Current mood:	happy
Entry tags:	2009_fic, fanfic, kept, rps

Fic: A Kept Boy 68/?
Fandom: CWRPS
Pairing: Jeff/Jensen, Jared/Jensen
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Slavefic AU. Sexual, mental and physical abuse of adults and minors. Dark themes, adult concepts and language.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a true story.
Word Count: 2,748
AN: Master list of previous chapters found here. Cast of characters can be found here. Banner by the lovely and generous bloodquartz. Podfic version read by the amazing superstitiousme (found here, courtesy of the very kind general_jinjur). And don't forget the other really awesome stories to be found at whatwekeep.

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Sam isn't up yet when Jensen pads down the stairs to the kitchen in pre-dawn darkness, so he decides to sit on the back step, away from the closeness of the house. The freedom to do this, to go outside whenever he wants and breathe is such an incredible luxury, one rarely given to him.

The promised peace looks unlikely, however, as, coming out the back door, he half-trips over Jared and almost takes a header down the shallow steps. Jensen squawks, flailing frantically for the railing, Jared yelps...and then meeps?

"What are you doing out here?" Jensen hisses in a sharp undervoice, still stretched like a rainbow over Jared's hunched shoulders. He pushes himself off the railing and pinwheels for a second before he finds the balance to straighten up.

"I could ask you the same thing!" Jared grumbles back, only unkinking slightly from his bent posture and with another sharp little mew. "I'm waiting for Sam."

"Me too. Are you hurt?" After a moment's consideration, Jensen drops next to Jared on the stairs, even though there's not much room for the both of them. Still, he and Jared have bumped a lot more than shoulders; Jensen guesses it's okay.

"No, I'm not hurt." Jared sounds confused. His hands are fumbling in his lap and Jensen considers the possibility he might have interrupted Jared inexplicably masturbating on the back steps for the thirty seconds it takes for a big-eyed, furry face to peep over Jared's forearm and squeak authoritatively and demandingly. "Hey, come back here!"

Not listening in the least, the kitten claws its way up to balance precariously on Jared's forearm for a couple seconds before it takes a flying leap toward Jensen. Its small legs are too short to propel it far enough, and it lands halfway on his thigh, tiny needle claws digging through Jensen's yoga pants frantically for purchase as it slides. It's instinct for Jensen to scoop it up, bring the kitten's wee, ribby body in close protectively.

"I think he likes you," Jared says, amusement warming his tone, as the kitten meeps again and curls up in the hollow of Jensen's palm. The crazy part is, it's not much bigger than Jensen's hand, as fragile feeling as something made of glass, but warm and softly furry. After a moment, Jensen realizes the uneven rasping noise it's making is its purr. It sounds a lot more unpolished than the adult cats he's used to, but he guesses that's the point. It's a kitten. It doesn't have the moves down yet.

"Hmm," Jensen says, unsure what the appropriate response is for commenting on a cat's likes or dislikes. He makes to hand it back to Jared.

"Nah, hang onto him for a second." Jared stretches and groans, back popping audibly as he arches. Jensen can see how tired Jared seems, making him look older, more adult. "I could use a rest."

"Is he for Sam?" Jensen looks back down at the fluffball curled so smugly in his fingers, cupping his free hand around the first, though the kitten hardly seems to need it. He thinks it might be sleeping.

Jared shrugs, tucking his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. "I don't know. I'm hoping. His mom didn't want to nurse him, so me and Chad have been trading off feeding the little guy every couple hours until we could get him weaned—which is not fun, let me tell you; I stink of kitten formula…"

Jensen tries to picture Chad with a baby bottle and kitten in hand and just can't do it.

"...so he keeps getting picked on and me and Chad, we just don't have the time to keep up with him like he needs and...hey!"

Jensen really doesn't like the way Jared's looking at him.

"You should totally take him, man! Yeah!"

"Oh. Oh, no, I couldn't..."

"No, but it would be perfect, really, because he already likes you—and believe me, this cat doesn't like anybody..."

"...I mean, I have work..."

"Jeff totally wouldn't mind..."

"And I'm not good with animals..."

"That's crazy! The dogs love you and look, Pickles does too."

Pickles? Jensen thinks, but he doesn't get a chance to say anymore about it before the back door sweeps open and Sam growls, "It is too early for you boys to be this loud on my back steps. Go beg for scraps elsewhere, you mangy dogs."

"Actually," Jensen says, scrambling to his feet, "I wanted to talk to you." He glances back at Jared, weighing the cost-benefit ratio of having the other slave present. The reason he got up this early, slipping from his very warm bed with Jeff, is because it's almost impossible to catch Sam alone. On the other hand, Jared is the one who suggested talking to Sam if he needed advice about Jeff. And Jared's known Jeff his whole life, loyal as a dog himself. "I need your advice." He jams his hands self-consciously in the front of his sweatshirt and finds that, at some point, he either shoved the kitten in there or it crawled right on in, because it's curled up against his belly. "About Mary-Louise." The kitten licks one of Jensen's fingers with its raspy tongue and then butts its head against his knuckles.

Sam's lips screw up with displeasure and she sighs, but she doesn't sound mad at Jensen when she says, "Aw, hell. All right. Are you any good at kneading bread?"

Jensen's never been privileged to watch Sam's morning rituals, usually either still in bed, waiting for his late-sleeping master to wake up, or taking advantage of those extra hours to do his yoga and Pilates, the effort of keeping himself trim and limber a never-ending one, especially in a house like this one, with such rich food so readily rampant.

Just how rich it is becomes really quickly apparent, watching Sam lay out bricks of butter like she's planning to build a wall and sugar and flour enough to mortar that wall, along with a whole host of other things Jensen doesn't know much about. Lord Hutton had been the only one of Jensen's masters too poor to employ a cook and, quite often, he hadn't been able to stomach more than broth and toast. For all Jensen's many talents, his ability to cook is entirely plebian.

Mercifully, she puts him to work chopping fruits and vegetables—though meeting her exacting standards for even that is no small challenge. But the exacting, repetitive work has the effect of making Jensen calm and focus…which is probably what Sam intended.

"All right," she says, furiously beating some kind of batter in a stoneware bowl into submission. "Let's hear it."

Jensen takes a deep calming breath, keeping his eyes on the steady slice of the knife in his fingers. "I think Master Bardem had or is having sex with Mary-Louise," Jensen says, letting it roll coolly off his tongue.

Sam misses a beat with her spoon, almost losing it in the process and Jared drops the double handful of eggs he's transferring from the fridge.

"You're cleaning that up," Sam says, without looking over her shoulder at Jared.

"Yeah, okay," he agrees, "but…holy shit, Sam!"

"Hush."

"I think he's the father of her child, too," Jensen adds, setting the knife aside to dig his nails into an orange rind, with a puff of citrusy perfume. He doesn't trust his fingers with sharps right at this moment.

"Holy shit!" Jared says again from the vicinity of the floor where he's mopping up egg and shell with a dishrag.

"Jesus fucking Christ." Sam tilts her face back at the heavens before going back to beating her batter, possibly with even more viciousness than before. "Okay. And you've told Jeff this?"

"No." Jensen shakes his head, focused entirely on his hands as he fumbles with the sticky-sweet orange. Shame curls darkly through his sternum, hot and cold and prickly. He should go to Jeff with this. His duty is clear and Jensen was raised and trained to do his duty. So why is he in the kitchen, avoiding Jeff and spilling family secrets to his fellow slaves like a backstairs gossip? "He's… Everything's so tense right now. I didn't know if I'd be making things worse."

"Yeah, but it's not you doing anything." Jared straightens up from his crouch, hands full of broken shell and stained dishrag, his fingers stained with yolk.

Inside Jensen's sweatshirt, the kitten stirs and stretches luxuriously, dart-tip claws cutting through the material to prick Jensen's stomach. He scritches the kitten's head quickly and guiltily through the shirt, hoping to make him settle. "Jeff has enough on his plate. I was afraid…" He falters, unsure how to articulate what he was afraid of, how to pick it from the tangle of all his other fears. "I don't know what to do," he says finally, an admission even harder to say than admitting fear. "I don't know what's the right thing."

"First mistake is thinking there is a right thing," Sam says, setting the bowl on the counter with a thump and wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist. For all her caution, she leaves a streak of flour across her skin and on her hips when she plants her hands on them. "Mary-Louise has been a mess since the very beginning and Jeff and his family…well. You're smart enough; you see what it's like." Sam glances at each doorway quickly, before going on. "It doesn't surprise me at all that one mess found the other to make a bigger mess." She picks up the bowl again and starts pouring the batter into waiting pans that Jared's already greased. "They were about to sell her as a horse, did you know that?"

Jensen's knife slips and he only barely avoids slicing the tip off his finger.

"I didn't know that," Jared says, sounding as shaken as Jensen. "I didn't… What did she do?"

Sam slants Jared an impatient look. "She didn't have to do anything, Jaybird, you know that." She shakes her head, opening the oven door and slinging in the pans of batter angrily, as if they've somehow offended her. Not that Jensen blames her; the bogeyman specter of being sold as a horse—no value, lowest of the low—haunts most slaves and Sam seems like Kane in that sense, apt to bury her fear in anger.

"I don't know all of Mary-Louise's story; Kane and Jeff don't talk about it and Mary-Louise sure isn't going to. Truth be told, many's the time I've wanted to wring her neck myself, though I don't think anyone deserves that." Sam sets her timer and then grabs another bowl. "You have those eggs separated?" she asks Jared sharply.

"Uh." Jared looks at the sudsy rag in his hands. "Not yet."

Sam sighs. "Forget it, I'll do it myself. The point is, Mary-Louise could've been more grateful. Jeff saved her from that."

"That doesn't sound very like her," Jensen says doubtfully.

"Of course not, gratitude is a human emotion." Jared goes back to scrubbing egg off the floor.

"But what should I do?" Talking trash about Mary-Louise's many failings is an all day job and Jensen doesn't have nearly that long before he'll be expected to wait on Jeff through breakfast with his mother. "Do I tell Jeff? If that's Javier's baby, then it's family. Jeff would want to know that, wouldn't he?"

"And what's Javier's endgame in all of this?" Jared asks, sitting back on his heels. "He showed up right after she did, more or less, and not to ask Jeff for money, or he would've done it by now. What?"

Jensen shakes his head. "Nothing."

"Yeah, 'nothing'. You think I'm just the guy that walks the dogs," Jared huffs, but his tone and faint smile say he's teasing. "I can put two and two together."

"I don't think you're dumb," Jensen avers.

"Innocent," Sam interrupts. "He thinks you're too innocent to get Javier's scheming."

"Seriously?" Jared raises his eyebrows and looks at Jensen, who actually feels his face get hot as he fastidiously picks white rind from plump, juicy fruit. "Wow. Wow. I think I'm hurt."

"I think you'll live," Sam says dryly. "What were you saying?"

"Nothing. Just that Javier…he's ambitious. I mean…he's really ambitious. And Jeff's mom has been bugging Jeff about having a baby and now we're saying that Mary-Louise is having Javier's baby." Jared shrugs. "Seems like a hell of a coincidence, is all."

"But… Mary-Louise is a slave," Jensen says inanely, tongue tangling over the words. "Her baby will be a slave, too."

It's Jared's turn to look at Jensen as if he's very stupid. Jensen can't bring himself to explain how disturbing (wrong) he finds the idea of passing a slave's child off as free, even though he knows it's done. He suspects Jared would find that even dumber. Especially since Jensen had advocated that exact thing to Mary-Louise herself.

"Okay, I know," he says irritably instead, prompting another stretch and an equally irritated meep from the kitten in his shirt. "But even if that is Javier's intention…so what? He's not a Morgan. Would him having a kid before Jeff make that big a difference?"

"Not to Madam Morgan," Sam answers, no doubt coloring her tone as she sprinkles flour across the dark countertops. "If it is his baby, I'd be damn surprised if she didn't already know about it. And if it his baby and she doesn't know about it, she will soon. Blood means everything to her. Everything. She won't be happy about Javier 'soiling' his with a slave."

"What about the Board, at Morgan International?" The kitten is doing…something in his shirt. Possibly fighting the shirt itself by the feel. Jensen gets up carefully, with the intention of washing the orange juice off his hands before he tries to handle the furry little thing. He only makes it halfway to the sink, though, before a mussed and fuzzy head pokes out the side of the pouch, followed by one sharp-tipped claw, which flails around a bit before latching on. The kitten starts to pull himself out of the pocket, meowing at full volume.

"Dammit, Jared, what have I told you about bringing animals in my kitchen?" Sam slams her bread dough on the counter and leans on it, other hand on her hip as she glares.

"Me?" Jared squeaks. Jensen catches the kitten in his sticky hands just before it falls out of his sweatshirt and brains itself on the hard tile floor. "Jensen's the one holding him."

"And I'm expected to believe Jensen just spontaneously shat a cat out of his belly all on his own?" Sam shakes her hair back and doubles the concentration of her glare. "Don't play me for a fool, boy; I'm twice your age and three times as mean. I know where that kitten came from." She looks at Jensen, not quite as forcefully, but definitely enough that he starts backing for the door. "That cat is hungry. And I'm not feeding him. Get the bottomless pit here to find you something. Away from my kitchen, please. You two have done enough damage."

"Sure thing," Jared says, cheerfully, grabbing Jensen by the elbow while Jensen juggles the kitten, who seems to think this is all great fun and keeps trying to climb Jensen's chest.

"What about Jeff?" Jensen asks, looking over his shoulder as Jared propels him out the door. "What should I tell him?"

"Tell him the truth," Sam says, after another quick check of the doorways. "Even if it's nothing, he'll want to know. And with Javier, it's never nothing."

Jensen nods, finally maneuvering the kitten so that it's tucked in the curve of his elbow, attempting to nurse from his pinkie. Or maybe just gnaw it off, with its soft milk teeth. "Okay, thanks."

"I told you Pickles likes you," Jared says as he frog-marches Jensen across the grass. "You guys were made for each other."

"Jared," Jensen begins and then stops. He sighs. "I am not calling this cat Pickles."

Jared looks confused. "Why not? It's his name. I don't make fun of you for Jensen, do I?"

"Yeah, but Jensen isn't my name."

Jared stops them both in his tracks and goggles at Jensen. "Seriously?"

"No. Not seriously," Jensen says, and laughs. "Not seriously at all." The look on Jared's face is so worth it.