ht_murray | This might be fic...

I was perusing that H/C meme and saw a prompt I was interested in. I'm pretty sure this is nothing like what the prompter envisioned.

Winding Down

Sex between them wasn’t what it used to be, no more rough hands holding or bone deep thrusts melding them together, sweat slick in tacky sheets, dents in the drywall behind their headboard. It couldn’t be like that. Not anymore.

Jensen gasped, skin pebbling under Jared’s fingertips. His breath stuttered, shallow and high in his chest. A thin exhale whistled in his nose, and Jared stopped-- close, so close-- but he stopped. “Too much?” he asked, both of them panting-- Jared from restraint and Jensen trying not to scream.

A quick nod, lip bitten between his teeth, and Jensen turned his face into Jared’s palm, embarrassed. “S-sorry.”

“No,” Jared soothed, soft kisses pressed to the lines around Jensen’s eyes, ignoring the pink tinge in the tears tracking through them. “Don’t be. It’s okay.” More kisses, to slow things down, draw the ecstasy higher over the bank of pain. Jared pulled out, between breaths and around thudded heartbeats, slid up, back arched so his cock painted a slick stripe along the groove of Jensen’s hipbone and across the plain of his quivering belly. Braced on long arms, Jared had to stretch his neck low, collapse down, back bowed between his shoulder blades like a wild cat slinking between savannah grass, mouth open to taste the heat and the want he built with slow rolls of his pelvis. Jensen tilted his head back and opened to him, licking over the ridges on the roof of Jared’s mouth before relaxing back into his pillow, swallowing slow and deep, throat exposed.

He opened his eyes.

Jared looked away, an impulse, sickening jump in his belly, before turning back again, a tender smile to hide the fear. Jensen blinked up at him, his eyes gone red where they used to be white, bloody tracks on the white pillow case. Almost out of time.

Jared found it hard to keep his hands from shaking as he dropped to his elbows, thumbs smearing away the evidence of their time together leaking slowing away. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. Just close your eyes.”

Jensen did, lips against the pad of Jared’s thumb. “I don’t wanna go. It’s cold. Can’t feel you there.”

“Shh, I know.” Long sigh against the shell of Jensen’s ear, and Jared began the long slide down again, sweet promises between every kiss, “Make you feel enough,” flat of his tongue molded around a peaked nipple and undulated to the rhythm of the heartbeat fluttering weakly beneath it, “that I’ll be burned into you forever.” Lower, lower still, and Jensen whimpered with each touch, his skin drawn tight over shaking muscles so it twitched and jerked, popped with electrical charge that made Jared’s hair stand on end. With every inch that Jared descended, Jensen’s hips drew back into the mattress, his belly concave, entire body drawn tight as a bow while Jared painstakingly drew that tension to the surface with lips and teeth, tongue and cheekbone, bridge of nose and brow bone, every inch of himself over every inch of Jensen except the one he was careful to leave wanting.

He ground his own erection into the corner of the mattress, one knee up on the bed, the other leg stretched to the floor. Growing desperate but determined not to lose control, he palmed himself roughly, fingertips curling up under his balls and tugging one then the other. His urgency diminished in waves, each pang a little more bearable until he found himself savoring the tang of Jensen on his tongue instead of chasing it, starving for more.

He tested his own patience, mouth closing over Jensen’s scrotum, barely room to breathe in the close, heady space of groin and thigh and ass. Jensen writhed beneath him, fists tearing at the sheets while his feet scrambled against the bedspread forcing it down until it pooled on the floor. His head bent back as far as it would go, crown pressing into the pillow so his chin was the highest point on his body, his Adam’s apple a close second, protruding out of his exposed throat and bobbing with each choked moan and whimper. Any more teasing was liable to break him in half. Jared couldn’t help but lean back for a second and admire the fruits of his patient labor before licking a quick stripe up from hipbone to belly button, settling over Jensen’s cock.

The reaction was so violent Jared imagined he actually heard the twang of a bowstring releasing as Jensen sat straight up in the bed and drew his knees up, knocking Jared away with a guttural scream.

“Fuck,” Jared breathed. “Too much, too much.” They were too close now, too close to the point when they couldn’t be together. Every nerve fiber in Jensen’s body was firing, each in its own death throes and warring against the rest. He leapt to his feet, bent to lift Jensen into his arms, have to save the body but Jensen braced against him, broke his grip.

“Not yet. Not yet,” Jensen pleaded.

“You need to go back,” Jared said. “Before there’s permanent damage this time.”

“No!”

“Jensen...”

Jensen dropped his head to Jared’s hip bone, hands slid up Jared’s legs to knead at the undersides of his ass cheeks before sliding down again. Jensen’s fingers behind Jared’s knees made Jared jerk on reflex before buckling forward. He wound up curled over Jensen’s back, clutching Jensen into an awkward embrace that Jensen returned arms locked around Jared’s waist.

“Just wanna make you feel good one more time,” Jensen whispered.

Jared straightened, kneeling on the bed beside Jensen, his hands coming to rest on Jensen’s shoulders. “Me?” He stroked over Jensen’s hair, smoothing it around his ears. “You want me to feel good?”

Jensen nodded again, keeping his eyes closed. “Please.”

“I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You won’t.” And as if to prove it, Jensen locked his arms tighter, so Jared became painfully aware of his cock trapped against Jensen’s chest. He couldn’t help but roll his hips against the friction. When he did, the head of his cock slipped into the cavity between Jensen’s pecs, where it was warm, and soft, and damp. When he thrust into that, his legs went a little weak, and he started to fall back, eyes rolling into his head, but Jensen held on tighter, began a slow up and down rocking motion of his entire torso.

“God!” There wasn’t any regaining control this time, not with Jensen writhing against him, his head bent into that ticklish space beneath Jared’s ribcage, and his chin digging into Jared’s hip. Jared went with it, one hand braced against the headboard and the other cupped behind Jensen’s neck while he rolled his hips with abandon, grinding and thrusting into sweat-slicked heat until he was the one on fire, nerve-endings twitching like downed power lines all over his body. His fingers curled into a claw around the top of the headboard, and on the next thrust, were crushed against the wall. He yelled as he came, pain and pleasure intermingled to the point of insanity, then slumped forward. He sank onto his haunches, pulling Jensen’s head onto his shoulder, while he breathed through the tremors, rocking them both through his aftershocks.

When he stilled, the only sound in the room over the ringing in his ears was Jensen’s ragged breathing against his shoulder.

“Thank you.” It was the stupidest thing to say but the only thing he could think of. He lifted Jensen’s head and tilted it back so they were face to face, didn’t even look away in horror at the blood seeping freely around the edges of Jensen’s eyes. “You didn’t have to.”

“But I love you, Jared.”

Stunned, Jared pulled Jensen against him again, stroked through his hair with hand pressed against the back of his head oblivious to the familiar scrape of circuitry and wire. “You, love me?”

“I know I’m not supposed to,” Jensen said, relaxing into Jared’s embrace, “but I do.”

“You think you do.”

“I know I do.”

Jensen wasn’t programmed to lie.

And Jared couldn’t breathe.

Jensen loved him. Or thought he did, in whatever way Jensen could. Jensen... who’d probably never be able to live outside his tank for more than a few months at a time, who couldn’t digest anything but oatmeal and protein shakes, probably didn’t know pain from pleasure and only ever asked for Jared to hold his hand until he fell asleep. Jensen... who Jared would probably never be able to fix, who believed Jared would never stop trying. Jensen... who Jared couldn’t imagine spending one day without.

“I... love you, too.”

Jensen jerked against him, sudden, violent, instantly reduced to panting and gasping, his fingers, bruising in Jared's skin. Jared thought it was another seizure, reached for the panic button at the base of Jensen’s skull, but Jensen caught his hand and pulled it away, face burning red as he glanced between them at the mess he’d just made.

"Oh." Jared didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Everything was all just so fucked up and impossible. “Happens to the best of us,” he said, laughing weakly. He said 'us' without thinking and meant it.

Jensen slumped against him, and Jared held him until they both heard the rasp in his breathing, felt the thin trembling in his muscles start to escalate. Jared wasn’t inclined to let go just yet, not sure Jensen would even remember him the next time around. Jensen was the one who finally spoke. “It’s time, then. Or there won’t be any me left the next time. If there is...”

“There will always be a next time,” Jared promised. And it was the first time he believed it, couldn’t accept anything less as truth. “Always.”

--

Jared held Jensen’s hand like he always did. “Breathe deep,” he reminded. “It’ll go faster if you don’t fight it.” Jensen’s fingers tightened around Jared’s, the nails biting in, as he took a deep breath, letting the fluid fill his lungs, the cold numb him from the inside out. Jared held on, through the shaking and the writhing, through the cracking knuckles and the final splash of cryo-fluid lapping over the edge of the tank, and when Jensen’s eyes finally started to close, he said, “I love you,” just in case it was the last time.

Dropping Jensen’s limp hand into the tank, Jared reached into the liquid and removed the faulty circuitboard from its slot in the back of Jensen’s skull. Turning it over, already knowing the design flaw wouldn’t be anything so apparent as to be visible with the naked eye, but hoping, nonetheless that maybe, just once, he’d be lucky enough to find something as simple as a loose wire or a bit of frayed coating. Finding nothing of the sort, he reached into the pocket of his lab coat, clicked on his recorder.

“Implant retrieved at zero-seven-fifty, May 22. Total lifespan, this incarnation, four months, 12 days, 22 hours. This time, we almost lost the body, but I’m more certain now than ever that Jensen’s still in there and that I can put his mind and is body back together again." After a brief pause, he added, "I have to. I promised.”

He clicked off his recorder and slumped into his desk chair, making a pointed decision not to look up at the bulletin board above his monitor. Too many bad memories up there, newspaper clippings about the accident, EEG graphs and a hundred journal articles about brain death, a business card in the corner for the grieving widower’s support group his mom really wished he’d attend. He’d seen it all before, spent far too many nights reading the fine print with eyes foggy from alcohol and exhaustion. He didn’t need to see it again. Instead, he opened the fireproof safe behind his desk, panicking momentarily when he thought he’d forgotten the combination --3-1-78, Jensen’s birthday-- then stuttered over the latch, afraid of how far ahead of himself he was getting, but more afraid not to believe he'd get there, eventually. Shaking off the doubt, he opened it with quick jerk, waved off the musty smell.

It only took a second to find what he was looking for.

The ring didn’t fit quite like it used to. Ten years of keeping his head down, shoulder to the wheel had taken its toll. But it felt right sliding on, the way it had that first time when Jensen put it there. He never thought he’d wear that ring again, but now, Jensen loved him... again.

He was never taking it off.

Fin

Here’s the prompt: (J2 AU) Turns out Jensen's prettiness really IS mathematically impossible. He's a robot. Something goes badly wrong with his circuitry and mad scientist/professor/lab-coat-wearing Jared has to fix him.

A/N: I hear the outcries to make this a verse, and don't think I wasn't imagining much, much more when I wrote this. However, knowing my flighty muse, I'm not promising anything. That's not a 'no.' Just a 'wait and see.' Best I can do. Thank you for the encouragement!