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

Fic: A Kept Boy 55/?
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: 2,478
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.

---

"Jeff?"

Jeff has taken advantage of the close confines of the cab to have Jensen on the seat with him, slung halfway across his lap in a position Jensen insists is comfortable, even with his feet crammed awkwardly in the foot well. Still, Jeff feels calmer and better with Jensen lying on him, so he's not inclined to argue.

The sound of Jensen's voice, though, seems to come from a long way away, more than can be explained by quietness or hesitance. Jeff comes up, like surfacing from dark waters, and realized dully that he'd dropped into a shallow doze without realizing it, sated from lunch and exhausted from everything else. His "…yeah?" in response comes out gruff but, surprisingly, not all that sleepy.

"I…" Jensen shifts a little on Jeff's lap—uncomfortably, Jeff thinks, a little uncomfortable himself as six feet of Jensen resettles. Jensen's hair rustles and tickles against Jeff's belly as he turns his head and Jeff lifts his head from its rest in the back window, opening his eyes. Jensen is looking back at him, eyes and eyebrows crinkled with the struggle to come up with the words for whatever it is he wants to ask.

"What is it?" Jeff tries to make the words gentle. Not that he had any intentions to make them anything but, but he tries to make them even more careful than he would otherwise, glad Jensen's unbent enough to ask him anything.

"Your mom," Jensen begins and then cuts himself off in the same floundering uncertainty. Jeff hates how even that much is enough to make his whole body tense up again, dull, red, throbbing pain wakening in his shoulders and temples like he's been beaten.

"What about her?" It doesn't come out nearly as mildly as Jeff's first words and Jeff tightens his arm around Jensen's waist in an attempt at reassurance.

"Is that what all parents are like?"

It's not the follow up Jeff was expecting and he finds himself gaping blankly at Jensen for several moments, the discarded wreckage of all the things he'd half-thought up to say about his mother choking in his throat, on the tip of his tongue. "I…what…?"

A moment after that, his hindbrain kicks in and advances the thought that, for all intents and purposes, Jensen's been an orphan for the last twenty-three years of his life. An 'orphan' whose parents sold him, no less.

"What are you thinking, sweetheart?" Jeff lays the words out like breadcrumbs for pigeons, hoping Jensen's hungry enough to follow them in.

Jensen shrugs, too careless about it for it to be genuine. "My other masters… It seems like most of them—those that had family…" Again, Jensen breaks off, face screwing up with the visible struggle for the right words to say. "It seems like it's difficult," Jensen says finally, a hero's feat of diplomacy.

Jeff hehs. "Difficult is one word for it, sure," Jeff agrees cautiously, not sure where Jensen is headed with this. Dark things are moving behind Jensen's eyes, things that could be shadows or sharks and no way to tell until that first bumping bite.

"Why do they do it? Why do they, why—" Jensen gestures helplessly, too big to draw up into fetal position on the cab's seat and just as clearly wanting to. "Why?" he asks again, finally, his eyes too bright and his voice turning raw and uneven over the word.

He's looking at Jeff like Jeff knows, like Jeff has got the freaking answer, when Jeff so clearly—so very clearly—doesn't. "Jensen, I…" Jeff shakes his head. "I don't… Don't you think this is the kind of thing you should talk to Cate about? She's the professional…"

Coward, Jeff's abused and atrophied conscience jeers. Coward, coward, coward.

"I don't know, should I?" There's no sarcasm in Jensen's voice, no contempt in his big, steady eyes. He's just, as always, awaiting instruction. "Do you want me to ask her instead?"

Jeff sighs. "No." Then, "I mean, you don't have to ask Cate. I just…" He runs through the pantheon of parents that he knows—his mom and dad, Ever's fractious relationship with her parents, Jeremy's asshole dad and ghost-mother, how Brent hasn't seen his mom in almost twenty years, how Sam will only talk about her mom when she's drunk…and only a crying drunk at that… A thought occurs to him, then. "And no. Not all parents are like mine. Jared's mom, Deirdre, she…" Jeff makes that same breathy laugh again, humor for something that isn't really funny. "She would've done anything for Jared, to make sure he was safe, taken care of."

"But she still gave him away." Jensen's expression is unreadable, though the haunted darkness of his eyes hasn't altered.

Jeff smoothes his finger over the flattened arch of Jensen's eyebrow, wanting to ease away that emotion as easily as he can smooth the lines from Jensen's forehead by simple touch. "She gave him away to save him from something worse. She asked me to take him because she knew I'd take care of him, that I'd never touch him."

"Never?" Jensen sounds startled, head rearing back a little bit.

Jeff smiles ruefully. Jensen's not the first to think that Jeff fished in that pond. Especially when Jared was younger, slenderer, more fragile looking. It doesn't bother him as much as it used to. "I think it would be a little like sleeping with my own brother. Or maybe a nephew. Don't get me wrong; I can appreciate what a good looking man he's grown up to be, but… I promised his mom. I promised I'd watch over him."

"A promise to a slave."

"A promise to a friend," Jeff corrects.

"What happened to her? Jared's mom?"

Jeff shrugs. "I don't know. My grandfather sold her. Waited until I was out of town, the fucker. By the time I got back…it was too late. He'd sealed the sale and I couldn't find her. I would've… I wanted to buy her, too, way back, when I cozened the old man into selling me Jared, but he—my grandfather—he was so angry. I'm amazed he let Jared go."

"A baby's not worth very much," Jensen says, matter-of-factly, so matter-of-factly that Jeff feels the same volcanic spurt of frustrated rage as when his grandfather—or father, for that matter—spat out a similar sentiment.

"He was worth something to Deed. He was worth everything."

Jensen doesn't flinch, exactly, and he doesn't really move, still draped across Jeff's lap, but there's suddenly an obvious distance between them that didn't exist before, the pupils of Jensen's eyes ratcheting a little wider. Jeff's anger wilts as quickly as it surged and he melts back against the cab's vinyl seat. "Sorry," he says awkwardly, pitching his voice below the level the cabbie should be able to hear him. "I'm sorry, I just… Deirdre was a good mother. She loved—loves—Jared like nobody's business."

The memory of Deirdre on her knees, begging him to buy Jared—not even born yet—begging him to keep her son from becoming…well, from becoming Jensen, aches, in the same old way as his fucked up knee. A Lord's bed-toy, Deirdre had said, her face old ahead of its time and frightened. She hadn't meant him, specifically, but he'd never been able to put those words—or that look—completely out of his mind.

"What about Mary-Louise? What kind of mother do you think she'll be?"

Another bump sideways into waters Jeff wasn't anticipating. "Mary-Louise?" Jeff blinks, eyebrows tweaking down. It's not that he'd forgotten about her, exactly, but she'd been uncharacteristically quiet, all the day to day going through Jensen and Joe, allowing Jeff to not think about her too much. The reminder—and the awareness of how easy it's been to forget about her—sting. He rubs the side of his nose, embarrassed. "I don't think I've ever known Mary-Louise well enough to judge what kind of mother she's going to be." Jeff sighs and lets his head fall back again. "Hell, I don't feel like I know if she even really wants the kid, you know?"

"I think maybe that's on purpose," Jensen says slowly, something else flickering through his eyes, more calculating than painful.

"Hmmm. What makes you say that?"

Calculation turns to discomfort and Jensen twitches, like he wants to sit up, but he settles again almost immediately. "I don't know. It's just…a feeling. A guess."

Jeff considers that, hearing something in Jensen's tone that doesn't sound like the unvarnished truth. On the other hand, compelling Jensen to tell him the truth instead of letting Jensen tell him in his own time and at his own desire goes against everything he's trying to do with Jensen. If Jensen is his friend—his lover—and not his slave in anything other than the legal sense of the word, then he has no choice but to let Jensen lie to him. There's not a damn thing Jeff can do about the doubtfulness in his voice, though, when he says, "Okay."

Jensen tilts his head, then winces as it stretches his already taut neck. "I don't know how to tell you what I mean. It's just…things I saw, things she didn't say, not anything she said or did, or…" Jensen shrugs. "I don't know. I really don't."

"Okay," Jeff repeats, sounding surer about it this time. He sculpts his thumb across Jensen's cheekbone and buries the little flame of disquiet at the way Jensen subtly angles his face into the touch. "Okay. I believe you. So tell me what you think."

"I just think she's scared."

"Scared?" Jeff tries to fit that emotion to the Mary-Louise he carries in his head and fails. "Scared of what?"

Jensen just looks at him. "She's a slave and she's about to have a baby who's also going to be a slave." Jensen's eyes shift, though he doesn't lose eye contact. "Did Kane get that genetic report he wanted?"

Jeff wonders what's behind the question. "No. Mary-Louise didn't want it and I wasn't going to force her. She said it's not mine and I believe her…why, do you think she's lying?" Jeff doesn't even know how to categorize the sensation-feeling that goes through him at the thought, too many emotions packaged into a spiky, tangled ball and enough to make him momentarily breathless.

"No," Jensen says slowly and in that same, not-quite-forthright tone. "I don't think she's lying."

"But you think something."

"I just wonder who the father is."

Jeff still doesn't know where Jensen's going with all this and he's coming to the unwelcome conclusion that he's not going to know. At least not right now. It's a weird feeling, that Jensen's holding back on him. It hurts more than his pride wants to admit it does.

"I wonder if that's got something to do with why she's so scared," Jensen continues, unaware.

"Maybe we should ask her," Jeff says lightly, mostly to see what Jensen's reaction will be.

The look Jensen gives him has only a hint of are you stupid in it, combined with something else that Jeff finds he very much wants to call fondness. "You really think she'd tell us the truth?"

No, Jeff thinks, but what he says is, "You never can tell, with Mary-Louise," which is really the more honest answer. Then, "I thought you said her fear was because she's bringing her child into the world to be a slave."

Jensen's mouth crooks. It's probably not his intention, but it just makes Jeff want to kiss him. "I think any slave has more than one thing they're afraid of."

"What are you afraid of?"

Jensen's smile, faint as it is, fades. "What aren't I afraid of?"

There are lots of things Jeff could—and wants to—say to that, but the one that crowds to the front and forces its way out of his mouth is, "I wish you weren't afraid of me."

"I'm—" Jensen bites back his first words, the automatic words, slave words. Slower, more hesitantly and scrutinizing Jeff's face as he says it, Jensen amends, "I'm trying."

Smiling is the last thing Jeff's mouth wants to do, but he stretches his lips around one anyway. "I know you are. C'mere." It's a bad and awkward angle to try and kiss Jensen but it doesn't stop either of them from making the attempt.

Jensen's mouth is hot, so hot, and it opens up to Jeff so smooth and easy, with a moan. Jeff own groan joins it, merges with it, twines around it in the same way their tongues tangle, clutching hunger rising to blot all other considerations from his mind.

And the thing is, Jeff's forty-two years old. This is not his first time around the block, not the first time he's been in love. He's cynical and jaded enough to mistrust the soaring little voice that tells him that all those other times have never been like this, that no one has ever fit so perfectly in his arms, into his life, into him…

…but goddamn if it doesn't feel like that, feel like he might die or kill someone if he has to stop kissing Jensen, if he can't have Jensen, just like this, with him, forever. And it's the best thing that's ever happened to him, pouring into cold, dark, empty places like pure spring sunshine. And it's the most terrifying thing he's ever felt, feeling how much Jensen's crept into him, how much this starving, raging hunger is eating him alive with want and need. And while Jeff's learned over time to deal with his wants, forty-plus years hasn't given him any better idea how to handle need.

The cab, which had ceased to exist for the period of time of their kiss, crashes back into Jeff's reality as it lurches to a sudden halt. Jensen squawks, a strangely hilarious, startled sound, as he starts to slide off the seat.

Jeff grabs Jensen with both hands, mashing them back together, clenching him tight as the cabbie declares, "We're here."

Irked, Jeff ignores the cabbie to glance out the window at the house's façade. It looks the same as it always has, but all the same, it suddenly doesn't feel much like home.

"Jeff?"

He's still hanging on to Jensen; too tight, Jensen sounds strangled. Jeff lets him go and Jensen draws back to his side of the seat. Jeff shakes his head. "Nothing. I just…" He looks down at his hands and wipes them the length of his thighs. "I'm not ready to go in," he admits lamely.

Jensen grins. It's a little shy and a lot brilliant as he puts one hand over Jeff's fingers and uses the other to open the cab's door. "So we won't go inside."