Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/3568301. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Supernatural_RPF Relationship: Jensen_Ackles/Jared_Padalecki Additional Tags: Lolita!Jared, Dubious_Consent, Crossdressing, Age_Difference, Size_Kink, Hebephilia, Infidelity, inspired_by_a_novel Collections: spn_masquerade_Winter_2015 Stats: Published: 2015-03-18 Words: 7726 ****** Sugar Baby's Finest Hour ****** by homo_pink Summary He was J, plain J, in the morning, standing five feet ten in dirty socks. He was Tristan in slacks. He was J-Pad at school. He was Padalecki on the dotted line. But in my arms he was always Jared. Notes For the spn_masquerade prompt: Jared can't help but notice how hot his step-dad is, can't help but notice how badly his mom treats him. He starts doing little things for Jensen and Jensen smiles each time when he does something nice. Jared wakes up him with little kisses when Jensen sleeps on the couch, wears a skirt for him when mom is not home. The new games they play are fun and Jared loves every moment of it. Jensen doesn't like his new wife anymore than his last one. But he likes that he gets to have Jared as a compensation. Also he really loves to see the hero-worship in the kid's eyes. Slowly but surely he molds Jared in accordance to his specifications. His wife doesn't notice/thinks Jensen is being a great dad. Originally posted here. (Italics are directly from the book and skewed to fit.) Jared, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Ja-red: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of two steps down the palate to tap, at two, on the teeth. Ja. Red.   ~   He’s the reason Jensen marries the woman at all. Maybe not consciously, and maybe not scrupulously, but with every tattered and shredded fiber of his beating center, yes, it had been the boy. And how very much a boy he was. No snips or snails or puppy dog tails, this child was made of finer things. Prettied, but sharp. The rough cut edge of a glinty diamond, the crushed velvet veneer of scabbed blood, poison, the fast-acting kind. “Poor old Mr. Jensen” with his “dorky dad glasses” had succumbed within minutes, in moments. The house was frumpy, old money, finely built – but weathered, dust motes tickling around the curtains and silly trinkets stored in glass cases like worldy prizes, gaudily cheap-looking. The room for rent – potentially his – was up on the second floor, a crossed hallway’s distance from a juvenilely decorated one; printed sheets, handwritten signs on the door, europop posters hung awry, and Jensen'd already, so easily, made his decision. “I’ll be sure to keep this in mind,” he had every intention of telling the lady of the house. He’d leave, hail a cab, find residence elsewhere. As it stood, he was a little wary of the sweet-cow eyes she’d been making at him on their tour of the property. He thumbed his specs back into place, resettled his lapels, clutched the handle of his suitcase a little harder, bolstering his nerves. Hoped she didn’t offer a discount, or insist he’d love it here. Jensen wasn’t great with confrontation. “We’ve got a spacious backyard, see, and look, my gardens,” she went on, leading him along by the elbow, tittering away. Jensen, however, had by that point stopped paying her a dime of attention, had stuttered his fool footsteps to a grinding halt, enough for her to turn, catch his gaze, say offhandedly, like it was nothing, like it wasn't everything, “and that’s my son J,” wandering ahead and still rattling off bulletpoints on why he should choose their place. But all she ever had to show was that. That one thing. Through the summer-drenched shine and the arc of the sputtering sprinkler, there he was. Laying flat on his stomach in the sunbleached grass, flipping through 75¢ comic book pages and eating little white powdered sugar donuts, legs up in the air, kicking thoughtfully back and forth, oblivious to the heat, the world, the man standing staring. Scrawny and smiling, bronzing in the late afternoon swelter, he was the sort of thing that could crush hearts in its fist, never knowing the harm his beauty could render. He was a peach, an absolute peach, fat and ripe and hung enticingly low. A man- killer.   ~   They’re wed in July, the mother and he, on the cusp of midsummer, three days after the little fawn child has turned thirteen, only a few hopscotches away from the very spot Jensen fell heart-first into maddening lust. “Not a child anymore,” the boy sneers, snapping wild strawberry gum in his newly coined stepfather’s face, tugging at the itchy confines of his rented bigboy tux. But, he is. Gorgeously, he is. At the reception, everyone's blank faced to Jensen. Including, and especially, his boisterous bride, and Jensen is merely a spectator. Over by the punch bowl, the boy flings his bowtie in an old auntie’s wig, shucks his shiny shoes off and slinks around like an ill fevered fae, barefoot. Hurdles his compact body into the meat of the crowd when it’s time for the toss. With tangles of hair in his laughing eyes, his knees knocking childishly, a mischievous devil smile set in a sweet angel face, he catches the bouquet – and Jensen's attention. He smothers the two of them in weedy arms. And Jensen takes note of Jared's halo burning brighter than a thousand hell suns.   ~   How did it start, one might ask. How could you let this happen? This awful thing. This illegal, immoral thing. The filth of it. Oh, you should be ashamed. You’ll burn, you’ll burn, and you’ll rot. But Jensen, a 36-year-old man existing solely in the miniature world led by the child’s hand, a tiny doll in a diorama, would never have been quite able to discern. For the child was not something that just happened to a person, he was given. He was a gift. He was art. And Jensen had been aflame from the moment Jared looked up from his funnies, grinned at him all wide and wild and full of metal.   ~   He was J, plain J, in the morning, standing five feet ten in dirty socks. He was Tristan in slacks. He was J-Pad at school. He was Padalecki on the dotted line. But in my arms he was always Jared.   ~   It’s just little things at first. Harmless, to an unseeing eye. Side by side seats at the table during breakfast, chosen by the child himself. Afternoon trips to the market, the boy’s head and shoulders sticking out of the passenger window, all cocker spaniel joy. Two-player games of Jenga at two in the morning, where the goading child tests the limits on ‘wood’ jokes, more than once. All of his black-inked pens are stolen from his desk one day and replaced with red Bics. “So you can draw hearts,” Jared says when he sees Jensen’s befuddled brow. “What? You don’t like it?” “It’s not—“ “You don’t,” Jared says, and stomps off, slams the door to his room obnoxiously hard. But he’s over it before day’s end, attention span of a puppy, and has already found new ways to torment Jensen. “Here you go, mister,” he says, holding a sweating glass of ice cold pink lemonade, the mother just coming round to join them on the back porch steps. Ice cold, Jensen knows, because he saw with his own disbelieving eyes, watched as the boy plunked five cubes in, before sucking a sixth into his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue, and then plucking it out and dropping that one in as well. “What a heated evening, my goodness,” the mother says, and Jensen hastily takes the glass and brings it to his own forehead, in full agreement. He drinks as they talk, sips and sips, and attempts to ignore the child’s wandering foot pressing into the side of his ankle.   ~   As far as Jensen’s concerned, there’s no need to make fuss over the marital bed. He’s content in his stuffy attic-sized room with the sagging curtain rod, the rigged up light switch. The neighboring room he can see into if he angles his body a certain way on the mattress. The terrible crow-singing, the immature tirades, the bone-thinned bird legs that sprawl shamelessly apart as their host sleeps on. The mother pouts at him, says they’d bond better under the covers, sly winks, flirts embarrassingly, tells him, “Poo poo. We should be spoiling our bodies.” He’s borderline repulsed at the notion. Why, she’s hardly more than a stranger, and he’s hardly interested in a breath outside of those spun from her birthed’s lungs. In the end, he begs off to tend to his studies and puts off consummation another night. To be spoiled on anything other than the richest offerings would spoil only his wanting heart.   ~   The first time he touches Jensen – really, truly touches him – is nearly unbearable. Jensen’s fallen asleep on the loveseat, fringe throw pillow clutched to his chest, TV turned down to a quiet hum. The rest of the house is fast asleep, all opaque shadow and a quiet ceiling fan, and he slumbers on and on, sleeps right through the fifth stair from the bottom creaking tellingly, entirely misses the slinky stick figure floating towards his napping form until something presses against his forehead. Then his temple. His cheek. His chin. The tippy tip of his nose. The corner of his— He comes awake violently, eyes huge, spine taut, blinking at the moon-bright face of his wettest dreams. “Up to your room, mister,” Jared says, crinkling his nose adorably, making silly faces as he slaps at Jensen’s cheeks. “Can’t stay here, sleepyhead. You’ll get sco-lee-oh-sis, you know.” Jensen’s eyes dart around wildly, like somebody else might’ve seen what just happened and they’d know, they’d know the reactive things his body had done with hardly any prompting. The very vision of the boy is enough stimuli in even the brightest hours, the most mundane situations. But in the seduction of 4 a.m., with his one thing standing in front of him in a pair of cotton pajama shorts and a flowy tee, outlined in a body-halo of television light, pressing his lips, that mouth, to the very skin Jensen lives his shameful life in, it’s too too much. His cock swells stickily against the seam of his pants, and it’s so wet he thinks he can smell it. Hopes he’s the only one who can. “Oh, you like this?” Jared says, and Jensen races toward bursting panic before he realizes the boy has turned toward the TV, old That Girl reruns flickering on the ancient rabbit-eared box. “She’s pretty.” Jensen hmms, his first audible noise. “I like her outfits.” Jared’s a strange child. They walk up to the second floor together, Jared eyeballing him the whole way, like to make certain Jensen is delivered to his room, and Jensen eyeballs him back, makes certain that no body parts of theirs are touching. Not even a pinky toe. Not even one of a thousand goosebumps he still has.   ~   Jared doesn’t stop there, and he’s not easily deterred. Feral creatures never are. When mother’s back is turned, he likes to play wicked games. Almost all of them involve his favorite toy, his Jensen, the instrument that sighs and groans and pitches high when its strings are thrummed just right. “Shh, watch this,” he says once before dinner, when they’re seated around the dining table and mother is bent over the stovetop, doling out portions of potatoes and sautéed meats, and he lifts his worn through Wolverine t-shirt up to his chin, pinches both little nipples to rosy distress, quick as a hotflash, and drops it back just as fast, says, “Oh, thanks mama,” when she sets their plates down in front of them. “Looks good, huh, Mr. Jensen?” Jared asks, the face of virtue, all doe-eyed innocence. Jensen nods, numb and partway dead with arousal under the table. He can see the tiny stiff things poking through the shirt, stares abnormally long, saliva backing his teeth. “Bet it tastes good, too,” and the child scoops a pile of mashed taters onto his spoon and grins around the wad, mother hemming and hawing and blushing with the compliments, Jensen choking and coughing, flushing with the implications. "Mama makes good stuff," Jared says a little later on, preoccupied with his food at last. "Yes," Jensen agrees, clears his froggy throat. "Your mother certainly does." They both smile at him in awed appreciation, and Jensen feels guilty up to his eyeballs, down to his crotch, and has to excuse himself from the table three separate times to splash water on his face and on his overheated, child-loving dick.   ~   She goes to town one sticky afternoon, muggy air thick with 'skeeters buzzing, meeting up with the girls, might catch a double-flick, "You boys will be alright without me, won'tcha?" Jared shoos her off, swats at a critter that's landed on the edge of his knee, says go on, go on, we'll find something to do around here, like he and Jensen are just pals, just a couple of schoolkids looking to get grass-stained and up to no good. And at least one part of that's true, even if Jensen hasn't the slightest inkling of an idea about any of it. The second the screen door’s slammed shut and the old Buick has set off down the drive, Jared’s hopped up off the patch of floor he’d been lazily perched on, digging the dirt out from under his nails, and shoots up the stairs two at a time, wobbly and hurried. Jensen flinches at the movement, thinks okay, bye, I guess, and it’s not that he was expecting the child to lavish attention on an old dud like him, he knows he’s something Jared just fucks with out of boredom, to wile away the summer months, but it stings like raw rejection, the careless dismissal, makes him feel fifteen and shy and stupid all over again. Only a handful of heartbreaking minutes have even passed, Jensen clumsily attempting a crossword puzzle, when the child comes slithering back down like Eden’s serpent and Jensen full on double-takes when he sees him, gasps so thick and ragged his glasses start to fog. It's just a little skirt, doll-eye blue, not even all that short, kind of swishy and soft looking, a few inches up on the thigh, flouncing with every step closer he gets to Jensen. It's not particularly raunchy, even though it absurdly really is, and Jensen's eyes feel hot and damp over it, jesus, how mortifying, but the child is so so beautiful. "How do I look?” Jensen can only nod, watch as Jared gathers the hem in both hands and frolics around the room daintily. “Do I look like Ann Marie?” Utterly beside himself, Jensen shakes his head. The child is a hundred, a million times more bewitching. “You don’t like it,” Jared says, blinking furiously, reddening from the shoulders up, and it’s his eyes that start to water now, it’s he who looks as though— And Jensen trips over his own tongue to say, “no, no, I do, it’s just, you just,” and he covers his face with his hands, lets his glasses fall onto his dirty dirty lap, “I can’t look at you like this.” It’s quiet, hushed. The strongest and truest declaration he’s ever made to anyone before. He’s not expecting what happens next to happen. Not that he’s expecting anything at all, had he bothered picturing how this day was going to go, had it been anything beyond board games or indecent drawings, it certainly wasn’t for the graceless child to come up to him in a graceful crawl, and while Jensen’s still blind with shame and his own shaking hands, set the glasses aside, climb into his lap, sit delicately down, babble comfort at him. Jared says, “it’s okay, it’s okay,” and “you don’t have to,” like he gets it. And maybe he does. Because the next thing Jensen knows, he’s got his wet-tracked, heated face tucked into the child’s neck, eyes squeezed shut because he can’t look again, he can’t, not when the image is still burned into overblown pupils. More Betty Boop than Minnie Mouse, the boy wears his skirt like its price tag is weighty, not like he snatched it from the neighbor’s clothesline when no one was looking. Not so itsy bitsy spider legs poking out underneath the hemline, endlessly long and smooth, tiny boy-scratches scattered about from knobbed knees to bare skinny feet. No shirt, just fevered skin wrapped around his ribcage, and a sweetly pretty flat chest. Untamed hair finally domesticated, tied up in a little knot with wispy strands falling against his cheekbones. There's even a little matching blue ribbon tied around the base, lopsided and unpracticed and destroying. "Hey, it's alright mister." It isn't, but he sounds like it could be. Like he wants it to be. So Jensen's arms come up around him, unsure, hovering moth-like until Jared squirms against him, presses himself bodily into the embrace, and sighs like relief. Jensen feels an echo of the sentiment inside him. They sit that way for hours, the boy warm in his hold and cuddled in tight, Jensen with his bottom lip trembling and his heart thumping wildly between them, and that's all that happens. That day.   ~   My Jared. Honey-limbed, golden, sparkling river nymph. Jared.   ~   The thing about Jensen's addiction was this: the more he wanted it, the better it was, and the better it was, well. The cycle never ends. And he'd either live with it – or he'd die without it. A month ago, he was a twelve year old boy with a nasty habit of hissing at strangers for fun. Today, toeing the line of teenhood, all grape lollipops and a mouth rung with cookie crumbs, he has much, much nastier habits. “Is it good?” he asks, pulling the candy in and out of his shiny, purpling mouth, spreading and shutting and spreading his thighs like butterfly wings. He’s in a little crop top and floral cotton panties, slouched carelessly across a recliner chair, watching Jensen’s reactions, listening for his sobbing sounds, because by now the little sex sprite knows exactly what havoc he’s wreaking, and he thrills from it. “Are you, do you like this?” Because Jensen still needs to hear it, needs to know he’s not the only sick fuck in the room. “I like you,” Jared says, eyes going narrow, knee falling to its widest stretch yet. And Jensen can see every outline, every bump and bulge, the little tip of his baby cock patching a wet smear, darkening a cluster of fabric petals. Soon, he thinks, soon he's going to get up and taste it, eat the flavor, keep the moment forever, and the child will be his his his and Jared will say, breathy and young and seeking, "..is it good?"   ~   They go to the flea market, as a family. They buy roasted corn and drippy sno-cones, fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the weekend crowds for a bench that’s seen better days. They get lost, circle around twice, dunk their heads in and out of bootleg shops, beads and baubles, a guy selling quote-unquote not-stolen radios and speakers, and the mother grows enchanted with a price-slashed perfumerie, brings every bottle and pump to her nostril. Hidden in plain sight, Jensen is free to partake in his favorite hobby. Boy- watching. He sees the things the child is drawn to, the direction his eyes linger, and with the mother busy sniffing, he stuffs a wad of bills into the boy’s hands and says, “anything you want”, doesn’t look him in his hypnose-eyes. Jared wanders into a cheap teen boutique, one of those discount stores with trendy, cheaply made clothes and a 50% off underthings rack. He isn’t gone long, just enough to fill up a pink plastic bag with secret things, but the mother comes along in that time, wondering over his whereabouts, and Jensen thinks quick, “My niece’s birthday is around the corner, I sent him on an errand." “I didn’t know you had a niece,” she says, delighted by the news. Yes, well. She also doesn't know he has dreams of sodomizing her son, has nightmares of never having the chance. He nods, says to her shoulder pad, “I told him he could keep the change. Consider it an allowance, good behavior reward.” And her smile just gets bigger and bigger, plumping cheeks, eyes telling him what a good dad he is to her J, a fine gentleman, a role model, a keeper.   ~   Soup used to be simply that, soup. Humdrum, uninteresting, just plain sustenance. Jared’s at his usual spot on Jensen’s right, slurping chicken-noodle alphabet soup, while the mother and he dip into their bowls of broccoli cheddar, and it’s an otherwise quiet evening, just toads and crickets out, jazz music down the street somewhere. It isn’t until the child noisily and completely unsubtly nudges his fruit punch cup over, nearly spilling the thing onto Jensen’s front, that Jensen sees what he’s been doing this whole time. In drippy noodle letters plopped down disgustingly right on the vinyl tablecloth, it says B-O-N-E-R 4 U. Jared snorts bubbles into his drink when he sees the look on Jensen's face. "Uh-oh," Jensen says stupidly, too rushy, "better clean this up," and he swipes his dinner napkin all through the mess, mops it up before mother catches on, and almost gets up to throw it away before he realizes he has one too. For the boy. Jared knows without being told, his eyes flecking dark dark grey.   ~   “Am I gaining weight?” Jared will say, now and again, hunching his chest over to his knees, squeezing at the little jellyroll fat he’s created under his navel. “Am I blubbery?” The first time he said this, Jensen was alarmed. Because no, no. He’s a scraggy thing through and through, bones stabbing up every which way, smooth bellied and poky Adam’s apple. But he’s learning obeisantly. It’s just another game they play. That Jared plays and Jensen is helpless in curbing. “Ah, youth, and already such a fool,” he’ll say, and Jared might huff or roll his eyes, or smile shark teeth at him. Am I beautiful, is what he’s asking, and Jensen would find him a palace of mirrors if he thought it would be enough for the boy. It isn't, obviously.   ~   "You chump," he said, sweetly smiling at me. "You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh boy, and look what you've done to me."   ~   Their first kiss is something of a scare tactic, an ultimatum, because romance has never come easily for Jensen, and the boy himself knows nothing of the sort. Some days he’s sooner to smack Jensen’s glasses off than he is to wrap arms around his neck, so it’s 50/50 really. They’re up in the child’s room, peeling old wallpaper off, readying it for fresh paint and Jared is bored. Bored bored bored. The boy is always bored of something. One day he’ll be bored of Jensen. “Kiss me,” Jared says, like the idea’s just wandered by and he's grabbed at it on impulse. Jensen thinks it’s a joke at first, another cruelty, has it at the back of his throat to whisper for Jared to be quiet, mother’s just downstairs, she has guests, but one cricked-neck glance has his breath gone still in his chest. “Well? You think I got all day or what?” He leans the skinny cupped arches of his shoulder blades back against a half-finished wall. "Come on then, move those funny legs of yours. I'm wuh-wuh-waiting." "Please don't – " His heart couldn't take it if, if. “Kiss me,” the child says again, ruder, face going cherried in sudden fury, brows up comically high, round-eyed, mouth in a thin quivering line. “You kiss me right now or I swear I’ll scream.” Jensen doesn’t think he would really, not really, he’s never tattled before, but something about his stance, the unyielding look in his eyes, feels hostile. And Jensen wonders if he shouldn’t maybe listen to his gut that’s chanting yes, do it, yes, take it, and do what the boy demands of him. He takes a half step forward, like the three floorboards between them are made of thin ice. Or crackly fire. Hellfire. Immediately, Jared holds out his arms. And he waits. His little body shivers when Jensen steps close. Mercurial eyes flit the map of Jensen’s face, everywhere all at once, and settle at last on Jensen’s lips, wets his own unthinkingly, and Jensen knows to the bone of him that it’s a mouth that’ll be written about lovingly on bathroom walls someday. Jared is young, and he kisses like the young, jaw open at once, tongue jabbing around organically, miming film scenes, bad Hollywood grandeur. But Jensen is sick and lonely and dangerously besotted and the child is bumblingly perfect. He holds onto Jared’s cheekbones with both hands, says shh shh shh, and fingers at the sweaty temple-curls. Mouths at the dip below his swelling bottom lip, sinks his tongue in again for a second try, looser, and the child goes to putty. He hitches little breaths, wraps willowy arms around the bulk of Jensen’s wide adult back and gigglingly says, “I kinda feel like screaming anyway now, mister." Lets Jensen go on kissing his canyoned mouth.   ~   Inside the tool shed, under the shingled back porch covering, in the shadow between the fridge and the sink, on the stairwell when no one’s home. Anywhere. Any time. Anyhow. "Touch it, mister," Jared wheezes happily, all smeared lipgloss and babyflesh. "Go on."   ~   He’s got a thick layer of foam poofed up on his chin and cheeks when the child pauses in the open doorway of their shared upper floor washroom. “You look so stupid,” Jared says cheerfully, kicking a hacky sack into a neat arc. Jensen watches him in the reflection, blade paused in the air to start in. “If you ask me,” Jared goes on, dragging the toy around in patterns with his big toe. “I think you should leave off doin’ that.” Jensen wavers, studying his Barbasol’d face. “Copper, right?” “Huh?” “Your hairs. They grow out orange, don’t they? Don’t they? Like a carrot top. Carrot dick,” he snickers. Then, “You orange everywhere?” “I—I,” Jensen says smartly, peeking down at his crotch for just, for just a second. The child grins like old testament sin. Then, hmming, idly wondering, he says, “Wonder how that would feel against my asshole.” Predictably, the child gallops off down the hall, echo of his spright laugh, his booming glee ringing in Jensen’s ears. And just as predictably, Jensen sets the blade down. Doesn’t touch it for a week.   ~   "Call me Cherry Bomb," the young thing says once, offhand, as he combs through his new stash of comics, eating dry cereal out of a styrofoam cup. Jensen doesn't ask why, but he waits for the punchline anyway. There's always a punchline. Cuz I make your meat explode! He's expecting, well, at least a little something. But Jared says nothing, and Jensen's boy-heavy brain brings to the front all of the sultry film noir Jared's been inhaling, obsession of the month, and Jensen loyally adds another alias in with the rest. Yes, my love, he thinks. "Sure," he says.   ~   Baby mice. Tender and pink and uniquely devoid of fur. (Blind and helpless and hard to resist touching.) It’s what he thinks of the first time Jared exposes the full and true length of his nubile body. He’s as lean and gangly as Jensen’s ever known him to be, little pudges for buttcheeks, swollen pink bits hanging between his legs, but still small, still premature, hardly a stitch of hair to be seen. Jensen thinks that he, his 7th grade flame, is the most erotic thing his eyes have ever fallen upon. “I look ugly,” Jared huffs, sighing, digging a finger into his half-moon bellybutton. He turns a foot on its side, ankle near parallel with the floor, and Jensen tracks the motion, knows somewhere deep in him that Jared’s just nervous, maybe terrified. He should say something, offer a smile, reassure the kid that he’s perfect, that he’s everything, that Jensen has never craved another before, won’t again after. What he does instead is pull his own clothes off one by one, steady, steady, eyes never leaving the child’s stare, waits until he’s newborn naked too, and says, “Do I?” Jared shakes his head profusely, tumbles out no, no, mister, oh wow in a choked daze, and that’s all Jensen was really looking for. “Will you show me how I look to you?” And readily, like nature intended, the harmless mouse slides into the waiting maw of the beastly tomcat.   ~   A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of hazel sulks and rosy mirth, Jared, when he chose, could be a most exasperating brat.   ~   “Please,” Jared whines, cheek trembling as he speaks. “I’ll be good, I swear. I won’t sass you again. I won’t even—please.” For a piercing hysteria moment, Jensen contemplates delirium. That’s more, far more, than the child has ever given him. Full of mockery and insults, Jared can be mean spirited about things, but hardly has he ever been polite. Jensen's stale insides are dead and black, full of ugly. And yet he nearly weeps with joy, with wanting, with being wanted. Jared leans further back on his elbows, humps his little hips in the air, and lets his head topple backwards, knob in his throat standing firm, pattern of veins lickably traceable. “Oh god," he sniffs, like maybe he's crying, he's still learning his way around an orgasm, "Jensen", and, of course, that finally does it. He flips the boy’s ruffled skirt up even higher, material sagging over the concave suction of Jared’s heaving belly, and he thumbs at the raw little slit between his legs, puffy and reddened and glossy-hot with recent spit from Jensen’s claiming mouth. Jared slumps like a doll, lets out a hot wet moan and scoots his little butt down to make Jensen rub harder. The child is making sounds, delicious sounds, sounds of the deaf, unknowing, unheard, and Jensen softly spits a wad of drool down to where his hand is working. He tugs at the delicate rim of him, circles, holds his breath while he watches two knuckles on his middle finger get swallowed like lava. He curls it back, does it again, and then he presses his mouth to the boy's pretty pink fuckhole and finally, finally sinks his tongue all the way inside. Scrapes the fine hairs of his beard against a child's ticklish parts. Jared wails into the barely air-conditioned room. "Pleasepleaseplease." "Hush, hush." "You're in there." "Shhh..." The child was never wearing panties underneath. He gets lovingly and thoroughly eaten out like a girl well into the lazy Sunday afternoon.   ~   In late August, they go shopping for school supplies. It’s enough to get Jensen thrumming in his skin, the reminder that all too soon the days of having Jared on hand, at his fingertips, around the hallway corner to fulfill his every wish and whim, will be over. Jared will go to school, will laugh, will learn, will make new friends, and Jensen will wait at home and pine. He can see it now. He’ll sit at the cat's windowsill between the curtain and the glass, swishing his devious tail and watching stray birds flit by, waiting for a lone pink- tailed white mouse. And he’ll be hungry, so starved and suffering that the moment little footfalls sound out in the front hall, backpack strewn to the ground, it’ll take all of the fight Jensen doesn’t think he has left in him to not simply herd the boy over to the nearest flat surface and feed. It’s getting bad for him, that much is clear. “Oh, J, no, you don’t need that one,” the mother says. “Here.” She tosses a plain black school binder into the basket. Three rings, basic plastic, no fuss. Jared glares longingly at the one she’s pushed back into the shelving; metallic-sheened cloth, bulky zippers, lots of pouches and pockets. Cool. He looks at Jensen for help, just—Just briefly. And Jensen just shrugs, what can he do? You don’t go against mother. You just don’t. Down another aisle, the child reaches for a pack of mechanical pencils. Pinks and oranges, little polka dots, glitters, candy colors. Each one has a squeezy grip thing, too. Mother laughs chidingly, those aren’t for boys, thinks he’s pulling her leg. Jensen wants to curl into a tight timid ball right there, horrified. Knows without having to see the look on the fawn’s face — can't bear to anyway — that it isn’t true, that the boy wants them desperately. He loves pretty things. Jared doesn't try for Jensen's help again. Mother walks on. Distressed, Jensen yanks a bag of pens off their hook, lightly waves them in the child's face, smiling hopefully, looking for a secret grin. They're red Bics. Jared hardly looks at them, hardly looks at Jensen. Trails after mother with hunched in shoulders like injured angel wings, dragging dirty untied shoelaces behind him.   ~   He’s being punished, it's true. But he’s also paying a penance all his own. He was at fault. He had shaken like a leaf when the child had needed most the shade and sanctity of an old red oak. The child isn’t cold-shouldering him, exactly, though he’s not warm-blowjobbing him either. Not anymore.   ~   “J,” the mother barks, “it’s your turn to run the dishwasher!” or “The lawn, J, the lawn,” she gripes, noticing the shin-length sway of the green. The child peeks – but he never speaks. Goes back to his channel flipping. And Jensen makes it down the list of the child's forced To-Dos; the figurines and the clocks dusted; the buildup scraps of trash put out on the curb in two neat, knotted sacks; the upstairs lavatory mopped and swept, shined and gleaming. He's a veritable invisible robot for the next two days, and oh, oh yes, the mother hasn't glowed so much since the day she began penning Ackles as her surname – until the middle of the week when she's headed out to the grocer and she heel-clicks past the child. The complacent smile dies on her rouged face and she ducks in for a sniff-test. She balks. "How on Earth. Can you not smell yourself? J, my goodness, you reek of stale sweat and B.O. Blugh." Jared flips two birdies at her back once she's turned, still muttering about decency and stenches, and Jensen studies the wood grain beneath his feet. He's caught the odor a time or two in passing. It's not B.O. that the boy stinks of. It's salt. And sex smells. And his own fiddly fingers sunk deep in his little underwear. He's not getting it from his usual source, but it doesn't mean he's not getting it. "Make sure he bathes, Jensen," the mother hisses as she goes, like she trusts him to get it done. Like Jensen has any clout whatsoever. Like it isn't nakedly clear who's boss. “Yeah, you heard her, Jen-sen,” the child says when he deigns to speak to Jensen at last. “Make sure I have a bath.” Still standing in mother’s dust, Jensen is quiet. Ol' rabbit-ear has droned down to a mute nothing and it feels a little safer. So Jensen turns. Skitters a quick eye to check the tone of the child’s face. It’s not safe in here at all.   ~   On his knees like the pious man he is, Jensen lifts a delicate paw off the tile of the bathroom floor, squeeze-rubs at the calf, cradles it lovingly. He smooths a greedy hand long lengths up unblemished roads, the knee, the gaunt boy thigh, all bone and thinness and wonder. Jared arches shamelessly, twisting eel in Jensen’s grasp, hands that’ll grow huge someday fisted at Jensen’s shoulder, at the back of Jensen’s sweating head. "You'll wash me?" the child stumbles out, teetering, moaning when a hand cups him just right, just so. "If that's what you want." Perpetual question mark afloat in the steam. "Always want you to, mister," he says, high, rounding the vowels out. And then, "do you have to be so maudlin? Just strip me and put me in the tub, mama won't be out 'til Christmas, you know." Jensen's grinning into the child's tummy, maudlin, thinking their daily crossword routine maybe isn't half bad. And Jared says then, scoffy, sure of himself, "It's not like I'm gonna break." And that's a truth. Sure it is. Because already brittle and half-stitched, of the two of them, Jensen knows who'll wilt. And who will bloom.   ~   “Rub-a-dub-dub,” warbling, splashing, “two men in a tub.” He pauses, looks at Jensen, cackles in his face. He flicks the tip of Jensen’s reddening ear and fans his lashes. Jensen can’t help smiling back. The child uncurls his flimsy limbs beneath the sudsy water, stretches out, grungy toes gripping the lip of the tub, knee a near-hairless hill for Jensen, knelt on the floor and petting within, to scrub – over, under, while he taps at each of Jensen's finger freckles, naming them like stars. The Big Dicker, he says, snorting to himself like he's awfully clever. To Jensen, he is. Meticulous, Jensen sponges every crease and crevice, every curve and catch. “Think you missed somewheres,” the child says, then pops a soap-fizz that’s glid past the wing of his collar bone, innocent. “Come to think of it, I feel extra dirty ‘round there. You should prob’ly not forget your favorite places, dummy.” If the child doesn’t hear the glib-glib gulp that he takes, Jensen would be surprised. But, of course, Jensen reaches under the lather dutifully. “Here?” he asks, real small, finding a hardening, promising bit of flesh, but the child shakes his head. “Here?” weighs the plump and heft of Jared’s small balls, and Jared does clog a bit, but he gasps, no, go on, and Jensen the wanderer roams on. “What about—“ “Yeah, yeah,” Jared says, like he’s being strangled, squirms on Jensen’s fingertips. “You don’t—feel dirty,” but Jensen, assuredly, very much does. “I am,” the child insists, latching onto Jensen’s bicep, forcing him to keep on. Jared slips his eyes closed, rolls his head back, and mutters, “I’m filthy,” while Jensen roots around down there, works a finger up inside, gets the child to sigh all content and purred and honey-warm. The boy drapes his stems wider, lifts his slippery butt. Shame is a closet concept around here, for all parties, and if the boy has any at all left, he doesn’t show it. He humps and fucks and says ohhh and makes Jensen all drippy in his own drawers. “Like it,” Jared says, eyes flickering like fuzzy channels behind his lids, “like it so much.” Maybe too much, Jensen frets, because soon he feels a prominent press of cock against the inner lily white bit of his forearm, feels the greasy slip that trails near the bend of his elbow. It's not water. And he's not ready for playtime to be over. "Shit," the child says. "Shit." His face twists, mouth goes gaping. The glimmery metal of braces over his teeth is distracting, wholesome looking, and his tongue licks over them before he groans, heavy, real, and he doesn't allow Jensen to pull his hand away, to stop. Jensen the intruder fingerfucks him well. And that’s when the child opens his glassy eyes, looks at Jensen like he’s playing a memory game with his features, reaches a spidery hand up out of the water, and places it on the cut of Jensen’s high-flush cheek. “You got a real pretty face, mister,” he says, wondering over this. Then he smiles, nods, and tells Jensen he better not dare stop. Stricken, lovesick, Jensen doesn’t. He’d never wish to miss out on the brilliance of this child’s undoing.   ~   He was mine, he was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, he was mine.   ~   Tracking mud into the kitchen, the child looks around, finds ignorant mother immersed in a crockpot recipe, and he marches up to Jensen all spittle and scowl. "Don't just sit there looking like a pervert," he seethes, side of his mouth. It carries over into a sharp laugh, "Oh, never mind. That's just how you look. Never mind!" Then he bares kinked teeth, tips in to Jensen's perverse ear, "I named my vibrator after you." And even with all of his naked stuffs hidden from Jensen's gluttonous gaze, the boy is pure cane sugar for Jensen's raring sweet tooth. He marches Jared up the stairs, skipping the fifth step on purpose, and lets the mucky little boy release one into his mouth. They're done in under a minute. Mother's cooking curried beef.   ~   He comes to Jensen’s room one dying afternoon, just before the start of school bells and bus rides, and in the yellowing light of Jensen’s table lamp, he says, pin-up girl racy, “Take me to bed.” Ruining the image at once, he follows it up with braying hyena sounds. They get spit into the wide flat of Jensen’s palm that crushes over his mouth on pure instinct. The mother has taken her sleeping potions tonight, but that doesn’t mean a thing to a worrisome monster. Sobering, Jared asks abruptly, "do you. Do you ever wonder what it would be like to." He cuts his eyes, busy snacking on a thumbnail. To hold your hand through Abner Park? To kiss you on the street where anyone can see? To watch you grow and flourish and fly, me at your side until we meet soil? "She doesn't– Even if you tried it with," the child says, starts again, "That old bat couldn't satisfy you the way, the way that–" He fumbles, whooshes a greasy strand out of his face. "Mama doesn't actually love you, Jensen. Not like–" Jensen's very soul turns in on itself, the shriveled thing experiencing rebirth. Self-preserving, he stops a boy's confession right there with one of Jared's favorite back-dipping, bodice-hugging kisses, all jaw and gesture and wet lip sounds. It's wrong, perhaps, to play an advantage like he's done, but it's beyond Jensen's own emotionally stunted capabilities to hear what the child might've said. Or worse, what he might've not said at all. Better this way, not knowing. "Take me to bed?" Jensen asks shyly, and Jared wipes his own ruddy mouth with the back of his wrist. The angel-devil of Jensen's life smiles a lover's smile and leads the way.   ~   Enchanted, Jensen unsticks the soggy t-shirt from the boy’s skin, pulls it back from his belly, lets the back of his hand rasp lightly against the pebbling skin, soft, adulating. Jared puddles out into the mattress top, audiencing Jensen’s destruction, shuddering with every skim and skirt of Jensen’s crawling fingers, watchful but vibrating. Coiled in wait. The serpent is never far. But it’s he, it’s Jensen who hisses out. Behind his lenses, Jensen’s eyes bulge, then close at once. He sighs, small and hot. Jared skins his three-day-old shirt up and off, lobs it aside. Then he says, “I got it special,” and makes sure Jensen is seeing everything again when he brings Jensen’s hand up to fondle his little chest. The for you is implied in his dusky smile. Jensen cups the absence of breast carefully, feathers over the filmy fabric. Tonight he’s done up in a little green bralette; sheer cups, lacy sides, earthworm thin straps hooked over his angular shoulders. He’s Himeros-powerful, 110 lbs of fuckability, the slutty virgin Jensen prays to at night when his St. Barbara candle has been blown out by cynical winds. The child will always be as he is right now, like this, in Jensen’s wistful eye, long after he's gone on to maturity. “If you take it off, that means for keeps,” Jared says, all dimple. It’s just larking, playing pretend. It’s not for real. But as sure as Jensen is that he’ll die one day from this love, he’s sure that it’s real to him. He slides a skinny band down the child’s arm, lifts the limb out, keeps the frailty pressed to the pillows. He’s bare under there, under his arms, the way he’s soft and barren everywhere else, no signs of m-a-n coming up yet. Still just sunshine and kid skin. Jensen, with massively teepeed pants and inadequate knees, leans in and down, inhales right at the supple curve of it. Jared giggles, shies away, says, "gross, oh my gosh, ew", but lets Jensen lick his armpit anyway. He smells of hot summers spent fucking bare on old sheets. "It's for keeps," Jensen promises, and the boy laughs because he can't hear the truth in it. Jensen leaves a lilac bruise blossoming on the junct of shoulder and throat, chews teeth into the wet tendon until Jared cries out and clutches on. Jared needs to need him the way he needs Jared.   ~   “Think I feel you in my guts,” Jared breathes, eyes shiny in the dusk. He clings to Jensen’s upper arms, all happy noises and awe, and his horny little cock bounces in the air, in what little space is left between them. Think I feel you in mine, Jensen clamps down on saying. Just works at pushing in and in and in, and gags back any noises his fool mouth wants to make. He can't do anything about his heart, though. Shhh.   ~   Jared’s not crying, he’s not, he’s not a toddler, growly growl, and he says so while he rubs at his runny eyes, going scarlet near the tear ducts. Jensen’s still partway inside him. Resting in the come-soaked sloppiness he left behind in there, where he tried not to love him too loudly, bed springs that go shrill with too much fervency, not quite ready to go back to separate halves when Jared whispers hotly, almost terse, “You never. You’ve never treated me like, like a little kid. You’ve always treated me like I was your,” sniff, boyfriend, Jensen thinks hysterically, sick, “baby.” “And I think,” the child says, softer now, mouse learning to see, “I think that’s why I—“ ten second exhale, “you know.” Yes, Jensen does. Me, too, me, too. So Jensen says, "Hey Cherry Bomb," on a whisper, "it's alright."   ~   He's the child's first everything. The child is his last anything. Teaching an old dog new tricks, it might say in Jared's first essay of the year; How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Maybe he'll write. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll never acknowledge them at all, in any veiled form, what they did, who they were. Maybe he'll say to his new friends, all eyerolls, oh, yeah, that's Mr. Jensen, my stepdad. Maybe that'll be all. He'll still be the truest friend a lonesome man ever had. These are the things that Jensen’s heart will itemize for him, when he can’t be liable, or sensible, enough to do so himself: the uptip slant of a cutely triangular nose, ruler and a half span of puny shoulders, hips with no flare, the sweet-cloy apple juice breath when a chain of juddered pants bursts loose. At a later date, when fawn has become deer, and five ten means six four, these details will still remain to ricochet him back to a summer of noisy, messy, inimitable love.   ~   I knew I had fallen in love with Jared forever; but I also knew he would not be forever Jared. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!