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Part 1
Jensen spent half an hour he really couldn’t spare that morning picking out the white shirt that made his eyes look extra green and the khakis that made his ass look amazing.
“Screw it, we’re ordering in,” Jared said as soon as he’d gotten a good look at Jensen.
Jensen flushed and wouldn’t meet Jared’s eyes, but he couldn’t suppress a smile.
What was half an hour, in the greater scheme of things?
At that point, Jared put his hands on Jensen’s shoulders, pushing him down, and the philosophical portion of the evening was pretty much concluded.
****
Jensen didn’t donate the money, but he didn’t spend it either. He put it in a shoebox at the back of his closet, and sometimes he looked at his loan balance and thought about being able to leave the firm, maybe do something he really wanted—one of his classmates was working at the Innocence Project, and she sent out these emails every once in a while that made his throat clench up—but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. It didn’t help that he was almost certain that he’d get busted for tax evasion if he tried, and he felt like a criminal even looking up the rules for cash deposits, which his ethics professor had said was generally a sign that you were trying to figure out how to do the wrong thing and get away with it. So, yeah. Shoebox, back of the closet.
Jared came to town every couple of weeks. They developed a pattern: they’d fuck at Jared’s hotel, order some food, debate what tourist attraction Jared should see before he flew back, and then fuck again. Jensen put his foot down at work and made enough time to see a couple of shows or exhibits each week so that he’d be able to make solid recommendations. (Okay, he maybe put a couple of toes down, and also cancelled his cable, but it worked out that he had more free time on balance.) He started running to and from work and showering at the office, which took longer than taking the Metro but kept him from feeling too much like the ‘before’ picture compared to Jared.
Despite the fact that he turned down three assignments, or maybe because of it, his biennial evaluation was better than ever. “You really seem to have found your place,” the partner leading the review said, and even though that wasn’t exactly how Jensen felt, he nodded, because he hadn’t lost all good sense. And he still thought that contractual loopholes were fantastic intellectual challenges, but having to talk to Jared about something else entirely turned out to be revitalizing.
They never talked about Jared’s business either, though if it brought him to DC on a regular basis Jensen figured it had to be either politics or defense-related. Jensen was guessing defense contractor of some sort, important enough to get paid enough to drop thousands of dollars (on Jensen) each trip but not so important that a paid-gay-companion sex scandal would destroy him. He was careful not to ask. The illusion that they only existed when they were with each other was fragile (and directly contradicted by those discreet envelopes) but important—important enough to Jared for him to pay dearly for it, and important enough to Jensen that he couldn’t afford to forget.
****
“Let’s do something different,” Jared said as soon as Jensen answered his phone one crisp fall day.
“No more food,” Jensen said immediately, because he was still unable to eat sushi. Jared’s sexcapade ideas were almost all excellent, but the occasional misfire was epic.
“No!” Jared made an embarrassed noise. “I mean, not like that. There’s this restaurant, they do a tasting menu. Supposedly it takes four and a half hours.”
Jensen closed his eyes and spun in his chair, facing the unseeing polarized windows of the building across the street. “Jared, I. I feel bad about you spending that kind of money on—”
“I want to,” Jared said, almost sullen.
Jensen didn’t know what to say to him. You should be careful so that I don’t think this is a date? I’m already way too into you; I think about you every day you’re not here? But the whole point of their—their business arrangement, that was the only word for it, was that Jensen didn’t say no.
He cleared his throat. “What if we, you know, started counting after dinner?”
“Jensen,” Jared said, and now his usual good humor was all but restored, “you’re not gonna drive me into bankruptcy or anything. And I know the score.”
“Still,” Jensen told him, “let’s—you know, it’s a frequent flyer discount, whatever.”
Jared laughed, and Jensen curled himself around the phone, wanting Jared there right now. “So do I also get a first class upgrade?”
Jensen froze, flummoxed. “What exactly did you have in mind?” If he’d just walked into some weird hooker lingo, he was going to be in deep trouble. Also, he was having a hard time imagining something he hadn’t already allowed Jared to try.
“Why don’t I leave it to your discretion?” Jared teased, and Jensen relaxed.
In the end, they did go to the restaurant. The meal took nearly five hours. Between courses, Jared told Jensen about his high school misadventures in San Antonio and Jensen gave back stories about Richardson, carefully free of last names or any references further forward in time. They were stuffed like overinflated balloons by the time the chocolate truffles arrived at the table—also buzzed, because they’d split a wine pairing, nine glasses for nine courses, so if they walked a straight line back to the hotel it was only because they were leaning on each other and cancelling each other out.
Jensen tried to put Jared into his bed, but Jared just pulled Jensen down and wouldn’t let go, so they passed out like that until Jared woke at ass-o’-clock and then totally took the ass part seriously. Jensen ended up getting fucked as the predawn light seeped past the curtains, and then fucked again in the shower, and after that he declared that ‘first class upgrade’ meant a blowjob combined with a vibrator in Jared’s ass, which worked well enough that it was totally worth having carried the little lipstick-sized thing around with him for a day.
After breakfast (the hotel made excellent scones), Jared mentioned his planned tour of the Hirshhorn. “Sounds great,” Jensen said, and Jared got this funny tight look on his face, which made Jensen realize that he sounded like he was inviting himself along.
“I’ll see you when you’re back in town?” he said quickly, because even if Jared thought he was being offered a freebie, it wasn’t in the terms of their arrangement that Jensen got to impose like that. Anyway, the now-Dickensian Johnson deal had suffered some sort of outbreak late Friday, right before they’d gone to dinner, and Jensen needed to go in and start shoveling away at the resulting mess.
When he hung up his jacket at the office, he found the usual envelope, with the usual three thousand. Jensen thought that, if he really had been a prostitute, he would have appreciated Jared’s polite discretion even more.
****
He didn’t hear from Jared for three weeks after that.
They’d compared opinions on Shakespeare, for fuck’s sake. (Jared had this completely twisted preference for the comedies, when anyone could plainly see that Hamlet was the only play that mattered.)
Oh God, he was a Julia Roberts cliche. Except that Jensen knew what the original ending of that movie had been, and he wasn’t expecting any Disney bluebirds to flutter down and give him his fairy-tale ending. And even if Jared, through some miracle, decided to ‘rescue’ him, that would only expose all the lies: what could he say? Sorry, I have this job already, it involves billing two thousand hours a year, more if I want a bonus—yeah, I guess you could call my profession corporate whore. In a sense, I do screw people for money. Just not quite as directly as you thought I did.
Right, that was enough to shrivel the fantasy before it unfurled.
Regardless, when Jared texted him in the middle of a dank Wednesday, Jensen felt like he’d been catapulted out of the office, soaring high into the clouds. “Free tonight?”
Jared had never wanted him except on the weekends. Heart pounding, he bent over his phone, carefully typing in the words. “You’re in town? I’ll rearrange my schedule.” Bruce would live with getting the next draft tomorrow.
There was a delay, during which Jensen fretted that he’d texted too needily, or something.
The response disabused him of any notion that it mattered. “Actually I have these two friends. I thought I’d give them your number. If that’s ok.”
His whole body turned to ice. His phone began to slip from his numb hands, and he only just caught it before it smashed to the floor. Part of him wanted to see it shatter, have an excuse not to answer.
He was going to be sick.
But when he managed to get himself to the bathroom, shoulder aching from something or someone he’d bumped into on the way, all he could do was sink to his knees on the cold hard tile and lean over the toilet. Nothing came up.
He’d been a fool.
And he could hardly blame Jared, who’d been upfront about his intentions and his expectations. Jensen was a travel luxury, like one of those supersoft bathrobes in the hotel bathroom. You didn’t worry that other people used them, not as long as they were cleaned in between. Jared had never offered anything other than what he was willing to give, steak dinners and dead presidents.
His hands were shaking and he mistyped at least a dozen times, but eventually he got the message together. “Sorry. Not taking on anybody new right now.”
And if pressing ‘send’ felt like putting his hand through a wall, Jensen didn’t have to admit that to anyone.
Jared didn’t respond.
****
Another three weeks passed. Jensen said yes to a document review that would’ve made even him weep with boredom if it hadn’t been a welcome distraction.
He thought about going out. It wouldn’t have to be a bar. He could hit Kramerbooks, approach someone who was checking out the nonfiction.
The thought just made him want to curl up in the corner of his office and wait until the growing pile of paperwork smothered him. He didn’t want to go out and make himself pretend to be interesting for some random stranger. He wanted Jared. Only he’d fucked that up, of course. Even when he pretended, his real, snoozeworthy self bled through.
Maybe he should’ve said yes to Jared’s friends. They could’ve been not entirely disgusting. If Jared paid for it, after all, then anything was possible. He could have closed his eyes and thought about work to get through the experience.
And then Jared wouldn’t have seen through his pathetic crush, and maybe he would’ve wanted Jensen again. If there’d been any doubt after the dinner and the morning after (but of course, Jared hadn’t even noticed at that point, because Jared didn’t see him that way), Jensen had confirmed it when he’d turned down Jared’s friends: Jensen was acting like a boyfriend, and Jared had never given any indication he was okay with that.
When Jared called while Jensen was deep in parsing an expert report that he was pretty sure played fast and loose with Bayes’ Theorem, Jensen almost didn’t understand what was happening. That was probably the only reason his voice sounded normal when he answered.
“Hello?”
“Jensen, hi.” Jared sounded—relieved? Nervous? Weird. “Hey, I know I haven’t been around much, but is there any chance you’re available Friday?”
“Friday?” Jensen repeated, more out of shock than anything else. He blinked, trying to clear his head, and pulled up his schedule, as if that mattered at all. “Uh—”
“It’s for me,” Jared said quickly. “I mean, it’d be me. You and me. If that’s okay.”
“Sure,” Jensen said, mouth way ahead of his brain. “Yeah. I’d—yeah, great.”
“Great!” Jared repeated, with considerably more enthusiasm. “See you then.”
Jensen minimized his calendar and stared at the sensitivity and specificity measurements on his computer screen, wondering what the hell had just happened.
****
He arrived at Jared’s hotel room resolved not to fuck up again, which wasn’t a problem, since Jared basically picked him up and threw him at the bed. Jensen’s vocabulary devolved to ‘yeah’ and ‘like that’ at variable volumes for a while, which was more than okay.
When he realized that he was leaning over Jared’s sated body, running his fingers through Jared’s sweaty, desperately-in-need-of-a-haircut bangs, he hesitated. But Jared had his eyes closed and made a displeased grunt when Jensen’s hand faltered. So he figured that Jared considered the lesson taught, and redoubled his commitment to following Jared’s rules.
“So what educational pastime do you have planned for tomorrow?” he asked idly, his voice hoarse from the second time, when Jared had practically shoved his cock down Jensen’s throat and Jensen had come all over his own fist.
“Hadn’t decided,” Jared said, still not opening his eyes. “Any suggestions?”
Because Jared wasn’t watching, Jensen risked smiling down at him, feeling light and heavy all at once. “I haven’t been able to check out the Chinese terra cotta warriors at the Sackler, but I hear they’re cool.”
Jared turned his face away, his shoulders tensing, and Jensen carefully disentangled his hand. Their sides were still pressed together, sweat-damp, contact warming him and making his thoughts run syrup-slow. Jared’s voice, when it came, was low enough that Jensen had to lean forward to hear him. “You could. I mean, we could go see them together.”
Jensen swallowed. He wanted to do that, stand in front of the exhibits and make jokes about how the nearly life-sized figures were half Jared’s height. Wanted people to look at them and think, those men are together. He could imagine the feel of Jared’s hand in his, big as the rest of him, warm and reassuring and—totally fake. If he tried something like that in reality, Jared was likely to conclude that Jensen hadn’t gotten the lesson the first time.
“I—I might have to work,” he said, as close as he could make himself get to saying no, even though he knew that he was just tormenting himself.
“Work,” Jared repeated, like the word tasted bad, and then he rolled further away, so that they weren’t touching at any point, and sat up, shoving the pillows aside to make space for himself.
Jensen figured that he wasn’t supposed to stay lying down either, so he sat too, pulling the sheet over his lap as if that would offer some sort of protection.
“How many clients do you have?” Jared asked, an unusual strain in his voice as he leaned back against the headboard.
Jensen suppressed the powerful impulse to say “one,” because Jared had made it pretty clear how things stood between them. He thought about work, the client numbers it seemed like he dreamed about. “Four or five,” he said, hoping it sounded plausible.
“And you, what, find them—?”
Jared was the one who seemed so familiar with the business in the first place, Jensen thought with a touch of resentment. “Uh, referrals,” he guessed, trying to keep the hesitation out of his voice. He shifted a little, because even on a soft bed the fact that he’d gone six weeks without fucking Jared was making itself apparent.
“Oh, yeah,” Jared said, like he was relieved. “But—how did you start?” His fingers were playing idly with the edge of one of the overstuffed pillows.
“Someone offered to pay me,” Jensen said, biting his lip.
“You do background checks, right? You don’t just—jeez, I should’ve given you names, no wonder you were mad.” Jared’s face was red now, spreading down his throat to his chest, looking away from Jensen.
“Hey, no,” Jensen said, wondering how they’d gotten to this place where Jared was upset over having violated the—ettiquette? Ethics? Road rules? Whatever. He reached out and patted Jared’s thigh. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He’d needed the reminder, as it had happened.
“You’re safe though, you don’t just go with anyone.” Jared had regained the confidence to look at him, but that was maybe worse, his eyes wide and sincere, all melting concern.
Jensen nodded, because he would have said anything to reassure Jared at this point. “Yeah, I check them out, like you said.” He thought about the conflict checks they ran on new clients at the firm. “Credit, criminal records, other stuff. I don’t want to be somebody’s Eliot Spitzer moment.”
“But you didn’t do any of that with me,” Jared said worriedly, and Jensen fought to hide his dismay.
“I, uh. Had a good feeling?” He tried to leer, but thought he was probably doing it wrong, given the expression on Jared’s face. “Seriously, Jared. I promise, I’m careful. Maybe I bent a few rules for you, but look how that worked out.”
Jared didn’t look satisfied. Jensen hated the thought of making him unhappy. He was already screwed; the least he could do was make sure that Jared got what he wanted. “Hey,” he said, moving to straddle Jared’s legs, bringing his hands up to cup Jared’s sharp jaw, “don’t worry about any of that, okay? Just let me take care of you.”
And if kissing Jared hurt some, like he’d been punched in the chest until he was tenderized, it was still worth it.
****
The next morning he had to beg off the Sackler, because the Johnson deal was bubbling towards a boil again after a month-and-a-half hiatus. Jensen spent most of the day updating the language on calculation of profits, which, though not nearly as enjoyable as hanging out with Jared, was engaging in its own right (confirming that Jensen was the dorkiest dork who ever dorked, but he was working on embracing his inner dweeb, since no one else was going to do it for him).
On Monday, Bruce had a surprise: both sides were now convinced that a final deal was imminent, and Jensen was going to get to come to the final meeting, where the principals would sign on the dotted line. The firm didn’t usually allow that kind of staffing for what was essentially a formality—they’d have to write off Jensen’s time, which meant that the hours wouldn’t count towards his billables goal, but Bruce said that it was important for the client to get to know Jensen for the future. If Jensen wanted to make partner, he knew, he had to do this kind of thing, and hopefully in the business context it wouldn’t be that evident to the other people there that Jensen was nothing more than a contracts casebook poured into a decent suit. He didn’t really get why more people didn’t want to dissect all the decisions that went into a big deal like this one, but he thought he could fake something like normal interest in weather and real estate if they just did a casual meet-and-greet for fifteen minutes after the contract was signed.
He spent the week in a haze of combined reminiscence and anticipation—Jared was making up for lost time, coming back for the weekend. On Friday afternoon, just before Jensen was supposed to leave for the meeting, Jared texted: “Be ready when you come in the door. I’ve got some celebrating to do.”
Jensen had to make a quick pitstop, because that got him hard so fast it hurt. He’d have to sneak out of the reception early, find a bathroom stall where he could open himself up, show up at the hotel with lube already dripping down his thighs. Luckily the thought was so hot that he came almost instantly, and even more luckily his suit was spared any damage, though his forearm was marked where he’d bitten deep to stifle his groan of ecstasy.
Bruce looked at him funny when he got into the cab—Jensen figured his color was probably still pretty high—but then visibly dismissed any concerns, turning instead to the brief he was reading. Jensen pulled out his own work, a draft Daubert motion to kick out that Bayes’ Theorem-defying expert testimony, and they bent their heads in nearly companionable silence until they arrived at the other firm, a squat white marble building with golden lions bracketing the front steps, arrogantly situated within a few blocks of the House office buildings.
Inside they got visitor’s badges with their pictures printed in black-and-white, pure Washington security theater, and were escorted by Susan (Jensen’s counterpart worker bee on the other side) to the conference room, where there was a standard display of bottled water, sodas, fruit, and cookies; the elderly and cantankerous Mr. Johnson himself; the other associate on the deal and a partner Jensen remembered from checking the photo on the website during an especially boring conference call—
And Jared.
Jensen stopped so suddenly that Susan bumped into him, sending him flailing forwards. Everyone turned to him, and Jensen’s shock was mirrored on Jared’s face, shifting quickly to suspicion, even anger.
“Are you okay?” Bruce asked, with a decent approximation of true concern. “Everyone, this is Jensen Ackles, the associate who’s done such good work on the licensing. Jensen, you know Bill, Susan, and Rachel, and this is J.T. Padalecki, who’s been keeping us all on our toes.”
Jensen couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even blink.
Bruce had gone on and on about the wunderkind on the other side of the deal (long enough that Jensen would have suspected some interest on Bruce’s part if Bruce hadn’t been not just married but so stolidly heterosexual that he actually pinged Jensen’s not-gaydar, which Jensen hadn’t realized existed until he’d left law school). But he’d failed to mention that said wunderkind mistook hapless lawyers for hookers, which didn’t exactly scream ‘genius!’ any more than Jensen’s acquiescence had done.
“So!” Bruce said, clapping his hands together, either ignoring the undercurrents in the room or missing them entirely. “Any final questions before we put this to bed?”
“Actually,” Jared said, his voice sounding like it had gone through a garbage disposal first, “I had a concern about paragraph 131, page 62?”
Jensen wanted to pinch himself, because this had to be a nightmare that was also a wet dream. He’d worked on that paragraph for two straight days.
“Yeah?” he said, and winced when everyone turned to him; Jared might sound thrown, but his voice had come out cigarettes-and-whiskey postcoital.
“Why don’t we all sit down?” Bill suggested. Jensen let Bruce guide him to a seat, and then they were off.
Jared excused himself after they’d come to an agreement on the disputed issue—Jared had closed the loophole Jensen had deliberately left open, but it was still a good deal for the client, so Jensen couldn’t have been upset even if he’d had any room for non-freakout emotions. After a minute where Jensen stared at the nondescript art on the conference room wall, his phone buzzed. Jensen successfully refrained from falling out of his chair—at this point, he was calling that a victory—and read Jared’s text. “Come tonight if you don’t want your boss to hear all about your second job.”
After that, Jensen didn’t really notice when they signed the documents.
Bruce had to jostle his shoulder to get him to stand up at the end, handshakes all around and congratulations (or at least Jensen thought that was what they were saying; he’d pretty much stopped processing words). Jared even shook his hand, firm and pleasant. Only the dangerous, angry gleam in his eyes suggested that anything was other than ordinary after closing a nearly billion-dollar deal.
“You did great,” Bruce said before he got into his cab. “Take the weekend off!”
Since Jensen was pretty sure he was going to be unemployed come Monday, he figured he’d take Bruce’s advice. He had just enough time for a quick trip back to his apartment before he was supposed to meet Jared.
****
Jensen only let himself stand in front of the hotel room door for half a second before he knocked.
Jared opened the door, mouth already forming some angry statement, then stopped. “What is that?”
Jensen held out the shoebox. “I didn’t—this is all of it. I can give you interest, if you want. I mean, I’ll have to write a check, but—I’m not. I never meant.” He trailed off, because Jared had taken the box and was examining the contents. “I was going to explain,” he tried again. “But then I fell asleep, and you were gone, and then—”
“Okay,” Jared said slowly, and backed up enough to let Jensen into the room. Jensen stared at him, trying to memorize all the details, because this was his last chance and he wanted to remember Jared like this, before Jared let loose about just how ridiculous an excuse for a human being Jensen was. Hell, Jared might even punch him; Jensen wouldn’t blame him.
Jared carefully put the shoebox down on the dresser. “What I don’t get,” he said, not turning back towards Jensen, “is why you kept pretending. Was it just that fucking funny to you? You must’ve thought it was hilarious. God, I was such an idiot.”
“No!” Jensen protested. “No, I’d never—I didn’t, I wasn’t.” He swallowed; it hurt, like there was a fist clenched around his throat. “I was trying to give you what you wanted. I didn’t want you to think that I wanted more from you.” He felt skinless, raw enough that he’d fall apart if Jared so much as touched him. “I’m the idiot, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong—well, I’m pretty sure it was illegal, but. You were always honest with me, and I didn’t want to give you up. I—I’m sorry.” Jared stiffened, the muscles in his back knotting up, and Jensen wanted nothing more than to reach out and dig his fingers in deep until they were both groaning. But he wasn’t allowed.
And then, because this was it, the total collapse of his fantasy life, he decided to get it all out. “But I’m not sorry for any minute I spent with you. You’re funny and hot and I liked hearing what you thought about modern art, and you even cared about paragraph 131, and I would’ve been—I wanted to be yours. I know you thought I was getting too involved, and you were right. I know you don’t owe me anything. I just—I can’t help how I feel, and—I’m not sorry.” His eyes were burning and he couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t going to inflict his breakdown on Jared, though. At least he could keep his end of the bargain that far. He turned to go, hand on the doorknob.
He’d only pulled the door a few inches open when Jared’s full weight slammed into his back, shoving him face-first into the emergency exit diagram. Jensen’s breath whooshed out of his lungs, not that he’d have been able to speak regardless.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Jared panted. His hands, bizarrely, were scrabbling at Jensen’s belt. Maybe sensing Jensen’s confusion, he bit down on the back of Jensen’s neck, wet and electric-painful-hot, so that Jensen’s hips jerked involuntarily. “Think you can say something like that and walk away. You know how fucking hard I tried not to fall for you?” Wait, what? But Jared was already continuing, his fingers having conquered the belt and moving on to Jensen’s fly, pulling out Jensen’s quickly hardening cock. “Soon as I saw you, dressed like that, turning all those guys down. I didn’t care, I had to have you. Knew I was being stupid, oldest story in the book, right? I wasn’t supposed to fall for you, but then I did. I tried to be cool, ‘cause I was paying you to like me.”
“But,” Jensen said, confused. “You tried to set me up with your friends.”
Jared snorted and pushed Jensen’s pants and shorts further down his thighs, pulling back on his hips to give himself more room to work. “Trying to remind myself that it wasn’t real.”
“But it was,” Jensen said, and he couldn’t keep the pain out of his voice, only grateful that Jared couldn’t see his face.
Jared froze. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting a gentle hand on Jensen’s back. “I really—I just wanted to give you what you wanted.”
“Wow, we are really stupid,” Jensen realized, and they both cracked up, Jared swaying forward so that Jensen felt Jared’s cock hard and hot against his back, at which point Jensen decided that bygones were substantially less important than the prospect of future, money-free, strings-attached sex.
Jared circled Jensen’s cock with one hand, the other rubbing around his hole, thumb nearly pushing inside. Jensen gasped. “You didn’t get yourself ready for me,” Jared said, like he was considering what the appropriate punishment should be.
Jensen guessed that pointing out that he’d expected that Jared’s priorities had changed wouldn’t be helpful. Jensen had, it seemed, been wrong about a lot of things.
Jared grunted forgivingly and dropped to his knees behind Jensen. He let go of Jensen’s cock in favor of grabbing Jensen’s hips, locking him in place, and proceeded to suck and lick at Jensen’s ass, his hot, thick tongue going deeper with each thrust as Jensen sagged further back and moaned into the crook of his own arm, braced against the door. Jensen’s pants were puddled around his ankles, and Jared slid his hands back so that he was cupping Jensen’s ass, tugging Jensen’s cheeks further apart, thumbs sliding in to open him up even more.
“Stay just like that,” Jared said when he pulled away. Since Jensen’s only other possible move was to liquefy where he stood, he complied.
Jared announced his return by pressing the head of his cock up against Jensen’s hole, driving his weight forward so that he popped in against the resistance of Jensen’s body. “Fuck,” Jensen moaned, wobbling forward until Jared grabbed him again and held him still. It hurt already—the lube on the condom and the minimal prep they’d done weren’t going to do much for him—but he loved it, as the ache in his cock testified. He pressed his cheek against the door, staring at his own hand braced beside it, and groaned and panted while Jared worked himself all the way inside.
“For the record,” Jared said, then stopped to suck in a couple of breaths. “You weren’t—getting too involved. I want you—to be mine.” He reached around and took Jensen’s aching dick in his hand.
He might have said more, but Jensen was too busy coming his marrow out to hear. Jared followed right after, his weight bearing Jensen down to the floor. Jensen gave a pained whimper when the head of Jared’s cock popped out, but Jared just smacked his ass, weakly. “Don’t even,” Jared said, honey-rich and tolerant. “You owe me bigtime.”
They’d both been pretty dumb, if you thought about it, but Jensen wasn’t prepared to argue the point. So: “Bed?” he suggested instead.
Jared wrapped his arm around Jensen’s waist when they were finally naked and horizontal, pulling him in close. “So,” he said, hooking his chin over Jensen’s shoulder as he stroked his hand down Jensen’s stomach, “did you really think you were going to get away with that trick you pulled in paragraph 131?”
Jensen’s cock twitched. “Marry me,” he said without thinking.
Jared went rigid behind him.
Jensen held his breath for a second, trying to figure out how to reassure Jared that he was just kidding, then realized that he didn’t need more pointless angst in his life. “It’s legal in DC,” he said, putting his hand over Jared’s. “Just something to think about, you know. In the long term.”
He actually felt Jared swallow. “Is Tuesday good?”
****
Bruce sent them a raku vase and a reminder about the firm’s confidentiality policy.
Jared refused to move into Jensen’s apartment (claiming, with unfair exaggeration, that Jensen’s shoebox had more space in it, but he was right about the lack of room for the dogs), so they ended up in a condo near Dupont Circle. They made the down payment in cash, ignoring the realtor’s disapproval, and put the vase on the mantel. Whenever Bruce got too demanding, Jensen brought it down and put it on a side table, hoping one of the dogs would destroy it, but somehow they never did.
When anyone asked how they’d gotten together, Jared would just smile and say he’d decided that he preferred a long-term contract to being billed on a per-hour basis.
END.
Jensen spent half an hour he really couldn’t spare that morning picking out the white shirt that made his eyes look extra green and the khakis that made his ass look amazing.
“Screw it, we’re ordering in,” Jared said as soon as he’d gotten a good look at Jensen.
Jensen flushed and wouldn’t meet Jared’s eyes, but he couldn’t suppress a smile.
What was half an hour, in the greater scheme of things?
At that point, Jared put his hands on Jensen’s shoulders, pushing him down, and the philosophical portion of the evening was pretty much concluded.
****
Jensen didn’t donate the money, but he didn’t spend it either. He put it in a shoebox at the back of his closet, and sometimes he looked at his loan balance and thought about being able to leave the firm, maybe do something he really wanted—one of his classmates was working at the Innocence Project, and she sent out these emails every once in a while that made his throat clench up—but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. It didn’t help that he was almost certain that he’d get busted for tax evasion if he tried, and he felt like a criminal even looking up the rules for cash deposits, which his ethics professor had said was generally a sign that you were trying to figure out how to do the wrong thing and get away with it. So, yeah. Shoebox, back of the closet.
Jared came to town every couple of weeks. They developed a pattern: they’d fuck at Jared’s hotel, order some food, debate what tourist attraction Jared should see before he flew back, and then fuck again. Jensen put his foot down at work and made enough time to see a couple of shows or exhibits each week so that he’d be able to make solid recommendations. (Okay, he maybe put a couple of toes down, and also cancelled his cable, but it worked out that he had more free time on balance.) He started running to and from work and showering at the office, which took longer than taking the Metro but kept him from feeling too much like the ‘before’ picture compared to Jared.
Despite the fact that he turned down three assignments, or maybe because of it, his biennial evaluation was better than ever. “You really seem to have found your place,” the partner leading the review said, and even though that wasn’t exactly how Jensen felt, he nodded, because he hadn’t lost all good sense. And he still thought that contractual loopholes were fantastic intellectual challenges, but having to talk to Jared about something else entirely turned out to be revitalizing.
They never talked about Jared’s business either, though if it brought him to DC on a regular basis Jensen figured it had to be either politics or defense-related. Jensen was guessing defense contractor of some sort, important enough to get paid enough to drop thousands of dollars (on Jensen) each trip but not so important that a paid-gay-companion sex scandal would destroy him. He was careful not to ask. The illusion that they only existed when they were with each other was fragile (and directly contradicted by those discreet envelopes) but important—important enough to Jared for him to pay dearly for it, and important enough to Jensen that he couldn’t afford to forget.
****
“Let’s do something different,” Jared said as soon as Jensen answered his phone one crisp fall day.
“No more food,” Jensen said immediately, because he was still unable to eat sushi. Jared’s sexcapade ideas were almost all excellent, but the occasional misfire was epic.
“No!” Jared made an embarrassed noise. “I mean, not like that. There’s this restaurant, they do a tasting menu. Supposedly it takes four and a half hours.”
Jensen closed his eyes and spun in his chair, facing the unseeing polarized windows of the building across the street. “Jared, I. I feel bad about you spending that kind of money on—”
“I want to,” Jared said, almost sullen.
Jensen didn’t know what to say to him. You should be careful so that I don’t think this is a date? I’m already way too into you; I think about you every day you’re not here? But the whole point of their—their business arrangement, that was the only word for it, was that Jensen didn’t say no.
He cleared his throat. “What if we, you know, started counting after dinner?”
“Jensen,” Jared said, and now his usual good humor was all but restored, “you’re not gonna drive me into bankruptcy or anything. And I know the score.”
“Still,” Jensen told him, “let’s—you know, it’s a frequent flyer discount, whatever.”
Jared laughed, and Jensen curled himself around the phone, wanting Jared there right now. “So do I also get a first class upgrade?”
Jensen froze, flummoxed. “What exactly did you have in mind?” If he’d just walked into some weird hooker lingo, he was going to be in deep trouble. Also, he was having a hard time imagining something he hadn’t already allowed Jared to try.
“Why don’t I leave it to your discretion?” Jared teased, and Jensen relaxed.
In the end, they did go to the restaurant. The meal took nearly five hours. Between courses, Jared told Jensen about his high school misadventures in San Antonio and Jensen gave back stories about Richardson, carefully free of last names or any references further forward in time. They were stuffed like overinflated balloons by the time the chocolate truffles arrived at the table—also buzzed, because they’d split a wine pairing, nine glasses for nine courses, so if they walked a straight line back to the hotel it was only because they were leaning on each other and cancelling each other out.
Jensen tried to put Jared into his bed, but Jared just pulled Jensen down and wouldn’t let go, so they passed out like that until Jared woke at ass-o’-clock and then totally took the ass part seriously. Jensen ended up getting fucked as the predawn light seeped past the curtains, and then fucked again in the shower, and after that he declared that ‘first class upgrade’ meant a blowjob combined with a vibrator in Jared’s ass, which worked well enough that it was totally worth having carried the little lipstick-sized thing around with him for a day.
After breakfast (the hotel made excellent scones), Jared mentioned his planned tour of the Hirshhorn. “Sounds great,” Jensen said, and Jared got this funny tight look on his face, which made Jensen realize that he sounded like he was inviting himself along.
“I’ll see you when you’re back in town?” he said quickly, because even if Jared thought he was being offered a freebie, it wasn’t in the terms of their arrangement that Jensen got to impose like that. Anyway, the now-Dickensian Johnson deal had suffered some sort of outbreak late Friday, right before they’d gone to dinner, and Jensen needed to go in and start shoveling away at the resulting mess.
When he hung up his jacket at the office, he found the usual envelope, with the usual three thousand. Jensen thought that, if he really had been a prostitute, he would have appreciated Jared’s polite discretion even more.
****
He didn’t hear from Jared for three weeks after that.
They’d compared opinions on Shakespeare, for fuck’s sake. (Jared had this completely twisted preference for the comedies, when anyone could plainly see that Hamlet was the only play that mattered.)
Oh God, he was a Julia Roberts cliche. Except that Jensen knew what the original ending of that movie had been, and he wasn’t expecting any Disney bluebirds to flutter down and give him his fairy-tale ending. And even if Jared, through some miracle, decided to ‘rescue’ him, that would only expose all the lies: what could he say? Sorry, I have this job already, it involves billing two thousand hours a year, more if I want a bonus—yeah, I guess you could call my profession corporate whore. In a sense, I do screw people for money. Just not quite as directly as you thought I did.
Right, that was enough to shrivel the fantasy before it unfurled.
Regardless, when Jared texted him in the middle of a dank Wednesday, Jensen felt like he’d been catapulted out of the office, soaring high into the clouds. “Free tonight?”
Jared had never wanted him except on the weekends. Heart pounding, he bent over his phone, carefully typing in the words. “You’re in town? I’ll rearrange my schedule.” Bruce would live with getting the next draft tomorrow.
There was a delay, during which Jensen fretted that he’d texted too needily, or something.
The response disabused him of any notion that it mattered. “Actually I have these two friends. I thought I’d give them your number. If that’s ok.”
His whole body turned to ice. His phone began to slip from his numb hands, and he only just caught it before it smashed to the floor. Part of him wanted to see it shatter, have an excuse not to answer.
He was going to be sick.
But when he managed to get himself to the bathroom, shoulder aching from something or someone he’d bumped into on the way, all he could do was sink to his knees on the cold hard tile and lean over the toilet. Nothing came up.
He’d been a fool.
And he could hardly blame Jared, who’d been upfront about his intentions and his expectations. Jensen was a travel luxury, like one of those supersoft bathrobes in the hotel bathroom. You didn’t worry that other people used them, not as long as they were cleaned in between. Jared had never offered anything other than what he was willing to give, steak dinners and dead presidents.
His hands were shaking and he mistyped at least a dozen times, but eventually he got the message together. “Sorry. Not taking on anybody new right now.”
And if pressing ‘send’ felt like putting his hand through a wall, Jensen didn’t have to admit that to anyone.
Jared didn’t respond.
****
Another three weeks passed. Jensen said yes to a document review that would’ve made even him weep with boredom if it hadn’t been a welcome distraction.
He thought about going out. It wouldn’t have to be a bar. He could hit Kramerbooks, approach someone who was checking out the nonfiction.
The thought just made him want to curl up in the corner of his office and wait until the growing pile of paperwork smothered him. He didn’t want to go out and make himself pretend to be interesting for some random stranger. He wanted Jared. Only he’d fucked that up, of course. Even when he pretended, his real, snoozeworthy self bled through.
Maybe he should’ve said yes to Jared’s friends. They could’ve been not entirely disgusting. If Jared paid for it, after all, then anything was possible. He could have closed his eyes and thought about work to get through the experience.
And then Jared wouldn’t have seen through his pathetic crush, and maybe he would’ve wanted Jensen again. If there’d been any doubt after the dinner and the morning after (but of course, Jared hadn’t even noticed at that point, because Jared didn’t see him that way), Jensen had confirmed it when he’d turned down Jared’s friends: Jensen was acting like a boyfriend, and Jared had never given any indication he was okay with that.
When Jared called while Jensen was deep in parsing an expert report that he was pretty sure played fast and loose with Bayes’ Theorem, Jensen almost didn’t understand what was happening. That was probably the only reason his voice sounded normal when he answered.
“Hello?”
“Jensen, hi.” Jared sounded—relieved? Nervous? Weird. “Hey, I know I haven’t been around much, but is there any chance you’re available Friday?”
“Friday?” Jensen repeated, more out of shock than anything else. He blinked, trying to clear his head, and pulled up his schedule, as if that mattered at all. “Uh—”
“It’s for me,” Jared said quickly. “I mean, it’d be me. You and me. If that’s okay.”
“Sure,” Jensen said, mouth way ahead of his brain. “Yeah. I’d—yeah, great.”
“Great!” Jared repeated, with considerably more enthusiasm. “See you then.”
Jensen minimized his calendar and stared at the sensitivity and specificity measurements on his computer screen, wondering what the hell had just happened.
****
He arrived at Jared’s hotel room resolved not to fuck up again, which wasn’t a problem, since Jared basically picked him up and threw him at the bed. Jensen’s vocabulary devolved to ‘yeah’ and ‘like that’ at variable volumes for a while, which was more than okay.
When he realized that he was leaning over Jared’s sated body, running his fingers through Jared’s sweaty, desperately-in-need-of-a-haircut bangs, he hesitated. But Jared had his eyes closed and made a displeased grunt when Jensen’s hand faltered. So he figured that Jared considered the lesson taught, and redoubled his commitment to following Jared’s rules.
“So what educational pastime do you have planned for tomorrow?” he asked idly, his voice hoarse from the second time, when Jared had practically shoved his cock down Jensen’s throat and Jensen had come all over his own fist.
“Hadn’t decided,” Jared said, still not opening his eyes. “Any suggestions?”
Because Jared wasn’t watching, Jensen risked smiling down at him, feeling light and heavy all at once. “I haven’t been able to check out the Chinese terra cotta warriors at the Sackler, but I hear they’re cool.”
Jared turned his face away, his shoulders tensing, and Jensen carefully disentangled his hand. Their sides were still pressed together, sweat-damp, contact warming him and making his thoughts run syrup-slow. Jared’s voice, when it came, was low enough that Jensen had to lean forward to hear him. “You could. I mean, we could go see them together.”
Jensen swallowed. He wanted to do that, stand in front of the exhibits and make jokes about how the nearly life-sized figures were half Jared’s height. Wanted people to look at them and think, those men are together. He could imagine the feel of Jared’s hand in his, big as the rest of him, warm and reassuring and—totally fake. If he tried something like that in reality, Jared was likely to conclude that Jensen hadn’t gotten the lesson the first time.
“I—I might have to work,” he said, as close as he could make himself get to saying no, even though he knew that he was just tormenting himself.
“Work,” Jared repeated, like the word tasted bad, and then he rolled further away, so that they weren’t touching at any point, and sat up, shoving the pillows aside to make space for himself.
Jensen figured that he wasn’t supposed to stay lying down either, so he sat too, pulling the sheet over his lap as if that would offer some sort of protection.
“How many clients do you have?” Jared asked, an unusual strain in his voice as he leaned back against the headboard.
Jensen suppressed the powerful impulse to say “one,” because Jared had made it pretty clear how things stood between them. He thought about work, the client numbers it seemed like he dreamed about. “Four or five,” he said, hoping it sounded plausible.
“And you, what, find them—?”
Jared was the one who seemed so familiar with the business in the first place, Jensen thought with a touch of resentment. “Uh, referrals,” he guessed, trying to keep the hesitation out of his voice. He shifted a little, because even on a soft bed the fact that he’d gone six weeks without fucking Jared was making itself apparent.
“Oh, yeah,” Jared said, like he was relieved. “But—how did you start?” His fingers were playing idly with the edge of one of the overstuffed pillows.
“Someone offered to pay me,” Jensen said, biting his lip.
“You do background checks, right? You don’t just—jeez, I should’ve given you names, no wonder you were mad.” Jared’s face was red now, spreading down his throat to his chest, looking away from Jensen.
“Hey, no,” Jensen said, wondering how they’d gotten to this place where Jared was upset over having violated the—ettiquette? Ethics? Road rules? Whatever. He reached out and patted Jared’s thigh. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He’d needed the reminder, as it had happened.
“You’re safe though, you don’t just go with anyone.” Jared had regained the confidence to look at him, but that was maybe worse, his eyes wide and sincere, all melting concern.
Jensen nodded, because he would have said anything to reassure Jared at this point. “Yeah, I check them out, like you said.” He thought about the conflict checks they ran on new clients at the firm. “Credit, criminal records, other stuff. I don’t want to be somebody’s Eliot Spitzer moment.”
“But you didn’t do any of that with me,” Jared said worriedly, and Jensen fought to hide his dismay.
“I, uh. Had a good feeling?” He tried to leer, but thought he was probably doing it wrong, given the expression on Jared’s face. “Seriously, Jared. I promise, I’m careful. Maybe I bent a few rules for you, but look how that worked out.”
Jared didn’t look satisfied. Jensen hated the thought of making him unhappy. He was already screwed; the least he could do was make sure that Jared got what he wanted. “Hey,” he said, moving to straddle Jared’s legs, bringing his hands up to cup Jared’s sharp jaw, “don’t worry about any of that, okay? Just let me take care of you.”
And if kissing Jared hurt some, like he’d been punched in the chest until he was tenderized, it was still worth it.
****
The next morning he had to beg off the Sackler, because the Johnson deal was bubbling towards a boil again after a month-and-a-half hiatus. Jensen spent most of the day updating the language on calculation of profits, which, though not nearly as enjoyable as hanging out with Jared, was engaging in its own right (confirming that Jensen was the dorkiest dork who ever dorked, but he was working on embracing his inner dweeb, since no one else was going to do it for him).
On Monday, Bruce had a surprise: both sides were now convinced that a final deal was imminent, and Jensen was going to get to come to the final meeting, where the principals would sign on the dotted line. The firm didn’t usually allow that kind of staffing for what was essentially a formality—they’d have to write off Jensen’s time, which meant that the hours wouldn’t count towards his billables goal, but Bruce said that it was important for the client to get to know Jensen for the future. If Jensen wanted to make partner, he knew, he had to do this kind of thing, and hopefully in the business context it wouldn’t be that evident to the other people there that Jensen was nothing more than a contracts casebook poured into a decent suit. He didn’t really get why more people didn’t want to dissect all the decisions that went into a big deal like this one, but he thought he could fake something like normal interest in weather and real estate if they just did a casual meet-and-greet for fifteen minutes after the contract was signed.
He spent the week in a haze of combined reminiscence and anticipation—Jared was making up for lost time, coming back for the weekend. On Friday afternoon, just before Jensen was supposed to leave for the meeting, Jared texted: “Be ready when you come in the door. I’ve got some celebrating to do.”
Jensen had to make a quick pitstop, because that got him hard so fast it hurt. He’d have to sneak out of the reception early, find a bathroom stall where he could open himself up, show up at the hotel with lube already dripping down his thighs. Luckily the thought was so hot that he came almost instantly, and even more luckily his suit was spared any damage, though his forearm was marked where he’d bitten deep to stifle his groan of ecstasy.
Bruce looked at him funny when he got into the cab—Jensen figured his color was probably still pretty high—but then visibly dismissed any concerns, turning instead to the brief he was reading. Jensen pulled out his own work, a draft Daubert motion to kick out that Bayes’ Theorem-defying expert testimony, and they bent their heads in nearly companionable silence until they arrived at the other firm, a squat white marble building with golden lions bracketing the front steps, arrogantly situated within a few blocks of the House office buildings.
Inside they got visitor’s badges with their pictures printed in black-and-white, pure Washington security theater, and were escorted by Susan (Jensen’s counterpart worker bee on the other side) to the conference room, where there was a standard display of bottled water, sodas, fruit, and cookies; the elderly and cantankerous Mr. Johnson himself; the other associate on the deal and a partner Jensen remembered from checking the photo on the website during an especially boring conference call—
And Jared.
Jensen stopped so suddenly that Susan bumped into him, sending him flailing forwards. Everyone turned to him, and Jensen’s shock was mirrored on Jared’s face, shifting quickly to suspicion, even anger.
“Are you okay?” Bruce asked, with a decent approximation of true concern. “Everyone, this is Jensen Ackles, the associate who’s done such good work on the licensing. Jensen, you know Bill, Susan, and Rachel, and this is J.T. Padalecki, who’s been keeping us all on our toes.”
Jensen couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even blink.
Bruce had gone on and on about the wunderkind on the other side of the deal (long enough that Jensen would have suspected some interest on Bruce’s part if Bruce hadn’t been not just married but so stolidly heterosexual that he actually pinged Jensen’s not-gaydar, which Jensen hadn’t realized existed until he’d left law school). But he’d failed to mention that said wunderkind mistook hapless lawyers for hookers, which didn’t exactly scream ‘genius!’ any more than Jensen’s acquiescence had done.
“So!” Bruce said, clapping his hands together, either ignoring the undercurrents in the room or missing them entirely. “Any final questions before we put this to bed?”
“Actually,” Jared said, his voice sounding like it had gone through a garbage disposal first, “I had a concern about paragraph 131, page 62?”
Jensen wanted to pinch himself, because this had to be a nightmare that was also a wet dream. He’d worked on that paragraph for two straight days.
“Yeah?” he said, and winced when everyone turned to him; Jared might sound thrown, but his voice had come out cigarettes-and-whiskey postcoital.
“Why don’t we all sit down?” Bill suggested. Jensen let Bruce guide him to a seat, and then they were off.
Jared excused himself after they’d come to an agreement on the disputed issue—Jared had closed the loophole Jensen had deliberately left open, but it was still a good deal for the client, so Jensen couldn’t have been upset even if he’d had any room for non-freakout emotions. After a minute where Jensen stared at the nondescript art on the conference room wall, his phone buzzed. Jensen successfully refrained from falling out of his chair—at this point, he was calling that a victory—and read Jared’s text. “Come tonight if you don’t want your boss to hear all about your second job.”
After that, Jensen didn’t really notice when they signed the documents.
Bruce had to jostle his shoulder to get him to stand up at the end, handshakes all around and congratulations (or at least Jensen thought that was what they were saying; he’d pretty much stopped processing words). Jared even shook his hand, firm and pleasant. Only the dangerous, angry gleam in his eyes suggested that anything was other than ordinary after closing a nearly billion-dollar deal.
“You did great,” Bruce said before he got into his cab. “Take the weekend off!”
Since Jensen was pretty sure he was going to be unemployed come Monday, he figured he’d take Bruce’s advice. He had just enough time for a quick trip back to his apartment before he was supposed to meet Jared.
****
Jensen only let himself stand in front of the hotel room door for half a second before he knocked.
Jared opened the door, mouth already forming some angry statement, then stopped. “What is that?”
Jensen held out the shoebox. “I didn’t—this is all of it. I can give you interest, if you want. I mean, I’ll have to write a check, but—I’m not. I never meant.” He trailed off, because Jared had taken the box and was examining the contents. “I was going to explain,” he tried again. “But then I fell asleep, and you were gone, and then—”
“Okay,” Jared said slowly, and backed up enough to let Jensen into the room. Jensen stared at him, trying to memorize all the details, because this was his last chance and he wanted to remember Jared like this, before Jared let loose about just how ridiculous an excuse for a human being Jensen was. Hell, Jared might even punch him; Jensen wouldn’t blame him.
Jared carefully put the shoebox down on the dresser. “What I don’t get,” he said, not turning back towards Jensen, “is why you kept pretending. Was it just that fucking funny to you? You must’ve thought it was hilarious. God, I was such an idiot.”
“No!” Jensen protested. “No, I’d never—I didn’t, I wasn’t.” He swallowed; it hurt, like there was a fist clenched around his throat. “I was trying to give you what you wanted. I didn’t want you to think that I wanted more from you.” He felt skinless, raw enough that he’d fall apart if Jared so much as touched him. “I’m the idiot, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong—well, I’m pretty sure it was illegal, but. You were always honest with me, and I didn’t want to give you up. I—I’m sorry.” Jared stiffened, the muscles in his back knotting up, and Jensen wanted nothing more than to reach out and dig his fingers in deep until they were both groaning. But he wasn’t allowed.
And then, because this was it, the total collapse of his fantasy life, he decided to get it all out. “But I’m not sorry for any minute I spent with you. You’re funny and hot and I liked hearing what you thought about modern art, and you even cared about paragraph 131, and I would’ve been—I wanted to be yours. I know you thought I was getting too involved, and you were right. I know you don’t owe me anything. I just—I can’t help how I feel, and—I’m not sorry.” His eyes were burning and he couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t going to inflict his breakdown on Jared, though. At least he could keep his end of the bargain that far. He turned to go, hand on the doorknob.
He’d only pulled the door a few inches open when Jared’s full weight slammed into his back, shoving him face-first into the emergency exit diagram. Jensen’s breath whooshed out of his lungs, not that he’d have been able to speak regardless.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Jared panted. His hands, bizarrely, were scrabbling at Jensen’s belt. Maybe sensing Jensen’s confusion, he bit down on the back of Jensen’s neck, wet and electric-painful-hot, so that Jensen’s hips jerked involuntarily. “Think you can say something like that and walk away. You know how fucking hard I tried not to fall for you?” Wait, what? But Jared was already continuing, his fingers having conquered the belt and moving on to Jensen’s fly, pulling out Jensen’s quickly hardening cock. “Soon as I saw you, dressed like that, turning all those guys down. I didn’t care, I had to have you. Knew I was being stupid, oldest story in the book, right? I wasn’t supposed to fall for you, but then I did. I tried to be cool, ‘cause I was paying you to like me.”
“But,” Jensen said, confused. “You tried to set me up with your friends.”
Jared snorted and pushed Jensen’s pants and shorts further down his thighs, pulling back on his hips to give himself more room to work. “Trying to remind myself that it wasn’t real.”
“But it was,” Jensen said, and he couldn’t keep the pain out of his voice, only grateful that Jared couldn’t see his face.
Jared froze. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting a gentle hand on Jensen’s back. “I really—I just wanted to give you what you wanted.”
“Wow, we are really stupid,” Jensen realized, and they both cracked up, Jared swaying forward so that Jensen felt Jared’s cock hard and hot against his back, at which point Jensen decided that bygones were substantially less important than the prospect of future, money-free, strings-attached sex.
Jared circled Jensen’s cock with one hand, the other rubbing around his hole, thumb nearly pushing inside. Jensen gasped. “You didn’t get yourself ready for me,” Jared said, like he was considering what the appropriate punishment should be.
Jensen guessed that pointing out that he’d expected that Jared’s priorities had changed wouldn’t be helpful. Jensen had, it seemed, been wrong about a lot of things.
Jared grunted forgivingly and dropped to his knees behind Jensen. He let go of Jensen’s cock in favor of grabbing Jensen’s hips, locking him in place, and proceeded to suck and lick at Jensen’s ass, his hot, thick tongue going deeper with each thrust as Jensen sagged further back and moaned into the crook of his own arm, braced against the door. Jensen’s pants were puddled around his ankles, and Jared slid his hands back so that he was cupping Jensen’s ass, tugging Jensen’s cheeks further apart, thumbs sliding in to open him up even more.
“Stay just like that,” Jared said when he pulled away. Since Jensen’s only other possible move was to liquefy where he stood, he complied.
Jared announced his return by pressing the head of his cock up against Jensen’s hole, driving his weight forward so that he popped in against the resistance of Jensen’s body. “Fuck,” Jensen moaned, wobbling forward until Jared grabbed him again and held him still. It hurt already—the lube on the condom and the minimal prep they’d done weren’t going to do much for him—but he loved it, as the ache in his cock testified. He pressed his cheek against the door, staring at his own hand braced beside it, and groaned and panted while Jared worked himself all the way inside.
“For the record,” Jared said, then stopped to suck in a couple of breaths. “You weren’t—getting too involved. I want you—to be mine.” He reached around and took Jensen’s aching dick in his hand.
He might have said more, but Jensen was too busy coming his marrow out to hear. Jared followed right after, his weight bearing Jensen down to the floor. Jensen gave a pained whimper when the head of Jared’s cock popped out, but Jared just smacked his ass, weakly. “Don’t even,” Jared said, honey-rich and tolerant. “You owe me bigtime.”
They’d both been pretty dumb, if you thought about it, but Jensen wasn’t prepared to argue the point. So: “Bed?” he suggested instead.
Jared wrapped his arm around Jensen’s waist when they were finally naked and horizontal, pulling him in close. “So,” he said, hooking his chin over Jensen’s shoulder as he stroked his hand down Jensen’s stomach, “did you really think you were going to get away with that trick you pulled in paragraph 131?”
Jensen’s cock twitched. “Marry me,” he said without thinking.
Jared went rigid behind him.
Jensen held his breath for a second, trying to figure out how to reassure Jared that he was just kidding, then realized that he didn’t need more pointless angst in his life. “It’s legal in DC,” he said, putting his hand over Jared’s. “Just something to think about, you know. In the long term.”
He actually felt Jared swallow. “Is Tuesday good?”
****
Bruce sent them a raku vase and a reminder about the firm’s confidentiality policy.
Jared refused to move into Jensen’s apartment (claiming, with unfair exaggeration, that Jensen’s shoebox had more space in it, but he was right about the lack of room for the dogs), so they ended up in a condo near Dupont Circle. They made the down payment in cash, ignoring the realtor’s disapproval, and put the vase on the mantel. Whenever Bruce got too demanding, Jensen brought it down and put it on a side table, hoping one of the dogs would destroy it, but somehow they never did.
When anyone asked how they’d gotten together, Jared would just smile and say he’d decided that he preferred a long-term contract to being billed on a per-hour basis.
END.
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