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spn_springflingTitle: Towards the Light
Pairing: J2
Rating: nc-17
Any warnings: au, scifi
The world is bathed in monochrome. A lifeless wasteland even despite all the people that still inhabit it, their bodies leached of all those things that gave them a soul, little robots marching from work to home and back again, living the lives they're told to live, completing the tasks they've been told to do, not possessing the initiative for much more.
The world is a city as far as the eye can see. Skyscrapers and foggy air and ever-moving streams of transport and automated everything.
It's a grey and barren desert of concrete and steel.
But a city cannot exist entirely above the surface. There is always an underneath, and Jared just happens to know a few of the underbelly's secrets. Jeff had taken a chance once, had shown him that there existed things beyond his realm of belief and understanding, and from then on Jared's life was never the same.
He went through the motions like he always had, kept living his uneventful little life in the little bubble of emotionlessness that was his (and everyone's) ultimate fate. But now he knows better. Now he knows that there are things that have been kept hidden from him (from everyone) and that his (and everyone's) existence as he knows it is a lie. And he can never speak of it to anyone.
He keeps it locked away inside a box inside a box inside a box somewhere deep down inside, only ever allowing himself to unlock the knowledge of it when he can't stand it any longer.
In a disguise, in an unsafe and undesirable part of town, Jared ducks into an unassuming doorway and begins the downward climb.
~
It's with fascination that he watches the syringe depress, coloured liquid curling through the clear tubes and into his arm.
He supposes it makes sense that the drug (or should it be called an antidote?) that contains such power is such a vivid blue, so unlike anything he sees during the normal aspects of his life. Everything is always so muted, near-grey, like there's a film over his eyes that he can’t wipe away. And for all Jared knows they probably colour the stuff just for effect, in which case he would agree that it works. In truth it doesn't kick in straight away, there are several minutes of building anticipation before you really feel it, but seeing that electric blue draining into your veins starts stirring something unfamiliar well before the main event.
When it hits…
Once the chemicals start to react…
Something hidden away deep in his body switches on. His heart flares to life and black&white becomes Technicolor.
The pain of sudden exposure is what he thinks bliss must feel like.
~
Jared has money, and therefore he has means and allowances not afforded to those beneath him.
He's allowed to veer from his usual schedule at times. He's allowed to remain unmarried and avoid procreation, though he must also endure the attempts to be convinced otherwise. He's allowed to visit parts of the city that are 'below his standing' so long as he uses the right excuses – gambling and having a mistress are the two most acceptable.
Even in a world such as this one there are rules and hierarchies and push and shove and behaviours both expected and unexpected of certain people. All the flesh-made automatons that live there, drained of their vitality as they are, still have the vaguest dregs of a personality. It may seem like it at times, but they are not entirely the robots that they often appear to be.
It gives Jared hope. That maybe one day people will start to break free of their invisible chains.
Indeed he knows that some already do. They are simply too few and far between to make a difference. The odd one that cuts loose and runs wild, telling people to wake up and see the lies… It's a mental break, they're insane, they're not normal, and they're never seen again.
Jared might know better, but Jared keeps his mouth shut.
~
He's in a bar. Non-alcoholically drinking away the ache as the last vestiges of the drug fizzle away, leaving him in a cloud of numbness.
It hurts worse every time, leaving such magic and beauty and reality behind. Settling back behind the veil of greyness feels more and more like he's wearing an ill-fitting skin, like he's growing and morphing into a different shape and the suit of his normalcy refuses to ease back together and let him do up all the buttons.
If he's not careful the seams will eventually tear.
Jared doesn't want to disappear. He doesn't want to be one of those 'mental break' cases that they drag away kicking and screaming, people shaking their heads, tutting to themselves as they forget he ever existed. But nor can he go on pretending that he doesn't know what he knows.
Fist clenching around his highball, Jared stares into the drink as the ice swims around. Even his so-called whiskey (what is it really?) is whispering to his subconscious that it should be a different shade of brown, that it should burn his tongue in a different kind of way. He turns his head and looks across the bar-top, the bartender serving another customer then moving away, revealing the other side of the room. There's a man sitting there, staring into his drink much like Jared is, his clothes and dishevelment suggesting that he probably belongs in this part of the city, where it's dark and dangerous and money and prestige mean nothing.
The man shifts and Jared finally gets a look at his face.
He's beautiful.
The sort of beautiful that has Jared thinking there must still be some electric blue in his system because his heart is rattling its cage in a way that's not normal.
The man's eyes lift and Jared catches an unexpected sliver of green. It steals his breath away. The man is suddenly looking at him, as if he'd felt the weight of Jared's eyes on him (and perhaps he had) and Jared can't even find the decency to look away. How can he, when he must surely be going mad. Never in his life has he seen eyes that colour, so bright and clear. Green eyes just aren't a thing that exists. But they're beautiful, just like the man's face, and he's feeling… what he's been told is called wonderment. It's like a glittering star, a shining light, floating on an inky black sea, beckoning him forth into its blackened depths.
He shouldn't do it, he knows he shouldn't, it's not part of the anesthetised little cardboard cut-out world he goes on pretending to belong to. But nevertheless he can't seem to stop himself as he gets to his feet, crosses the floor, and holds out his hand toward the man.
The man takes it.
~
Jared takes them to a place he knows. It's seedy and stale-smelling, but it's hidden away and free of prying eyes and ears. He's brought people here before, people from underneath, that know what he knows. Sometimes it's to talk, sometimes it's to fuck, while they're still riding the high of the emotional colour-wheel spinning through their blood. He's always amazed how much the body and mind can feel, how they can fill up so completely with feelings and sensations, so much that Jared thinks he might explode, yet he never does.
This is different.
He isn't 'high'. He isn't out of his mind (probably). But there's still a well of something building in his stomach and it's… frightening.
Jensen says he feels something too, that seeing Jared back in the bar, looking at him like that, triggered some sort of feeling that he doesn't know what to do with or what name to give it. He says that he's always felt empty and cold inside, and describes something that Jared thinks might be loneliness, but holding Jared's hand makes him feel strange and altogether different. Jared thinks he can relate.
He leads Jensen to the bed and sits them down on the sagging mattress, holding him close. Outside of the drug he's never felt the desire to touch someone before, in the past even the formality of having to shake someone's hand was a vague irritation, but right now he really wants to touch Jensen. All over. Every part of him. Jared knows of lust and desire, has experienced something like them when he's been soaking in the blue sludge, but usually they're thought of as something a hospital needs to treat. He doesn't know for sure if they're what's making his insides feel so bruised, but he does know that there's no going back after this. He's officially broken.
"I've never felt like this before."
Jensen kisses him, and Jared throws himself into it like he's just taken a step off the edge of a cliff.
~
He says there are others. People with blue or green eyes, with red and purple hair, with ink under their skin, and lips and nails painted outrageous colours.
Jared believes it, but he can't imagine it.
There's a 'lab' where a scientist works, trading money for volunteers, people willing to illegally change themselves. Some want to rebel, while others (like Jensen) just wanted the money. Then there are those who are just born different. Jensen's 'lucky' he can still go above ground, so long as he stays in the shadows. Some are there to escape, and have to stay below for fear of their lives. And some have ventured even deeper – forging a city of their own.
~
The most perfect of bodies is spread out before him and Jared takes a moment to taste his own hunger for it. He's never felt so turned on, never salivated over the need to be intimate with another person. It's all new to him, and to Jensen as well. They're both taking their time to feel out this new territory, wondering how they're going to deal with it, if they can cope with the permanence of it, because whatever this mishap is that their meeting has caused, the both of them seem to sense that it's not going away. The dull monotony, the sallow numbness that Jared has endured all his life, that he's forged on with amidst a peppering of experiences with electric blue, has reached an end. He knows there's no path back from this. The moment he saw Jensen across the room, his life as he knew it was over.
But he wouldn't dream to be sad about it.
Jared runs a hand down Jensen's chest, marvels at the gentle pressure of skin and muscle against his fingertips. He takes hold of Jensen's hips and lines himself up, pushing his cock inside. He'd had his fingers inside Jensen's soft pink hole, and then his tongue, and then his fingers again, but this feels so much more like a complete connection, like they're both giving and taking at the same time. Jensen is so hot around him, every now and then squeezing down on him as if he can draw Jared in deeper. It makes Jared gasp, makes his body surge forward each time, and he has to try not to lose what little control he has.
Restraining himself takes actual effort. Something inside him is making Jared want to do everything at once, feel everything at once. He wants to make Jensen moan and scream and cry and come. He wants to see it all happen, he wants to be there. Because Jared has felt some of these things 'under the influence', knows in a vague sense how some things affect the mind and the heart and the body differently, but Jensen is new to all of it.
Jared keeps moving, keeps touching, curls his fingers around Jensen's cock. He takes in everything about the way Jensen twitches and shudders, how his breathing hitches, the heat and the smell and the expression on his face as he spills all over Jared's hand. His own orgasm takes him by surprise, and he finishes inside Jensen's body in a rush, all but collapsing on top of him with sudden exhaustion.
Automatically they seem to fit themselves together, curling up under the old moth-bitten sheets. Jensen's eyes are looking up at him, still as alarmingly green as they were in that first moment. And Jared wishes he knew what to say, how to express the flood of emotions he's feeling, but there's too many of them and he's too new at this to figure it all out in a matter of seconds.
Reaching up, Jensen cups the edge of Jared's jaw in his palm, and thumbs away a single drop of wetness from the corner of his eye. He tries not to be jealous (is it jealousy or…?) with the way Jensen seems to so easily say so much with that single gesture.
Jared takes a breath, attempting to stem the torrent of disarray that's threatening to burst forth. He's unpractised in this, but he tries to swallow it all back down, to give himself a moment to sort through the tangle, thread by thread. It's a mess, but he knows he can do it if he tries, if Jensen's there to steady him. There's pleasure and relief and fear and protectiveness and anxiety and naming each one lightens the load.
The next one, however, brings him up short.
He thinks maybe he knew it was there amongst the chaos, but maybe he wasn't sure what to call it or how to pull it loose, maybe he was afraid of it, about what he's heard about it, what it can do to people… It can be quite a heavy weight to bear.
But now that he has it in his hands, now that he's got love right there in his grasp for the first time in his life, he wonders if maybe it's the only one he really needs.
~
End.
Pairing: J2
Rating: nc-17
Any warnings: au, scifi
The world is bathed in monochrome. A lifeless wasteland even despite all the people that still inhabit it, their bodies leached of all those things that gave them a soul, little robots marching from work to home and back again, living the lives they're told to live, completing the tasks they've been told to do, not possessing the initiative for much more.
The world is a city as far as the eye can see. Skyscrapers and foggy air and ever-moving streams of transport and automated everything.
It's a grey and barren desert of concrete and steel.
But a city cannot exist entirely above the surface. There is always an underneath, and Jared just happens to know a few of the underbelly's secrets. Jeff had taken a chance once, had shown him that there existed things beyond his realm of belief and understanding, and from then on Jared's life was never the same.
He went through the motions like he always had, kept living his uneventful little life in the little bubble of emotionlessness that was his (and everyone's) ultimate fate. But now he knows better. Now he knows that there are things that have been kept hidden from him (from everyone) and that his (and everyone's) existence as he knows it is a lie. And he can never speak of it to anyone.
He keeps it locked away inside a box inside a box inside a box somewhere deep down inside, only ever allowing himself to unlock the knowledge of it when he can't stand it any longer.
In a disguise, in an unsafe and undesirable part of town, Jared ducks into an unassuming doorway and begins the downward climb.
~
It's with fascination that he watches the syringe depress, coloured liquid curling through the clear tubes and into his arm.
He supposes it makes sense that the drug (or should it be called an antidote?) that contains such power is such a vivid blue, so unlike anything he sees during the normal aspects of his life. Everything is always so muted, near-grey, like there's a film over his eyes that he can’t wipe away. And for all Jared knows they probably colour the stuff just for effect, in which case he would agree that it works. In truth it doesn't kick in straight away, there are several minutes of building anticipation before you really feel it, but seeing that electric blue draining into your veins starts stirring something unfamiliar well before the main event.
When it hits…
Once the chemicals start to react…
Something hidden away deep in his body switches on. His heart flares to life and black&white becomes Technicolor.
The pain of sudden exposure is what he thinks bliss must feel like.
~
Jared has money, and therefore he has means and allowances not afforded to those beneath him.
He's allowed to veer from his usual schedule at times. He's allowed to remain unmarried and avoid procreation, though he must also endure the attempts to be convinced otherwise. He's allowed to visit parts of the city that are 'below his standing' so long as he uses the right excuses – gambling and having a mistress are the two most acceptable.
Even in a world such as this one there are rules and hierarchies and push and shove and behaviours both expected and unexpected of certain people. All the flesh-made automatons that live there, drained of their vitality as they are, still have the vaguest dregs of a personality. It may seem like it at times, but they are not entirely the robots that they often appear to be.
It gives Jared hope. That maybe one day people will start to break free of their invisible chains.
Indeed he knows that some already do. They are simply too few and far between to make a difference. The odd one that cuts loose and runs wild, telling people to wake up and see the lies… It's a mental break, they're insane, they're not normal, and they're never seen again.
Jared might know better, but Jared keeps his mouth shut.
~
He's in a bar. Non-alcoholically drinking away the ache as the last vestiges of the drug fizzle away, leaving him in a cloud of numbness.
It hurts worse every time, leaving such magic and beauty and reality behind. Settling back behind the veil of greyness feels more and more like he's wearing an ill-fitting skin, like he's growing and morphing into a different shape and the suit of his normalcy refuses to ease back together and let him do up all the buttons.
If he's not careful the seams will eventually tear.
Jared doesn't want to disappear. He doesn't want to be one of those 'mental break' cases that they drag away kicking and screaming, people shaking their heads, tutting to themselves as they forget he ever existed. But nor can he go on pretending that he doesn't know what he knows.
Fist clenching around his highball, Jared stares into the drink as the ice swims around. Even his so-called whiskey (what is it really?) is whispering to his subconscious that it should be a different shade of brown, that it should burn his tongue in a different kind of way. He turns his head and looks across the bar-top, the bartender serving another customer then moving away, revealing the other side of the room. There's a man sitting there, staring into his drink much like Jared is, his clothes and dishevelment suggesting that he probably belongs in this part of the city, where it's dark and dangerous and money and prestige mean nothing.
The man shifts and Jared finally gets a look at his face.
He's beautiful.
The sort of beautiful that has Jared thinking there must still be some electric blue in his system because his heart is rattling its cage in a way that's not normal.
The man's eyes lift and Jared catches an unexpected sliver of green. It steals his breath away. The man is suddenly looking at him, as if he'd felt the weight of Jared's eyes on him (and perhaps he had) and Jared can't even find the decency to look away. How can he, when he must surely be going mad. Never in his life has he seen eyes that colour, so bright and clear. Green eyes just aren't a thing that exists. But they're beautiful, just like the man's face, and he's feeling… what he's been told is called wonderment. It's like a glittering star, a shining light, floating on an inky black sea, beckoning him forth into its blackened depths.
He shouldn't do it, he knows he shouldn't, it's not part of the anesthetised little cardboard cut-out world he goes on pretending to belong to. But nevertheless he can't seem to stop himself as he gets to his feet, crosses the floor, and holds out his hand toward the man.
The man takes it.
~
Jared takes them to a place he knows. It's seedy and stale-smelling, but it's hidden away and free of prying eyes and ears. He's brought people here before, people from underneath, that know what he knows. Sometimes it's to talk, sometimes it's to fuck, while they're still riding the high of the emotional colour-wheel spinning through their blood. He's always amazed how much the body and mind can feel, how they can fill up so completely with feelings and sensations, so much that Jared thinks he might explode, yet he never does.
This is different.
He isn't 'high'. He isn't out of his mind (probably). But there's still a well of something building in his stomach and it's… frightening.
Jensen says he feels something too, that seeing Jared back in the bar, looking at him like that, triggered some sort of feeling that he doesn't know what to do with or what name to give it. He says that he's always felt empty and cold inside, and describes something that Jared thinks might be loneliness, but holding Jared's hand makes him feel strange and altogether different. Jared thinks he can relate.
He leads Jensen to the bed and sits them down on the sagging mattress, holding him close. Outside of the drug he's never felt the desire to touch someone before, in the past even the formality of having to shake someone's hand was a vague irritation, but right now he really wants to touch Jensen. All over. Every part of him. Jared knows of lust and desire, has experienced something like them when he's been soaking in the blue sludge, but usually they're thought of as something a hospital needs to treat. He doesn't know for sure if they're what's making his insides feel so bruised, but he does know that there's no going back after this. He's officially broken.
"I've never felt like this before."
Jensen kisses him, and Jared throws himself into it like he's just taken a step off the edge of a cliff.
~
He says there are others. People with blue or green eyes, with red and purple hair, with ink under their skin, and lips and nails painted outrageous colours.
Jared believes it, but he can't imagine it.
There's a 'lab' where a scientist works, trading money for volunteers, people willing to illegally change themselves. Some want to rebel, while others (like Jensen) just wanted the money. Then there are those who are just born different. Jensen's 'lucky' he can still go above ground, so long as he stays in the shadows. Some are there to escape, and have to stay below for fear of their lives. And some have ventured even deeper – forging a city of their own.
~
The most perfect of bodies is spread out before him and Jared takes a moment to taste his own hunger for it. He's never felt so turned on, never salivated over the need to be intimate with another person. It's all new to him, and to Jensen as well. They're both taking their time to feel out this new territory, wondering how they're going to deal with it, if they can cope with the permanence of it, because whatever this mishap is that their meeting has caused, the both of them seem to sense that it's not going away. The dull monotony, the sallow numbness that Jared has endured all his life, that he's forged on with amidst a peppering of experiences with electric blue, has reached an end. He knows there's no path back from this. The moment he saw Jensen across the room, his life as he knew it was over.
But he wouldn't dream to be sad about it.
Jared runs a hand down Jensen's chest, marvels at the gentle pressure of skin and muscle against his fingertips. He takes hold of Jensen's hips and lines himself up, pushing his cock inside. He'd had his fingers inside Jensen's soft pink hole, and then his tongue, and then his fingers again, but this feels so much more like a complete connection, like they're both giving and taking at the same time. Jensen is so hot around him, every now and then squeezing down on him as if he can draw Jared in deeper. It makes Jared gasp, makes his body surge forward each time, and he has to try not to lose what little control he has.
Restraining himself takes actual effort. Something inside him is making Jared want to do everything at once, feel everything at once. He wants to make Jensen moan and scream and cry and come. He wants to see it all happen, he wants to be there. Because Jared has felt some of these things 'under the influence', knows in a vague sense how some things affect the mind and the heart and the body differently, but Jensen is new to all of it.
Jared keeps moving, keeps touching, curls his fingers around Jensen's cock. He takes in everything about the way Jensen twitches and shudders, how his breathing hitches, the heat and the smell and the expression on his face as he spills all over Jared's hand. His own orgasm takes him by surprise, and he finishes inside Jensen's body in a rush, all but collapsing on top of him with sudden exhaustion.
Automatically they seem to fit themselves together, curling up under the old moth-bitten sheets. Jensen's eyes are looking up at him, still as alarmingly green as they were in that first moment. And Jared wishes he knew what to say, how to express the flood of emotions he's feeling, but there's too many of them and he's too new at this to figure it all out in a matter of seconds.
Reaching up, Jensen cups the edge of Jared's jaw in his palm, and thumbs away a single drop of wetness from the corner of his eye. He tries not to be jealous (is it jealousy or…?) with the way Jensen seems to so easily say so much with that single gesture.
Jared takes a breath, attempting to stem the torrent of disarray that's threatening to burst forth. He's unpractised in this, but he tries to swallow it all back down, to give himself a moment to sort through the tangle, thread by thread. It's a mess, but he knows he can do it if he tries, if Jensen's there to steady him. There's pleasure and relief and fear and protectiveness and anxiety and naming each one lightens the load.
The next one, however, brings him up short.
He thinks maybe he knew it was there amongst the chaos, but maybe he wasn't sure what to call it or how to pull it loose, maybe he was afraid of it, about what he's heard about it, what it can do to people… It can be quite a heavy weight to bear.
But now that he has it in his hands, now that he's got love right there in his grasp for the first time in his life, he wonders if maybe it's the only one he really needs.
~
End.
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no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 04:13 pm (UTC)Amazing that you've created such a rich world in so few words - loved it! <3
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 05:34 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for sharing. I loved this fic! Take care :)
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-06 05:11 pm (UTC)The words flew together so smoothly and almost poetry-like.
WOW <3
xxx
no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 09:34 am (UTC)He's unpractised in this, but he tries to swallow it all back down, to give himself a moment to sort through the tangle, thread by thread.
Loved this image!
Loved how you described this world. Really damn awesome. Loved it!
no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 11:40 pm (UTC)Thank you, anon! :)
no subject
Date: 2017-04-13 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-14 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-17 07:02 pm (UTC)S.