Current mood:	weird
Entry tags:	fanfic, kept, rps

Fic: A Kept Boy 54/?
Fandom: CWRPS
Pairing: Jeff/Jensen, Jared/Jensen
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Slavefic AU. Language. Dark themes. Sexual situations & mentions of abuse.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story.
Word Count: 2, 219
AN: Previous parts found here. Cast of characters can be found here. Banner by the lovely and generous bloodquartz. And don't forget the other really awesome stories to be found at whatwekeep.

---

"I. I might be in here."

Jeff's eyebrows kind of stutter, up and then down, confusion deepening the lines around his eyes. "I. What?"

It's all happening too fast.

With his other masters, Jensen could bury this panicky, fluttery feeling in the solidity of routine, but so far as he's been able to tell, Jeff avoids routine like the plague and so Jensen is like a flag in a windstorm and not sure what to do about it. Too many things are happening, all at once.

They scrape to a stop and Jensen tries to disentangle this one thing from all the others. He gestures with his free hand, both thankful and strangely anxious about Jeff tethering his other arm. "There. In the gallery."

Jensen's never spent a lot of time dwelling on or trying to untangle his past. He's always been too busy. But now, with Jeff, he feels like he understands what a blessing that busyness had been, a gift that kept him from sinking into this marshy uncertainty. He'd known what he was, what his purpose was. And he'd been proud of it, proud of being the best, proud of his long history of dedicated service.

And now…he doesn't know.

He knows—he thinks—that Jeff's a good man, but ownership sits on his shoulders as badly as his blazer and he has a way of making Jensen question everything he knows as true. He has a way of making Jensen feel ashamed.

"Lord Kilmer," Jensen elucidates, uneven hotness blushing up through his pale skin. He's not even sure why. "He would use me. In his pictures, his paintings." Jensen feels so stupidly tongue-tied, unable to communicate even the simplest concepts. He shakes himself, mentally and physically, trying to put his words together in some kind of sense. Softer, calmer, he says, "You don't like hearing about my other masters. I thought… I thought maybe you might want to go around."

He doesn't really know what he expects Jeff's reaction to be. He expects violence less and less, but he doesn't ever dismiss it as a possibility. It makes him feel stranger that what he does expect is for Jeff to kiss him; it seems like arrogance to expect affection (and to maybe look forward to it) but the fact still remains that Jeff's concluded a lot of their conversations in just that way. What he does not expect is for Jeff to wrinkle his eyebrows again and then guide him over to one of the marble benches.

"Okay, I want very much to get this right," Jeff says, putting his hand over Jensen's and tangling their fingers together, "and I'm not sure what you're trying to say to me, here. Do you—" Jeff stops, sighs. "Okay, so first of all…you can talk about your…your other masters, Jensen. I don't…when I get upset, I'm not upset with you."

Jensen looks down, mentally rolling his eyes. He knows Jeff's ire isn't at him, specifically. It doesn't absolve Jensen of the duty to not upset Jeff by talking about things he knows will only piss Jeff off.

"Jensen—" Jeff breaks off into a shaky laugh that sounds only a couple seconds from hysteria and he lets Jensen's hand go to scrape his fingers through his hair again. "Look, every part of my day that doesn't revolve around you has sucked pretty hard today. And it's just barely lunchtime. So…if you could just… Help me out a little here? Do you want me to see these pictures of you? Or do you not want me to see you that way?"

Jensen blinks. It hadn't occurred to him to feel any way in particular about Jeff seeing him in Kilmer's art, other than in terms of Jeff's discomfort, Jeff's anger, on a day that—as Jeff pointed out—sucked for him beyond the telling of it.

"I just didn't know if it would bother you," Jensen explains. He and Jeff talk more than they ever have and yet it still feels like trying to push every word through a brick wall. He knows Jeff's not stupid but he also doesn't seem to understand much about the things that all Jensen's previous masters took entirely for granted. Having to explain everything, all the time, in all this excruciating detail…it's exhausting, even without all the external drama. "I don't know…."

Lady Blanchett—Cate—has asked him about Kilmer, but even so, he hasn't really had to think about this part of it: the endless reels of film, the snow flurry throb of flashbulbs, the long, long hours of being posed and manipulated.

"I was scared a lot," Jensen admits, miserable at betraying his former master's confidence in this way, his throat aching all the way into his chest and making his voice wobbly. "Before…before I understood." Jensen shakes his head. "He was in a lot of pain. He was in so much pain. And I…I helped him with that."

It feels boastful to say it, even though Kilmer had said those words to him. More than once.

Again, Jensen doesn't know what to expect from Jeff. They're so far from the fragile soap-bubble patterns they've built up; Jensen can't make any predictions. The smile that dawns across Jeff's face, slow and sun-bright, is surprising even so. More than that, the naked way that Jeff looks at him makes Jensen's body tighten and prickle with gooseflesh, makes him wish that he could go to his knees for Jeff right here, suck him harder and better than that slave from the restaurant.

"You don't need me to tell you that you're good at your job, Jensen," Jeff says, sounding as fond as if Jensen's been his for years instead of short months. Jensen is enough his own man to feel slightly ashamed at how much he craves after the approval he hears in Jeff's tone, but it doesn't stop him from feeling it, that shameless want, that desperate flush of pleased pride. Jeff wraps his fingers around Jensen's wrist again, his thumb stroking the delta of veins. "I didn't know he used you in his art."

The way Jeff says it, admiring, wondering… It's different from the way Kilmer talked about it, different from the people who'd fawned around him. It's different than what it feels like to remember. Jensen shrugs.

"Do you want to go see?" Jeff bumps Jensen with his shoulder, lightly, like a man would do with his pal.

He does want Jeff to see. He wants Jeff to see this part of him, to know about this part of his life. He wants Jeff to see what his masters have made of him.

Maybe Jeff reads all that from Jensen's expression, because he leans his shoulder against Jensen's again and says, "C'mon."

Jensen doesn't know for sure that there even are any of Kilmer's works on display, let alone any of the ones with him in them; He knows Kilmer donated a number of his works, because he loves the museum, but for all Jensen knows, they could be crated up somewhere in a dehumidified room, gaining dust and value.

But of course, the pictures are there: the big portrait that Kilmer used to call King Kilmer and His Fool, even though the actual title is something else, a couple of smaller, mixed-media works where Jensen is, mercifully, mostly unrecognizable though he still remembers the staging for all of them in complete and graphic detail.

For the most part, people come to galleries to eyeball the art or, occasionally, their friends and companions. There's not a lot of eye-contact between strangers. Jensen is, nonetheless, glad that Jeff keeps them well back from Kilmer's pieces. The bracelet of his fingers around Jensen's wrist feels hot, the only thing grounding Jensen, keeping him from floating up and out and away on a flood-tide of memory.

"What are you thinking?" Jeff murmurs, making Jensen jerk. Though Jensen is intensely aware of Jeff's hand on him, he'd somehow almost forgotten there's a person attached to it.

Jensen shrugs. "Just…remembering."

"Good or bad?"

Another shrug. "I don't know."

Jeff squeezes Jensen's wrist. "Tell me about him."

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't know." Jeff's thumb does the same absent-minded flex against the inside of Jensen's wrist. "Anything you want. Tell me anything. You were how old when he bought you?"

"Fourteen," Jensen answers promptly. "I was fourteen. But he didn't really buy me. Lord Cruise gave me to him." Jensen touches the faint scar on his chin, mostly invisible but devastating, all the same. "I was… Lord Cruise wanted to sell me and he knew… He knew Kilmer wanted me." Restlessness fills Jensen, an itchy and anxious desire to move, to get out of here, back into the sunshine and heavy air. At the same time, he can't drag his eyes away from the pictures, even to look at Jeff.

That was the first time Kilmer had put him in a sling. Such a long time to tease him open and then the ohmygodstop over-full feeling of a hand—a fist—inside him and then the brain-bending intensity of release, when Kilmer had finally let him come. That was when Kilmer had been experimenting with sensory deprivation; the blindfold and soft wax pushed into his ears. And that…

"Hey." Jeff nuzzles behind Jensen's ear. "Where'd you go?"

"Nowhere." Smiling is such second nature; it requires no effort on Jensen's part to manufacture one. "I'm right here."

Jeff's smile is still on his face, too, but it's crooked, uncertain, and there's a darkness that goes far back in his otherwise light eyes. It's not like when Violet flogged him, that eminently pleasurable darkness; this is that other kind, the kind that kept Jeff from touching him, kept Jeff from loving him. "Did you like the things he did to you?" Jeff nods at the pictures. "Did you…?" Jeff's face screws up and he seems to be searching for the right words for whatever he means to say. Then he gives a little shrug. "Did you like those things?"

"Sometimes." It's such a simple and inadequate word to explain something so complicated but it's also the best word he has. Jensen shivers, though he'd be hard pressed to explain why.

Jeff wraps his arm around Jensen's shoulders and pulls him in close, turning his head to brush his mouth across Jensen's cheek. It feels good and Jensen closes his eyes, leaning into Jeff, enclosed.

"I tell you all the time how beautiful you are," Jeff murmurs, his voice rumbling into Jensen's bones, "but I don't always know if you know how much I mean by that." Jeff huffs suddenly, the heat of his laugh searing Jensen's skin. "But I don't have the faintest idea how to talk to you."

"I would tell you anything you want to know."

"No, I know you would…" It's the wrong thing to say, because Jeff pulls back, shaking his head. "I just… I wish I knew how to have a conversation with you. Something that didn't lead to bad memories or me sticking my foot in my mouth, saying something I shouldn't."

"But you can say whatever you want to. You're my master. There's nothing you can say to me that would be wrong. I don't understand why you worry so much about…about me. I'm…" Jensen manages to break off before he says, I'm nothing because he knows it's one of those things Jeff hates to hear from him but he doesn't know what to substitute for it. "I don't know why you worry so much."

"Because I'm an owner. Because the law gives me this power and I should not abuse it. I should not abuse you. Because I have a responsibility—I'd think you would totally understand that, Jensen. If…if your job is to take care of me, then it's as much my job to watch over you—to watch over everyone under my care." Jeff seizes Jensen's chin between his fingers, not painful, but firm. "Because if I have to own other human beings, then I should give a damn about what that means and how…how to be right about it. Or as right as anything can be in this fucked up system."

"You're raising your voice," Jensen murmurs, not sure where to put his eyes, not sure what to do with his body. He holds himself still because it's the only solution he's ever come up with for that feeling, ineffectual an answer as it is.

"I—" For a moment, it seems like Jeff's going to go on, maybe even ramp up a few notches…and then he visibly reins himself back, forces his shoulders down from up around his ears. Jeff stands there a few moments, glaring over Jensen's shoulder. Then:
"Okay, I'm starving. What's say we get out of here?"

"Yes," Jensen says. Not because he cares one way or the other so much as he feels Jeff's desire to get out of there.

Jeff's hands come up to Jensen's face and now—now—Jensen gets the kiss he's been waiting all this time for.