nilchance | FIC: Within Me Burning

Title: Within Me Burning
Author:

nilchance
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Misha Collins/JDM
A/N: Sequel to If Bird or Devil. Jeff is a dom, Misha is his boy, Jensen is complicated.

Jeff wakes to Misha plastered against his side, and a shadow beside their bed. He isn't alarmed; he knows he should cover Misha, protect him, but he also knows this shadow. Knows his scent, the shape of his body, the rhythm of his pulse and the taste of his skin.

Jensen has his back to them, his shoulders rounded like he carries Renee instead of just her memory. He's watching the door, their guardian, spare as his knife. Alone.

The sheets slip over Jeff's skin as he moves to the edge of the bed. Jensen hears him and tenses, but doesn't turn, even as Jeff kneels up behind him.

"Hey," Jeff says, with all the fondness that swells in his chest. It's a nothing word, but it's enough; he feels more than sees Jensen relax, trusting Jeff at his back. Jeff dares to wrap his arms around Jensen's stomach, a clumsy embrace. When he rests his cheek on Jensen's back, the skin is cold as death. It feels necessary to remind him, "You're not dead yet."

"Dead enough."

"No." Despite himself, Jeff holds him tighter, as if he can keep him from flying apart. "Renee is gone, but you're still here. With us." Jensen doesn't answer, and Jeff feels the first spark of anger. "You're alive for a reason, Jensen. She can't have you yet. Not yet."

Jensen sighs. His fingers curl around Jeff's wrist, hard as ice, and he pulls his hand up. Jeff feels something wet and tries to recoil, but Jensen guides his hand to the hollow in his chest. Pressing Jeff's fingers deep and there's nothing inside, only blood and bone, and Jeff knows. He knows that Jensen carved it out himself.

"She has my heart," Jensen says.

Something wet smears across his face. Jeff reflexively twists away and runs out of bed, thumping to the floor in a tangle of sheets.

For a minute, it's all he can do to stay still. He opens his eyes, expecting to find his hand red and wet, but there's only the familiar smears of dog spit. Bisou peers over the edge of the bed, ears perked, and whoofs out a ripe bit of morning breath.

"Couldn't wait for your walk?" Jeff asks. "Well, you've got good timing."

Bisou jumps over him to the floor and pads down the hall, casting looks over her shoulder like she's trying to be patient for her idiot daddy. Jeff sits up and slowly untangles from the sheets. He's getting old, his joints aching in the mornings. Too old for a bright young thing like Misha. It feels like the heavy grief of the dream is clinging to him, weighing him down.

When he staggers into the kitchen, he finds said bright young thing in the living room, all knotted up on his yoga mat. Morning light pours in the windows and strokes Misha's bare pale skin. Jeff pauses to admire his handiwork, the three crossed welts on Misha's back, the fluid ease of Misha's body as he stretches.

Bisou is practically doing a dance, so he puts the coffee in a travel mug and tugs on his boots. Misha doesn't glance up as they go past, and Jeff resists the urge to break his rhythm with a kiss. If they get started, they won't stop.

Jeff locks the door behind him.

Sometimes it's nice to live in an unfinished building; it's quiet, and there's no neighbors to complain on the rare occasion that he gets Misha to scream. Today, though, the early light casts pale ghosts across the floor and illuminates the dust, and the empty halls seem eerie. Bisou is oblivious, but Jeff can't help thinking of Jensen's warnings. There could be anything hiding behind the doors of these hollow apartments, waiting until they're sleeping.

Their footsteps down the stairs echo loudly in Jeff's ears. Bisou ranges a few steps ahead, her nails clicking, her tail sweeping through the air. She's undaunted by the fact that everything's changed, their calm world replaced by one filled with murderers and oracles. Jeff came here looking for an uncomplicated life, just him and his boy...

Misha is an oracle. They're in the scope of a hunter, and the only thing protecting them is a brittle angry man who's as likely to kill Jeff as he is to protect them. The dream was fleeting, but at least that much was true: Jensen buried his heart with Renee. Once the murderer is dead, Jensen will probably follow her down, this woman who never mentioned his name.

"You fucked that boy over, Renee," Jeff murmurs. It's loud in the quiet, though, and Bisou gives him a concerned look. Jeff rumples her ears and like that, she's comforted. His trusting girl. Maybe he should send her to his mother's, out of the fray. But how long are they going to live like this, locking doors and flinching at shadows?

Jeff can't control this, and it gnaws at him. Misha's his to protect, his to keep.

Then end it.

The whisper is clear as a bell, right in his ear. Jeff nearly trips down the stairs. He turns, but there's nothing behind him. No sign of a woman who owns that slick black voice.

Bisou whines a little, pulling at the leash.

"Easy," Jeff says, more to her than to himself, and keeps walking. It's slower, though, his pace choked by the need to look around him.

He's going crazy. The stress is getting to him, the stories of death and prophecy. Only this and nothing more, he thinks, and swallows a laugh.

Down the last set of steps, where Jeff's knees always start to click and hurt, and Bisou surges towards the exit. His girl has better manners. Jeff spins, wrapping her leash around his hips to pull her up short, and coffee sloshes over the mug to scald his fingers. He curses, dragged down the last few steps, and then Bisou bounces on her back legs to open the door.

Jeremy's on the other side of the door, newspaper in his hand. His distracted "Bisou, down," is telling, given that Jeremy spoils her rotten, but the fact that he doesn't laugh hysterically at Jeff twisted around a leash is the real warning sign. Jeremy's eyes betray him every time.

"What is it?" Jeff says.

Jeremy opens his mouth, hesitates, and hands Jeff the newspaper.
*****
They found the body in an upscale neighborhood, hung in the attic of an empty house, facing the window. It had taken days for the smell to catch someone's attention, but once found, the scene exploded with media interest.

The body's hands had been cuffed behind her back, police issue handcuffs. There had been a badge pinned to her breast, above her heart, and a police cap crammed into her mouth. An insult, the newspaper speculated, a fuck you to the police who couldn't catch him. Secular order collapsing, as Renee's body had represented religious order crumbling.

Her name was Cynthia Lidard, and she had taken Jeff's copy of the Ethical Slut. Just a doorgirl, he'd thought, an overenthusiastic kid. It had been easy for the bastard.

The second woman around Jeff who had died.

"'Like the last victim, Renee Walker, Lidard dabbled in the local leather scene. Friends say she was dangerously promiscuous.'" Jeremy glowers at the newspaper in his hands. "Keep your daughters in, folks. Make sure they don't make adult decisions about their own sex lives!"

"Stop reading that trash," Misha says from the kitchen table, both hands wrapped around his mug of coffee. Despite the robe he shrugged on when Jeremy and Jeff came thundering in, Jeff can see him shivering. "It'll only make you crazy. You remember what they said about Renee."

Jeff watches them both from his position against the wall. He can see the door from there, and the window. It's irrational, but he wants every entry and exit point in sight.

"'Local government suggests that the leather bars in town be closed until the situation is resolved.'" Slapping the paper down with a sound that makes Misha flinch, Jeremy growls, "It didn't happen in the goddamn bars! They're gonna make us scatter, nobody'll be able to watch out for the kids like Cynthia, no bouncers like Jason, no--" His voice breaks, and he covers his eyes with a hand. "Shit. Shit."

"Hey." Misha gets up and goes to Jeremy, slipping an arm around him and rubbing his shoulder. "It's okay."

"I knew her," Jeremy says. "She was just a fucking kid. She was in pre-med, she--"

"Shh, shh."

Jeff can't make himself unlock from his stance. He can't go to Jeremy. He feels frozen, a distant fire growing in his chest, a fury that could consume everything.

How do I end it? he thinks, as helpless and as focused as he's ever been. Tell me how and I'll do it. I swear I'll do it.

There's no answer, which scares him more than if there had been.

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FIC: Within Me Burning

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