Work Text:
Blazing
In the morning Jensen sees Dean's reflection in the mirror. It's still faded and frayed around the edges. An overexposed picture. He's brushing his teeth and he says, Go away, around a mouthful of toobrush, but he doesn't mean it and he knows Dean is here to stay. He sighs, turns around, and pats Dean's shoulder with an awkward comforting gesture. He knows the next few weeks are going to be rough when Dean's all solid bones under his palm.
For the next few days, Dean stays silent but he remains close, living in the liminal space out of the corner of Jensen's eye. Dean's shrouded in darkness, sticky like oil. Jensen finds it staining his clothes, his fingers, and his skin. He scrubs himself raw under the powerful spray of his shower, water hot his entire body becomes pink, but he can still see the large marks. At work, they walk in synch from the trailer to make-up, to read-through, to setting stage, and finding marks, and trying lightning. Dean gets closer when the director yells action, then flows inside Jensen sinuous like liquid smoke, slams into him with overwhelming power of his emotions. Jensen welcomes him, them, and he says his lines, wears Dean's pain like a badge of honor. I'm here, he whispers to himself, to Dean. I'm here to keep both of us grounded.
But it's harder than he was expecting. It's been ten days. Jensen scratches his face where his growing scruff itches. In the fog- blurred mirror, Dean's smile is more of a smirk that could mean anything and everything. Still with the silent treatment, I see. But Dean doesn't take the bait. He walks out of the bathroom into the adjoining living room and fills one of Jensen's glasses and lets the light from the lamp hit the crystal and downs Jensen's 12 year old scotch in a single gulp.
Jensen makes all these random, seemingly inconsequential choices for Dean in the space the writers leave him – and it's like moving in a cage not tall enough to stand. Some days, he wonders if he's made Dean's life worse than it was supposed to be, burdening him with more things that he could bear. When Dean's with him, blood and bones, and miserable enough he reverses to silence like when he was a kid and his mother had just burned on the ceiling, Jensen feels, not guilty, but responsible. It's why he beckons Dean to sit beside him on the couch, drawing the distance between them to null. He's given Dean a feral need for human touch that skyrocketed into something Jensen didn't plan. He knows the pleasure that comes to Dean from a gentle hand.
There's tension on the muscles of Dean's back when Jensen pushes Dean to lean against him. Dean resists for an interminable second, and Jensen lets him decide. He does lean, in the end: a surrender. His head falls against Jensen's neck with a wordless sigh. There's scar tissue where Jensen's hand is resting. He follows the ridge of the old cut under the worn cloth of Dean's Henley's to the cap of Dean's hipbone. Jensen knows the story behind the scar, although he keeps perfecting over and over. He changes the monster, he changes the weapon. Some days it was only luck that put Dean out of a sticky situation, and he ends drinking his victory in a bar alone. Other days, someone came to save him.
Dean's sight is set toward the windows, to the open sky outside and the sharp trajectories of the seagulls. It's nice for now, and Jensen melts himself into the leather of his couch. The warmth from Dean's body makes him drowsy. He'll need coffee, he craves sleep. He's exhausted. The sun is setting in flaming colors and flooding the room with dancing dust motes.
Jensen has a hard night of work ahead of him. Some of it is easy stuff he could do in his sleep, but there's a scene planned for the end of the night that has put him on edge the entire week. He knows Dean won't react well to it, he knows this bleeding desperation is going to get worse. He'll keep Dean close, though, just in case. Tucked inside and in the safety of his own bones. He hopes the burning flare won't consume him. His fingers curl around Dean's hip.
Jensen wishes it were tomorrow already.
I'm so tired.
Dean's voice is scratchy from lack of use.
But it was Jensen who spoke.
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