FIC: Deep As I've Been Done

[nilchance]

Title: Deep As I've Been Done
Author: nilchance
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Clay/Jensen, also Jensen/Cougar
Warning: Rape, violence, some BDSM themes
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Andy Diggle and to Jock. No profit made, no lawsuit preferred.
Summary: Prompt from here. "Jensen maybe has a very slight daddy!kink. Clay maybe has a way to deal with that." And then it spiraled out into something much more fucked up.
Notes: Thank you for the read-through, poisontaster and beanside, and for being sympathetic when I promptly showed why I shouldn't do this on Nyquil and little sleep.



This is the arrangement, simplified:

If Cougar goes down, Clay keeps Jensen on the rails. If Jensen goes down, Clay keeps Cougar on the rails.

This is the addendum:

If Aisha goes down, Jensen and Cougar keep Clay on the rails.

If Clay goes down, Aisha doesn’t need anyone, she says. They agree with this to her face, if not necessarily in practice. It depends on whether Aisha is the one who kills him.

It works all right.
****
After most near misses, Jensen can bounce back. Near misses are 90% of his job; that clusterfuck in the port of LA is not the first time he’s been so close to an execution bullet that he tastes metal. As the song says: he gets knocked down, he gets back up again. Like Teflon.

Except today is not most days.

Today Jensen has Cougar’s blood under his fingernails, and he can still hear the slow awful rasp of Max’s zipper coming down. His neck is bruised in five blotchy points, fingertips and thumb. He can’t get that taste out of his mouth. He can’t stop shivering, both hands laced around the shitty paper cup of hospital vending machine coffee. These are all data-points in his mental calculations, the same points he keeps running and coming up with no answers as the hours wear on.

He reads personalities; it’s what his survival hinges on. Back in his old “can’t sleep, clown’ll eat me” days before he had (Cougar) people he trusted with his back, he read a lot of psychology and sociology and profiling textbooks, trying to understand things like an anthropologist from Mars. So he’s a freak, but his point is, he would never have profiled Max as a rapist. Too messy. Too many fluids.

Jensen is apparently a shitty judge of character. This bothers him more than he’ll admit.

He can’t stop thinking of Max’s gloved hand blocking his nose, forcing him to open his mouth to breathe. The oily taste of the leather. The ragged sound of Cougar trying to breathe with a punctured lung and two stab-wounds in his stomach, Cougar choking out, “don‘t you fucking touch him,” and only static on the comms--

A hand comes down on his shoulder, and Jensen nearly jumps out of his skin. The coffee, lukewarm by now, goes sloshing over his knuckles and onto the floor. Most people would snatch their hand back, especially since Jensen looks bloody and deranged enough to keep the staff at bay, but Clay just leans on the pressure. It’s more reassuring than Jensen wants to admit.

Fucking waiting rooms. Fucking hospitals. Fucking Clay.

“Easy,” Clay says, squeezing Jensen once before letting him go. He drops a clump of napkins onto the spilled coffee, nudging it back and forth with the toe of his boot.

If Jensen looks close at the old leather, he can see flecks of blood. He doesn’t look close. He’s not sure whose blood it is.

Once the coffee is mopped up, Clay sits on the chair beside Jensen. His hand is warm and steady; Jensen wants to lean against him, but… “They sent you in here to kick me out, huh.”

Clay snorts. “Nobody sends me anywhere these days, except Aisha. No, I was coming to check on you. But you’re not going to get far with civilians when you’ve still got blood on you.”

Got red on you, Jensen thinks dizzily. Then, what he always thinks after a movie reference: I should show that to Cougar.

His heart lurches hard in his chest; he makes a stupid little hiccupping sob. He clamps a shaky hand over his mouth, too late to keep anything in. Stop, he tells himself, stop, you fucking pussy, stop it right now.

“Hey,” Clay says, and starts to put his hand on the scruff on Jensen‘s neck. He stops, remembering Max, like Jensen is remembering Max. Before Clay can figure out where is safe to touch him, Jensen shifts away. The moment breaks.

“Hey,” Clay repeats, gentler. “How about we get out of here for a while?”

“Cougs.”

“Coug’ll be unconscious for a while, with all the drugs he’s on, and Pooch is here to cover. It’s not going to help him any if you get kicked out of the hospital. Or arrested.”

“Aisha has connections, she said. It‘s why we came here.”

“Yeah. But despite rumors she spread, she isn’t omnipotent.” Clay thumbs the bruises Max left. His eyes are dark, an echo of when he‘d come and pulled Max‘s body off Jensen. Protective fury. “I’m more worried that you’ll keel over.”

That time, Jensen does yank away. “I’m fine. I keep telling you--”

“You’re not good enough to con people who know you.”

“-- that I’m fucking fine, whatever, so Max stuck his cock in my mouth. It’s not like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It‘s not even in the top ten.”

The muscles around Clay’s mouth flinch just a little. He says, “Jesus, Jensen.”

Stubborn, Jensen says, “Well, it’s not.”

“I know that.”

“And he shouldn’t have been so goddamn surprised I bit it off.”

Clay chuffs out a laugh that’s not really because he’s amused; he laughed that way the first time one of them mentioned Roque after the port. Then he rests his closed fist on Jensen’s shoulder.

“C’mon, kid,” he says. “Cougar got through surgery. He’s stable. The chart Pooch stole says it’ll be at least another few hours before they’ll let anybody in to see Cougs.”

Jensen blinks. Manages not to whine, a few hours?, and instead clears his throat. Things are starting to hurt. If Cougar wasn’t laid up, he’d have sat on Jensen and started feeding him tranquilizers or codeine by now. “I was thinking I’d charm the nurses.”

“You look like an extra from a Romero movie,” Clay points out, not unkindly.

Jensen gives him a pale smile. “Well. I’m just that good.”
*****
It takes almost an hour in the shower before Jensen stops finding things in his hair-- bits of skull like eggshells, spongy-wet stuff he doesn’t want to think about.

The water eventually runs clear. He feels wrung-out; the wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead. Blue screen of death.

He swipes a hand across the fogged mirror, then stares at the collar of bruises on his throat. His reflection is a dead-eyed stranger, like Max hollowed him out. Turned him back into a flinching beaten kid he’d joined the army to outrun.

Jensen knows he’s as smart as all the tests say, or maybe smarter, because he’d have aced the block design section of the IQ test if he hadn’t tried to make the shapes into Optimus Prime. He’s smart, and so he knows he has options.

He can break; he might feel better, after. He can quit, since Max is dead; this is really just like breaking, except more public. But he knows that Cougar would only turn up wherever he tries to disappear. He can repress and deny and make stupid small talk to fill up the quiet; this will only work until Cougar wakes up.

Or he can take back what Max tried to steal.

It’s different when things are his choice.

There’s a change of clothes on the counter. Jensen shrugs into them and opens the door.

Clay sits on the edge of the bed, tensed to run or fight, as usual. When he sees Jensen, he sits up and turns the TV on mute; Jensen glances that way and sees C-SPAN, the endless scrolling ticker on the bottom. Nobody will ever know that Max was the bad guy, let alone that he died. How he died.

“Aisha tried to kill you yet?” Jensen asks. It’s not his best moment.

Clay shrugs. “Not yet. Her dance card’s full, maybe.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jensen rubs a hand over his eyes. “So many people to kill, so little time.”

“Jensen,” Clay says, all scratchy and low. He’s probably going to follow it up with a stupid question like ‘are you all right?’; Jensen gets down between Clay’s knees, instead.

They look at each other. Jensen’s heart is racing like crazy, his palms sweating, but he pulls the watch off his wrist. The metal is warm from the shower.

This is their signal. Their code, for when Jensen needs it, or when Clay does. There have been other nights. It’s an understood thing, when the edges get too sharp. Jensen’s never felt sharper than tonight.

“Ah, kid,” Clay murmurs. “You sure--?”

“Colonel,” Jensen says. “Please.”

Achingly slow, like he’s trying to give Jensen time to change his mind, Clay takes the watch. Once it’s in Clay’s hands, not his own, Jensen can feel the tension in his back and shoulders starting to thaw.

Clay folds the watch up in his palm, makes it disappear like a magic trick. Then he reaches out and pulls Jensen’s glasses off, folding them up, putting them on the nightstand. His eyes never leave Jensen’s face. His voice is different, darker and warmer, when he says, “That’s not what I want you to call me tonight.”

The blush travels up Jensen’s chest, his throat, into his face. He knows what Clay means, what he’s looking for; damn that scene in Bolivia, anyway, and damn Clay for remembering how they’d both reacted.

“Sir?” Jensen hedges, because he doesn’t want to be too easy. He doesn’t want to be too good.

Clay looks at him, half-lidded and knowing. He nudges between Jensen’s bent thighs with his boot, reshaping him with small touches. By the time Clay’s done, Jensen already feels boneless and he’s shivering again; when Clay touches the bruises on his throat, cupping his hand around them, Jensen feels something crack inside his chest like spring ice.

“Daddy,” Jensen breathes, and still winces inside. It was easier to call Clay that when he was face-down and fucked out, two of Clay’s fingers deep in him.

Clay makes that great sound, growling and satisfied, and unbuttons his pants. He doesn’t unzip, which is good; that sound might unmoor Jensen too much. He wants to do this right, with his mouth on the zipper, licking Clay through the metal teeth, Clay’s hand heavy on his neck.

It’s still good. It’s so good.

Afterwards, after Clay’s come thick and hot in his mouth, Clay pulls him up off the floor. Onto Clay’s lap, which is weird and should be awkward, except Jensen’s brain is all noise to no signal from the blowjob. They can do this, after. It’s safer.

Pussy, says the voice in Jensen’s head. Cougar is in the hospital, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Whatever was before. Nothing else. Jensen won’t give up any more ground.

Clay rubs the back of his knuckles up Jensen’s thigh, a silent question, and lets it go when Jensen shies back from the touch. Instead Clay pushes Jensen’s head down to rest on his shoulder, and he touches each bruise one by one.

“He’s dead,” Clay says.

“I’m okay--”

“Just shut up and listen.” When Jensen subsides, Clay nods and continues. “He’s dead, and you’re ours. Somebody’s always coming for you.”

Part of Jensen wants to shrink away. Soft words don’t mean much; Jensen’s recited enough of them in his time.

“He was dead,” Clay says. “Soon as he touched you.”

“Fuck you,” Jensen suggests, which actually means ‘too far’. Clay grunts, which means ‘message received’, and continues mapping each bruise over and over again.

After a while, rocked by Clay’s breath, Jensen closes his eyes.
****
When Cougar wakes up, Jensen’s there. He has a stupid tabloid rag, which kept him from getting bored enough to rewire any machines but not engrossed enough to miss the small quiet signs of the drugs wearing off. The twitch of an eyelid, the shallower breaths.

It worries Jensen sometimes, that he knows Cougar so well.

The first thing Cougar does, even before opening his eyes, is reach for a rifle. Jensen catches his hand between both of his own, careful of the IV.

Cougar wakes all at once, like the snap of a television coming on, his attention focusing on Jensen’s face. His eyes are foggy with pain and with morphine, but he’s awake enough to kill everyone in the ICU. There’s a moment where Jensen sees Cougar consider it, too.

“They can rebuild you,” Jensen says, his voice rough. “They have the technology.”

Cougar doesn’t blink.

“Bad timing,” Jensen says. “Okay then.”

Cougar’s voice is dry, almost lost under the machines. “Max.”

“Dead.” But that’s not exactly what Cougar is asking. He blacked out at a bad time, right after Max pushed-- Jensen swallows. “Didn’t get any further.”

Cougar studies his face, a little unnerving, then nods. “All right?”

“Says the man in ICU,” Jensen says. “I’m fine.”

Cougar looks at him, quirks a smile. Doesn’t say, liar.

Comments

[nilchance.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, I would listen to JDM read the phone book. ;)

Thank you!