but the ink stains on his fingers are engrained. “He used
to drink at the Blind Unicorn,” she says, and Jensen knows he’s earned a moment’s
trust.
“Thank you,” he says.
It’s a student tavern, crammed down in the river quarter along with the cheap hostels
and the street vendors’ handcarts and the whores. Noise spills out onto the street from
its open doors, and the barroom is crowded with young men and women in scholar’s
robes, tankards in hand. The place smells of cheap spiced wine and thin city-brewed
beer, and Jensen breathes in the scent and sound of the place, because the atmosphere
is as familiar to him as the inkstains on his fingers and it’s the first time he feels as if
the city’s welcomed him home. Even the barstaff, friendly and overworked, take the
time to listen to him before they shake their heads. They know Jared. They know him
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well, they like him, and Jensen learns that the youngest Padalecki is a smiling, goodnatured giant, the kind of man who’ll clear tables and walk a barmaid home at the end
of the night out of nothing but friendliness. He’s given away the shirt off his back,
brought the server proofs for his dissertation, has time to listen to other people’s
stories and lend a helping hand. But after the court case, they’ve heard nothing.
Nevertheless it’s the only lead he has and he sits by the fire for most of the evening,
listening to the students discuss their courses and lecturers, just as he had done so
many years before, so often. The complaints could be his own, but the courses are not.
The University’s become hidebound. Theology clings to the edges of the syllabus,
strictly orthodox. Magic has gone. Geography confines itself to the known world.
Political theory is about procedures of governance, not changing the world. Students
pushing beyond the remit of their lecturers are discouraged, and unsupervised
personal study is frowned upon. It seems to Jensen, listening, that all the excitement
of the University in its youth has faded to a bland, self-perpetuating conformity, and
he cannot help wondering how the Jared of the vivid drawings and bright mind felt
about his professors.
And. He doesn’t like Jared’s... he’s not going to say friends. There’s a group in the
corner one of the barstaff points him towards, men and women who studied with Jared
at the University. They’re loud, brightly dressed. “The bookseller’s son?” one of them
says, and laughs. “Who cares?” “He’s the one who got thrown out,” another adds,
with a gloating curiosity. “Isn’t he the one who wore his grandfather’s robe?” a
women mocks. “He’s nothing. He should never have been at the University. Poor
boys and charity girls. Waste of space."
Jensen says quietly, “Is that what they teach you?” He’s lost any chance of getting an
honest answer. He doesn’t care. He can’t imagine the man he knows from Jared’s
letters friends with this privileged, scornful group. It’s then that he realizes that it’s
only the accents of the Old Town he hears, that these students spend freely and
carelessly, that their robes are silk and velvet and their thoughts bounded by the
constraints of their upbringing. Inasmuch as the University he knew expanded the
horizons of the poor, so too it used to challenge the rich. Not so now.
But he stays until the last student leaves, although frustration tightens his shoulders
and claws his hands around the wine glass. It’s the only lead he has on Jared, and it’s
going nowhere. The boy’s vanished into the City, and here Jensen can’t track him by
scent, can’t glide over the rooftops and hunt him down. His wings are useless. He’s
reliant on his wit, his human resources, his intuition, and none of them are serving
him well. Tomorrow... Jensen glares up at the moon, full, bright, mocking. Tomorrow
he’ll try the University itself, see if the registration officer has an address, trace
Jared’s steps through the halls and libraries he himself knows so well.
Tonight, his feet have taken him back to the city wall, the dividing line between rich
and poor. The sentries, motionless and suspicious, watch him pass, and the streets are
almost deserted. The shops are shuttered, walled against the darkness, and Jensen’s
footsteps are loud on the cobblestones. The night feels uneasy and hostile, fleeting
shadows against glass-shard topped walls, flickers of candlelight behind barred
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windows. When he rounds the corner and looks at what used to be the bookshop, he’s
not surprised to see the guards still standing at the door.
There used to be a back entrance, down the alleyway, hidden under the branches of
the yew tree that still stands in the yard. Jensen makes himself step lightly, clings to
the shadow of the walls, and eases himself around the side of the house. Ivy falls over
the edges of the yard wall, the leaves gleaming softly in moonlight, and the door is
still in place. The wood’s old now, soft and splintering under his fingers, but the latch
is freshly oiled and smooth. So freshly oiled Jensen’s fingertips are damp.
He stops then. There’d been a half-thought impulse in his mind, something about
checking the house, but if the smell on his fingertips reads truth he’s not the only
intruder tonight. The gate’s quiet, eased open. The house is silent, no lights showing
in the windows, but Jensen’s looking now, and there’s a shadow moving where no
shadow should be.
Supporting the upper story is a lintel that runs under the windows, and on it is the
shape of a man. Fifteen feet above the ground. Pure curiosity holds Jensen silent,
despite the frustration of knowing he can’t investigate the house himself, not with a
thief already in residence. But the man he’s watching doesn’t have the casual ease of a
burglar. He moves stiffly, shuffling, and his hands clutch at the stone. It takes him far
too long to open a window, and Jensen’s holding his breath as the figure eases itself
inside the house. Absurdly, he feels protective, concerned. He should, he supposes,
alert the guards. He doesn’t. He waits, hand on the gate, and he’s surprised at how
urgently he wants to see the man safely on the ground. The guards are armed and the
drop’s not slight.
When the man climbs back out of the window he’s cradling a box the size of a couple
of books. It’s obvious he hasn’t thought about how he’s going to retreat with it in his
hands. There’s a moment when Jensen thinks he thinks about throwing it down, when
he hesitates and decides it’s impossible. Jensen wouldn’t either. Instead, slowly,
carefully, the man inches along the lintel to the point where the corner guttering leads
to the roof. He must have climbed up there, where the braces form an uneven ladder.
Going down is far more difficult, and Jensen’s thief shelters the box under one hand,
clinging to the gutter with the other. There’s a moment when something creaks, when
he looks down. He freezes. His hand scrabbles against the stone. Jensen wills him to
hold on, catching his breath.
Slowly, so slowly the arc of it is almost beautiful, the guttering peels away from the
wall and collapses. The man falls with it, at first shocked motionless, then, in a sudden
flurry of limbs, flailing. The crash when he hits the ground is spectacular: he grunts,
forced and sharp. Jensen yelps himself, half-stifled with shock, and the guards shout
in surprise.
“You clumsy fool,” the thief in the yard mutters to himself, and branches snap as he
levers himself upright. He’s okay, Jensen thinks, on a rush of relief so strong he
surprises himself. Moonlight highlights the bones of the man’s hands and the curve of
his cheekbone, shadow spiked by tangled hair. The box is still in his hands. By his
silhouette against the house wall, he’s tall. Broad shouldered, sweetly uncoordinated
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in the way young men who have not yet grown into their bodies can be. There’s
something hauntingly familiar about the set of his shoulders, a teasing tug at Jensen’s
memory. He’s never seen this man before. It’s impossible. But knowing doesn’t stem
the ridiculous, misplaced urge to reach out a hand, and offer a wordless greeting as if
he’ll be acknowledged without question. He nearly does, but even as he opens his
mouth someone shouts, harsh and alarmed, and he can hear running footsteps and the
jangle of metal.
The guards are running down the alley.
He almost changes. Almost, as if he has no control over his own body: as if his claws
and teeth are an unthinking, essential protective armor for this man he does not know.
It’s a shocking impulse, and it leaves him almost shaking with the effort to stay
human. He’s thinking fight, flight, every option he has rolled out in his mind clear as
ink on parchment and stained with a vicious anger against the threat of the guards. He
ducks into the doorway, drops the latch. It rattles. He’s looking at the thief. The man
stares back, absolutely still with shock. His eyes are slanted. His hands are broad,
clasped around the box. He smells of fear, of dirty clothes and unwashed skin and
hunger. It’s a smell that twists in Jensen’s stomach. If he has to, he can get them both
out of here. He’s perfectly capable of killing the guards. He will. He shouldn’t.
A fist slams against the door. “It’s locked!”
“He could have climbed the wall. Here.” Their voices are rough and urgent.
He can hear the man breathe. They’re checkmated. It’s Jensen’s move. “If you know
another way out of here,” he hisses, “Now would be a good time.”
“What -”
“No?” Jensen says. “Can you run?” The guards will come back. Soon. The latch
won’t hold.
“Why -” It’s a young voice, faintly accented, uncertain.
“Yes or no?” Jensen says.
“Yes.”
“Then come on.” It’s too late to worry. Jensen throws open the door and runs.
Footsteps follow him, uneven, too slow, and behind them, the guards shout. The
street’s exposed and empty, the gaslamps lit, and he races across it into the alley
opposite. There’s a wall at the end he leaps up at, hands catching along the top. An
unexpected shoulder boosts him up, and he straddles the top and reaches down. Onehanded, the thief scrabbles up, lets himself drop over the other side and catches Jensen
as he falls. They’re running again, ducking through the alleyways, under a string of
washing, upturning a water barrel, setting the dogs barking in their wake.
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“This your regular entertainment?” Jensen’s thief pants, as they pound through the
twists and turns of the night-shuttered marketplace stalls.
“Nah,” Jensen says. He spins on his heel, ducking down behind a slow-moving night
soil wagon, and drags his thief down by his shirt collar. The skin under his knuckles is
smooth and young, the cloth frayed. Under the stink of the wagon, the man even
smells familiar. “I’ve got a vested interest in the Padaleckis. Keep your head down,”
he mutters. “You’re built like a young tree.”
“Because, this isn’t what it seems, if -”
“Run when I say go, yeah?” Jensen hisses. “Go!” He doesn’t let go. He hasn’t missed
the drag in the footsteps following his, although the pair of them slip into the darkness
of the University gardens unseen. The University’s always favoured the grandiose
over the domestic, and the rhododendrons are extravagantly flowered and twenty feet
high. He can’t hear the guards.
“Keep walking. It’s not far. How painful is that ankle?”
“How did you...?” Then the thief stops, jarring Jensen’s hand from his jacket. “Where
are you going?” he asks, and his voice is different, aware and suspicious.
“You smell of the streets,” Jensen says shortly. “But your shirt’s good linen under the
dirt and someone who cared about you made that jacket. I’ve got a spare bed for the
night and a bath, if you want.” He’s looking at his thief. He’s looking up, which is
unexpected and far more comfortable than it should be.
“Everything has a price,” his thief says. He’s still holding the box. Close. It’s got to
matter to him, whatever’s in there. “What’s yours?”
“Nothing you’re thinking,” Jensen says. “I’m looking for someone,” he says. “If
they’re - if they need - let’s say it’s a kindness meant for someone else.”
For a moment, they stand there in silence. Jensen’s thief’s frowning. His hands are
still tight on the box and his shoulders braced. He’s learned not to trust, somewhere,
and Jensen’s guessing the lesson’s still sharp.
“This isn’t a good idea. I’m wanted.”
“I guessed as much,” Jensen says. “Might be something to do with crawling up
drainpipes and stealing whatever it is you’ve got there. Kid, I don’t care.”
“I wasn’t stealing.” The words are snapped out. But he starts to walk, this stray Jensen
wants safely in his rooms, away from the guards and the University. “It’s mine.”
“Fine,” Jensen says. Whatever Oh. Oh.
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“Then it’ll be safer locked up for the night,” he says. “And I’ve got no ties to the
University. No one’s going to be knocking on my door looking for you. Look, I’m not
going to hurt you and I sure as hell don’t need whatever you’ve got in that box. It’s
yours.”
“Right.”
Now he’s listening, it’s almost as if he can untangle the threads of that accent, the
patina of the University over the clipped harshness of the city’s street toughness, and
under it, so faint, the traces of a country roll that must be his grandfather’s legacy.
This is Jared Padalecki, he’s blazingly sure of it, so sure that if the man balks Jensen’s
not going to be above getting his claws out.
He sets a hand to his door, searching his pocket for the keys. “It’s a private entrance,”
he says. “And there’s two flights of stairs between here and my rooms. The window’s
low enough to get out of, if you need.” He’s beyond bribery. “You can take the keys,”
he says. “I could do with a drink. I’ll get a bath sent up. And food. Just let me in after,
eh?”
The man he’s sure is Jared is still hesitating. He’s got pride, Padalecki’s grandson.
“Get your ass inside,” Jensen says, and unexpectedly Jared laughs, a short,
unexpected bark of laughter, and ducks his head and reaches for the keys. “I’m not
gonna knock a gift horse,” he says.
“I’ll knock three times, with the porter for the bath.”
“I got you,” Jared says.
Jensen doesn’t want to turn away. He wants to follow Jared upstairs, ask him what
went wrong, how things changed, what the hell has happened? It’s too soon.
But when he glances back, he doesn’t see a closed door. Jared Padalecki is still
standing in the doorway, frowning.
He’s careful. He doesn’t even look Jared in the eye when he knocks with the porter,
lingers over his thin red wine until he’s absolutely certain the man must be done
bathing, and when he knocks again, juggling two bowls of soup and a whole loaf of
bread - Jared’s face is too thin, the skin by his eyes pulled tight with fatigue - it’s with
no expectation of welcome. But the door’s unlocked. Fear flashes through him. He
can’t lose Jared now: it’s an imperative so shockingly powerful he races up the stairs
and crashes through the door The bathtub’s standing in the middle of the floor. Jared’s in it, head tipped back, hair
curled with damp and dripping onto the rugs. He’s asleep.
The relief’s so fierce Jensen shivers. It’s ridiculous. He’s never had this visceral
reaction to a human - to any creature. He’s always been the one on the outskirts, dry
and witty and uninvolved. He’s the one with the answers, perfectly poised, perfectly
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in control. Right now, he’s so off-balance he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
He’s restless, uncomfortable in his skin: his wings itch at his shoulderblades, his tail
would be twitching if he was dragon. He wants to bare his teeth and howl. He wants
Jared to look at him, really look at him, his true self, the size and weight and strength
of him, the gleam of his scales and the arch of his wings Whoa. Whoa.
Carefully, Jensen puts the bowls and the bread on the table. Lets himself sit on the
edge of the bed, and looks at his hands. He’s shaking. He’s never, never reacted to a
human the way he reacts to this one. He’s never felt the way he does now, this
confusing, urgent roil of emotion, this urge to protect and claim and, damn it, preen:
the fierce desire to rip every threat to shreds - damn the University to hell - and the
equal urge to snatch Jared up bathtub and all and take him home. Jensen wants to lay
out all the books in his library and see Jared smile. He wants to argue with him over
good wine and honeycakes until the candles gutter. For Jared, Jensen wants to lay out
the fiercest of prey, defeated, the knottiest of arguments and the sweetest conclusions,
share with him the sum of a curiosity that has spanned stranger shores than any
University Magister has dreamed.
The boy’s a stranger to him. A pretty stranger, with his skin flushed pink and his
hands hanging lax on the rim of the tub, the muscles of his arms loose and his
shoulders relaxed. His face is unusual, sharp and elegant, and his mouth is the soft
pink of the inside of a conch shell, and his fingers are stained with ink and strong.
And yet he’s so familiar Jensen almost knows the taste of his skin.
There’s a moment, sometimes, when Jensen looks at something - a book, a filigree
lamp, a crown - and knows it’s meant to be his. It’s a thing of dragons, the instinctive
urge to collect and own and cherish. He feels that way now, looking at Jared, and he’s
utterly confounded by the thought because Jared’s human, living, breathing.
Waking. Jared’s head rolls against the rim of the tub and his eyelashes flutter twice,
before he looks up.
“Sorry,” he says, and his voice now is soft with sleep. “I meant to leave you some
water, but it’s filthy. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He’s reaching for the towel,
standing, utterly unembarrassed by his own nakedness. Jensen can’t look away. Wet,
gleaming, pinked by the heat of the water, Jared’s beautiful. His shoulders could bear
an ox, his flanks are as elegantly muscled as a racing thoroughbred’s, and his chest is
a sculptor’s dream. He’s sparsely furred, and water has drawn the pattern of it into
runnels that curve over his belly and lead down to the soft, heavy beauty of his cock,
delineate the powerful muscles of his thighs and the bulge of his calves. His wrists are
surprisingly delicate for a big man, and the way his hair flops over his eyes makes him
seem so sweetly shy, but the stance of him, the set of his hips and the brace of his
shoulders, is all reined-in power.
Jensen’s mouth is dry. He can hear his own pulse in his ears, and between his legs, for
the first time ever and utterly beyond his control, his cock feels heavy and heated. He
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knows he should look away. He can’t. He’s as enraptured as a fledgling with their first
hoard.
“Should I...?” Jared says, and then he stops, arms upraised, towel in one hand. He’s
looking back. There’s a moment when his eyes go blank and his mouth tightens, and
then he says, “Fine.” His voice is clipped. He lets the towel fall to his shoulders, looks
down for a second, looks up and steps out of the bath. Walks forward.
Bemused, unable to look away, Jensen watches. It’s only when Jared drops to his
knees between Jensen’s thighs, so close that Jensen can feel the damp heat curling
from his skin, that he realizes what Jared’s doing. “No!” he says, scrambling
backwards, hands tangling in the bedclothes, blood rushing to his cheeks. “No, that
wasn’t, you don’t, I don’t...”
Jared’s still kneeling, but there’s the faintest tilt to his head. His eyes are half-closed,
looking at Jensen. “I pay my debts,” he says.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Jensen says, panicked, and drags himself against the
headboard, as far away as he can get. His skin’s flushed, there’s sweat prickling in his
armpits and at the back of his neck, and his cock’s still uncomfortably, crazily hard.
It’s a fundamentally physical reaction he cannot place: he’s got no context for this, the
desire to thumb Jared’s mouth open, run his tongue up the strong lines of Jared’s
neck, the heat under his own skin. “It’s not like that.” It is. His human body has
utterly betrayed him. He’s undone, incoherent. Years ago, he’d smiled at his human
friends, at the convoluted pitch-plunge of their mating dances. He’s not laughing now.
He’s terrified.
There’s a horrible silence. Jensen has no idea what to say. Words slide away from
him, unformed. From the end of the bed, Jared looks at him steadily, a little frown line
between his eyes as if he’s trying to puzzle out something strange. Then he sighs, and
stands up. He reaches for the towel, and starts drying his hair as if nothing’s
happened. “That’s a first,” he says. Then he says, “Thanks for the stew. And the bath.
I’ll pay you back.” He’s pulling his shirt on, comfortably, as if he doesn’t know
Jensen can’t stop watching every move he makes. Then his leggings. He sits down at
the table and breaks open the bread. “Sit down,” he says. “Please.”
Jensen finds he can’t say no. His knees wobble, undignified, and unclenching his
hands is concious and strained, but he stands up. He walks. He sits down. He reaches
for the spoon, just to give himself something to hold, although his gorge rises at the
thought of eating.
He says, “I know who you are.”
Jared’s spoon stops halfway between bowl and mouth.
“I’ve known you for years,” Jensen says. “You used to send me pictures. Of dragons.
I lent you some books. Your father used to send me parcels.”
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Jared puts his spoon down. His face has gone an odd color, white at his mouth, pink
across his cheekbones.
“You stopped writing,” Jensen says. “I was worried.”
Jared says, “You can’t be.”
“You had a dog called Sooty,” Jensen said. “And ten years ago you stole the
Magister’s carp and set them free. You used to like walnut cake and saffron buns. I
tried to get you some, but it was too late.”
“You can’t be him,” Jared says. “It’s impossible.”
“I’m Jensen,” Jensen says. “I’m sorry I didn’t come before.”
Standing up, Jared’s so stiff the table squeaks two inches across the floor. His steps as
he walks to the window are stiff and jerky, and his back is so tense under his shirt
Jensen can see every muscle clench. It’s a long time before he says anything, and
when he does his voice is low and uncertain. “I used to have this dream,” Jared says.
“I dreamt that I’d find you, and somehow you’d fix everything, and we’d live happily
ever after. I knew it was never going to happen. Even when things started to go
wrong, I asked Dad if I could tell you, and he made me promise not to write. He said
we owed you enough already.”
“Owed me what?” Jensen says. “I owe you. I told him to use the money -”
“Not everything comes down to money,” Jared says. His knuckles are as white as the
windowframe. “We sold the wrong books, for too long. We let people use the shop for
meetings. We had a printing press in the cellar. The University - I was surprised they
let me in,” Jared says. “It was only later, after... they thought they could teach me
better.”
“It didn’t work,” Jensen says.
“It didn’t work,” Jared agrees. He turns around, and the line of his shoulders is softer
as he leans against the wall, and there’s a little sideways tilt to the corner of his
mouth. “If it had, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“I heard a little, at the Blind Unicorn,” Jensen says, and Jared’s smiling, just a little,
ironic and soft at the same time. It’s an easing that allows Jensen himself to loosen his
grip on the spoon.
“Then you know what it was like,” Jared says. “I couldn’t write to you about it, you’d
have torn them to shreds. And by that time they were watching us. But I felt... it was
good to know you’d think the same way. I missed you. I started letters so many times,
you don’t know. All the petty little things, the closed collections and the tutorial rules
and the books I couldn’t even cite... It was my dissertation topic that got me thrown
out in the end,” he says. “I blame that one on you.”
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“What?” Jensen asks, shocked.
Jared comes back to the table, pulls up his chair, reaches for his spoon. “I want to
prove dragons really existed,” he says. “Which is kind of a whole can of worms,
because dragons presupposes magic, presupposes limits to a rational universe,
subverts the whole alternative history the Magister’s got going on with the church.”
He pauses. “I think I can do it, too,” he says. He glances up, and Jensen has no idea
what shows on his face, but Jared grins. It’s a real grin, toothy and broad, and it’s got
dimples: his eyes slit, laughing, and his hair falls over his face, and Jensen’s
helplessly smiling back.
“You said to me, dragons have five claws,” Jared says. “You told me Milthorpe
couldn’t tell a firedrake from a wether, but that he knew someone who could. You
said dragons were as real as I wanted them to be. I believed you. I still do.”
“But -” Jensen says, and then doesn’t know what to say, trapped.
“You know what’s in that box?” Jared asks. He waits.
Jensen pulls himself together. It’s not as if Jared knows. He can’t. All he’s got are
myths and circumstantial half-truths, a child’s puzzle pieces. “If you’re going to tell
me it’s a dragon’s tooth, I think you’re more credulous than I taught you to be,” he
says.
“Pfft,” Jared says. “That’s my notes. All the references. A couple of pages I might
have... liberated. I’m going to put them back,” he says hastily. “But for the moment
they’re safer with me. Your letters. Milthorpe. It’s not...” he sighs. “It’s not like, in the
general scheme of things, one dissertation about dragons is going to change the world.
But if I prove something that knocks a crack in their whole world view, you know?
And do it in public?”
“Hm,” Jensen says.
“Plus,” Jared says. “Dragons, dude. Dragons!”
~*~
It’s gold that pays Jared’s debts and inscribes his name on the University register.
Nothing more, and not a great deal of it either, although Jensen tells Jared half the
sum he actually paid and Jared writes it down carefully in his book. It hurts, that book
of debts. Jensen brings home cinnamon rolls: Jared makes a note. Jensen finds, in a
pile of twenty-year-old offprints from a moribund journal, the exact article he’d been
trying to remember the night before and buys it for pennies: Jared makes a note.
Jensen slips the porter enough of a tip to make sure that the bath water is always
steaming hot: Jared makes a note. It’s impossible to do something just because,
because Jared licking his sticky fingers and smiling makes Jensen feel happy, because
Jared likes to be clean, because Jensen’s as invested in Jared’s dissertation as Jared.
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Everything’s a transaction. It makes Jensen feel small, as if everything he can give is
worth nothing more than money. He’d fetch the moon down from the sky on a silver
ribbon if Jared wanted, but when he knows the look in Jared’s eyes is going to be so
painfully embarrassed every time, he can’t even bring home a bagful of honey rolls.
He brings two, and Jared smiles up at him tiredly from the mess of paper and books in
front of the hearth.
“You shouldn’t.”
Jensen shrugs, leaves the roll by Jared’s elbow, and takes a pile of unsorted diaries to
the bed. That’s the one thing Jared will let him give, time and an analytical eye, and
that only because Jared knows it’s something Jensen enjoys.
“Did you manage to track down those blueprints?”
“Withdrawn.” Jared says it absently. There’s a worrisome amount of material that’s
just from the University library. Jensen’s own third dissertation, A Study of the
Highlands, surreptitiously sought on one of the evenings when the elderly porter will
let both of them search the stacks unsupervised, is no longer available. It’s absolutely
harmless. There’s a survey of a lake seen from above, that’s all, a perfect pale blue
teardrop between elegantly pitched mountains Jensen’s going to show Jared one day.
A human could have drawn those maps. But along with one unimportant unpublished
text have gone all the back editions of Annals Draconis. The linguistic studies, the
atlases, the experiments, the metallurgy and the artwork and the bibliographies,
anything which might conceivably contradict the University’s emphasis on a
circumscribed world. There’s nothing new in the library, either. A few journals and
some retrospective studies Jensen cannot see as anything other than derivative and
bland.
He’d be more worried if Jared didn’t tell him about the underground newspapers and
the unauthorized reprints of foreign studies. There’s a group of scholars in Firenze
doing some amazing work on interpretations of language and a theologian from the
far north with some radical and fascinating ideas on plural theism, a small outpost of
lecturers and students exiled from the University and working from a monastery in the
desert. There’s a woman in Lisania studying flight and another who believes she can
prove the world is flat. Someone’s found a set of fossil footsteps in the desert:
someone else is digging up bones the size of monoliths, in the peat marshes of the
floodplains.
“I’m sorry,” Jared says. “It was too dangerous. We didn’t want to compromise you
too.”
Jensen snorts. He’s brushed petty tyrants off his scales like gnats. “I wish I’d known,”
he says. He would have liked that, evenings in the cellar of the bookseller’s, spiced
wine and discussion and the clattering frame of the printing press in the next room.
Looking up, Jared gives him a wry smile. “There was a reason I wanted to see you,”
he says. “And besides...”
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“Mmm?” Jensen asks.
“You turned up just in time,” Jared says. His fingers stroke absently at the cover of
the seventh Magister’s diaries. She’s a white dragon from the ice-bound North. Jensen
had liked her, although they’d only once met in passing and she’d been distracted at
the time, newly mated. “I was going south, once I had my notes. We’d never have
met.”
They would have. Had Jared fled, hidden, disguised, Jensen would have hunted Jared
down. He can almost feel his wings flex at the thought.
Instead he has Jared safe, in this single room with his books and his notebooks and his
smile. And the room itself is beginning to resemble something dangerously close to
home. Dragons like stuff. There are a couple of reproduction tapestries, now. Jensen’s
always had a soft spot for unicorns. Two comfortable chairs, a mess of warm red
earthenware bowls on the table, a pair of fluted candlesticks. A heap of sheepskin rugs
in front of the fireplace. Some good wine, and the wine glass by Jared’s knee with the
vivid blue spiral twisting through the stem of it is Venetian.
They’re all decoration. The heart of the room’s sitting on the sheepskin rug, ruffled
and staring back. “I’m glad we met,” he says.
Jensen lets his glasses slip down his nose and peers over them. “Shut up,” he says. It
doesn’t work. Jared’s starting to smile.
“Have you any idea...?” he says, and then he stops himself, ducks his head, opens the
book.
For a moment or two, undisturbed, Jensen lets himself watch. The curve of Jared’s
knee straining against the soft wool of his leggings. The unconscious hunch of his
shoulder and the idle tapping of one fingertip against the page. Jared’s mouth. His
hair. His stocking’d feet, high-arched and long-toed. He’s got feet like a dragon. Of
all the objects in the room, he is by far the most precious and the most fragile.
Dragons have been known to sleep for centuries, but Jared’s lifespan is little more
than the blink of an eye. He’s not only human, he’s so young, clean and newly
minted. There are times when Jensen feels dragged down by age, watching him. Other
times when, laughing helplessly together, he feels almost the same age. Jared’s good
for him. Jared makes him feel unsure, open, happy. Jared touches him, unconscious
little pats, full-on hugs; slings an arm over his shoulders, makes him dance in the
street to the jangle of a hurdy-gurdy, matches him glass for glass in the Blind Unicorn
and makes him sing on the way home. Makes him breathless, hardens his cock,
befuddles and beguiles him, and all of it unconscious. Jared sleeps in the same bed
and thinks nothing of waking up curled in a huddle of legs and elbows. He hasn’t got
a shred of modesty when it comes to baths and no set timetable either, so that Jensen’s
forever coming home to a steamed-up room and bare, wet skin. He reads in bed,
propping his book on Jensen’s shoulder and combing his fingers absently against
leather and flesh alike, and Jensen lies sleepless and trying to not shiver under that
touch. Even now, when he should be reading, Jensen’s watching Jared’s mouth curve
silently around the words of the diary 165
“Jen. Jensen.”
“What?”
Jared’s alive with discovery. “Look.” All flailing limbs, he climbs on the bed, book in
hand. “Look,” he says, and splays the thing open under Jensen’s nose. They’re
forehead to forehead. “Look.”
His finger stabs at the page. Jensen squints. There’s a sketch in the margins. It’s a
dragon’s scale, shed not torn, a simple drawing, although the artist has somehow
managed to catch the translucent iridescence of a mature adult.
“Do you think that’s what I think it is?” Jared asks. “Do you think there’s more?” He
turns the pages slowly, frowning. He’s bathed. He smells of lavender and honey. It’s
distracting.
“Jensen.” His name’s breathed out hoarse with wonder, and on the page there’s a
drawing of a dragon’s paw, three claws seen in profile curled around the roundels of a
bedpost. The scales are so faintly shaded they’ve got to be the Magister’s. Three
pages on, there’s a detail of a wingtip. Chapter seven has a series of tail spikes. Page
172 has an anatomical study of an eye. Incoherent with wonder, Jared’s hesitant to
turn the pages. His hands are shaking.
“It’s not the same,” he says. “I mean, the architectural details are solid, you know, the
depth of the blocks and the way the runners were laid and the shape of the arches and
the size of the theatres. And the linguistics makes sense, and the place names, and the
maps. But this is... this is... you could almost believe...” He’s almost whispering the
last words.
Looking down, Jensen studies his own human hand. It’s small, clenched on the
bedspread. Faintly pink. His knuckles are creased and his fingernails rounded. There’s
a faint pattern of freckles across the back, the faintest hint of the shading on his scales
when he’s real. Jared’s never going to see him as a dragon.
Getting up from the bed he walks over to the table, splashes a measure of wine into
the glass and drinks it, fast, staring out of the window while Jared rustles pages behind
him.
After a while, Jensen realizes the noise has stopped. He turns around. Jared’s not
reading. He’s looking at Jensen, head on one side, as still as if he’s been watching a
long time. Suddenly, the room’s too close, too hot.
“I’m going out,” Jensen says, already reaching for his jacket.
“Wait. I’ll come with,” Jared says.
“Not tonight,” Jensen says. It hurts to say the words. He wants to stretch his wings
aganst the night sky, fly hard and fast under the curve of the new moon, watch the
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faint, angled blade of his own shadow knife-edged under starlight. He wants to feel
the wind on his wings, and he wants Jared to see and feel that joy. It hurts. It’s never
going to happen. “Not tonight, “ he says hoarsely, and slips through the door before
Jared’s got one boot on. Fuck the guards. He changes in the street and leaps into sky
between the houses, wind screaming under the heavy beat of his wings.
He comes back four days later. He’s been home, he’s come back: he’s ransacked his
library. He’s brought wild strawberries and books and a sketch of the mountain an
artist had painted for him far too long ago, mounted and framed. He drags it all up the
stairs, panting, and lays it all out on the table where Jared’s books lie in untidy piles,
bookmarked and laden with notes.
“Belaforte,” he says. “He’s good on metals and alchemy. There’s a chapter on
etchings you need to read. Greiger, on the transmission of knowledge. He’s got a
theory about how longevity stifles creativity. He’s wrong, but there are some good
points in the rebuttals. Donna Kateline, on myths, legends and archetypes. She spent
some time... you might not recognize some of these. And strawberries,” Jensen says.
He’s suddenly aware Jared’s said nothing. “I brought strawberries.”
Jared places his bookmark, carefully, between the pages of his book. There are dark
circles under his eyes, and his hair isn’t ruffled. It’s lank. He opens his mouth, closes
it, doesn’t ask whatever it is he wants to ask.
“Jay?”
“I can’t -”
“What?”
“Where did you go?” Jared asks.
“What?”
“It’s a simple question,” Jared says. “Where did you go, Jensen?”
Jensen looks away.
The book slams shut. “Can you even tell me where you live?” Jared asks. His voice is
frustrated, angry. “I fucking looked for you so hard. I spoke to the guards. I asked
everywhere. I chased down those smugglers you get your wine from and your
attorney and I even went back to the bookshop. Have you any idea what happened
while you were gone?”
It’s a rhetorical question, but Jensen says, “No,” anyway.
“Someone saw a dragon,” Jared says.
“What?” Jensen hisses.
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“Just outside the city. It was a farmer, checking stock. People thought it was a joke,
until the next report came in, and that was one of the city guard coming home from
leave. Then some little girl and her grandmother from one of the villages. They all say
the same thing. They saw a dragon.”
“Fuck,” Jensen says.
“It should have been us,” Jared says. “It should have been you and me.” Then he says,
and it’s so much worse, “I wish it had been me.” His voice is so soft Jensen turns back
to look at him, almost expecting tears, but Jared’s rigidly upright in his chair, staring
back.
“Where did you go?” he asks. “Where?”
There’s nothing to say. Jensen’s hands almost clawed. His breathing’s too hot. He’s
almost panting.
Standing up, Jared says, “I can’t ask, can I?”
“No,” Jensen manages.
“Fuck,” Jared says. He kicks the chair back. It nearly topples, wobbling on two legs.
Striding around the table, Jared seems to have grown at least a couple of inches since
Jensen last saw him. Up close, maybe four. Jensen has to tilt his head back, but
Jared’s hand are fisted in his jacket and almost lifting him off his feet. “I don’t know
what to say to you,” he says, and he sounds almost lost.
“Jared -” Jensen says, and then Jared kisses him. Hard, messily, open-mouthed,
almost biting. Neither of them are yielding. Jensen’s bent back over the table under
the force of it, Jared’s thighs crowding his, Jared’s shoulders blocking out the light.
Licking across Jensen’s teeth, his tongue is cool and forceful, and one of his hands
scrabbles Jensen’s chin to a painful tilt. His other hand is gripping Jensen’s ribs,
sliding up to his armpit, thumb pressing painfully against the arch of his back. It’s
utterly unexpected and utterly new and Jensen’s floundering. He doesn’t know where
to put his hands, he can’t seem to breathe, he can’t smell anything except Jared’s skin,
and this thing between them is so much bigger and more alive and - fuck, is that his
own voice, those bitten off half-growled moans?
It is. Jared leans back, palms his face roughly, looks down. “You wanna say no again,
this is the time to do it,” he says, and his voice is low and dark. But Jensen hasn’t got
a single word left.
The world shifts. Jared’s heaved him up onto the tabletop and moved in between his
legs as if he belongs there, the heat and weight of him emphatically real. His hands
are rolling them hip to hip, and it’s only then that Jensen realizes he’s so hard he’s not
even damp but wet and Jared’s right there with him. He gasps into Jared’s shoulder,
and at the sound of it Jared shudders and his hands start to pull at Jensen’s belt. He
leans back, when he strips it free and jerks Jensen’s leggings off and yanks three shirts
and a leather jacket over Jensen’s head in one go, and his eyes are narrowed and
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intent. Despite the small fact that they’re completely different species and Jensen
doesn’t even think Jared likes him very much at the moment he still can’t say no. He
seems to be saying yes. In fact, what he’s actually saying is, yes, Jared, oh god, yes,
come here, your hands, which is language reduced to the commonest of forms and “Oh fuck no that’s you -” Jensen says and then he screams. Faintly. Jared’s hands are
under his ass, his fingers curved viciously tight against Jensen’s hips, he’s kneeling
down, and he’s gone down on Jensen’s dick as if it belongs to him. The sight of it’s
dizzying, Jared’s lips stretched and pink and his eyes wild under the tangle of his hair,
Jensen’s own cock glistening with spit and Jared licking at it, sucking it, choking and
heaving and pulling every inch of it down until he’s got to be nearly swallowing.
Then he does swallow, deliberately, the force of it squeezing so hard Jensen screams
again and his own hands claw their way down Jared’s back. He smells blood. That’s
too much, he’s going to hurt Jared, he tries to heave himself back, drag himself across
the table, his legs are flailing, and then Jared pulls off and smiles at him so sweetly
and dangerously Jensen gasps.
“Good to know,” Jared says, briefly, and then he’s standing up and Jensen’s flat on
his back. There are fingers in his mouth and he sucks at them instinctively before
they’re gone, and then Jared’s teeth are biting into the tendons of his neck. Even as
Jensen arches into the fierce, enflaming pain of that bite, he can feel Jared push into
his ass. Two fingers, firm and implacable and confident, slicked with something more
than spit. “You want this?” Jared whispers at him.
He says, “Do it, come on, please, Jay -” and Jared’s cock rocks into his ass hard and
fast, so big the push of it stings and burns, a pain so bright it’s nearly ecstasy.
“Hang on in there,” Jared mutters at him. “I swear, it gets better,” which Jensen
doesn’t understand because he’s burning up now. Inside him, shockingly intimate,
Jared pushes closer, presses at a different angle, higher, deeper, and then oh fucking
hell, the world goes white and implodes.
~*~
“I want to show you something,” Jensen says. He’s curled up in the wreckage of the
bed, one foot braced on the tilted corner of a pillow and one elbow pressing against
the bedpost. The canopy’s softly shaded in the light of a single candle.
“What, now?” Jared grunts, muffled. His nose is somewhere around the hollow of
Jensen’s hips and his hands are cupped under Jensen’s back, his thumbs smoothing a
slow and tender caress into skin. Utterly relaxed, his thighs press Jensen’s into the
mattress. “I can’t move. Ask me tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” Jensen says, and tugs gently at Jared’s hair. He’s been running his
fingers through the strands of it, mindlessly content, for what must be a half-mark by
the candle.
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“Will I like it?” Jared asks, opening his mouth against Jensen’s skin, heated and
damp. He bites. It’s not the first time, but it is the gentlest.
“Maybe,” Jensen says. He’s so full of Jared, Jared’s fingers, his smile, his ridiculous,
evident enchantment with Jensen himself, his heat and his spend. Jensen wants to give
something back, now, while this thing is still fresh and new. “Come on. Get up.” He
tugs harder.
Flopping over onto his back with a groan, Jared yawns and stretches. “Okay,” he says.
He levers himself upwards, reaching for his shirt. Jensen’s already dragging his own
clothes on, but the play of muscle and skin across Jared’s back is lovely to watch,
almost luminous in candlelight. It’s almost as if there’s the faintest glow under his
skin, an iridescence hidden in the patterns of light.
By the time Jensen’s trimmed the wick in the lantern and lit it, it’s gone.
He takes Jared up to what used to be Dragon’s Landing and is now the Quadrangle,
the vast open space at the University gatehouse. It’s still dark, too early even for the
most dedicated of students, and the only other people there are the two bored guards
at the entrance gate. The night is cold and clear, and despite the light of the gas lamps
the stars show bright and the moon low and half-full. More than just a reflection,
some of the cobbles glow faintly underfoot. Geoluminescence, light-bearing rock,
scarce and difficult to mine. There’s enough of it in the cobbles on the square to
illuminate the gatehouse and the barracks, the new library frontage and the new
registry office, although it’s not quite dark enough for the pattern to show clearly.
“What?” Jared asks. His shoulders are hunched in his jacket, his hands in his pockets,
but his head tilts towards Jensen and there’s a softness to his face that’s new. “If you
brought me here to say the stones give out light, dude, every undergraduate out after
curfew -”
“No. Look,” Jensen says. “Forget about crawling home after hours, and look at the
pattern of the cobbles.”
“What pattern?” Jared asks.
“You’re standing in the middle of it,” Jensen says drily, and waits for Jared to catch
up.
“Really?” Jared says doubtfully, but he peers at the cobbles in dutiful puzzlement.
There’s a moment when he picks up a straight line, angling outwards from the center,
and then another. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and starts to follow the shape
of them, frowning, spinning slowly on his heels. “It’s a... I’d say it’s a star, but there
are straight lines...” He pulls a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket and starts
pacing the cobbles, measuring by his own stride. By the time he’s done, there are faint
pink streaks across the Eastern sky.
“It’s a star,” he says. “Complicated, but a sixteen-pointed star.”
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“You never knew?” Jensen asks, and Jared shrugs. “There’s a circle, here where we’re
standing,” Jensen adds. “But the stones here seem fainter. Maybe the light fades with
time, I don’t remember it being this way. We didn’t even have to use lanterns, last
time I saw this place at night.”
“So?” Jared says. He reels Jensen in with a tug on his jacket, and settles them
together. His hands worm their way into Jensen’s pockets and, warm, enclose
Jensen’s. “So.”
“Where do you think would be the best place to see this?” Jensen asks.
Jared shrugs. “The astronomy tower? The clock tower’s a bit further away.”
“Think bigger,” Jensen says.
“What do you - ,” Jared says, and then he stops. He spins both of them around again
on the spot, slowly, and then he looks up at the sky. “You think this was built for
dragons,” he says.
“I know it was built for dragons,” Jensen says. Then, hurriedly, “Think of the old
maps. And the shape of the gatehouse, and the size of the passage to the Great Hall -”
Tightening, Jared’s hands hold him silent. “Let me,” he says, and for long moments
he’s absolutely silent. Then he sighs. “Dude,” he says. He lets go, and steps back,
spins around again with his eyes wide and the start of a smile that’s nothing but
wonder. “Dude.” It’s a smile shared equally between Jensen and the stones.
~*~
It takes six months for Jared to write his dissertation. It would have taken less, but he
comes home late one evening smelling of apples and earth and says, “I’ve got a job.”
He’s working at one of the warehouses, moving stock for the market. Fiercely
resentful, Jensen sulks, making love in angry silence until the day Jared gets his first
wages and brings home two tasseled, velvet cushions and a plate of turnovers made
with sweet flaking pastry and fresh wild raspberries. Then he tries to give Jensen
money towards the debt, and Jensen, stuffed and comfortable, can’t even pretend to be
angry. They compromise, and next payday Jared brings home two trout in a wicker
basket, a lemon, fresh rosemary, and an intricately woven throw for the bed.
He’s nesting. The thought makes Jensen smile, because it’s almost as if they’re
making a home, him and Jared, in this room with their shared books and their shared
bed. The smile’s wry. Jared’s human. Jensen’s not, and every moment is precious.
Jensen finds himself trying to memorize every word Jared says, the exact
configuration of his knuckles, the smell of his skin, the arch of his back under
Jensen’s mouth.
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Even in six months, Jared’s older. He’s lost the desperate possessiveness of those first
kisses, although he’s as jealous of Jensen’s time as Jensen is of his. He’s learnt to
phrase his sentences to hint at arguments he can’t say aloud, and the dissertation itself
has become a covert, elegant challenge to the University’s orthodoxy. He’s bulked up,
shifting crates, and he moves with a confident surety that fascinates Jensen. Jared
knows it, too. A sly smile can make Jensen shiver in the heat of the Blind Unicorn’s
taproom: alone, Jared can be tender, romantic, or so wickedly, dirtily obscene that
Jensen finds himself in an almost constant haze of sexual arousal. He’d thought,
vaguely, somewhere in his future when he mated he’d find out what all the fuss was
about. Now, he’s half hard the moment he steps in the room and Jared’s there. It
makes for long nights, and adds a level of play to academic argument that Jensen’s
never suspected could exist. Both of them are prepared to play dirty, and while Jared’s
bigger, Jensen’s sneakier.
He’s also happy. It’s unexpected, shocking, wrong. He’s never heard of a dragon in
love with a human. Dragons quest, following some ill-defined urge Jensen’s never
bothered to find out much about. They find a mate. They nest. Sometimes, they have
nestlings. It’s always seemed a little boring.
There’s nothing boring about Jared. He’s fascinating. He’s so human, and at the same
time there’s something about him that’s almost dragonish: his toothy grin, the shape
of his hands, the way he collects things. Sometimes, more and more frequently,
Jensen dreams they’re flying together, tumbling through the sky in a synchronicity
that’s all grace and power. In his dreams, Jared’s a blue dragon. Always blue. It is,
Jensen thinks, something about the shade of his skin in candlelight. Once, looking at
Jared’s hand clenching on the bedsheets, the sheen of light had fragmented so clearly
into a pattern of scales Jensen had blinked.
There’s a drawing in the Magister’s diary that’s hauntingly similar, a human hand so
carefully shaded it could almost be scaled. Jared’s got it pinned up on the wall.
There’s another drawing next to it, a sketch of the Magister herself, seated at her desk.
Her hands are nearly clawed over the pile of books at her side, her grin is dangerously
fierce, and there’s a shadow on the wall behind her that’s almost winged. Any dragon
would know her one of themselves. By the way Jared’s eyes linger, Jensen suspects
he might think the same, although no dragon has ever, to his knowledge, revealed
themselves as a shapeshifter. Certainly not the Magister herself, who had ruled the
University for thirty years with an iron fist and an incisive mind, before vanishing in
the mountains of the north with the woman who’d been her secretary for most of that
time. Sometimes, Jensen wonders what it was like for both of them, in that mountain
fastness, as the Magister did not age and her companion did. Was it tolerable? He
wonders. Could he... could he and Jared...?
No one knows where she went. They have only her diaries, and a biography written a
hundred years after her disappearance which is so racily scandalous the author must
either have made half of it up or known the Magister very well indeed, and that’s
impossible. It’s still so scurrilously amusing he and Jared take it in turns to read it out
loud. The biography has a formal structure that’s almost dragonish, and a warmth of
wit that’s so human both of them wish they knew more about the author.
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The biography doesn’t make it into the dissertation, although the diaries do. The
maps, the place names, the linguistics all do, but Jared concentrates on physical
evidence. “I want something real,” he says.
“You can’t take the landing site into the Great Hall,” Jensen objects, because Jared
already has a crate of fire-forged metals and acid-etched engraving plates and a ring
the size of a saucer and a carefully preserved, dated mud print of a wether’s rear paw.
He’s packed Jensen’s letters and Milthorpe too, as if for good luck.
“No, but they’ll recognize it,” Jared says. He puts the lid carefully on the crate and
stares down at it, his shoulders hunched.
“You’ll be brilliant,” Jensen says. “I trust you. It’ll be fine.”
Jared offers him a sickly half-smile, pale, and heaves up the crate. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Jensen says, and follows.
The University’s always trusted in a formal, public presentation to prove the mettle of
its candidates. It’s why the Great Hall was built. There’s a dais for the examining
professors, and a canopied chair for the Magister if they choose to attend. Other
University members can use the padded seats of the lower tier. In Jensen’s day, those
seats were public, but now attendees not part of the University are exiled to the bare
stone of the upper tiers which used to be undergraduate territory. In the middle of the
hall, there’s a desk and chair for the student under examination. The space is wide.
Wide enough to hold several full-grown dragons, although Jensen’s absolutely sure
that the current Magister has no idea why the corridors are so broad and the Great
Hall lit by skylights so massive a dragon could leap through them.
It’s more than familiar. Jensen can remember when the foundation stones were laid.
He’s taken his own degree here in the Hall twice, and he knows exactly how nervous
Jared must be feeling. Careful of the crate, he knocks their shoulders together, and
Jared gives him the smallest of smiles.
“You are going to be here, aren’t you?” Jared had asked.
Jensen had blinked. “You really think I’ll be anywhere else?”
That morning, he’d given Jared a map. “Look,” he’d said awkwardly. “I’m sure
everything will go well. But if - just if - it doesn’t, this is where I live.”
Jared had kissed him. Oddly, it hadn’t been one of Jared’s enthusiastic, enveloping, so
glad to see you kisses, but small and soft and almost reverent. “Thanks,” Jared had
said.
Now, he’s not saying anything, and the sheaf of papers in his hands is quivering at the
ends. Although they’re early, people are already sitting in the hall. Under the skylight,
Jensen’s sure he can see some of the staff from the Blind Unicorn. There’s a couple of
people from the tavern where he rents the room, the woman who sells him cinnamon
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rolls and Jared honey cakes. The porter from the library is there, and a whole group of
people who wave cheerfully at Jared. One of them’s the woman from the cartoonist’s,
and the girl with the inkstained fingers and the notebooks, and the man who unearthed
the Magister’s diaries and wouldn’t take payment. In fact, as Jensen realizes just how
many people are waving, it looks as if every bookseller in the city has closed up shop
for the morning. Half the librarians are here. There’s even a very elderly gentleman in
a bath chair who winks at Jensen with disconcerting familiarity.
Even the University seats are filling up, although the students filing into the hall in
small knots are edgy and sharp-spoken. They’re not waving but pointing, and Jensen
doesn’t like the way they prop their feet on the seats and snigger to each other as if
they’re here to mock. Jared’s not looking at them. He’s unpacking the crate, slowly,
head bent. Then he sits down, smooths out his papers and folds his hands. He doesn’t
look around to where Jensen stands in the shadows of the passageway from the
gatehouse. He looks perfectly composed, but Jensen knows by the set of his shoulders
that every muscle is tight with anticipation, and he almost stumbles to his feet when
the examining professors file into the hall.
Querquinx is the one Jensen’s pinned his hopes on. He’s no longer teaching, but he
knows Jared well, and although Jared’s not telling Jensen’s sure Querquinx was
involved in that illegal printing press. There’s a tall woman with a cane whose own
early work has been suppressed, and a pair of linguistics professors who’ve published
nothing at all in the last ten years but seem to have an extraordinary volume of
correspondence with places most current atlases don’t even name. The others... Jensen
sighs. Bland, conformist. There’s a couple with tenure in the church as well as the
University, not a good sign. One of them’s been involved in setting the undergraduate
syllabus. He’s glaring at that one when the professors themselves rise to their feet.
He and Jared hadn’t planned on this. The Magister doesn’t attend undergraduate
presentations. But there’s no mistaking that crimson robe, that regal, elegant mane of
white hair, or that arrogant aristocratic face. For a moment, then, Jensen considers
calling the whole thing off, snatching Jared and taking him home, leaving the
University to molder into obscurity. These things come around. In a hundred years’
time, there’ll be another radical student with the kind of ideas that revitalize a whole
generation, it just won’t be Jared.
But Jared himself has flung back his head, and his hands have flattened on the desk as
he stands, and the curve of his cheek says that he’s got that faint smile that always
means trouble. Jared’s perfectly happy to go to war with the Magister, and Jensen
smiles to himself, folds his arms, and leans back against the wall to watch.
When they’d practiced this, Jared standing in front of the fire and Jensen sprawled out
on the bed, Jared had started small. He’d been five pages in before he’d even
mentioned the word dragon. Now, he puts down his notes, looks around the hall, and
says, “When I was a boy, I believed in dragons.” He looks at the Magister, the
professors, the students, his friends in the upper seats. He says, “I still do. I’m going
to tell you why.”
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He does. Point by point, he talks about language, ethnicity, place-names: he discusses
forty-two words for clouds and thirty describing flight. He mentions aphorisms and
country sayings, spends three minutes on “by the egg” and two on “sharp as a talon”.
Our own quadrangle, Jared says, and produces the evidence, was once called
Dragon’s Landing. Ten percent of the placenames in the Highlands have some
reference to flight or dragons. He hands in the statistics.
I believe, Jared says, even as the Magister frowns and the professors shuffle uneasily
on their seats, that dragons once moved among us. In this very University. Have you
ever wondered, he asks, why our buildings are so massive? Why our doorways are so
wide and our passageways so commodious? Every building over a hundred years old,
Jared says, was built to accommodate the shape of a dragon. Even this very hall, he
says. How many of you have crossed the Quadrangle at night? How many of you have
stopped to wonder why the square was inlaid with light-bearing rock, in a pattern that
can only be seen from the sky?
On average, he says, our buildings are constructed to allow the passage of something
the size of a hay wain. Some are wider. Some of the stones used are so massive we
used to believe they were placed by giants. This stone I’m standing on, Jared says, is
the size of the Magister’s dining hall. It’s Rhenish granite, quarried from the
mountains west of Firenze. It’s ten times the size of the largest blocks the University
used to build the new library, and we all know how difficult it was to quarry and
transport those. I don’t believe, he says, that it travelled here on a wagon. I believe it
was flown here by dragons. If this sounds fanciful, he says, I’d like you to look at
these blueprints, with their descriptions of stones being lowered from a height.
There’s a sketch in the corner here of a sling with four attachments, he says, and adds,
it was Professor Fawcett who excavated the old library before demolition. Professor,
do you remember those harnesses you found, and the strapping on that buried block?
The professor nods, slipping a quick glance at the motionless Magister as he does.
The dimensions, Jared says, match exactly the description on this blueprint. This isn’t
the fantasy of a bored architect. This is real. Also real, he says, is the physical
evidence of objects which could only have been made with equipment - or skills - we
no longer have the ability to use. This cup, he says, holding it up, has been etched
with such exactness the pattern edges are still sharp two hundred years later. This one
is the best modern version I could borrow. It’s actually from the University’s buttery.
You might recognize it, he says, smiling. I’m going to pass both around so that you
can compare the quality. No acid we have access to today can replicate the work we
were producing two hundred years ago. And I’d like to show you this description - it’s
from the earliest edition of Lao Tscheng - of warriors dipping stone arrowheads into
dragon’s blood. How friendly do you think a silvermaster has to be, he says, to
persuade a dragon to donate their own blood? I’ve got here, Jared says, a silver ring
made by the same man who made this goblet. They’re both signed, you can see for
yourself. But this ring - Jared holds it up - is the size of my forearm. Whatever
creature it’s made for, he says, it’s not human.
Silver isn’t the only metal I believe dragons helped us work, Jared says. We’re all
familiar with the tales of magic swords. Elsinor, Icefire, Dragon’s Bite - you
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remember that one, the sword that belonged to our own founding Queen? It used to be
on display in the old museum, Jared says, but I believe these days the Magister keeps
it in his strongroom. Here, in these journals, Jared says, there’s a record of attempts to
replicate that forging. It was impossible. No matter how hot the forge, he says, we
humans could not achieve anywhere near the temperatures required to bond that
particular combination of metals, far less shape that metal into sheets and fold them.
There are a hundred folds of metal in this blade, Jared says, and lays down the dagger
Jensen had brought from his own hoard. And none of them folded or annealed by a
human. We simply can’t create that kind of heat and pressure ourselves.
So. Why, then, is there no reference to dragons in our literature? Why are there no
draconic epics, no records mentioning dragons, no nursery rhymes, no dissertations,
no memoirs? Jared pauses. The fact is, he says, that there are. It’s just that we don’t
see them. There’s two reasons, he says, and Jensen sees the Magister’s eyes flicker
sideways for a moment.
Firstly, Jared says, we don’t see dragons in our written history because we expect our
ancestors to react to dragons the way we would. If a dragon walked into this hall
today, Jared says, we would be absolutely amazed. It would be a paradigm shift
beyond anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes. The story would be around the
city in minutes. There’d be early editions of all the newspapers, people would be on
the street corners shouting - you remember what happened when a little girl thought
she’d seen a dragon, six months ago? But for our ancesters, Jared says, I believe
dragons were so normal they weren’t worth comment. There are clues, he says, and he
discusses the Magister’s diaries and the memoirs of one of the architects who worked
on the Great Hall and a couple of references Jensen didn’t even know he had. Not
only these, Jared says, but I believe the dragons themselves were producing written
material. I’d like you to take a look at this dissertation. There are maps in here of
places it would take a human six years to survey. Yet this dissertation was completed
in the statutory twelve months, and it was examined and passed without comment in
this very hall.
Very deliberately, Jared holds the bound papers up before he passes them to
Querquinx, and that’s the moment when Jensen realizes it’s his.
He has no idea how Jared got his hands on that particular piece of evidence. It’s
uncomfortably close, although Jared can have no idea who he actually is. Surely. And
for one awful moment Jensen really can’t remember what name’s on the cover. He
can see the thing now, clean and newly bound, in the hands of that young boy from
the printer’s - oh fucking hell. Fucking hell.
But when he looks up - when he can’t help looking up - the man in the bath chair
(How old is he? Seventy? Eighty? Older? Old enough?) gives him the smallest nod.
I want you to know, Jared says, that I was given this dissertation by someone
unconnected to the University. And that although I’ve detailed and indexed all my
references, you won’t find most of them in the University library. When the library
was built, he says slowly, the University vowed that it would be a repository for all
published scholarship. Impartial. This, Jared says, is no longer the case. I’m not just
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using sources the library doesn’t have, he says, and taps volume 2C of the fifty-yearsout-of-date library catalog. I’m using material which was once available to all of us
and has now been removed from the library’s accession records. Some of it I can’t
trace “Just to clarify. Are you saying material has been removed from the library?” It’s the
thin woman with the cane. She’s - she’s the woman the guards had escorted away
from the bookshop.
“Yes,” Jared says. “I’ve given some example references in appendix E, but if you
prefer to search for yourself, I have one of the older indices here for comparison with
current records.”
“Thank you,” the woman says, and as she leans back she gives the Magister a look
that’s so fiercely contemptuous Jensen thinks for the first time, Jared’s done it. He’ll
pass.
I’d very much like to know, Jared says, what’s so very dangerous about dragons that
we have come to believe - have been led to believe - that they’re nothing more than a
myth. And, he says, if we have been led to believe this myth... how many other
falsehoods have we come to believe? This is only one investigation on only one
subject, he says, and rests his hands on his work.
Then he cocks his head on one side. “How do you feel about unicorns?” Jared asks.
Even as the thin woman starts to smile, Jared says, “Ladies, Gentlemen, professors of
the University, I’m done.”
He sits down so abruptly his knees must have gone weak.
The hall is silent. Utterly silent. Querquinx seems lost in thought. The thin woman’s
still smiling. The booksellers seem to be passing notes. The students are not even
shuffling their feet. Usually, there are questions. Sometimes, there’s a spontaneous
round of applause before questions. People’s parents have been known to shout
encouragement. But, here, there’s absolute silence. Jensen doesn’t know what it
means, and in his seat Jared’s back straightens as if he’s bracing himself.
It’s almost a shock when the Magister rises to his feet. His mouth’s working, and his
hand is clenched tightly on his staff. There’s a moment when Jensen thinks the man’s
not going to be able to get his words out, and then he says, “I have never heard such a
fandangle of arrant nonsense.”
One of the students laughs, short and nervous. Another. They’re shuffling in their
seats.
“I don’t know what you were trying to achieve, Jared Padalecki, with this mess of lies
and children’s tales, but I can absolutely say it’s a laughable failure. Laughable,” the
Magister says sternly, and his eyes scan the hall.
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Another student laughs. Another, nudging sniggers that spill across the row of them,
and one of the professors points and says something under his breath that makes the
woman next to him giggle nervously. He laughs. The man next to him laughs, and
then the Magister’s secretary stands up and gestures at Jared and says, “You foolish
boy -”
Jensen changes. He didn’t know he was going to do it, didn’t even consciously choose
to change until his claws are scratching at the stone and his wingtips brush the
passageway. He’s a big dragon, as dragons go, and his coloring’s a dramatic and
elegantly sheened black. His claws are the size of a man’s forearm, his teeth razoredged, and like all dragons his breath smells of brimstone and ash. He’s intimidating
enough for people who are used to dragons. Now, he’s the stuff of nightmares, and he
knows it. When he saunters into the hall, one of the sniggering students faints. The
Magister collapses onto his chair, white-faced. The professors are on their feet. The
booksellers are on theirs. People are shouting, screaming; dislodged papers flutter
over the tiers of seats, someone’s trying to scramble to the exit over one of the
fellows.
Jared doesn’t look around. His head’s still bent. He’s... Jensen snorts. If he thought he
was infatuated as a human, it’s nothing to the way he feels about Jared as a dragon.
He’d tear out his heart with his own claws and lay it at Jared’s feet, if Jared needed.
Gently, Jensen folds his wings. He lowers his head and pushes the table out of the
way with his nose, and then rubs his head along Jared’s thigh, eyes closed. It’s
precisely the same affectionate caress he’d give his mate, an instinctive action all the
more poignant for being entirely new.
Jared reaches out a hand and scratches the exact spot behind Jensen’s horns that he
can’t quite reach himself. Then Jared glances down. He’s smiling, just a little, less
astonished than he should be, and Jensen growls at him softly.
“Yeah, I know,” Jared says quietly. “You’re gorgeous. You’re going to be on the
cover of every newspaper in the city.”
Huffing, Jensen nods to the Magister.
“I think you proved my point,” Jared says drily. “But let’s get out of here before he
calls the guard, eh?”
Tapping a claw on Jared’s dissertation, Jensen growls again, louder.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jared says. “I don’t think we’re going to be forgotten, pass or
fail.” There’s a note to his voice that’s sadder than it should be, and when he stands up
he’s not standing tall and proud and happy as he should, although his head's held high
as he packs up his materials and hefts the crate. When he leaves, he's walking by
Jensen's side, through the corridor that was evidently built to take a dragon's bulk.
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If Jensen makes a very rude sign with the end of his tail as they leave, Jared will never
know. Although by the sounds of things, no one really notices - “What else have you
lied to us about?” Querquinx is shouting.
They stop in the center of the star. Jensen looks at the sky: it’s a bright morning. The
clouds are high and fast, a slipstream wind heading home. In a day, he could be in his
own library.
“Thank you,” Jared says, and Jensen ducks down so fast he nearly gives himself
whiplash, but Jared doesn’t step back. He’s nearly whispering. “Thank you. For today,
and the baths, and the books -” His mouth is white around the edges and his eyes are
so sad Jensen nearly whines.
“I’ll always remember you,” Jared says. “So will they,” he adds, on a glimmer of a
smile so forced Jensen’s never seen it before. “And I’ll pack up your things. I’ll send
them on -”
Very gently, Jensen curls his front claws around Jared’s waist. He turns his head to
one side, and for the first time in years, sends a gush of pure white flame into the sky.
Then he fixes Jared with one unblinking eye, and waits.
“I guess... I guess that wasn’t what you wanted to hear?” Jared says, and Jensen tilts
his head a little further.
“You, er...”
Curling his tail around Jared’s shoulders, tucking the tip of it around his waist, Jensen
tightens his grip and flicks the trailing edge of his wings at the sky.
“Oh,” Jared says. He ducks his head. He’s starting to blush. “Really? Seriously?”
Snorting, Jensen runs the end of his tail across Jared’s cheeks and through his hair.
It’s the softest caress he can manage, although the way the light falls on Jared’s skin
makes it look as if the touch is bruising. Blue dapples shimmer like shadows.
“Are you sure?” Jared says. “Really, truly, sure?”
But his hands are as tightly fastened on the coils of Jensen’s tail as Jensen’s claws are,
now, in Jared’s belt. Jared’s eyes are so bright they could almost be a dragon’s, and
his pupils seem a little misshaped. Oval, lengthening, when they should be round.
Jensen drops his shoulder as low to the ground as he can manage, tugs Jared forward,
and gingerly wraps one front paw around the crate. When he snorts, impatient, Jared
huffs out an amazed laugh that turns into an astonished gasp as Jensen heaves him
upward. There’s a space between Jensen’s cervical spines that could have been made
for a human exactly Jared’s size, although he feels heavier than Jensen expected, as if
Jared’s mass is more than his size, and the heat of his thighs is warm even against
Jensen’s scales. When Jared’s hands fasten onto the barbed curve of Jensen’s sixth
spine, his hands cling so fiercely they could almost be clawed.
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There are some things not even dragons tell each other. Jensen, showing off, beating
up from a standing start to the most pointedly elegant of flybys, has begun to wonder
if humans and dragons are more closely linked than either he or Jared had thought.
He wonders how long it will be before Jared changes. He can’t wait to find out.
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Fandom: The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall
Pairing: Stephen Gordon, Martina Hallam, Miss Puddleton, Marcus Llewellyn (in various combinations)
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 12,500
Disclaimer: fanfiction.
Summary: Werewolf remix. Contains a reversal of most gender roles in The Well of Loneliness.
Notes: Many, many thanks to beta doro.
Genderswap, femmeslash, slash, mpreg, fpreg, polyamoury, pack dynamics: however, not nearly so explicit as this would imply.
That’s a lot of tweaking for the happy ending I’ve always wanted.
Morton Hall is very definitely a remix rather than fanfiction. There are many direct quotes - speech - and paraphrases from the
original text within this work..
Morton Hall
(The Spark Notes Werewolf Remix)
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
There is an air of faded grandeur about the Malvern Hills. Rising in a singular, gentle
ridge from the flood plains of the Severn, their rounded skirts and worn, short-grassed
slopes are reminiscent of an aged gentlewoman, who in her youth was beautiful and
proud, and is now facing twilight with her head held high. So too does the Georgian
homestead of Morton Hall, tucked into a south-facing fold of the hills, still face headon the stares of strangers with elegant frontage and dark windows. The house is old,
the red brick weather-worn and the paint faded, but like the hills above it Morton
faces the snows of winter and the storms of spring with a quiet pride.
Within the stout walls of this English homestead, sheltered in Morton Hall’s
encircling, neglected grounds and free to wander wild over the slopes of the Malvern
Hills, lived Sir Philip Gordon and his daughter, Stephen. Sir Philip, a man of noble
charm, a dreamer, had loved late in life and too well: his husband, a wild, noble boy
from across the Irish Sea, had over Sir Philip’s protests borne him one child and one
only. As Sir Philip had feared, caught between the sudden wild joy of a child that bore
his name - a son! - and the fear of losing his beloved, the burden of bearing a child
was too great for his fierce, bright boy. As the child grew, the flame of his lover’s life
sank, and despite every desperate aid Sir Philip could contrive, when the child was
born and revealed to be a girl, the flame guttered to nothing. Distraught, Sir Philip
neglected both estate and child, leaving the child to be raised by servants and nurses,
and winced from the plans he had made for his son with his lover in happier days.
Tended and governed by generation upon generation of male Gordons and their
partners, Morton Hall would, he thought, now pass from his hands to those of his
daughter and her skirted, simpering wife. Sir Philip’s daughter would never stand
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sturdy and gallant at his side, as he had imagined his child: would never tend the aged
oak woods, help with the harvest, or ride free over the hills as his lover had been wont
to do. The sickly puling babe, narrow-hipped and wide-shouldered, that lay silent and
wide-eyed in its cradle would never replace the fierce, encompassing affection of his
Irish boy.
In a fit of grieving misanthropy Sir Philip ordered the child christened Stephen, in
bitter remembrance of his lover and the son both of them had desired.
For two years the child languished unloved and cared for only by Sir Philip’s
housekeeper and his elderly nurse, while Sir Philip himself brooded over the loss of
his lover. Only at night would Sir Philip approach his daughter, drawn to this last
unwelcome memory of his beloved, and by the light of a single candle he would stare
at her perfect fingernails and smooth, pale cheeks, looking in vain for his wild Irish
boy in the shape of her face and thrust of her chin.
Yet as the child grew Sir Philip was forced to acknowledge that Stephen bore, not his
lover’s countenance, but his spirit. As an infant she would gambol, unafraid, around
the hooves of Sir Philip’s hunters and beg to be lifted into the saddle. She would
venture into scrapes that left her nurse panting and distraught, climbing onto the roof,
swimming in Morton’s lakes, and settling before the fire in the library of an evening,
unafraid of her father’s brooding presence. Slowly, Sir Philip grew to love his child,
recognising in her spirit his lost lover, indulging her whims and tantrums as he had
done his. Fierce, sensitive, Stephen grew up with as strong a desire to love and be
loved as her father, with his timid nature and noble spirit, and hers too was her
father’s deep love for the land which nurtured both of them.
Thus lived Stephen, for the first thirteen years of her life. Although there remained
about her an air of unspoken yearning, born of her early years, on the whole she was
as content as a child could be. She did not yet understand that her broad-shouldered
frame and capable hands would laughed at by the pretty, painted daughters of her
father’s friends: that in the marketplace of marriage, her straightforward words and
honest, homely face were worth little to the fluttering femmes looking for
companionship in their ruffled silk boudoirs. Yet Sir Philip, knowing this, still
encouraged Stephen in her country pastimes. As he had done with his Irish boy, Sir
Philip taught Stephen to ride astride, like a man: handed her a shotgun and taught her
to breathe with the trigger and lean into the shot. And when he found he could no
longer keep up with Stephen’s wild dashes across the countryside on the beautiful,
sleek hunters Sir Philip bought for her alone, he hired a groom to ride with her.
Collins was a soft-spoken Irishman who came to Morton Hall from Sir Philip’s
cousin’s estate. Initially doubtful, looking at the gleam in Collins’ eye and the gold
rings in his ears, Sir Philip feared that the man would cut a swath through his stable
boys and seduce his tenant’s sons. But Sir Philip soon grew to trust the man’s steady
hands and slow smile, and to him he entrusted his daughter.
For Stephen, it was a revelation. Sir Philip knew and loved the land, but Collins lived
within it in a way the older man could not emulate. Sir Philip taught Stephen to shoot.
Collins would take Stephen up onto the hills, lying with her for long hours concealed
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under bracken or brambles, showing her the bustling tenderness of the badger dams
with their cubs or the stags driven into desperate battle by the force of the rut. Collins
knew the secret dells and sparkling streams, the meadows covered with buttercups,
the spot where the wildcat nested and the tricks of the wily dog-fox Sir Philip’s
hounds had never cornered. For Stephen, it was as if every morning was an adventure:
she would awake and leap out of her bed, dragging on her breeches and boots with
trembling hands, and clatter down the stairs to the kitchen where she would steal
bread and cheese from the larder before racing to the stables. There, Collins would
already have her beloved hunter saddled and waiting.
Only one grief marred her newfound joy. Unlike Sir Philip’s other staff, Collins did
not take his half-days once a week. Instead, once a month, he took a three day
holiday, and for those three days could not be found. Distraught without her boon
companion, Stephen moped from room to room, kicked at the furniture and refused to
take solace in the adventure stories that had fired her imagination before Collins had
created her own. Neither rage nor angry tears would change Collins’ mind: his days
were his own, and he would not share them.
So marked was Stephen’s grief and frustration that even Sir Philip took note. As his
daughter fretted and itched at the confines of Morton Hall’s stately library and broad
halls, as she would drag out the croquet hoops and challenge her father to a game,
only to throw down her mallet in a temper ten minutes later, as she would curl up by
his feet as she had done as a small child only to spring upwards and pace in front of
the windows, glaring out at the full moon where it hung over Morton Hall’s lakes, Sir
Philip began wonder.
In the library at Morton there were one or two books Sir Philip had always locked
away. Now, he took them down, and read them late at night in the quiet confines of
his study. Sometimes he would take notes, frowning gravely over the text, and at
length there came parcels from London he added to his locked desk drawer. Sir Philip
watched Stephen ride out and come back flushed and laughing, her hair wild and her
eyes bright: he watched her tumble in play with the hound cubs and hunt over the
meadows and fields of his estate, focused and sharp, eager as any predator for blood.
There were times when Sir Philip would study Stephen gravely, his chin in his hands,
as she lolled in front of the fire, and his eyes would be sad. But at the same time there
was a sudden gentle tenderness in the way he treated Stephen, a puzzled, fierce love
that grew all the stronger for his doubts.
As the spring of Stephen’s fourteenth year waxed into summer, she grew conscious
that Collins was changing. Almost unnoticed at first, he became snappish and
withdrawn, spending his time on unspecified errands and solitary pastimes. Used to
Collins’ constant attention, Stephen grew wily in pursuance, rising earlier and
sleeping later, yet she could not track her groom across the woods and hills he knew
so well. Confounded and miserable, she wooed Collins with small gifts and
compliments, while Collins himself grew ever more distant. Stephen herself did not
understand the miserable thrill of possessive jealousy that she felt, only that she had
thought Collins to be hers alone, and now he was not.
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The end came abruptly, in July. It was a summer evening, still warm, and the full
moon lit the fountain and the box garden into white light and sharp shadows.
Miserable and restless all day, Stephen had let herself out of the house, knowing only
that she needed to be outside, and had headed instinctively to the small cottage where
Collins resided, for he eschewed the attics where the other grooms slept. Sure of her
welcome and as she had done so many a time before, Stephen slipped the latch and
entered.
On the hearth rug, where Stephen herself had sat so often, talking of fairs or hunts or
horses, lay two wolves. Curled nose to tail, content as any hound after a day’s chase,
they were asleep.
Blind, unthinking, rage seized Stephen. She wanted to cry out, but her voice failed:
she caught her hand to her mouth and bit it until the blood came, her knees were
shaking, her back rigid against the wood of the door. Then, welling up from her belly,
fastening in her throat, clamping around her heart, came a howl of grief so loud the
glass in the windows shook, and in the echoing silence after, the stable yard dogs,
woken abruptly, gave tongue, and after them the hounds in the kennels. Both wolves
shot to their feet, bristling with fear, teeth bared and eyes wide.
So it was that Sir Philip found them, racing from the house with his coat flung
haphazardly over his nightclothes and his feet thrust into dirty boots. In an instant he
saw what had happened: he wrapped Stephen in his coat and drew her away, and that
night he did not leave her side. Like a dumb creature she wept in his arms, over
burdened by shame, and Sir Philip held her in his arms, this his beloved child, and
stroking her hair he told her that this trouble would pass, that she must be brave, that it
would be forgotten, that there would come a time when this would be no more than a
memory. Yet as he comforted Stephen he thought of the books he had read, of
Stephen’s rangy frame and her bright eyes, of her sensitivity and her courage, and his
face was grave.
In the morning, he sent Collins away.
Very dreadful indeed were the nights Stephen spent grieving over the loss of her
companion. The hours would drag by, the moon shining in the windows would be
intolerably bright, the ticking of the clock on the stairs a dreadful intrusion, while
Stephen wept silently into her pillow. Without Collins, she felt restless and
incomplete, as if some part of her had been wrenched away, and although she loved
her father dearly she could not but blame him both for giving her Collins, and for
taking him away. She bore her grief in silence, and did not take it, as she had every
other childhood grief, to his knee.
Sir Philip was not blind to Stephen’s distress. Guilty, feeling he had ignored for too
long his daughter’s wild ways and unseemly joys, he began to educate her in the ways
of the society to which she had been born. He ordered the old brougham cleaned, and
began to make neighbourhood calls, taking afternoon tea with old friends he had not
spoken to since his lover’s death. There Stephen would sit, awkwardly balancing a
china teacup and saucer on her knee, fumbling through conversation, while Sir Philip
discussed politics and arts with the women of his acquaintance and hunting with the
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men. Always awkward in feminine company, Sir Philip took to taking Stephen into
the nearby town of Great Malvern once a week, where he would call in at the
haberdasher's and the drapers and hesitate in the street as they passed the milliner's
and the dressmaker’s, hoping that Stephen would show an interest in the feminine
garments within. But the only place where Stephen was truly comfortable was the
lending library, and there she borrowed, not the romances and poetry other girls
devoured, but adventure stories and books on farming. Worse, Sir Philip found his
daughter fiercely protective in company. The first hint of disagreeable discussion, and
she would rouse to her father’s defense, her wit sharp, unthinking of the polite
conventions that held true argument at bay. In town, she would insist on being by her
father’s side, walking on the outside of the pavement and holding the door for him:
should he betray weariness, she would drag him back to the carriage as sternly as any
sheepdog. Only at Morton Hall was Stephen truly comfortable, her father safe and her
father’s estate spread around them, free from intrusion.
In an attempt to remedy Stephen’s education, for Sir Philip felt that in raising her as
he had, trusting in Morton’s acres and his own wisdom, he had failed his daughter, Sir
Philip engaged a French governess. Mademoiselle Duphot was petite, charming, and
pretty enough to send half the county’s femmes into swooning disorder when she
appeared at the assemblies in her lace cap and flowered dress of Parisian silk. Yet
although Stephen took to the language with ease, she did not succumb, as Sir Philip
had half-hoped, to the charms of Mademoiselle’s softly broken English and the gleam
of flirtation in her eyes. When Stephen came to him, lit up and excited as she had not
been since Collins’ departure, and told him that a Sergeant Smylie was offering both
gymnastics and fencing lessons, Sir Philip readily agreed to the engagement and, half
fearing and half hopeful, watched Stephen take to both with joy. Stephen grew swift
and limber under the Sergeant’s tutelage, fierce in each bout and noble both in victory
and defeat, but although Sir Philip watched her with sharper eyes than Stephen would
ever know, never did she betray any attachment for the handsome sergeant other than
admiring friendship.
More often, now, Sir Philip frowned over his books in the quiet of his study, dreading
the worst and hoping for the best. There was no one to whom he could confide his
fears. At length, his hand hesitating on the pen and shaking when he laid the letters on
the tray to post, he made discreet enquiry of the few friends he had made during his
university years. Two months later, he bade farewell to Miss Duphot, and in her place,
small, grey, so self-contained she could well have been a statuette, came Miss
Puddleton.
Miss Puddleton was were. Born to a family in the North of England, she had lived out
her childhood mindlessly content and unaware, as so many weres born to country
families did, and like many other women of impoverished means and intellect, she
had supplemented her studies with tutoring and governess work until she had been
able to apply to Girton. It was on the cusp of her first term, at the age of twenty one,
that Miss Puddleton had turned for the first time. Unfortunately for her, that turning
had been witnessed by fourteen dinner guests, her parents and siblings. There was no
concealing what she was. Regretfully, Girton had sent their apologies. Few posts
remained open to her, if any: no family would openly admit to a bloodline that
included the possibility of a were child. Although her family, in the teeth of dismayed
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protests from her mother’s congregation and her father’s friends, would not disown
her, Miss Puddleton would never be accepted in polite society. Lonely, miserable, she
eked out her days alone in her parents’ library, studying for a degree that would never
be hers. Only the significant remuneration Sir Philip offered had tempted her away,
for although Miss Puddleton dreaded and feared exposure, Sir Philip’s letter had been
both understanding and supportive, and her family was not rich.
From the very first moment of Miss Puddleton’s arrival, Stephen suspected that this
queer little woman would mean more to her than any other governess or tutor.
Something about Miss Puddleton’s quiet courage, her dogged intellect and her
disciplined study, spoke to Stephen’s loneliness. In two months, it seemed to her that
Miss Puddleton had always been at Morton. It was to Miss Puddleton that Stephen
took her griefs and joys, her pride in her horsemanship, and her impatience with the
feminine clothing Sir Philip insisted she don for their ventures into society. Stephen
found that her restless frustration was soothed by Puddle’s quiet demeanour, that her
fits and starts and temper would break on the rock of her governess’ patience, and that
her questing soul would find peace between the pages of Puddle’s beloved books. For
the first time, Stephen felt utterly secure in her affections. Under Puddle’s quiet
governance, she blossomed, becoming confident and assured.
Never once did Puddle bemoan the lack of feminine wiles in her pupil: never once did
she seek to instruct Stephen in flirting or politics or dancing, as any other governess
would. Instead, Miss Puddleton, gently, inexorably, harnessed Stephen to a journey of
intellectual discipline that, at first resented, would become a journey of discovery as
compelling to Stephen as any other hunt. Puddle took Stephen exactly as she found
her, her agitations and enthusiasms, her fierce love for Morton, her windswept hair
and grubby hands, and her turn Stephen grew not just comfortable but content with
Puddle’s presence. Theirs was not just the relationship of governess to pupil. At night,
in front of the nursery fire, Stephen would lay her head in Puddle’s lap and, letting her
governess comb out every tangled strand of the resented long hair Sir Philip refused to
have bobbed, Stephen would bring to her every small triumph of the day. Nothing
seemed truly real to Stephen until, curled up and warm, she had told it to Puddle.
Even on the days when Puddle must, perforce, absent herself from the house, Stephen
would go out into the garden at night and call to her governess until out of the
darkness would come the slight, small mottled wolf Puddle became as a were, and
together they would romp and play in the grounds of the house. Never once did
Stephen or Sir Philip fear that Puddle would turn on Stephen as so many weres were
rumoured to do: never once did Sir Philip, watching from the library, worry that the
were’s bite would turn his daughter and condemn her forever to the life of an outcast.
Rather, Sir Philip watched his daughter become content and happy, and for two years
he put away his books. Only once did he bethink himself of the concerns he had held.
Each year, in summer, Miss Puddleton took a fortnight’s holiday and, travelling north,
rejoined her family. Although Stephen moped in her absence, and prowled the house
in restless irritation, there were frequent letters from Yorkshire that smelled of
lavender and promised return, and the wait was endurable. But in the March of
Stephen’s sixteenth year, one of Miss Puddleton’s cousins came to stay in a nearby
house. The cousin was a radical Whig, a woman who defiantly lived alone and
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espoused a policy of tolerance towards weres, and Miss Puddleton begged for and
received permission to visit on her off days.
Stephen hated every minute Puddle was away. She would walk up and down the hall,
biting her nails, tugging at her shirt cuffs until they were ragged, and any attempt to
distract her would meet with a muttered refusal and a resentful glare. When Puddle
returned, Stephen was not happy until her governess was bathed and settled in front of
the fire where she belonged, her comb pulling gently through Stephen’s hair and all
trace of her absence removed.
It was a great relief to Sir Philip when the cousin removed to Bath.
Thus the time passed until Stephen was almost eighteen, and of age. Her outdoor life,
and the athletics and fencing she had kept up, had given her the confidence of an
athlete. Her body was spare, graceful and finely muscled: her shoulders were broad
and her hips narrow, her legs long and strong. Her hands were carefully kept but
capable, her face, reminiscent of both her father’s noble features and his lover’s
sensitivity, was both fine and pleasing, if a little strongly featured for feminine taste.
When Stephen moved, she did so with a disconcerting, confident grace that thrilled
Sir Philip but sent a shiver of unease through the society femmes, more used to flutter
and hesitation. Stephen was strong, powerful, forceful, and among the charms and
frills of a feminine boudoir she looked out of place and miserable. It was an
incongruity that seldom occurred to Stephen herself, more concerned with the misery
of making polite conversation, but both Miss Puddleton and Sir Philip quietly sighed
and hoped that somewhere there would be a woman who could take their beloved
charge exactly as she was, forthright and confident, yet so tenderhearted she would
weep over a fox cub orphaned by the very hunt she had led.
It was then that Stephen met Martina Hallam.
It can safely be said that at seventeen Stephen had not outgrown her childish dread of
society. Willing though she was to accompany her father, she disliked small talk and
endured social occasions only to please Sir Philip. Nevertheless, when Colonel and
Mrs. Antrim sent invitations to a dance much anticipated in the neighbourhood, back
the acceptance went from Morton Hall, and on the evening concerned both Stephen
and Sir Philip were in attendance.
Stephen, herself gently eased into the confinement of a dress by Puddle’s insistent
hands, was astonished to discover there a young woman not only as impatient of
costuming as she, but also as widely travelled and free thinking as she wished to be.
Martina Hallam, utterly disregarding the sideways glances of disapproving femmes,
wore a carefully tailored jacket and dress pants that instantly struck Stephen with such
envy she resolved to order both the following day. Martina Hallam did not dance.
Martina Hallam owned and managed an estate in British Columbia, having travelled
out to the province following the death of her parents and found the country so wide
and open she had stayed for love. Martina Hallam spoke of the great forests, the
snowcapped mountains, the deep, swift rivers and splendid skies of her home, and as
she spoke Stephen thrilled to the adventure of an unknown land and to Martina’s deep
voice alike. Unlike any other femme Stephen had met, Martina spoke simply and
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without artifice, and expected Stephen to do the same, and that night Stephen found
herself fascinated and charmed by her companion. Equally, Martina too found
Stephen compelling, and questioned her about her horses, her fencing, her gymnastics,
and her taste in books: both of them drawn to an unexpected friendship which already
felt much older than the four hours of the dance.
Before they left, Sir Philip invited Martina to dinner.
Dinner was only the start. Martina fitted so well into their small family that she went
often to Morton, talking of husbandry with Sir Philip and hunting and fencing with
Stephen, betraying not a moment’s unease about Miss Puddleton’s presence at the
dining room table. She was not a woman who had taken to study, but she was happy
to listen to Stephen and Puddle discuss the novels they had read and offer her own
thoughts. She rode well, and had the rudiments of a summer’s fencing instruction that
allowed her to fence with Stephen and occasionally hold her own. Sir Philip lent her a
hunter, Stephen smiled, and Miss Puddleton hoped silently that here, here was the
woman for her charge.
People gossiped a little, but on the whole kindly, for at last Stephen was behaving as
other femmes and although her choice might be odd, so too was Stephen. It was a
good match, people thought, and they smiled to see Martina ride past on Sir Philip’s
rangy bay and Stephen on her own beloved hunter Raferty. Miss Puddleton began to
think wistfully of the woodland around Tenley Court, now on the market, and Sir
Philip shook his head and tried not to hope, but could not hide the joy in his eyes, for
it was possible that he had been quite mistaken.
It was autumn when Martina Hallam looked at Stephen and saw, not a friend, a fellow
femme as misplaced as herself, but a were. They were two days from the full moon
and Martina was restless and impatient, but for the first time she had dared to risk a
friendship and agree to Sir Philip’s untimely invitation. By habit and necessity a
deeply closeted were, she had feared discovery and dreaded exposure, choosing less
from scruple than from a fastidious nature not to join any of the concealed society
packs. Yet that night, she had heard Stephen and Miss Puddleton discuss in no
uncertain terms where they would hunt on the night of the full moon, and in her
astonished gaze Sir Philip sat, wineglass in hand, at the head of the table, nodding
agreement. Never had Martina imagined that her monstrous transformation would be
so easily accepted: she could barely breathe, trembling in her seat, amazed and
disconcerted at the strength of passion with which she wanted to be part of this small
pack. To a woman such as she, the conviction that Stephen, Stephen with her sharp
mind and the strength of her body and her smile, must be were, came as a revelation.
Of an instant she must say something. She said, knowing that her eyes must be wild
and her countenance pale, “Stephen - let's go into the garden, I've got something to
tell you.”
The tone of her voice must have been odd, for Sir Philip frowned and Miss Puddleton
looked sharply at her face, but Stephen was smiling and getting out of her chair. There
was not another word Martina could bring herself to say as they went out through the
library doors onto the terrace, so suffused with hope did she find herself, and Stephen
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must have understood from her face that there was something of import to discuss, for
she too stayed silent until they were beyond earshot of the dining room.
Then Martina stood still, and she said, “Stephen, my dear -” to Stephen, unbelievable,
chilling words, “- utterly desirous of your pack -” “Join with you -”
Stephen was staring at her in dumb horror, staring at the hope in her face and
flinching from it, one hand outthrust and clinging onto the terrace rail as if it alone
would support her. Staring back, Martina realised, gradually and with a hideous,
awful despair, that Stephen had no notion of what she was talking. Slowly, over her
friend’s face, came an expression of such deepest revulsion that Martina could not
believe what she saw: she said, stupidly, stumbling, “But are you not were? I thought
-”
At that Stephen spun around and fled wildly back into the house, her face distraught.
Martina stood perfectly still. For the first time in her life she had laid herself bare and
confessed to what she was, and the object of her affections - the woman she had
thought could be her Alpha, not her wife - had utterly rejected her. All she knew was
that she must get away, before the hue and cry was raised: away from Stephen, away
from Morton, away from the promise of a pack that had been a deception as great as
any she practiced herself.
In less than two hours she was motoring to London.
No one questioned Stephen. That night she fled to the sanctuary of her room, and in
the days that followed she wandered the familiar hills and valleys of her home
bewildered and deeply distressed. She could not imagine what in herself had drawn
Martina to her, and even though she could feel pity for the woman, stronger yet was
the utter amazement that Martina could have so desired something which she was
unable to give. Stephen shrank from the thought, for even after years of friendship
with Miss Puddleton she could not but feel that to be were was to be monstrous,
ungovernable, outcast, and yet she missed Martina’s friendship with a deep longing
unassuaged by Sir Philip’s quiet concern and Puddle’s tenderness. Now she knew the
true meaning of fear. They had been so happy, so content, and yet all the time Martina
had been deceiving her, waiting only to force that horrific transformation which
would exile her from everything she held dear. Had she been so very different? Had
there been something in her, vicious, ravening, which had spoken to the wolf under
her friend’s skin? At night Stephen could find no answers, tossing and turning in her
bed, dreading that the very nature which had brought her Martina’s friendship had
also attracted the wolf.
One night, when she could bear it no longer, as she had used to when a child she went
to her father. Sir Philip was sat as he was wont to do in the quietness of his study, but
when he looked up Stephen thought, he has been expecting me. There was a quiet
relief in that, and slowly she slipped to her knees, dropped her head on her father’s
lap, and told him everything Martina had said. She spared nothing, mourning the
friend she had lost, laying bare her own shame and confusion, and Sir Philip listened
in absolute silence.
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To him it was as if the glass had shattered. For years he had feared this moment,
dreaded it, and now it was upon him, recognised not by himself but by another. His
spirit cowered, and he dared not look at his daughter, so carefully laying bare all that
made her different, all that made her the woman she was, strange, unique, beloved.
Merciful God. What could he say? How could he tell her, his daughter, the last,
precious legacy of the Irish boy he had loved to distraction, how could he tell her that
her hopes and dreams were nothing but ashes, that she was tainted beyond all hope?
He could not. His courage failed him. Smiling, lying, he said to her, “My dear, do not
concern yourself. The woman mistook to whom she spoke. Who can blame her,
hunted and beset as she must be? Someday, Stephen, there may be a femme who you
will come to love and who loves you for what you are, not what they wish you to be,
and if there is not, well, what of it? Marriage is not the only course for a woman, and I
have been thinking that you should spread your wings a little, recently.”
She was gazing up at him with hope in her eyes. Sir Philip choked a little, and said,
“Darling, I’m sorry, it’s quite late.”
“Thank you,” Stephen said quietly. “I felt I had to ask.”
After she had gone, Sir Philip sat staring at the great family Bible in which he had
recorded his daughter’s birth and his lover’s death. In had been nearly eighteen years
since both, although Sir Philip could not see the dates. His eyes blurred, his throat was
choked. He wept.
There was gossip over Martina’s departure and none of it kind. The county had
welcomed her as one of their own, and smiled to see her with Stephen. Now,
disappointed, betrayed in their expectations, the society femmes and country blades
felt both foolish and angry. The tolerance with which they had regarded Stephen, for
Sir Philip’s sake, vanished, and instead Stephen met with frowns and turned backs
when she and Raferty rode out.
Such disdain distressed Sir Philip intolerably. He took to riding again as he had not
done for years, simply to rack his brain for the poor jokes at which Stephen would
pretend to smile, in order that people should see his daughter appear content. It was
unthinkable to him that the men and women whose approval he had courted so
assiduously should police nature with such vicious tongues and virile antagonism: Sir
Philip broke off nearly all acquaintance, ceased to be at home to callers, and from his
study began to search for some place where his daughter might be at peace.
For all Stephen’s broken friendship was the cause of much speculation, it would not
have had such impact were not the commons already on edge. Although for Sir Philip
and Stephen, and for a lesser extent Miss Puddleton, Morton Hall was both refuge and
home, and whatever happened outside their gates was irrelevant, there were forces
afoot in Parliament and in Europe which would drag them out of their isolation. On
the continent, the Kaiser was openly defying the arms agreements made with the
English Parliament: the Royal Navy was locked into a war of attrition with the
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Kaiserliche Marine, and the Balkans were ablaze with posture and rumour. With
society uncertain, excited, and rife with speculation, gossip over Stephen’s broken
friendship was both harsher and louder than Sir Philip expected, and while he had
been considering sending Stephen on an extended tour of Europe, much as his own
father had undertaken, that option was closed to him. Even a trip to Paris seemed an
unnecessary risk, with the Germans arming on the border and Austria calling up
reserves. Sir Philip wrote to his own old tutor at Magdalen, canvassing on Stephen’s
behalf, and asked Miss Puddleton if she would consider accompanying Stephen to
Cambridge.
Her answer, quietly confident, was yes. But before Sir Philip could put any plan in
action that would remove his daughter from the circumstances in which Morton Hall
found itself, Sir Philip, caught unaware by a circumstance he had not expected for
many years, died.
There was a cypress tree which had stood on the lawn at Morton since before Sir
Philip’s grandfather’s birth. Knarled and twisted as both roots and branches were,
neither Sir Philip nor his groundsman expected the tree to long outlive themselves.
Yet, struck by lightning in a winter storm, the tree had become dangerously unstable.
Unwilling as he was to entrust any aspect of Morton’s care to another, Sir Philip had
been supervising the felling: the tree was more damaged than expected, the stress on
the trunk more telling, and Sir Philip had been standing exactly under the spot where
the thing fell.
Stephen got to him just in time to see his eyes close.
Sir Philip’s death left his daughter deprived of three things: the companionship of a
like mind born of real understanding, of a stalwart barrier between herself and the
world, and above all, of love.
Recovering from the merciful numbness of shock and facing her first deep sorrow,
Stephen was utterly confounded. Only now did she realise, laid open to all wounds,
how much her father’s loving care had protected her. Suddenly responsible for
Morton, she began to understand just how much Sir Philip had taken on his shoulders:
she was responsible now for the farms, the house, the woodland, the hills: a thousand
small decisions which no other could make fell on her and her alone. The support of
society was denied to her. Even if Stephen could have borne the contempt in the eyes
of her neighbours, she could not and would not tolerate their pity. Only to Puddle
would she take her terrible, woebegone grief, and Puddle herself was suffering also.
The burdens she and Sir Philip had carried together were now hers alone, and late at
night, when Stephen, tearstained and limp, had fallen asleep in her lap, Puddle,
helpless, would curse the burden of silence with which Sir Philip had enjoined her.
She dared not explain to Stephen how she felt. In her own frustrated grief, Puddle was
sharp with Stephen, and the desolated girl would flee to her own rooms, where she
would take out her anger on her gymnastic apparatus or on her weighted barbells, or
out into the stable to be cried into Raferty’s warm coat.
Spring came and went, and summer approached, the summer of Stephen’s eighteenth
year. It was the cubbing season, and yet she did not order the hunters brought in: the
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shooting season, and yet she did not put up her gun. Irresolute and feckless, drowned
in grief, she wandered the halls of Morton with Puddle behind her, both of them
equally unhappy.
So things might have continued for months, were it not that, one afternoon in Great
Malvern, Stephen fell in love.
Andrew Crosby was amazingly blond. His hair was not the blond of a movie goddess,
but that of a Renaissance painting, almost silver in sunlight, cut short and bobbed like
any Medieval page. His eyes were large, a striking, remarkable violet blue fringed
with long, fair lashes, his smile with its sharp white teeth was so innocently sweet it
could be a child’s, and his hands lay in Stephen’s so trustfully that Stephen felt as
protective of this man as every other of Morton’s creatures. Like some rare blossom,
even down to the slow drawl of his American accent, he had arrived on her land and
was hers to cherish.
Yet not only was Andrew Crosby undeniably male, he was married.
They met outside the chemist’s in Great Malvern, although Ralph Crosby had rented
the Manor House from Sir Philip fully five months before. There had been gossip
then, for Ralph Crosby was one of those men who seem ill-fitted to any situation. His
boots were too well polished, his tweeds too new, and his smile too tight: the county
had not been forthcoming, and the lack of invitations had left the household irritated
and fretful. Sir Philip’s untimely death had left them even more isolated, for half the
reason the couple had rented the Manor was the baronet’s presence. Even the Crosbys
would not intrude unintroduced on Stephen’s grief. Nevertheless, when Andrew
Crosby recognised, in the woman who had so efficiently disentangled his beloved
West Highland Terrier from the jaws of an irritated Airedale, his late landlord’s
daughter, he knew that here was an opportunity he could not miss. Recognising that
Stephen would value efficiency over vapours, he gritted his teeth, laid claim to the
bloodied, triumphant terrier, and opened his big violet eyes at the one woman who
could attain for Ralph and himself an entree into county society.
In fairness to Andrew, he had not expected Stephen to fall headlong for that implicit
promise. A fraught interlude stitching the terrier’s wounds was followed by a lift
home: an encounter with Ralph by a dinner invitation, and Stephen was so rattled by
the whole situation that, when Puddle enquired after Mr. Crosby – “Mr. Andrew
Crosby,” Puddle said, “Mrs. Antrim says he was a music hall performer. I suppose
you were obliged -”
Stephen flared up. “I’m sick to death of your beastly gossip,” she cried, and strode
from the room.
“Oh, Lord!” murmured Puddle, frowning.
The interval between that day and the next Sunday, on which date dinner had been
arranged, seemed endless to Stephen. She did not stop to analyse her feelings, she
only knew that she felt exultant, transported, in a way she had never done before. All
of a sudden Morton’s summer seemed glorious to her: she had missed the daffodils
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flowering, but the hawthorns were sharply white: the cubbing season had started
without her, but the rich tawny coat of the old dog fox suddenly seemed glorious,
while above the hills the song of the lark seemed so beautiful that it left her breathless.
Even the memory of Martina, as Stephen wandered through scenes they had shared
together, seemed affectionately dim, eclipsed by violet eyes and a shy smile.
The morning of the day of the dinner seemed interminable to Stephen. Breakfast was
followed by church, church by lunch, and in the long hours of the afternoon Stephen
fussed and fretted about her clothes in such uncharacteristic form that Puddle threw up
her hands and left her charge to the morose contemplation of three neckties, all of
which, though originally admired, now seemed too loud, too wide, and too old.
Nevertheless, the drive to the Manor seemed to fly by.
It was as she was escorted to the door of the drawing room that shyness seized
Stephen by the throat. With femmes, she had nothing in common: oddly prim, she was
often left awkwardly blushing by their conversation, unable to discuss the minutiae of
clothing or fearfully embarrassed by certain subjects. Equally, men found her too
clever, a little presumptuous, a little too knowing about masculine pastimes. Yet there
were times when Stephen had hated her own isolation and made awkward little
advances, her eyes apologetic and her shoulders hunched, attempting to feel at ease
amongst her peers. There she would stand with her arms folded and her face strained,
trying to be part of a society which she both despised and craved.
Standing on Mr. Andrew Crosby’s threshold, Stephen was beset by the memory of
every moment she had tried and failed to be something she was not. Her necktie was
too tight, her face flushed, her feet stumbling in the boots that seemed now too big
and clumsy set against Mr. Crosby’s Persian runners: she was close to fleeing when
the door opened. The terrier barked, a bullfinch in a cage burst into startled song, and
on the lounge, Andrew Crosby was laughing.
“Do come over,” he said, patting the silk, and Stephen, clumsy, awkward Stephen, did
exactly as asked.
“I am so glad,” Andrew said, “That you are here: we have been so short of good
company, haven’t we, Ralph?”
It was only then that Stephen realised Ralph Crosby had been standing by the
window. The other Mr. Crosby’s face was unevenly blotched and his hands were
clenched: he looked like a man who would rather be anywhere than where he was,
and Stephen had just made up her mind to offer her excuses and leave when he came
forward with his hand outstretched.
“I am so sorry you find us at odds,” he said, through a smile that seemed horribly
forced. “The dog has been whining all day, the maid has left us again, and the cook but I shall not trouble you.”
Stephen said, “Yes. Oh, no - yes,” and then fell silent.
Ralph Crosby exchanged a glance with his husband.
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“We keep American hours here,” he said, and his mouth curled a little at the words.
“Cocktail?”
“No, thanks,” Stephen said, who had not yet come across the custom, and then
catching a glimpse of her host’s disappointed face said swiftly, “Indeed, no, whatever
you desire, I’m sure -”
“Excellent!” said Ralph, rubbing his hands, and very shortly the butler wheeled in a
curious mobile contrivance which appeared to contain bottles of colours and types
Stephen had never before seen. It seemed to take Ralph Crosby a remarkable amount
of effort to create three drinks: ice, lemons and spirits went into the mix, each
explained in detail, until by the time Andrew and Stephen had received their chilled
glasses nearly a full quarter hour had passed.
“Just the way you like it, dear,” Ralph Crosby had said, but Andrew had only smiled
at Stephen over the glass and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip.
Stephen did not in the least understand why the motion made her feel both hot and
cold. She shivered, and twisted on her seat, and suddenly the damp curve of Andrew’s
mouth seemed more enticing even than the sweep of her own horse chestnut avenue
seen from the manor windows. Ralph Crosby smiled, and Andrew Crosby pouted, and
Stephen took another sip of her cocktail, which she disliked intensely.
“We hear you hunt,” Ralph Crosby said, and his smile was wide and toothy.
“Yes?” Stephen answered him. “Although, not lately, the weather -”
The weather had been glorious, a stretch of late autumn sunshine that had garlanded
the rich reds and yellows of the leaves in the park and turned the corn to gold.
“Maybe later,” Ralph smiled, and put down his drink. “Darling, would you excuse
me?” he asked, and without waiting for a reply left the room.
Andrew sighed. “Ralph is so very busy,” he said softly, “And I feel so out of place
here. The people don’t like me, you know, because I am American. They don’t
understand.”
“Oh, no,” Stephen exclaimed, and then blushed bright scarlet, for she was not
unaware of the gossip surrounding the Messers Crosby.
“You were so kind,” Andrew Crosby said. “I am so glad you’ll be my friend. You
will, won’t you?”
Astonished, elated, Stephen said, “Yes.” It seemed to her that nothing could be
sweeter than Andrew’s smile in reply, nothing more endearing than the chatter with
which he entertained them both, and nothing more beautiful than the pale stretch of
his narrow neck and his graceful hands. Enthralled, Stephen could not take her eyes
from Andrew’s fine skin and eyes, and Andrew, recognising all too well the signs of
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infatuation, set himself to entertain as best he knew. Dinner was late and burnt: Ralph
Crosby was taciturn and sharp when called from his study, and there was nothing to
drink but white wine and soda or gin, but Stephen left feeling as if she attended the
best dinner of her life.
At the Manor, Andrew Crosby, idle, discontented and bored, let his thoughts dwell
unduly on the young woman. He was not by nature vicious, but Ralph Crosby was not
an attentive husband and Andrew had none of the constraints and ties of English
Society. He could find nothing wrong in a little flirtation over cocktails, in asking for
Stephen’s company on shopping trips or excursions - “Oh, darling, do come, I’d be so
bored without you,” - or arriving at Morton Hall without an invitation. “You don’t
mind, do you, darling?”
For her part, Stephen, in the grip of an infatuation that was entirely new to her, could
not say no to Andrew’s appealing smile or wide, violet eyes. Even though she knew
that Andrew would conveniently forget his pocketbook, and it would be Stephen
buying the leather driving gloves or the cashmere scarf on which Andrew had set his
heart, she still went shopping, standing awkwardly with bags and coats while the
assistants fussed and Andrew smiled. After the one occasion when she had tried to
introduce a terrified Andrew to Raferty, she did not try to share her own pursuits, but
instead willingly held the wool for Andrew’s knitting and endured his excursions into
chess. Like a tame lapdog, she followed where Andrew led, stood and sat at his
command, and smiled at his words.
At Morton, Puddle observed her charge’s uncharacteristic, subdued behaviour, and
stared worriedly at the calendar still open on Sir Philip’s desk. It lacked but two days
until Stephen’s eighteenth birthday, yet Puddle had seen no sign of the event both she
and Sir Philip had dreaded. Hopeful for the future and irritated by the present, she did
her best to be polite to Andrew Crosby and remain tolerant of Stephen’s enthusiasm.
At the Manor, Ralph Crosby silently fumed. He was not unused to Andrew’s
flirtatious behaviour, and certainly not averse to allowing certain liberties in his
husband’s conduct to which other men might have objected. If there was a price to be
paid for social acceptance, Ralph Crosby was happy for his husband so to pay. Yet in
three weekends of sudden and consuming infatuation, Ralph had yet to see a single
invitation or an unbent back, an acknowledging nod or a friendly smile. It seemed to
him that Andrew’s flirtation was all too encouraging and Stephen’s devotion all too
obvious, and when he had suggested that enough was enough, Andrew had stared at
him blankly. It was not the first nor the last time that they would quarrel, but on this
occasion the moon was nearly full and Andrew chose to flee, not to the locked
quarters of his own bedroom but to Morton Hall.
There he arrived in the teeth of a summer gale that scattered the leaves from the trees
and sent smoke streaming from the chimneys. It was late, and the butler frowned at
the intrusion, but Stephen came smiling from the library and ushered him inside. For
once, it was Stephen who was assured and Andrew shaken: he found himself settled
down with a rug over his knees and a glass of Sir Philip’s brandy in his hands, and
beside him Stephen was offering biscuits and stoking up the fire. It seemed so homely
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that Andrew could not but smile back, and at that Stephen came to sit beside him on
the lounge.
“You frighten me, you know,” she said, and she sounded so disconcerted that Andrew
looked up in consternation.
“You make me feel so weak, and so strong at the same time. I don’t know how to feel
when I’m with you.”
“Well,” Andrew said, “Perhaps - you’re so very unusual, Stephen.”
“Really?” Stephen said.
Her smile was so sad Andrew did reach forward and clasp both of her hands. “My
dear,” he began, and then there came a thunderous knocking on the door.
“Who can that be?” Stephen frowned, irritated, for she knew of no one who would
come this far out on so wild a night.
“Stephen -” Andrew said, trying to pull his hands away. “Stephen!”
The door burst open. There was a tremendous growl, the growl of a wild beast, and
leaping over the lounge and straight for Stephen’s throat came a massive, shaggy
monster, all grey fur and huge, yellowed teeth. Stephen threw up her arm to protect
herself, Andrew fled for the door, and from the hallway Puddle cried out sharply,
“Stephen! No!”
It was too late. Threatened in her own home, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, a
night before the full moon, Stephen Gordon had changed.
Locked in vicious, snarling battle, two wolves struggled and heaved amidst the
shattered furniture. Ralph Crosby, pale furred and scarred, was experienced: Stephen
Gordon, with a great grey ruff of fur and massive shoulders to bear it, was young and
well-muscled. Neither could gain the upper hand, although they snatched and snarled
at each other, muzzles bloodied and claws scratched on both floorboards and skin.
Crosby managed a ripping tear at Stephen’s haunches: Stephen a snap at Crosby’s
front leg that left him limping. Crouched, Crosby went for Stephen’s throat, caught
her shoulder, and would not let go, although Stephen swung around so purposely
Crosby was smashed against the fireguard, the Chesterfield, the lamp - the side table
smashed, the lamp fell, sparking, and Sir Philip’s Dresden china clock wobbled on the
mantel piece.
It was Puddle who stopped the fight, with a bucket of water brought from the kitchen
by the trembling, mute butler. Soaked through, the wolves rolled apart: Ralph Crosby
took one look at Puddle’s resolute face and the blunderbuss she was holding, and
instantly, smoothly, transformed, snatching an antimacassar from the lounge to cover
bare flesh. Utterly bemused, Stephen could not, but instead stood shaking, watching
her governess with wary, terrified eyes.
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“Enough is enough,” Puddle said. “Sir, I’ll thank you to get dressed, take your
husband, and leave this house. I do not expect to see either one of you here again.”
In silence, she watched Ralph Crosby put on his clothes. Dressed, he took the weeping
Andrew by the wrist, and left, silenced and exiled by the threat of the blunderbuss
Puddle still held.
Only when the front door had slammed behind them did Puddle turn her attention to
Stephen. “Oh, my dear,” she sighed, and then she sat down on the lounge, suddenly
very weary. Everything she and Sir Philip had feared had indeed come to pass, and in
the worst way possible. “Oh my dear, dear Stephen,” Puddle said. “Come here.”
Just as she had when she was a girl, the wolf Stephen padded, hesitating, over to the
lounge, laid her bloodied muzzle in Puddle’s lap, and closed her eyes. She was still
shaking.
It was dawn before Stephen could change back. Human again, from her eyes welled great big
piteous tears, and she did not move from where she lay but sat weeping into the refuge
of Puddle’s comfort. “Oh, Puddle!” she cried. “Puddle!”
Puddle said nothing at all. But in her heart she was mustering the courage to say to
Stephen, as she and Sir Philip should have done years ago, “I know. Stephen, take
heart. You're neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you're as much a part of
what people call nature as anyone else. Above all, be honourable. Cling to your
honour for the sake of those of us who share the same burden, and show the world
that people like us can be as selfless and fine as the rest of mankind.”
Yet even now Puddle’s courage failed her. Few knew better than she the agony of a
were, the terrible fear of the outcast who perceives herself to be monstrous. How
could she say to Stephen, with conviction, that she was neither abominable nor
unnatural, when Puddle felt herself both of these things? How could she counsel Stephen in
her distress, when Puddle herself was mired in the depths of her own, despite Sir
Philip’s compassion and Stephen’s own friendship?
Instead Puddle sat, gentle, patient, teasing out the knots in Stephen’s hair and wiping
the tears from her face.
At length, with a great sigh, Stephen pulled herself upright. Her face was reddened
and blotched with tears, but her back was straight and her eyes steady. “Well,
Puddle,” she began.
It was then that the butler knocked on the door.
“What is it?” Puddle cried, after a glance at Stephen.
“Ma’am, the newspaper is here,” Stephen’s butler said. “We have declared war on
Germany.”
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“What!” Stephen exclaimed, for the last few weeks had been nothing more nor less to
her than Andrew’s smiles and Andrew’s eyes.
“No!” said Puddle, for she had thought of little more than Stephen and the calendar.
But the butler was gone. It was Stephen who retrieved the newspaper from the hall
and both of them read it, shocked, by the library fire. Matters were so much worse
than either of them had believed. England was mobilising. Reservists had been called
up. The Navy was on high alert: nurses, miners, and engineers had been asked to
report to bases across the country: train travel was restricted. There was talk of
rationing, and troops were already embarking for the continent. France and Austria
were at war: Russia poised on the brink, Germany had already declared war, Italy was
hesitating....
War. The incredible had come to pass, and throughout Europe and the whole world,
the old woke with a sense of disaster and the young, amazed and bewildered, with a
stinging pride and a desire to do something, anything. Equally so Stephen felt her own
blood stir, and the fierce desire to fight for her own country, for Morton, raced
through her veins. Every instinct called her to combat, her new-found predator’s
blood, her aggression, her competent, strong body and her fierce courage. She was a
femme, exempt, rejected, called to service by the bedside and not to the battle, but
every instinct in Stephen revolted at serving the bedsides of the wounded. She was
called to action, not service.
“Puddle,” she said urgently, “Puddle -”
Puddle, who was not immune to the same excitement, folded up the newspaper and
said gently, “Well, dear. Shall we pack?”
~*~
Quite often now Stephen would see unmistakable figures. For, as though gaining
courage from the terror that was war, many a were had crept out of their hole, come
into daylight and faced their country. 'Well, here I am, will you take me or leave me?'
England had taken. Side by side with humans, weres joined the Army, the Navy,
Merchant Marine, the Land Femmes and the Nursing Corps. Ralph Crosby joined the
Flying Corps: Martina Hallam was a mechanic with the Canadian First Contingent.
Accepted, even welcomed for their courage and strength and perseverance, in these
days of struggle many a commanding officer turned a blind eye to three day’s leave or
strategic illness. For the weres, life was both bitter and sweet, creating a measure of
pride that would bring disillusion in its wake, but never again would the brotherhood
and sisterhood forged by the whirligig of war be broken. In finding themselves, the
weres found each other, and in that solidarity found strength.
Stephen herself very quickly joined The London Ambulance Column, and presently
Puddle found employment with one of the Government departments. She and Stephen
shared a small service flat in Victoria, and many were the friends and acquaintances,
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both were and human, who found a welcome therein. So often isolated and mocked at
Morton, here Stephen found her strength and competence something to be admired.
She blossomed under that regard, and her slow smile and confidence served her well:
it was not long before Stephen, as she so desired, was posted to the front. A week’s
leave saw her at Morton Hall, sadly denuded, the furniture under covers, the hunters
gone to the cavalry regiments and the unmarried men to the Worcester Rifles, the
unmarried femmes to the munitions factories or the farms. Then in haste to London,
and via the crowded hold of a hastily converted liner to the docks at Bretagne. And
thence to the front.
~*~
“Stephen?”
“Yes, Marcus?”
“How far now?”
“I think about twenty kilometres. Why?”
“Oh, nothing.”
The road was pitted with shell holes, rutted by the wheels of tanks and waggons and
ambulances. Wire netting hung with rags lined the route, camouflage hedges. Behind
them, the thud of the great guns could still be heard, the deep irregular thunder that
shook every nerve, and occasionally the whine of a shell. The morning was grey, a
bitter, starved morning, and the faces of the men that marched to the front were
equally pinched. Yet from a single blasted plane tree a blackbird sung, as if the shell
that could fall at any moment was as unreal as spring, and in the fields the battered
apple trees were still blooming.
“Do you think -?”
“What, Marcus?” Stephen asked gently. She spared a glance for the were at her side,
for of all the men and women of her unit, it was Marcus who had both taught her fear
and given her courage. A slight man, his hands still shook with the shell shock that
had invalided him out of his regiment, but Marcus’ grip was as steady as Stephen’s,
suturing, carrying, soothing, holding the dreadful, patient pain of the wounded at bay
with the touch of his hands and his quick smile. Even now, both of them sleepless and
exhausted, their eyes red rimmed and watering, Stephen’s hands still bloodstained and
the ambulance loaded with men who might never see another dawn, Marcus dipped
his head and glanced up under his eyelashes as he had taken to doing. It was a
submission all the more sweet for the way in which, when Stephen closed her hand at
the back of his neck, the smaller were relaxed into her grip.
“Not long now,” she said.
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At the Field Hospital the orderlies carried away their last patients, and for precious
hours the weres could sleep, rolled up in coats and blankets, until it was time to start
the terrible journey again. They dared not risk lights in the dark, but for the weres
night was almost as day: to them alone fell the awful, cold hours of the midnight
watches, when courageous and grim-hearted, the ambulance drivers must negotiate
not only the terrible, muddied, rutted roads and the bursts of shell fire but the men
who had fallen asleep willy-nilly as they marched, huddling against broken walls and
tattered hedges. There were never enough drivers: there was never enough time no
matter how fast Stephen or Marcus drove, and the lines of the wounded and dying
were unceasing. Every day the risks they took seemed greater, yet under that
bombardment Stephen found a curious peace that went hand in hand with a
devastating need to protect the were at her side.
Miss Puddleton and Stephen herself were both sports, born to bloodlines which had
neither expected nor welcomed them, to a society which rejected everything they
were. For neither of them was there the reassurance of a family nor the freedom of a
pack, which for other weres, well hidden, long disguised, was their birthright. Marcus
was such a were. Born of a Welsh pack, he had grown up roaming freely on the hills
of his homeland, slept curled into a heap with his packmates, and understood to the
smallest degree the etiquette of pack rule, of which Stephen knew nothing. For
Marcus, it was pride that allowed him to submit to Stephen’s touch, to make sure his
Alpha was fed before himself, to tend Stephen’s small wounds and stand by her side.
He had none of the constrictions enforced by human society: for him it was enough
that Stephen was Alpha, not that she was male or female, and from the moment he
had first seen her slow smile Marcus had chosen in any way he could to serve.
For Stephen, understanding came slowly. Raised human, she did not at first
understand why it was to her that the new recruits turned for guidance, why it was that
she, so clumsy and shy in everyday life, could stand up for her unit and demand the
tents, bandages and fuel they needed for the men in their care, why under fire it was to
her lead that the other drivers looked. Nor was she accustomed to the fierce
protectiveness with which she tended to the men and women of her unit: the urge to
defend and cherish that seized her heart and would not let go. It was both like and
unlike the love she bore Morton Hall, a vivid, constant current of affection that carried
both her and the unit through the horrors of their war. But it was to Marcus in
particular that Stephen looked, to the bowed curve of his neck and his quiet,
unceasing devotion.
One evening came when they were walking together, beyond the tents and the
hospital, down towards the end of the field where one solitary, battered pear tree still
stood ragged against the blood gold of the sunset. It was the day when Stephen, still
smarting from the half-healed shrapnel wound on her cheek, had received to her utter
astonishment the Croix de Guerre. The medal seemed cool and heavy on her breast,
and yet to Stephen, set beside the lives of so many men, it seemed nothing. Marcus,
though, had brushed away tears at the sight of it and even now his mouth was soft, so
that Stephen must reach out a hand and hold his. There was no one to see.
Marcus said, “I have been waiting so long for you. After the war... Stephen, after the
war, say you won’t send me away. Don’t let me live alone again without a pack...”
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Stephen stared straight ahead, trembling. Suddenly she understood what it had meant,
the companionship and the protectiveness and the care: Marcus’ swift smile, the
camaraderie of the unit. Even Puddle’s faithful care and Martina’s question, so long
ago now it seemed almost as if she had been talking to another woman. Stephen had
not known then what she was.
She said, very slowly, “After the war - no, I won't send you away from me.”
When the guns stopped, she went, not home to Morton Hall, but to Paris. Armistice
seemed, not a celebration, but a slowly closing door. Even before demobilisation, the
weres who had been so precious in war were looked at askance in peace: asking for
her customary three day break for herself and her drivers, Stephen had first been
refused and then had to plead her case. Soldiers who had once welcomed their help
now looked aside and spat as they went by. Letters from England told of weres
suddenly unemployed, discarded now that their usefulness had passed, and the faint
hopes of legal recognition were already fading into the bitter memories of the past.
Yet still remained the sense of community, embattled, threatened, but so very
welcome. In Paris, Stephen knew she had friends: in London too, should she need.
Even from Morton Hall came letters from Miss Puddleton that suggested the county
was not so averse to weres as they had been. Colonel Antrim’s daughter Violet was
openly were, careering across the countryside on her father’s hunters with her wife at
her side: Ralph Crosby had distinguished himself in the Corps and was now a
respected, if awkward, dinner companion. Even Puddle herself had given up
concealment. "I am too old and set in my ways,” she wrote to Stephen from Morton
Hall. Yet she wrote too of the autumn leaves and the turning gold of the bracken, the
bright yellow of the gorse, the reclamation of the Hall itself, so very battered after the
Army Corps had departed, and for Stephen, Morton was an ache in her heart that
could not be assuaged.
Yet it was to Paris that she went first, and by her side went Marcus. To Puddle she
wrote, “He’s got no one except some distant cousins, and I can give him a home: he
has offered to help with my writing, and of course the Unit takes up much of my
time.” For Stephen had vowed to assist her drivers and staff in any way she could.
Puddle, reading, could only sigh, for Stephen did not write as she had wished for so
long and say simply, “I have found my pack.”
The strange sympathy which exists between weres held both of them in thrall. For
Marcus, it was everything to stand by Stephen’s side and sit at her feet, type her
letters and plan with her Morton’s gardens: for Stephen, Marcus’ tender care was a
joy and a refuge. Yet the fact remained: she was female, he was male, they were both
were. With the terrible bond of her nature, she could bind Marcus to her, and although
the world might condemn both of them they would rejoice, unashamed and
triumphant. Yet how could she? If she laid claim to Marcus, the world would name
him unfit, outcast, abhorred: were. Irresolute, she hesitated and could not reach out.
Yet she could not bear to send Marcus away.
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In spring, she took them both to Italy. There was a villa there, under the Tuscan sky,
which belonged to a friend from the war. It stood empty and welcoming, and at night
the gardens seemed to welcome the two wolves who played there, rich with the scents
of eucalyptus and heliotrope and jasmine. The tangled woodland seemed made for a
were to explore, the lush gardens and winding trails perfect for gamboling play, and
there at last Stephen found herself freed from the shackles of the war. There was no
one to watch if she and Marcus rolled together on the great lawns or ran shoulder to
shoulder under the moonlight: no one to see if they curled up together in front of the
massive stove in the library. The days slipped by, days of sunshine and laughter.
Yet, slowly, discontent eased between them. Marcus, who had hoped for so much,
began to believe that Stephen would never offer him the bond he so craved. Stephen’s
soul longed for completion that her honour would not allow. Slowly, they began to
avoid each other, running alone in the night and resting apart. The tension became
unendurable.
One night, Marcus came to Stephen as she sat alone in the library. He had never been
a coward, and he had the pride of his birth: he was afraid to lose the woman he loved,
but more afraid of the lies that lay between them.
He said, as Martina had said before him, “I want to speak to you, Stephen.”
Stephen put down her newspaper. For a second she looked at Marcus’ wide eyes and
trembling hands, and then her courage failed her, and she said, “No, Marcus -”
“Now,” Marcus said, and went down on his knees. “Stephen,” he said. “I can’t stay. I
thought - I thought you would come to accept me as pack. But I have come to realise
that you accepted me out of pity and nothing more, that I will never be what you need.
Every time you look at me you shrink away. I’m going home, Stephen, I can’t bear -”
His voice broke.
Stephen stared at him, aghast. Then in a moment the restraint of years was shattered.
She fell to her knees, and reached out to hold Marcus in her arms: she had nothing to
say but his name. “Marcus... Marcus...”
When she looked down Marcus’ mouth was trembling, but his eyes were bright with
hope.
“Don’t you understand?” Stephen said helplessly. “Don’t you know what it would
mean to be together?”
But Marcus was smiling when he said, “What do I care? I love you.”
That night they were not divided.
~*~
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In April Stephen returned to Morton Hall. She did so quietly, slipping home under
cover of darkness, and by her side came Marcus.
For Puddle, it was as if joy had returned to the house. All of a sudden the tasks that
had seemed so very hard were nothing to Stephen’s competent hands and Marcus’
loving care. The house seemed no longer an empty shell but was filled with voices
and laughter, the walls repaired and the carpets patched, the furniture brought out of
storage and the pictures rehung. Cook returned to the kitchens and the gardeners to the
grounds: the great lawn was reseeded, the box gardens replanted, and in the stables
three new hunters looked over the stable doors. Spring covered the hills in buttercups
and the woodlands with the tiny white starred anemones, set the tulips ablaze in the
gardens and charmed the honeysuckle on the walls into glorious scented bloom, and
for Stephen and Marcus, newly bonded, Morton Hall was nothing but joy.
Late one night Stephen came smiling to Puddle as she sat reading in the library. “Do
you remember,” she asked, “When I used to come to you here?”
“Yes,” Puddle said, laying aside her newspaper and taking off her reading glasses, for
Stephen sat now as she had done then, with her head in Puddle’s lap. Her hair was still
shorn, as it had been for the war, but the shortness suited her and made of her strong
face something distinctive and handsome.
“I should have asked you this years ago,” Stephen said, “Except that I didn’t
understand. Now Marcus -” and she smiled, soft and gentle, for Marcus’ love and care
underscored every waking hour. “Marcus has made it clear to me what pack is,” she
said. “Puddle, would you...”
“Yes,” Puddle said. “Oh, Stephen. Yes.”
~*~
In July, Martina Hallam came back to Morton Hall.
The war had not been kind to Martina. Shipped over from Canada with the First
Contingent, she had been plunged into the morass of the Somme with a company of
human drivers: her compatriots, unused to weres, had misunderstood both her need
for society and her awkward, masculine attributes. She had been badly wounded at
Pusey, bad enough to be invalided back to England, and in a hospital in Dorchester
doctors had fought to save her eyesight. Scarred, she had retreated after the war to her
estates in British Columbia, yet even there the consolations of the great lakes and
mountains of her adopted land were no substitute for the companionship of other
weres. Lonely, she reached out to the companions of her youth, and from Morton
Hall, secure and happy with her own pack about her, Stephen wrote back.
“It seems queer now,” Stephen wrote, “that we argued so deeply. I was just an
ignorant cub in those days. What splendid companions we were, and how badly I
failed you then. Martina, I was so young: I beg you to forgive the mistake that I made
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then. I thought of you often during the war, and now I am returned to Morton I
remember your companionship with such sweet joy. Can we take up our friendship
again? If only we can...”
From Canada, amazed and delighted, Martina wrote back. At length she heard about
Marcus, and Puddle: about the new woodland and the improvements Stephen had
made to the home farms and the conservatory: about Marcus’ white doves and
Puddle’s research, and in her awoke the desire to see once again the lost friend of her
youth. From Canada she set sail to Liverpool, and at length she came again to the
great door of Morton Hall, all set open now for her coming and ablaze with light, and
behind Stephen’s smiling face stood the familiar Miss Puddleton and Marcus, so very
well known to her now from Stephen’s letters.
It seemed to her that she had been away but an instant. She hesitated on the threshold,
yet Morton seemed to her now as it had ever been, a refuge unlike any other she had
known.
“Welcome back,” Stephen said, and drew her into the warmth.
The End.
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Bonus Stories
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Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 3,000
Prompt: J1 is a werepanda and very rare, their numbers have been declining for many years due to how difficult it us for them to
find a comparable mate. J1 has been in a program to try and find a compatable mate for him for ages with no success, he certainly
didn't expect to bump into anyone compatable and certainly not at his local coffeeshop/store...
No underage please or non con
Kinks: werepandas
Notes: Written for blindfold_spn, a second fill for this prompt - you’ll find here also the wonderful The Padapanda's Courtship,
by morrezela. (This was the second time I accidentally filled a prompt morrezela had already written. I felt bad enough about the
first one.)
Many, many thanks to beta Doro.
Tea in Black and White
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
“Look. This isn’t working,” Jared says. His knees are knocking against the table top,
his shoulders are so tight he can feel the seams of his jacket pull, and his fingers are
clenched on his iPhone.
Janine pulls a face, exasperated. She likes him, he likes her. It’s all good, except “You climbed out of the window. She was gorgeous. And a red panda! Did you see
her shoes? Her cute little face?” she says. “And you were downright nasty to that sun
bear. Jared, you’ve got to put in some effort if we’re going to find you a mate!”
“Did you hear yourself?” Jared says. “Red panda? She wasn’t even in the same gene
pool! And I don’t even like honey, okay? Two hours at a honey tasting is not my idea
of a good date. I’m not a bear.”
“Jared, we discussed that you might have to compromise a little.” Janine pushes her
glasses up her nose, pinches the flesh between her plucked eyebrows. “You have to
learn to date! You’ve been registered with us for six months now, and we’ve managed
to find you sixteen potential mates -”
“Janine, I’m a panda,” Jared says. “Werepanda. I’m rare, okay? Rare even for
Distinctive Partnerships. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. But you promised me
you’d find something compatible, and so far I haven’t met anyone!”
“It’s not like we’re not trying!” Janine says, and pushes the paperwork across the desk
at him. “Look. There’s a guy in Dallas. His name’s Brad, he’s an NFL fan, drives a
truck, owns his own business - he’s a building contractor. Why don’t you just give
him a try? He’s a nice guy, Jared, I spoke to him myself, and he’s tired of bar
206
hopping. He wants to have a family. You’ve got things in common. He’s suggesting
bowling - how easy can he make it? Why not at least go on one date?”
“What is he?”
Janine rolls her eyes. “Grizzly.”
“No,” Jared says. He stands up and pushes the papers back. “We’re done. Thank you.
You tried.”
His mama’s going to kill him if he moves to China. But it’s looking like the only
option if he ever wants to have a family, and Jared’s itching for a son he can take
fishing the same way his dad did him. Or a daughter as pretty as his brother’s kids. Or
he can take his daughter fishing and admire his son’s tiaras - either’s fine, both. He
just feels like he’s incomplete, marking time, without a family. He knows that’s not
usual for a werepanda, as slow and reluctant to reproduce as his full-blooded relatives,
but nothing’s been usual about Jared. So far as he knows, he’s the only werepanda in
Seattle. He was the only werepanda in Texas, too. No one could have predicted that
the mosquito bite he got when he was six carried the were virus. Pandas! His mama
had freaked, his papa had been frowning over how to grow bamboo in the back yard,
and every were specialist in North America had come and gone until Jared felt as full
of holes as an inside out sea urchin. He’d put his foot - paw - down in the end. He
didn’t need to change. He wasn’t going to freak out. He still ate burgers and pizza like
every regular boy. If every so often he felt like sunning himself in the yard in his fur
suit, that was between him and his family alone.
The Padaleckis moved out of state, the reporters went away, and Jared’s new doctor
had trained in Beijing. Nothing else changed, until Jared decided it was time to get
serious about dating. He wanted a mate, he wanted kids, he wanted the whole shebang
with the big TV and the family room and the football runs and the Nyquil and the
broken nights. He even bought a house on the strength of that want, a five-bedroom
house with a big back yard, two dogs, an awesome basement with a pool table and a
Wurlitzer the kids could play with when they got older. He’d planted trees. He had a
hammock.
“You’re never going to have biological children with someone who isn’t another
werepanda,” Jared’s doctor had said bluntly. “And even then, you’re going to have the
same problems as the rest of the panda population. Jared, the chance of you or your
partner conceiving are so small they’re virtually nonexistent. Have you looked at the
statistics? Even the Chinese weres have been using an IVF program! If I were you,”
Jared’s doctor says, “I’d be thinking about adoption. There are kids that need families
out there, and you’d be a great dad.”
Not on his own. He knew some awesome single parents, but what Jared wanted was
another adult to share a family with. So he’d tried. He’d tried line dancing and pottery
making and on-line scrabble with flirting: he’d gone on dates with his cousin’s best
friends and his father’s fishing buddies’ sons. He’d even tried hanging out in the
Barnes and Noble coffee shop with a copy of The Rules. But there was no getting
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around the fact that Jared wasn’t going to get it on - or get it up - with anyone who
wasn’t black and white and furry. His biological wiring was as skewed as his origins.
It was then that he’d gone to Distinctive Partnerships. His mama had that look in her
eye, and Jerry, the condor were who owned the travel shop where she booked her
cruises, had taken to bringing the little half-eaglet chicks to work. Jared’s mama had
asked, Jerry had told her, and an hour later Jared was walking up the steps into the
discreet downtown office he’d just left.
Red pandas. Grizzlys. Sun bears. Canadian brown bears and European honey bears.
He’d dated a giant sloth, a spectacled bear from Guatemala and an alarmingly slender
Black Bear from Pakistan. There’d been a moment when he honestly thought Janine
was going to ask him to date a zebra on the basis of color compatibility alone.
“Jared,” she’d said. “I’ve been in this business ten years, and I’ve never come across
another panda. But I’ve got a lovely hyena/coyote couple. I’ve matched a panther and
a lynx - they’ve just had their second litter, the kids are so cute - and my
tortoise/armadillo pair just sent a wedding invite. Be flexible?”
He couldn’t. It had become all too clear that what he needed was another werepanda,
and as far as he knew, he was the only one in North America. The nearest one he
knew of for sure was Yling-Yling, and no one had even known she was there until her
mother turned up at the zoo to visit. Edinburgh Zoo had been so embarrassed they’d
almost closed, although Yling-Yling had (eventually) made it more than clear that she
loved her adoring public, thank you, and she’d be just fine if only they could install a
phone. Her mother worried. She’d not been out of her fur since in public.
Maybe he could go to Scotland before he went to China. Maybe he could give up on
the whole idea altogether. Maybe he was just meant to be alone, and that thought there
was so alienating in itself Jared had to stop on the street and draw in a deep breath. He
didn’t want much. Just someone to come home to, someone who’d smile at him over
the breakfast table and laugh softly with him about the kids he’d never have.
He can’t go home like this. He’s not crying, but his eyesight’s blurred and his face
feels hot and there’s an aching hole where his heart should be. If he doesn’t look, he
won’t see the two werecats with their daughter swinging over the cracks in the
pavement or the carrier pigeons cooing at their fledgling. The whole world’s
reproducing. He’s the only one “Hey!”
“Uh, sorry -” Jared says, and stumbles over his own feet, stepping back. “I’m sorry, I
wasn’t looking, I was, are you o -” Oh. Oh.
“You’re a were,” he says, blinking. The man’s tall, built, gorgeous. Gorgeous enough
for Jared to notice, and he’s long ago given up on any definition of attractive. The
guy’s got short hair and black, rounded sunglasses perched in the soft spikes of it, big
eyes, and the faintest trace of a softening at his jawline and waist that’s as cute as
fuck. His skin’s so faintly dappled that it’s only something about his stance that Jared
recognizes as were, that peculiar duality to the way he moves that suggests he’s
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something other than human on weekends. “You’re... oh God, you’re perfect,” Jared
says. He’s never felt like this, this amazing upsurge of recognition, happiness. He
can’t stop smiling. It’s ridiculous. “Tell me you’re single. You’re not mated, right?”
“Huh?” the man says, sharp and irritated. He looks Jared up and down, and sighs.
“Look, you’re pretty, but I ain’t ever gonna play daddy to your cubs, I ain’t that kind
of bear, so let’s just call the whole thing off, okay?”
“What?” Jared says blankly.
“Kenneth Carstairs?” the man says.
“Uh. No?”
“You’re not here for a date?”
“No?”
“Oh fuck,” the man says, running his spare hand through his hair. There’s the faintest
blush under his dappled skin. “Look, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else. I’ll
just -”
“No, don’t go!” Jared says urgently. “At least let me buy you a drink. Tea!” he says,
glancing wildly around and realizing that they’re standing outside the little cafe Janet
took him to once. “You have to try this place, they’ve got a menu and everything. And
I’m not, swear to God I’m not some crazy stalker or anything, whatever it is that you
thought I was, I’m not, okay?”
The other man’s definitely blushing now. “Dude,” he says. “I’m really sorry. It’s just
that I get these guys wanting to mate all the time, you know, and it ain’t ever gonna
work for me and I can get a bit defensive about the whole thing, because.”
Jared says slowly, “Is that a book on pandas under your arm?” He’s never felt like this
before. He’s dizzy with it, the unexpected hope, the way everything’s suddenly
brighter, full of potential, possible.
“Yes?”
“And is that bamboo in your bag?”
“Uh, yes?”
“We have to talk,” Jared says. He holds the door to the cafe open invitingly, although
his fingers cramp around the glass and his knees wobble, and he summons up his best
grin. “I mean, seriously. It’s my life and happiness we’re talking about here. You can
spare ten minutes.” He bats his eyelashes hopefully. It works on Janine.
Panda guy, though, is laughing, a kind of reluctant ducked-down laughter that makes
Jared want to see him laugh out loud. “Do people really fall for that?” he asks, and
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he’s glancing at the mismatched couches and the junk store tables and the lanterns,
and he’s taken a step forward. Another one.
Jared smiles to himself, letting the door swing in behind them. “Sometimes,” he says,
and sits down at the table where Panda Guy is already stacking his books.
“It’s just that... I was practicing the same moves in the mirror when I was five, you
know? It sure as hell didn’t work on my mom, and it’s not working on me either.
Made me smile, that’s all.”
Shrugging, still smiling himself, Jared pushes across the menu. “Page three,” he
offers, “China green tea.” Panda Guy’s head is already bent over the choices. Jared
leans back in his chair. “I’m Jared,” he says. “Jared Padalecki. I’m were.”
“Jensen Ackles,” Panda Guy says, without even looking up. “And me too. But let’s
not talk about it, because it kind of sucks.”
“Actually...” Jared says, and then bites his tongue, because he could be so wrong, and
just because Panda Guy Jensen Ackles has bamboo and books and feels right doesn’t
mean he’s exactly what Jared’s spent most of his life trying to find. “Try the snow
bud,” he says.
“Okay,” Jensen says, and looks up. He’s got extraordinary eyes, focused, like he’s
absolutely there in the moment, like he’s actually interested. “So,” he says. “Your life
and happiness. That’s a pretty big remit.”
“It kind of is,” Jared says. He looks around for the waitress. “Two... uh, two of the
Xue Ya?” he asks. “Thanks.” When he looks back, Jensen’s sitting back in his seat,
looking back with his head tipped just a little to one side.
“I was six,” Jared says. “I got bitten by a mosquito. It was carrying the virus. No one
knew where it got the infection - I mean, by the time I changed, it was three weeks
later. They think it maybe came out of a fruit shipment at the zoo.”
“Rough,” Jensen says.
“Not so much, at first. My sister’s friends thought I was the cutest thing ever. I used to
get the best hugs. Nothing like a real live fluffy cub, yeah? Then...”
“Go on,” Jensen says. He’s the sort of man who says thank you to the waitress. Jared
likes that.
“Then I grew up,” Jared says. “And it turns out I’m one of those weres who are
species specific. Made dating feel more than stupid. It’s not like I’m a wolf, seventeen
different pack lines to pick or whatever. I’ve never met another were like me.”
“Huh,” Jensen says. He stirs his tea thoughtfully, smells it. His thumbs are flexible,
double-jointed. “I was... it was six months ago. I was working in San Francisco. Night
on the freeway. There was an accident, blood all over the place. I was first on the
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scene.” He shrugs. “It’s more than ironic the only other were I know for sure is like
me is dead,” he says. “You’re not the only one who’s species specific. And, dude, this
sucks big time. I keep trying, you know, but no matter how furry the people I date, it’s
just not enough. Even signed up with some agency - that’s why I thought you were
someone else.” He raises an eyebrow, ironic and mocking. “All I want to do is get
laid. Which is...” He taps his fingers against one of the books, looks down, smiles to
himself so briefly Jared wants to reach out and touch. Some kind of reassurance thing,
maybe, although the lurch in his stomach is new, and he’s a little shaky himself.
“I mean, I can’t even get it up with another bear, you know? And I know what I’m
missing. I can’t even...” He looks away. “Dude, I even tried whacking off to the
Discovery Channel.”
Jared reaches out a hand, taps it on the pile of books. Jensen’s got a Pinyin dictionary
to go with his travel guides. “I’m a panda,” he says, and watches Jensen’s eyes widen.
“You’re kidding,” he says.
“Straight up,” Jared says.
“Did you know?” Jensen says. He’s leaning forward, and his mouth’s just a little open
with the shock, and there’s the tiniest flick of his tongue against his teeth as if he’s
nervous. “Did someone set me up?”
“You are too,” Jared says. He can’t stop smiling. He lets himself look, now, at the
breadth of Jensen’s shoulders and the shape of his hands, the laughter lines by his
eyes and the sweet rounded curve of his ears. There’s a comfortable, warming heat in
his belly that’s absolutely new. “I couldn’t believe it. What are the chances?”
“I was all set to go to China,” Jensen says. He’s looking back so hard. As if he likes
Jared. Likes likes. “Never thought...” And for the first time, ever, Jared’s glad of his
broad shoulders and his messy hair and his hands and his stupid, different, ugly face,
because Jensen’s looking at him as if he’s worth looking at, and that’s amazing.
“I’d just about given up,” Jared confesses.
“That’d be a waste,” Jensen says. He’s still looking. He’s straightened up in his seat.
Now, he looks confident, sure of himself, and Jared’s suddenly glad that at least one
of them knows what they’ll be doing. If Jensen’s interested. If Jensen’s really
interested. And for the first time on any date, Jared’s not thinking about his two empty
bedrooms, he’s thinking about what it would feel like to feel someone else’s skin
against his, wondering if Jensen’s mouth is as soft as he thinks it might be and his
skin as smooth.
“So, wait,” Jensen says. He reaches out and takes Jared’s hand, an instant shock of
warmth, and cups it in his own. His fingers are shorter, stubbier, strong, and his thumb
fits perfectly into Jared’s palm. “You’ve never...?”
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“No,” Jared says. “I kind of gave up trying after a while.” He doesn’t mention sixteen
disastrous dates. He can imagine telling those stories later, both of them curled up on
his couch. He could maybe make Jensen laugh. He’d like that.
Jensen’s hand tightens. For a moment, Jared feels the phantom prick of claws and the
soft brush of fur against his own skin, and it’s enough to make him gasp. His cock’s
hardening in his jeans, swelling, so unexpectedly demanding he has to hold onto
Jensen’s hand against the disorientating, consuming changes in his own body. He’s a
were, he should be used to becoming something else, but as a panda Jared likes
lounging around in the sun and occasional forays into sugar cane to vary the bamboo
diet. Nothing, nothing, has ever felt like this, his skin fever sensitive, his knees
trembling under the table.
“I’m not the kinda guy should be anyone’s first,” Jensen says. There’s a frown line
between his eyes, but he’s not letting go.
“I don’t care,” Jared says.
“You can do better,” Jensen says, painfully honest, but his thumb’s pushing little
circles into Jared’s palm, sweetly erotic.
“Dude, I’m the only chance you got to get laid this side of the Pacific,” Jared says.
“Are you really gonna say no?” Under the table, his knee’s pressed against Jensen’s.
They’re both shaking. “One of us needs to know the score, and it’s not me.”
“When you put it like that...” Jensen says, smiling, just a little. He’s looking at Jared’s
mouth, not his eyes, and the drop of his eyelashes makes Jared shiver. When Jensen
looks back up, his eyes are dark. “I’m sorry you don’t get a choice,” he says. “But I’ll
do my best by you, swear to God.”
“I’ll take that chance,” Jared says. He stands up, holds out his hand, and although he’s
holding his breath Jensen doesn’t even hesitate.
“You sure?” he asks, although his hand is as tightly clasped around Jared’s as Jared’s
around his.
Jared smiles.
Jensen leaves his books on the cafe table. When Jared asks, later, much later - the
moon’s bright and low through his open bedroom windows and Jensen’s head is
heavy and warm against his shoulder - Jensen says, “Figured I wasn’t going to need
them. One of us knows what they’re doing, even if it ain’t me.”
“I don’t speak Chinese,” Jared says.
“You speak panda,” Jensen says, and, slow and tired, his fingernails scratch at the
perfect spot behind Jared’s ear. “You’ll do.”
212
Fandom: Supernatural RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5,000
Prompt: I just want to see this scene written:
After knotting Jensen, MC manhandles a dazed Jensen to sit on his lap, chest to back, and gets Jensen off again and again by just
playing with his nipples, never even needs to touch his dick. Jensen's sobbing from over-stimulation but is too fucked out to have
enough energy to push MC's hands away from his abused nipples. MC doesn't pull out after his knot deflates, just waits for the
constant contractions of Jensen's ass to get him hard again before he starts round two. (OP’s option for J2 in comments)
Warnings: Omegaverse, and every single layer of dubcon that implies.
Kinks: knotting, dirty talk, nipple play, rimming, snowballing, milking, barebacking, a little bondage, hints of mpreg.
Notes: Many, many thanks to beta Doro.
Written for spnkink_meme, dirty little sister for Not.
Slick
Jay Tryfanstone
2012
“You're so wet,” Jared says. “I... have my fingers right there. Jesus.”
His voice is tentative, and his fingers rub gently at Jensen's hole, slip there smooth
with Jensen's slick, hesitating. It's not enough. Jensen shivers and moans and pushes
back, spreads his thighs and arches his back, feels so wet and empty, “C'mon,” he
moans, knowing he's not going to get what he wants from his Beta co-star, but
needing it anyway. “C'mon. More.” It's hard enough letting Jared see him like this
anyway, vulnerable, needy: so mortifying he hadn't been able to even say the words,
just stripped down and rolled over and heard Jared's half-suppressed gasp. It's fucking
obvious what's going on, he's in heat, and the slick at his ass marks him Omega. Not
the careful, authoritative Beta he's spent his lifetime constructing, the mask he's never
let slip, couldn't.
He's never gone into heat before, doesn't know what the hell happened: he's been
taking suppressors since he was thirteen and they've never failed him until now. He
couldn't have picked a worse time, a closed set, some fucking island off Vancouver.
“Hey, ” Jared had said, catching him shivering and flushed, curled up on the floor of
his trailer. “Ackles. What the fuck's wrong -” His nostrils had widened. “Oh,” he'd
said - so instantly aware of what was going down when it had taken Jensen himself
hours to realize - and then he'd said gently, softly, an embarrassed flush creeping over
his face and his eyes darkening, earnest: “Want me to help? I... know what I'm doing,
Jen.” He's so brightly obliging, the sly tilt of his narrowed eyes familiar, Jensen's
friend, his co-star. And maybe Jared has done this before, for some other closet case, a
girlfriend, a lover.
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Jared. Everyone's best friend.
Jensen, desperate, said yes. He's regretting it now. The tip of Jared's finger teases, a
quarter inch penetration that's nothing but an empty promise. Jensen's practically
squirming on that one touch, but when he pushes back, Jared moves with him, and the
hand that's holding his hips tightens.
“Shouldn't we negotiate?” Jared says. “Isn't there a contract? How many fingers do
you want, how far? No dick, right, Ackles?” There's an undercurrent to his voice that's
dryly amused, far too in control for Jensen's liking. It sends a shiver of unease through
Jensen's skin, but his senses are all over the place, he couldn't read an Alpha in heat if
it was right under his nose. But he's the one in control, he asked for this.
He says, “More than I've got,” twisting against Jared's grip, trying and failing to get
any more than that teasing, stupid hint of the penetration he needs. He's dying here.
He needs it so bad, wants Jared's scent clouding his head, Jared's thighs’ hard muscle
holding his knees open, Jared's hands pushing him down, making him take it, Jared's
dick, Jesus If Jared won't man up and shove his fingers exactly where they're needed Jensen will.
He drops his shoulders on the sheets and reaches back, and behind him Jared's breath
hisses through his teeth and, Jensen can't believe he's doing this, so shaming his face
is on fire and he wants to curl up with embarrassment, but his ass aches and contracts
and flutters, spilling slick, and Jensen arches his back and shoves his own - fuck.
“No you don't,” Jared says. “Oh no.” He's snatched Jensen's hand away, pins it down
in the sheets, and Jensen yells and tugs and heaves but Jared's weight is immovable,
his fingers biting. “If you come,” Jared says, and there's a note to his voice Jensen's
never heard before, deep and powerful. “You come on my dick,” he says, and Jensen,
fuck, Jensen's eyes open wide and his head's a mess of shit, shit, because that's not a
Beta's voice, it's an Alpha's. He's... that's Alpha dick Jared's packing, already massive
and hot and hard behind denim of his jeans, pressing against Jensen's ass. Alpha.
“Oh Jesusfuck get off of me,” Jensen yelps, but the gush of slick is mortifying and his
knees slide further apart and his ass tilts, presenting, his body a mess of need and
want and his mind running in circles. Behind him, his fucking co-star, the fucking
Alpha he's invited into his bed laughs, and for an instant there's a thumb at his hole,
broad and hot and still not enough. He can't help the noise he makes or the way his ass
chases that touch, out of control, begging.
“You want it that bad, Jen, you're gonna dance on my knot,” Jared says, such an easy
confirmation, like this is nothing, as if Jared hasn't lied his way through the last ten
years, as if Jensen isn't panting for his co-star's dick like the Omega slut he's spent his
whole damn life trying not to be. But Jared's free hand is working at Jensen's back, the
clink of his belt buckle and the whip of leather pulled out of belt loops loud and
obvious, and all the choices Jensen's ever made have come down to this, the Alpha
dick behind him. “No fucking contract,” Jared says, sly and wicked. “Welcome to
your biology, baby.” He's laughing. He's still laughing when he leans forward wicked slide of his dick up the crack of Jensen's ass, harsh denim and hard heat under
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it - and grabs Jensen's other wrist. Helpless, Jensen's face hits the sheets, his hands
twisted behind his back. He struggles, his shoulders burning, his hands sweaty and
fisted, but Jared's grip holds him down and leather pulls tight around his wrists.
“Not gonna get out of this one, Jensen,” Jared says, muffled, the belt pulling tight.
Jared's hands fumble, leather bites into Jensen's skin, his muscles bunch, the hairs on
his forearms catching and pulling, but Jared's stronger. “You ever wondered what it
was gonna be like, Alpha dick riding your ass? I'm gonna own you,” Jared says, and
lets go.
Jensen can't. He struggles against the belt, tries to pull his wrists apart, pants into the
sheets. It's so undignified - his ass is utterly exposed, his thighs beginning to ache, the
tendons in his groin stretched tight, and Jared's just leaning back and watching the
show. But Jensen - Jensen can't help it: he humps his ass, waves it in the air like a
fucking flag, like an Omega desperate for a knot. Panting for one, his ass so wet
slick's dripping down his thighs, his balls drawn up tight, his dick so hard it's waving
under his belly and tapping against the sheets, precome drooling down the shaft of it,
sticky, shaming evidence.
“Gotcha just where I want you,” Jared says quietly. “Omega bitch. You want my dick,
Jen? How bad? Gonna beg for it?”
“Fuck you,” Jensen growls.
Jared's hands fasten on his hips, drag his ass further up in the air: Jensen's cock slaps
against his own belly and wobbles, skin painfully tight now. “C'mon, Jen,” Jared says
to him, whispers. “How bad do you really want it? How hard? You really think I'm
gonna give it to you just ’cause of your pretty ass and the smell of you right now? Beg
me,” Jared says, and leans forward. He's unzipped his jeans, and the metal of the zip
drags over Jensen's thighs and his ass, cold hard bite of teeth, and the hard, heated line
of his dick rides Jensen's crack crown to balls, easy slide. Jared's bending over, his
elbows planting into the mattress on either side of Jensen's head, his chest heavy
against Jensen's back and his bound wrists, stubble on it pricking against Jensen's
skin, his chin pointed hard into the base of Jensen's neck.
“Hormones must be going wild right now,” Jared says, confidentially quiet, the
rumble of his voice in his chest shivering through Jensen's skin. “Want me to knock
you up, Jen? Fill you up, get my pup in your belly? Never gonna leave me then.
Watch you swell, keep you barefoot and plugged, chain you to the fucking kitchen
sink if I have to. Wanna have my pup tugging on your tits?” Jared's hand is hot,
splayed over Jensen's flat belly and pressing up, like he's already full: then he tugs,
hard, on Jensen's nipple, rolls it between finger and thumb, a warning shot of pain that
jerks Jensen's cock and tightens his balls. “C'mon, Jen,” he says, mouth wet and
warm. “I know you want it. Show me.” He bites down, all teeth and venom, and it
hurts, it really fucking hurts, but it bucks Jensen's ass against that infuriating dick like
his backbone's on a string held in Jared's hand. “Beg me,” Jared says, and at last his
voice is strained and his dick's leaking on Jensen's back, blood hot.
215
When he pushes upright, Jared's hand is on the back of Jensen's neck, heavy and tight.
“Come on, beg,” Jared says. “Wanna watch you squirm on my dick. Try hard enough,
it's yours.”
Jensen does. He's babbling into the sheet, “Fuck you, hate you so much right now,
bastard, bastard,” but he's pushing his ass up, pleading, and the head of Jared's dick is
sliding against his hole. “Please,” Jensen moans, wriggling, helpless, hips thrusting
up, obscene. He's so wet, so empty. “Jared. Jay. Please!”
“Please, what?” Jared says, his hand on Jensen's ass and his fingers curled around his
dick, holding it in place, so close Jensen's hole parts over the swollen head of it with
every thrust and he can feel Jared's foreskin roll back. Jensen's feverish with want,
shaking with it: his head rolls from side to side, his hands flex and fist in their
bindings, he needs, so badly. His teeth are clenched.
Jared says, “Sweetheart.”
“Get in me,” Jensen manages. “Fuck me, fuck me hard -” He gets an extra inch, wails
around it, his hole clenching and sliding around Jared's dick. Thicker than any toy he's
ever used, hotter, living, unpredictable: Jensen gasps, fighting against Jared's hand
and his weight, wants more. “Stick it in," he says, and barely recognizes the rasp of
his own voice. “Please, Jay, please, I'm begging, I'll be -”
“Go on,” Jared says, and his thumbs press down on Jensen's hole, either side of his
dick, pull at the stretched muscle until it strains and hurts. When Jensen moves, his
ass sucks at Jared's dick, wants more, but not even the head's fully inside. “You gonna
be good for me? Take everything I got for you?” Jared says, and flexes, gives Jensen
another half inch, pain flaring through his asshole for one shocking second as the
crown pops his rim. It's still not enough, only a hint of the knot Jared's packing.
“I'll be so good,” Jensen begs through gritted teeth, “I swear to you, I'll be good, fuck,
please, Jay, I want. I need you,” Jensen says, and knows his voice is little more than a
wail.
“Bitch,” Jared says fondly.
He runs his free hand up the sweat on Jensen's back, drags his fingernails after and
makes Jensen arch higher than he thought he could, thighs shaking. Jensen gets
another half inch of fat, slick dick, can't hold his ass that high and loses it, sobbing.
“What the fuck... what the fuck do you want?” he manages. “Jay, please.”
“My bitch,” Jared says, sliding deeper. His hands change their grip. “Mine.” It's a
growl. “Swear i.
“Fuck okay,” Jensen yelps.
Jared slams his dick home. All of it, every fat, gorgeous, heavy inch of it, merciless
and exact, and Jensen screams at how fucking good it feels, at the relief and the pain
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and the pleasure so mixed his eyes blur and his back hunches and his hips buck up
against Jared's and stop, jerking, fastened by Jared's hands.
“Oh fucking hell yes,” Jensen babbles, “Please Jay, so fucking good need -” He's
mortified by the words coming out of his own mouth, bites down on the sheets and
still begs for more. “Jay,” he says, “Alpha.”
“Babe,” Jared says, all lazy amused pleasure, and pulls out, long and slow.
Jensen keens with the loss, still can't move, rolls his shoulders, tries to push back and
can't, and Jared rubs soothing circles into his hips even as he nearly - nearly, so
nearly, tip of his dick hesitating where Jensen needs him most - stops. Jensen can feel
his own body betray him, flutter and cling and pull, so wet he's leaking around Jared's
dick, for God's sake, he can hear the bubble of his own slick above his own gasps. His
insides feel hollow, empty, yearning: he wants so badly Jared's weight and heat, the
breadth of him, wants it always, wants to hang off his knot and swell with his pup and
fuck yeah, that's it, Jared, yes.
When Jared pushes back, he forces all the air in Jensen's body out with him,
luxuriously vicious. “Jen. So tight,” he says. “Perfect.”
And that's absolutely terrifying, the approval in Jared's voice, because Jensen wants to
bask in the warmth of it, owned. He whimpers into the sheets instead, digs his
fingernails into the palms of his hands and tries to remember who he is, and Jared's
fingers slide around his neck just where an Alpha's collar would lie.
“You were made for this,” Jared whispers, bending over, his dick an unmoving,
heated weight in Jensen's ass. “My dick in your ass. My knot. My come. My bitch.
Hold onto yourself, Jen, I'ma gonna fuck you now.”
He does. Relentless, powerful, Alpha dick, everything Jensen's wanted and never
allowed himself to have, and Jensen whines for it just like the bitch Jared's named
him. It's utterly humiliating, miserable, and the hottest fuck he's ever had, nothing he'd
asked for, nothing he'd expected, he'd never guessed - “Oh fuck,” Jensen moans, and
behind him Jared shifts an inch down and fucking nails Jensen's prostate on every
single damn thrust. Nothing he'd read, no porn he's watched, nothing compares to this,
he can't see, he's gasping, the bed board's hammering at the trailer wall, the whole van
must be shaking, there's no way everyone on set doesn't know what's going on “Fuck yeah take it,” Jared growls, and suddenly his hands are biting into Jensen's
hips, holding him still.
That's not just Jared's dick pushing into his ass, it's a half hard knot that still feels like
Jared's trying to shove a fucking baseball in there. Jensen's asshole wasn't made to
stretch that far, he's gonna fucking break, there's no way it'll fit.
Jared howls. He fucking howls, when the knot goes in, when Jensen's hurting so bad
and so good and can't fucking catch his breath and still wants to move. He can't. He's
knotted, absolutely helpless, owned, and Jared folds up over his back and pants
217
happily in his ear. The whole crew on set must have heard the rebel yell of that howl,
and Jensen cringes and shivers and pulls at the cruel, tight stretch of the leather
around his wrists while his ass tries to close around the brutal mass of Jared's knot and
can't. But his cock's shamingly, painfully hard, rolled against his belly, and his balls
are throbbing, like all he's ever needed is Alpha dick shoved up his ass to make him
the Omega bitch he's mocked and derided and lied about being.
“Knew you'd be good,” Jared murmurs, heated and urgent, and his knot's still
growing, massive, hard and so hot Jensen's ass burns around the bulge of it. “So
fucking good, Jen.” Lazy, Jared's hand slips down, tugs at Jensen's own cock.
“C'mon,” Jared says, hand slip-sliding on the precome that coats Jensen's skin.
“C'mon then, come for me.”
Inescapable, like he's tied to Jared's voice and not just his knot, Jensen does. It's crazy,
white lights and blacked-out vision and pins and needles, and it fucking hurts, his
cock jerking in Jared's hand and his ass clenching around Jared's knot. He sets Jared
off too: the knot squeezes even harder and Jensen swears he can feel the jerk of it, the
hot spurts of Alpha come flooding his ass, seeping down, soaking his balls, his thighs,
the sheets. He's going to be smelling of slick and come for days, walking funny for
weeks, and everyone's going to take one look at him and know he bent over for Alpha
dick, took it hard and fucking loved it.
There's a reason he's never done this before.
Jared, bastard, takes his time undoing the belt, lazy git that he is, all blissed out.
Fucking Alpha. “Eight fucking years,” Jensen grumbles, rubbing at his wrists. “Eight
years!”
“Yeah yeah,” Jared mutters, rolls over with one big hand curled around Jensen's
shoulders. “Talk later. Sleep now.”
There's come still dripping out of Jensen's ass, he's gross and sweaty and on edge. He
needs to be out of here yesterday. He needs to be flying out of the damn country. “Let
go,” he warns.
Eyes snapping up, Jared growls at him. “Sleep.”
Jensen does.
He wakes up to the soothing stroke of Jared's hands on his skin, and for a moment, he
relaxes into that touch, stretches and preens. It feels like - Jensen yelps. His ass, Jesus,
his ass. “What the fuck -” he manages. “Jay, fuck -”
“Huh. Sorry. Does it hurt?” Jared says, all apologetic big eyes and smirk. “Roll over,”
he says, and drops a kiss on Jensen's shoulder, sweet and innocent, until he blows a
raspberry on wet skin. “C'mon,” he coaxes.
“I'm fucking sore,” Jensen complains. “Seriously, Jay, I feel like I've had a baseball
bat up my ass. I'm gonna be limping for days.”
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“I'll kiss it better?” Jared offers, conciliatory.
Jensen rolls over, huffing. “Don't touch my ass,” he warns. “Jay, I'm telling you, don't
-” He's thinking about packing, about calling the boat to pick him up. He needs to get
the hell out of here, now, before this shit hits the internet. His career's shafted,
contracts void, fuck, he's gonna lose the house without an Alpha co-sign “Mmm,” Jared says, and his weight settles between Jensen's legs, unaccountably
spread. His hands are warm, pulling the cheeks of Jensen's ass apart, and his face
prickles with stubble.
“Jay,” Jensen says, sharp. He's filthy down there, still tacky with his own slick and
Jared's come, and his asshole still feels both frighteningly lax and bitingly sore.
“You look fucking used,” Jared announces, on a note of deep satisfaction.
“I know that,” Jensen says, and tries to squirm upwards and close his thighs.
“Nah, c'mon baby, don't do that, let daddy see,” Jared croons.
The hands that had been gentle are gripping hard. Jensen can't move. “Stop it,” he
says, but he can feel the slick start to come, his ass awkwardly wet inside, although
he's not leaking yet. “That's just disturbing.”
“Huh,” Jared says, the heat of his face warm against the inside of Jensen's thighs. His
stubble scratches, irritating. “I had my dick right in there, Jen, don't think you've got
much left to hide.” He thumbs at Jensen's asshole, gently, but it still hurts and Jensen
shivers.
“Babe,” Jared says, muffled, and then the flat of his tongue licks up Jensen's crack,
broad and wet and hot and filthy.
“What -” Jensen says, trying to sit up. “Jared. That's, fuck, that's, how can you, at least
let me shower, Jesus -”
Jared's not listening. Jared's tongue wriggles and soothes, muscular, wickedly wet,
stripes up Jensen's ass and worms into the sore folds of his asshole. He slobbers. He
grins into Jensen's ass and bites, sharp stinging pain, at Jensen's asscheek and then he
licks again -“Fuck, Jay, I mean it, that's unclean, that's, holy shit -” and sucks, eagerly,
his own come and Jensen's slick out of Jensen's asshole, tongue working away at the
rim of muscle hard and sore. “Oh Christ,” Jensen says helpless, his hands fisting in
the sheets and his hips rising. “I can't, Jay.”
But he can. His body shivers, begs, his thighs shake, his own slick and Jared's saliva
gathers and pools and drips down his aching balls to the mattress. He's starting to feel
empty again. It hurts, it's so filthy, it's the dirtiest thing anyone's ever done to him, and
he wants it anyway. “Stop it,” he says weakly, and Jared's finger slides in with his
tongue and crooks down. Jared's got long fingers, and he knows exactly where to
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push, too hard, too soon, but there are sparks behind Jensen's eyelids and his whole
body is arching off the sheets, his hole soaking, open and vulnerable and needy.
“Got what you need,” Jared mutters, and shoves another finger in there in place of his
tongue, licks around the knuckles of them and Jensen's ass. It's not enough.
“Please,” Jensen says. “C'mon,” he mutters, “C'mon, c'mon.” He's not expecting
anything, not after the cruel tease that was last time.
“Slut,” Jared says gleefully, pulls his fingers out with an obscene slurp, and slides up
Jensen's back. His dick's a hot, blunt pressure against Jensen's asshole, but there's no
resistance left in the muscle. Jared slides in on slick and saliva, nosing home, pushing
his way inside Jensen's body and not stopping until the heavy, furred weight of his
balls is pressed against Jensen's ass and his weight holds both of them down. This
time, he's rocking his dick in and out of Jensen's ass, snatched inches, and Jensen
squirms, feels the muscles of his ass spasm and cling, slippery with slick. Wants
more, harder, humps his ass and his cock the bare inch he can between Jared's hips
and the sheets, wanton and shamed.
“Settle down,” Jared mutters into his ear, pointed chin tucked into the crook of
Jensen's neck. “Take it slow. You'll hurt.”
“Fuck you,” Jensen says, succinct.
Jared laughs. “If you say so,” he says, and pushes up. He pulls out fast and hammers
back in again, wickedly, painfully hard, pulls out and does it again, again, again, too
fast, too much, fucking jackhammer of a dick that owns Jensen's ass and makes him
claw the sheets and hunch over with the want of it, the aching, miserable need that
gnaws at his guts. Jared doesn't stop. Jared fucks him deep and hard and fast,
relentless as a machine, and Jensen comes hard and wails, clenches around the dick
that's still fucking him, hasn't even paused, as if Jared didn't notice or didn't care that
Jensen's spent. Jensen's elbows have folded, his knees can't hold him up, and Jared's
dick still hammers his ass.
“Can't -” Jensen whimpers, and Jared heaves him up like a rag doll, sits him down
with his thighs splayed apart and his head rolling on Jared's shoulder and Jared's dick
pushed even deeper inside. Jared doesn't even miss a beat, hands forcing Jensen up
and down by his hips, a grinding stroke that burns and aches.
“Can,” Jared says breathlessly, and then shifts his hand. He curls it around Jensen's
spent, sorry, sensitive cock and pulls, fingers sliding through come.
Jensen hears himself whimper, arches his back against the pain and hears Jared growl
in satisfaction: Jensen's asshole hurts, aches, and then the pain's suddenly sharp again
as Jared slams his half-hard knot through the sore, stretched muscle. It hurts so bad,
the muscle quivering, flinching, trying to close and failing, forced wide by the base of
Jared's cock. Eyes screwed up, teeth biting hard at his lip, Jensen pants and shakes,
but Jared's long, quiet howl is utterly triumphant.
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“Fuck yeah,” Jared says, at last, and lets Jensen rest on his thighs, groaning. The
swelling knot makes Jensen shiver, makes his ass ache, but Jared holds him down.
Jared's breathing hard, groaning, he's going to come, soon - and then he gasps once,
short and sharp. Come stings, hot and sticky, in Jensen's ass, Jared's knot pushing at
his prostate, painfully hard. He can feel his ass walls tremble, try and contract and fail
and try again, useless, around Jared's dick. Around his own cock, Jared's hand
squeezes and tugs in painful counterpoint to the pulse of his knot. “Come for me,” he
says, wheezes, his voice high and tight as he comes himself. “C'mon, slut, show me
what you got, betcha can, betcha got something left for me.”
“Hurts,” Jensen manages, his head rolling against Jared's shoulder and his eyes closed
tight against the pain.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jared mutters, but his hand shifts, splays over Jensen's belly and then
inches up to his right nipple. It hardens under the push of his fingers, painfully taut.
“Huh," Jared says, his voice intrigued, and then he licks his hand. His thumb pushes
back, wet and cold, and then his fingers lock on and pull hard.
The pain, unexpected, makes Jensen squirm on Jared's knot, try and pull away, but he
can't. Jared's got him good, knotted fast.
“Mmm,” Jared hums, and his fingers tighten again, plucking, sore now, a sharp,
aching pain that still shivers down Jensen's spine to his balls. Makes Jensen think of a
pup sucking there, tugging at sore cracked skin, a pup with sharp white teeth and
Jared's eyes. His belly shivers, a dark surge of frightening need, everything he's
terrified of feeling. But he's writhing, helpless, arching up into Jared's hands and down
onto Jared's dick, and Jared's laughing a little, breathless. “Like it,” he says, and then
his other hand's on Jensen's left nipple, pulling and tugging in a rhythm that forces
Jensen's back into a painful arch and makes his ass slip and tug at the hard bulge of
Jared's knot. It hurts, aches, stings: Jared rolls both nipples between finger and thumb,
pulls hard, and then lets his thumbnail press into the swollen flesh. Jensen yelps,
stung, and he can feel his asshole spasm around Jared's knot as if the nerves are strung
together.
“I'll get you clamps, next time,” Jared promises, his voice wicked dark. “String
weights off 'em, chain you down to the bed.” His fingers push and press and then
pluck, hard, stretching out Jensen's nipples further and faster than he can bear.
“Can't - Jay, please -” His voice is a broken mess.
“Bite you with them on,” Jared says.
He buries his fingernails into flesh, such a bright pain that Jensen surges up into the
pull of it, needing more, shoving himself down on that massive knot and up into
Jared's touch, desperate and crazed. Jensen's going to come from this, going to make
himself come, can't stop himself writhing and twisting under Jared's hands, panting.
The next time Jared's fingernails tear into his nipples Jensen does come again, almost
dry and so painful he's crying. Bitter stinging tears to match the wicked sharp pain in
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his balls and his nipples, the defeated, flagging half-soft pulse of his cock and the
biting pain in his ass as his body tries to buck and can't, tied by Jared's knot. Jared
practically wrings the come out of him, his hands twisting and pulling.
Then there's nothing left in Jensen at all but a deep, drugging lassitude. He can't move,
is only barely conscious of the knot that forces him open and the come and slick that's
pushed out of his hole with every tiny contraction. Jared's hand holds him up, Jared's
thighs hold his apart, Jared's fingers tug painfully at his swollen, wet nipples and his
empty balls and roll the loose, hurting flesh of his cock in their grip.
“Reckon I could milk another one out of you?” he asks. “Love it when you come on
my dick. Feels so damn good, you'll never know.”
“Please,” Jensen whispers, half asleep.
“Please what, babe?” Jared asks, his fingers pushing down to press around the sore
rim of Jensen's asshole, stretched wide around the base of Jared's dick. His knot pulses
inside, still contracting. “You want more?” His forefinger's petting at the muscle, wet
with slick and come, pushing at it, wriggling.
“Jesus Christ, no!” Jensen says, waking up and trying to sit up and flailing, but Jared's
got him pinned down and Jared's finger pushes and levers and forces itself inside
Jensen's ass in a dull flare of pain. It slides in against Jared's knot, knuckles pushed
against Jensen's prostate, and it's too fucking much, Jensen's body wasn't built to take
this, he'll rip apart.
“Thought you liked it dirty,” Jared says, and Jensen pushes weakly at the arm that
holds him down and the one that flexes against his belly as that finger shifts inside
him, crushed between his prostate and Jared's knot, wickedly, painfully intimate. He's
got no strength left in him, he's utterly fucked out, totally limp in Jared's embrace: his
thighs won't hold him up even if he splits his ass open dragging it off Jared's knot.
“One more, I swear,” Jared whispers. “One more and I'll let you sleep. C'mon, Jen,
babe, I know you can.”
It's with absolute horror that Jensen feels his poor, spent cock twitch against his thigh.
“I can't,” he moans. “I can't. I can't.”
He's pushing back into Jared's chest now, twisting around the pain in his ass, looking
for comfort in all the wrong places, but Jared's arm comes up and holds him tight and
Jared croons into his ear, “So beautiful, Jen, so good, you're doing so well,” even as
his finger cruelly massages the last of Jensen's come out of his body. Slow, thin, it
dribbles out of his soft cock onto his thighs, every drop a separate spasm of pain that
matches the weak, failing contractions of his ass on Jared's knot.
Jensen thinks he blacks outs before it finishes, but he might just fall asleep.
By the time he wakes up, he's knotted again. He doesn't even know if Jared ever
pulled out: Jared's asleep, snoring into the pillow and dribbling on Jensen's shoulder,
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but his dick's wedged firmly in Jensen's ass. Tug and whimper and moan as he will,
Jensen's not going anywhere: every pull at his abused asshole sends a spasm of pain
shafting through his balls and his belly, as if half the nerves in his body have re-routed
to his ass. He's stuck fast, caught, owned, and Jared isn't even awake.
That's the first time he allows himself to weep, silently, over a lifetime of concealing
what he is - he's not a Beta, never will be. And Jared's never going to let this one lie,
it's the worst prank his co-star's ever pulled, the most successful, disastrous,
devastating. He tries to stifle his tears, regrets every single greekphobic joke he's ever
made on set, lies gasping into the muffling palm of his own hand, but Jared wakes.
Jensen's expecting mockery. It's nothing more than he's going to get the moment he
limps out the trailer. Omega. Knotslut. Bitch.
But Jared pulls him into a massive, determined embrace and lets him cry, silent,
unmoving. It's a rough, unwelcome comfort, but Jensen takes it, and he dozes with his
cheek against the salt-wet pillow and the rest of him curled into the cradle of Jared's
arms and his thighs. Jared smells of shampoo and soap, but Jensen's itching with dried
sweat, his come still splattered sticky across his chest and dried in thin dribbles down
his belly, the hairs in his inner thigh catching against the tacky spill of his slick and
Jared's seed and his ass cheeks wet inside. His ass feels loose and sodden, but the
heavy thrust of Jared's dick is an almost comfortable weight, his knot solidly present.
Jared must have got up and showered, come back and opened Jensen up and fucked
himself inside like he's got every right, like he can roll Jensen over and shove his knot
in there without even asking. Any time he wants.
Alpha.
“Jay?” Jensen whispers, cautiously.
“Yeah, I know,” Jared says, slow and deep. “Think I'ma gonna let you go now?” His
hand slips down, curls warm around Jensen's belly. “Every fucker'll know you've been
bred,” he says, drowsy, content.
The bite on Jensen's shoulder aches, hard.
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Notes.
* Ever since Jared read that article about exactly what kind of long-term damage black market suppressants can
do to an Omega, Jensen's have been coming on prescription from the Padalecki family doctor. It's been over six
years but Jensen still doesn't know that, back in Texas, he's a registered, chipped, collared Padalecki Omega,
show name Jensen Ross Smeckles Padalecki-Ackles.
* Yup, he's been taking placebos since they got on the ferry. He doesn't know that, either. But it's about time they're not getting any younger, there's enough money in the bank, Jensen's never gonna get his hands on a
morning-after pill stuck on some island in Vancouver Sound - and Jared's tired of waiting. He wants Jensen
wearing Jared's collar like it's been there all his life and a pup with Jensen's freckles and his grin.
* Jared likes to tell himself that a summer pup's a really practical idea. It'll give Jensen time to get over the birth
before they shoot season nine. But there's a sneaky part of him that badly wants to see Jensen waddling onto stage
on the post-season con circuit, when every single person out there will know that the pup he can't hide is Jared's.
Jared figures he's gonna be giving a lot of foot rubs. That's okay.
* Jensen's gonna kill Jared when he does find out. Jared's only hope is to keep Jensen so fucked out and happy he
doesn't notice. Jared's Mom thinks he's an idiot and should sit Jensen down and tell him everything.
* Jared's Mom is probably right.
Copyright, asofterworld.com.
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Credits
I owe so many, many thanks to the people who helped out so much with this zine. I am so very grateful,
it’s amazing that people spent so much of their own time on these stories.
bethia_cathrain, who beta’d in the teeth of her own schedule.
doro, who beta’d almost the whole of this zine, under pressure, having signed up for two stories. She’s
amazing. I’ve been so lucky to have her help – this would be half the publication it is without her. I
don’t think there’s a single comma which escaped her scrutiny.
I don’t know if she’s ever volunteer again, though!
meus_venator, who did the stunning covers for The Ackles Clause and An Occurrence of Dragons, as
well as the single .epub, .pdf and .mobi files for these stories.
Richard, who did the canon beta for The Shining of the Stars – I was terrified.
salty_catfish and her sister, who produced an amazing choice of covers!
unovis_lj, who was so steady and understanding with her support, and beta’d the stories I was so
worried about.
Thank you to you, as well, for reading.
That’s all folks.
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