Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/677465. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/M, M/M, Multi Fandom: Actor_RPF, CW_Network_RPF, Supernatural_RPF Relationship: Jeffrey_Dean_Morgan/Jeremy_Sisto, Javier_Bardem/Jeremy_Sisto, Javier Bardem/Jeremy_Sisto/Original_Female_Character Character: Jeffrey_Dean_Morgan, Jeremy_Sisto, Javier_Bardem, Original_Female Character, Cate_Blanchett Additional Tags: Mental_Health_Issues, Mental_Breakdown, Mental_Institutions, Threesome_- F/M/M, Pegging Series: Part 10 of AKB_Outtakes Collections: What_We_Keep Stats: Published: 2013-02-09 Words: 3307 ****** Jeremy III (Brothers) ****** by poisontaster Summary 1991. Jeff takes Jeremy on a trip. Jeremy goes on a trip all his own. Notes See the end of the work for notes The trip to Spain is the only trip that they take together as a couple. Or, if not that—because Jeremy has a hard time imagining Jeff copping to their relationship in terms so definite or romantic—then lovers, a properly European term that rolls more graciously off the tongue than fuck-buddies. *** Jeremy's never been out of the USNA, too poor and too unimportant to qualify for the security clearances, but Jeff… Jeremy knew Jeff had money; one look at that big-ass house and its cliffside property and it's obvious, Jeff's determinedly ragamuffin lifestyle notwithstanding; but Morgan isn't one of those big names that you recognize just for hearing it. Jeremy had no idea what kind of people Jeff came from until Jeff sprang it on him, all casual-like: "Hey. You wanna come with me to Spain?" *** Turns out Jeff's got some half-brother who lives over there, making trouble for the family and Jeff's mom wants Jeff to go over and hush the whole thing up. Jeremy doesn't know all the details, it's enough that Jeff asked him to go. That Jeff wants him to be there, be with him. *** Jeremy doesn't tell anyone he's going. There's no reason not to, he just doesn't want to. He doesn't want questions or doubts or even encouragement and support. He wants this to just be his. His adventure. His adventure with Jeff. *** Jeremy's a little worried about the age thing—Jeff still doesn't know how old he is and Jeremy would like to keep it that way—but other than some side-eye from the Homeland agent that checks them through, it all goes smooth. This trip is going to be epic. *** Jeff's brother picks them up at the airport. Jeremy isn't expecting Javier—a half-brother—to look so much like Jeff. Doesn't expect him to be so much like Jeff, that effortless, bright-burning charisma that makes Jeremy feel so much like a drab and helpless moth. The accent doesn't help. *** Two days into the trip, Jeremy realizes that he didn't bring enough of his meds. He counts the pills four times with cold-but-sweaty fingers, trying to make them multiply through sheer wishful thinking, but no matter how he hashes the math, he can't make it work, can't make them be enough. *** "What's wrong?" Jeff asks, when Jeremy comes from the bathroom. He's sprawled out naked, slow, lazy tugs on his cock, and Jeremy's seen Jeff naked lots now—now that they're fucking—but even so… The sight of Jeff's cock, thick and hard and getting harder, always hits him like a punch, makes his mouth water and his hole clench. "Nothing," Jeremy says. Then, knowing that won't be enough of an answer, he fumbles, "Y-your brother. He isn't what I expected." The corner of Jeff's mouth hooks down and his hand falls away from his dick. Jeremy curses himself as an idiot. "Yeah, well. What's the line from that movie? No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Don't let him fool you." "I'd rather you fool me," Jeremy says, and if it's dorktastic and pathetic, at least it gets Jeff's mind back on the right track as he grins and reaches for Jeremy. "You can fool me all night long." *** I don't need them. I can totally manage this until we get back home. It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. I don't need them. *** "So. You are one of those boys who likes to play with men, rather than boys his own age?" When Jeremy woke up, Jeff was gone, note on the nightstand to explain: Gone to work. When he came downstairs, still at the stumbling into the furniture stage of waking, Javier was there. He's got half a mango, cutting lines into it with a wicked looking pocket-knife. "What?" Jeremy sits on the other side of the table from Javier and pulls the coffee carafe across to himself. Lying about his age comes easy, despite the unwelcome shock of being seen through so soon and so easily. "It's nothing to me, you understand," Javier says, putting the knife aside. "Jeff is welcome to fuck whoever he wants." Javier pushes his thumbs into the mango's rind, turning it inside out so that the soft, fragrant fruit spears out like a blowfish. "As are you. Want some?" *** Jeremy wanders around Javier's house like a restless spirit for a couple hours before Javier either gets sick of it or takes pity on him. He only gives Jeremy enough time to throw on a t-shirt with his pajama pants and shove his feet into ratty rubber flip-flops but it's an ensemble Jeremy's been seen in before, so it's not all that worrisome. Jeff warned Jeremy about Javier. Warned him on the plane, on the tarmac, warned him in their borrowed bed in the aftermath of sex. Being with Javier is very different than what Jeremy imagined from Jeff's warnings. Or maybe it's just the difference of one fuck-up relating to another. Birds of a feather and all that happy shit. This is what Jeremy learns: it's very easy to distrust Javier, but much, much harder to dislike him. That damned Morgan charm. *** Also: Spanish wines will fuck your shit up. Seriously. *** "You're happy," Jeff says, amused, as Jeremy pulls him down onto the couch. Closer, his nose wrinkles but his grin gets wider. "Jesus, you're drunk." "I'm horny," Jeremy says, wrapping both legs around Jeff's waist. "You're demanding." There's no bite to the words, but there is one in Jeff's smile as he slides Jeremy's arms up the couch's length, pinning them to the armrest with one hand. "You like it." Jeff ruts down, into him and Jeremy feels how much Jeff likes it—already. "I do." They fuck right there on the couch. At one point—when Jeremy's head is arching back, because Jesus, it feels that good, having Jeff's cock—he thinks he sees Javier on the gallery above, watching them. But when Jeremy whips up to get a better look, there's nobody there, nothing but man-high potted trees that a fucked out brain could probably see as an actual man, out of the corner of the eye. Probably. *** Despite his worries, Jeremy manages the trip just fine. Totally fine. In fact, it's so fine that he's not even sure anymore why he was taking the meds in the first place. It's the best he's felt in years. His first act, on returning to his apartment, is to flush all the pills. Not the most environmentally sound of acts, but it feels good. Right. A declaration of things to come, a declaration of self. Life is good. It's perfect. *** Whenever Jeremy tries to remember that stretch of all-too-brief time between Spain and the hospital, those bookends of triumph and failure, respectively, it's fragmentary; stop-motion still photographs as though time had slowed to molasses around the hyper-excited collection of molecules colloquially known as Jeremy Sisto. And that, too, is part of the pathology: being able to remember, with complete clarity, the bone-deep conviction that he could fly…without at all feeling connected to that recollection. As if it happened to someone else. An alternate Jeremy, or maybe the Jeremy from his made-for-TV movie. He remembers knowing he could fly, and that's the part he confesses to friends, lovers, doctors, the long slow path to sanity through abasement. What he never tells anyone is that being with Jeff, loving him, is what made him think he could do it. That it was even possible. *** Though it feels hopelessly high-school, and pathetic to boot, Jeremy's life divides into Before Jeff and After Jeff seamlessly and without any intervention on his part. The worst part is that Jeff is still here. Hovering around Jeremy's life, without the decency to die or at least fade away into the faceless seethe of humanity, where maybe Jeremy could forget about him, forget how much it hurts, just seeing him. Having Jeff in front of him, still inexplicably giving a shit about what happens to him, thinking they can somehow still be friends after all this and yet as good as a million miles away compared to what they had—what they were—before… It's noble and stupid and selfish and horrible and possibly the most loving thing anyone's ever done for him. Jeremy wishes he could hate Jeff more. It's too tangled to be pure, too weakened by the way Jeff can make him fly, even sane. (For a given value of 'sane') His mom wants him to come home. His dad wants him to come to New York. Meadow wants him to come up to San Francisco, where she's working with some abolitionist movement. Jeremy doesn't want to move at all. *** The call from Javier is unexpected. That Jeremy accepts Javier's invitation to dinner—sans Jeff—is even more so. He's suspicious—partly because of Jeff, partly because he can't think of a single reason that Javier would want to see him again…and partly because it's just his nature to be suspicious. But he goes, because he's curious, too. *** He'd forgotten how much Javier looks like Jeff. The leather motorcycle jacket only makes the resemblance sharper, though Javier's is fashionably patinaed but creakingly new, where Jeff's is battered and time-worn to his shoulders. Javier kisses him on both cheeks, briskly, and then his mouth—a kiss which lasts several seconds too long to be merely friendly. Jeremy blinks. "Um. Hi." *** His nerve was the first thing they cut out of him in the hospital. It takes him all the way until dessert to work up the courage to ask: "Why?" He thinks it says something that Javier doesn't pretend to know what he means, only considers the question, tongue curled thoughtfully into the bowl of his sorbet spoon. Then Javier shrugs. "Why not? You were good company in Barcelona. There's no reason to think you wouldn't be good company here in Los Angeles, as well. Or am I required to keep safe distance because you belong to Jeff?" "I don't belong to Jeff." Even knowing that Javier is baiting him, he can't keep the edge from his voice, the space between his shoulders knotting tight. "I can have dinner with whoever I want." Javier spreads his hands: you see? "You have other friends." It's not a question. Javier's the kind of man who has lots of friends wherever he goes, though you'd never want to turn your back on any of them. Javier's lips purse slightly and he spears his spoon into the mound of his sorbet before he leans his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. "But none who interest me half so much at the moment as you." *** Javier really likes to dance. More than that, he's a lot better at it than Jeff, for all they share a similar ranginess of body. He's a lot better than Jeremy, too, though he takes pity on Jeremy after a few awkward turns and swirls, relenting into a more familiar hip-to-hip grind that Jeremy has no problems following along with. Jeff never liked to go dancing. *** His meds always give him dry-mouth. By the time they wander over to the bar, Jeremy feels halfway to desiccated. It's also the most alive he's felt in months. He gulps his beer thirstily, head thrown back. It's only after it's mostly gone that he realizes Javier's been watching him drink and that he's been guzzling the bottle's neck like it's some guy's cock. The bottle jags in his hand with the awareness, and he gets a slop of wet and foam on his chin for his trouble. "What?" Jeremy demands, wiping with the back of his hand and smearing the club stamp. Javier leans in close. It's probably just to be heard over the music. "Are we still in the wooing stage or will you take me to your home now?" The touch of Javier's hand—thumb—across Jeremy's bottom lip and chin is startling, both in its unexpectedness and its warmth. "What makes you think I'm taking you anywhere?" Jeremy asks, but he doesn't move, doesn't bat Javier's hand away from molesting his chin and cheek. The beer has gone straight to his stomach like a shot, ice-coolness transmuted to a coal-like heat. Javier shrugs. "We could go to my hotel if you prefer," he concedes. "But it lacks the same…" Javier searches for the word, drawing back to make a stabbing motion. "…passion of me fucking you in the same bed where you made love to Jeff, verdad?" Something slithers through Jeremy's belly, though he'd be hard pressed to put a solid name to it. He's not manic. He worked really hard to get sane again and—though the doctors (not Cate)tell him he's imagining it—he can still taste the residue of his meds in the back of his throat, bitter and somehow cottony. He's on his meds. He took his meds. Whatever he's feeling, it's not the byproduct of his fucked up brain chemistry. …Though it is, very likely, the product of his thoroughly fucked up brain. "You want to hurt Jeff, don't you?" Javier sounds genuinely curious, matching the expression on his face. "No," Jeremy avers. The bitterness of his mouth gets sharper, almost metallic. Liar. Liar. "I'd never hurt Jeff." "Perhaps I used the wrong word," Javier offers smoothly. "My English is good, but it's far from perfect. I only meant to say that you can show Jeff how you have moved on from him. As he has moved on from you, has he not?" Javier strikes a Christ pose, arms open wide. "Here I am, waiting to be cruelly used." *** Sometimes since the hospital, Jeremy feels as though his IQ has been cut in half. Cate has put him through enough testing for him to know intellectually that's not the case; he's still smart. Or as smart as he ever was, given what he's considering. He knows Javier is manipulating him. Or trying to. He's just not sure how much he cares. *** "I thought you didn't like boy…men." "Not as Jeff does, true. Better to say I am…opportunistic. We have that in common, my brother and I." "Half-brother." "Even so." *** This is how it happens: Javier takes Jeremy on his knees. There's only enough lube to smooth the way and Javier makes Jeremy take the length of him, all at once and slow. So slow. It hurts, opening up for Javier's cock. Jeremy hates that he enjoys the pain, enjoys Javier holding him down, enjoys that Javier doesn't care. He hates that it feels good, cock curving hard to his belly and little whimpers coming from his throat with each rocking nudge. "Good," Javier gloats. The timbre of his voice is different but the deep furry note in the way he sounds, cock-deep, is strangely the same, creating a deeper ache than sex can reach. "So good. Dios. No wonder he—" "Don't." Javier threads his hand through Jeremy's hair, tugging his head back sharply on his spine and for a moment, it's so much like being with Jeff that Jeremy can't breathe. "Gently, querido. Or should I say instead: sweetheart?" Jeremy groans and, like that very first time, comes without a hand on him. *** "You don't seem shocked." Cate threshes her straw through the ice of her drink without looking away from him. "Am I supposed to be? Is that my role here?" "I slept with…I let Jeff's brother—half-brother—fuck me." Jeremy's starting to get loud, his voice cracking unevenly over the words. Hastily, he drops his tone. "I'd think that merits a little shock." "I'll be shocked if that's what you want, but truthfully, I'm a lot more interested in understanding why you did it." "I don't know." He hadn't been enjoying his sandwich very much—he couldn't even really remember what he'd ordered—Jeremy pushes his plate away. "Hmm." It's amazing the wealth of meaning that Cate can infuse in one noncommittal syllable. "Did you enjoy having sex with him?" Jeremy shrugs, his face hot and tight. "It was all right. It was fine. Good." "Hmm," Cate says again, leaning back in her chair. "Do you plan to see him again?" Jeremy stops, iced tea halfway to his mouth. The ice inside shifts and clinks, dripping tea onto the table. It never occurred to him that seeing Javier again is even a possibility, their mutual goals accomplished. "I don't know." Cate's eyebrows arch, but she only asks, "Do you think you'll have sex with him again?" "I don't know," Jeremy says a third time, annoyed. Annoyed with Cate and her bland, non-judgemental questions. Annoyed with the sound of his own voice, parroty and indecisive. Annoyed at how fast the white-hot clarity of last night has bogged back down in muddy…muddiness. More decisively, he says, "No. I don't think so." "Got what you wanted from the experience?" Jeremy shrugs again. *** The next time, Javier shows up with a friend, a woman he calls Mariposa, though that clearly isn't her real name. They take turns fucking him, Javier and Mariposa. The black of Mariposa's strap-on matches the black of her eyes and its ridges do things to him that Jeremy never dreamed were even possible. It's weird; he'd gone to Jeff like iron to a magnet and afterward, he'd just figured that meant he was gay. Can't love cock that much and not be gay, right? Like with everything else—and after a couple sessions of eating Mariposa's pussy—Jeremy's a lot less sure than he used to be. *** "So you haven't told Jeff?" "Cate. I just want a refill on my meds, not the headshrink special." The middle vase on Cate's console table is off-center. Jeremy nudges it carefully back into place and then looks up to see Cate regarding him knowingly. "Supply and demand, Jeremy; it's the heart of commerce. You should know that." Cate twirls her pen across her knuckles, smile lifting the corners of her lips. "Why haven't you told Jeff?" "Why would I?" Now the vase is too far to the right. "You think I should tell him? You think I should… Aah. I don't even know if Jeff would give a shit." "If you didn't honestly think Jeff cared, it wouldn't matter that you're having a relationship with his brother." "Half-brother," Jeremy corrects. "And it's not a relationship." "Well, what is it, then?" *** I fucked your brother. I've been fucking your brother. I let him do whatever he wants to me. He's been avoiding Jeff for months but, for all his other faults, Jeff knows how to dig in his heels and be persistent. The words are on the tip of Jeremy's tongue; he thinks of them in terms of trebuchets, of arrows on the string, a gun with a loose and easy trigger. Then Jeff puts his arms around Jeremy and the smell of him, the solid bones and warm skin so entirely, intimately familiar…it takes Jeremy by the throat and puts him on his belly, filled with a want so huge and so wild his skin feels to thin and friable to contain it. When Jeff starts to let go, Jeremy takes a kiss from him, fast and fumbling, craving—desperate—as bad as any junkie. For one delirious moment, Jeff is there, in the kiss with him. Then Jeremy feels him coil. He can't take it, Jeff pushing him away again, so he pulls back first. His smile feels like a crooked and broken thing, but he's faked it enough in the hospital to know it passes muster. "Old habits," he says. I let your brother fuck me. He hurt me and I liked it and sometimes I pretended he was you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. "Sorry," Jeremy says. End Notes There endeth the outtake. The rest of this is authorial rambling, feel free to skip. Nilchance and I talk about the AKB universe and its characters and permutations on a pretty regular basis. This started out as an idea for a "mirror universe story" (a'la Star Trek's Mirror Universe), where Jeremy, manic and wanting to hurt Jeff for reasons unknown starts fucking Javier, who, of course, has reasons of his own for wanting Jeff to suffer. I started writing it to that end, a bit of what-iffery that hammered on mine and Nilchance's narrative kinks pleasingly. But, in trying to figure out how to make the timelines branch off from each other (without getting too wholesale AU from my already crazily AU original timeline), I spotted a crack in the actual canon where this little bit of fun could fit in, as long as the…affair, for lack of a better term, happened after Jeremy got out of the hospital. The downside to this is that Jeremy wouldn't really be manic at this point, deviating from our original bunny, but a) it fit well with the period of awkwardness, anger and recrimination on both sides after Jeremy is hospitalized and b) there's an even sharper angst to the idea that Jeremy did this with the (mostly express) intention of hurting Jeff badly while completely stabilized and on his medication, rather than on a bipolar swing. Though Jensen and Jeff are the primaries of AKB and my focus has been, necessarily, on them, the unfinished, unhealed messy relationship between Jeff and Jeremy has been an intriguing, enticing and fun one to extrapolate and explore. It illustrates a lot about the how and why of Jeff relating to Jensen as he does and it illuminates Jeff and Jeremy on their own merits, as well. Jeremy is still at that "figuring your self and your life out" stage in this story and, as a result, his confusion and bitter wounds and deep, overwhelming love are teenager-intense, creating patterns that will shape him into his adult life. And, as usual, a background player, Javier is fascinating in nearly as many ways. There hasn't been much room for him in the main narratives; as for much of his 'real' life, Javier is not the main story. But one thing that I wrote to Nilchance, when she commented on how alone Javier is, in contrast to Jeff, was this: one line that I wanted Javier to say and couldn't quite find a place for is how he and Jeff are like off-center mirrors of each other. There's a lot about them that's alike, but Jeff takes it that extra few steps toward "good" and Javier takes it that few extra steps toward "bad". Jeff is loving, caring and trusting in a way that Javier isn't...and CAN'T be, based on that very aloneness. And I think a part of Javier holds Jeff in contempt as a goody two shoes and annoyingly virtuous, another part of him longs for the kind of love and devotion that Jeff seems to inspire, which is one of the reasons he's always looking to take Jeff's things. I don't think Javier hates Jeff any more than Jeremy does, though Javier's had more years to nurse his bitters than Jeremy has. You can't want to hurt someone THAT MUCH if you don't give a shit about them. So pitting the three of them against each other in this way has been both really fun, from a writerly point of view and really illuminative of the kind of men they all are, their relationships and distances to and from each other and what that all means in how the story turns out. Though I don't know if I'll ever write it, I have this amusing image in my head of Javier, changing with fatherhood and wanting to construct a meaningful relationship with Jeff and, in typical Javier fashion, trying to make amends with Jeff by disclosing this most sordid of secrets, leaving Jeff in the unpalatable position of either wrecking the fragile bridge they've built after so long because he's just that pissed (and ditto Jeremy) or sucking it up and letting it be water under the bridge. If nothing else, it tells me how much these characters will continue to live in my head long after I've finished the main AKB arc. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!