stripytights

If it feels like you've seen this post before, you have. I couldn't get the html of the original to format properly so I scrapped it. I'd blame lj but it's all me. Have backdated but who knows if that'll work either.

we were lovers in the great collapse. This is my springfling fic! I wrote for

viviansface's lovely song prompt 'The Great Collapse - The Zolas.' Originally I wrote most of a rock-band AU with J2 being arrested for public indecencies committed on stage. Then at the very last minute this idea hit me, I scrapped the other and went for it. I'm actually really happy with this one (and yes, that may be the only time you ever hear me say that about anything I write).

Reposted under the cut, now punctuated semi-correctly and with corrections made, because I like keeping everything on my journal.

Title: we were lovers in the great collapse

Fandom: Supernatural RPF

Pairing: Jared/Jensen

Rating: M

Content notes: switching

A/N: Thanks bro-stevesky for literally Ameri-picking this as I wrote it like a gently shining star. She's the reason Jensen isn't lying on a pavement, and also why there is no flocked/fucked pun.

Summary: Jensen doesn’t know what happened. He barely knows where he is. He just knows he wants it to work with Jared again.

He's the only one left. The only one in a city of deathless quiet, and when he tosses back his head and shouts, all he gets are the resonant echoes of a thousand Jensens shouting back. After the third week he goes a little bit crazy.

At least, that's what he thinks happens. He remembers looting senselessly. Pockets of worthless jewellery filched from empty shops. A handful of sweetened coffee beans from an open jar. Smashing in windows and hearing the alarms go off, listening to them sound their bleak, desperate calls, a hopeless siren that screams hear me. He prowls the darkest corners he can find and hopes that something will lunge for him out of the dark. He lets himself down into the sewer and stands there, arms outspread, and waits, as though they've hidden down here, ten million watching eyes just waiting for him to find them in some hideous game of hide and seek. He stands there, and cajoles, and thinks he hears urban legends crawl closer in the dark.

When he comes back to himself fully, he's shaken and more alone than he was in the moment of his madness. His hands are scratched to shit, torn and bloody, and he doesn't really remember what he did to make them that way. He licks his lips absentmindedly and tastes coffee like some faint memory. In his pocket rustles a cellophane wrapper.

When he lies down on the sidewalk, feels the heat of it underneath him, ants march beside him, relentless and insistent, forcing their way through a crack in the pavement. One of them carries a burden, a crumb or something, Jensen can't quite see. He sympathizes though, his thoughts press down on him as well. They pass by his leg, a solitary steady progression and when he bends his knee, they walk around it. He thinks one of them eyes him with mild reproach, but then he thinks that the mannequins that staff the shop windows watch him at night. He's not quite sure if he's wrong. He watches the ants until they're out of sight, admires their work ethic, even if nothing has changed for them.

When he heaves himself up, he finds himself water and jerky. No need for that just yet but he feels as though he should act the part. Grizzled lone survivor in an empty world. Bear Grylls without the cameras. Scott without the Antarctic. Rips into it and almost breaks his jaw with the effort, resorts to the dried apple pieces, sweet on his tongue, summer preserved in a packet. He changes his clothes from force of habit, folds the discards like he never did before this, and for five days in a row he returns to the same sidewalk, book in hand, as though he's waiting for the ants to return. There's nothing else to do. He feels no urge to leave the city, or to return to the countryside - he chose the city a long time ago and he sees no reason to leave.

On the fifth day, a shadow darkens the world in front of him, and he lifts a hand to shield his eyes and stare. He's past surprise, past doubt. If this is madness returned, there's nothing he can do. Jared stands there. He's wearing shorts and flip-flops, and Jensen lets himself remember the last time he saw that. Jared was on a beach, standing there and telling him I don't think this is going to work, his jaw working in emotion and Jensen had wanted nothing more in that moment than to punch him, just to see something other than that remote sadness on a face that should only be happy. Or perhaps so he wouldn't have to listen. He hadn't punched anyone since he was thirteen and whaling on his brother though, and that wasn't where he was going to start. He'd kept his hands firmly, squarely together, and nodded briskly because Jared was right. Different priorities. Different stages of life. Jared twenty four and Jensen twenty eight. Sometimes love isn't enough, when one of you wants sleep, the other wants to party, and both of you are used to doing things your own way.

His mind has some odd priorities if it thinks that's the sight Jensen wants right before he expires or loses the last pieces of his mind. Only, Jared is insisting that Jensen needs to drink some water. He doesn't have heatstroke and he's well provided for water, but he drinks it anyway for the look Jared gives him, muted joy shining from under his eyelids, and some part of Jensen hopes that's for him, and not just for the sight of another human face. Of all the people to run into on all of the empty sidewalks in all of the empty worlds.

It's not that strange perhaps. This is Jared's neighborhood. When they'd broken up, they'd silently divvied the city up between them, sharp lines and angles bisecting their lives once again. Not purposefully, but with gentle unconcern, two lives drifting apart with no point of connection. From the window of his apartment, Jensen only heard quiet. Jared's had looked out onto a night hot-spot. Now, they share with the ants, and he thinks for long moments of how the quiet must sit heavy on Jared’s nerves. They go back to his apartment and it’s like still being alone. Jensen thinks about telling Jared, how he had run through the streets, pockets filled with gold. See I can be spontaneous. If he licks the back of his teeth, he thinks he can still taste the coffee.

They don’t talk about why they’re here, or how, or any of the things that crowd the atmosphere. They talk of inconsequentials. How good the weather is, how bright the sun has shone. How there are no birds, not anymore, and Jensen mentions the ants. Jared nods as though he understands every word Jensen doesn’t say, and a few extra to boot that he’s neither said nor thought. Without reference to a past that chokes them both when they speak, a future that cannot be thought of, the present hangs without context or direction. After that, Jared takes Jensen to bed, as though the last three years have never happened. With the curtains closed, Jensen can pretend for a little bit that they didn’t, until the silence outside the window gets too much.

With a practiced jab of his finger, Jared puts the battery powered cd-player beside his bed on. “Old-school style,” he says with a smile, as Last Kiss pours out of the tinny speakers. A second jab at the buttons leaves it on Soldier of Love. Jensen closes his eyes, and then opens them again, unable to decide which he wants more, drags his fingers through Jared’s hair as Jared goes to his knees as sweetly as he ever did when they were together, and sucks Jensen down as though he’s never had the chance to go out of practice.

Jensen bites his fist, shifts under Jared, and fights the urge to break away, Jared too hot and too near in the still summer-saturated air. But the feeling passes, leaves them both stranded in silence as the CD scratches to a stop, and all Jensen can hear is himself, wet pants in the air, and Jared, eyes closed now, small sounds obscene in the sudden quiet. When he comes, Jared digs his fingers into his hips and holds him to the bed, strong and certain; and frustrated of movement, Jensen sinks back down. Jared holds his head on his hip and says nothing at all.

Two and a half weeks later, Jensen is back in his apartment, alone. He tries not to think of Jared’s face, and of how his own must have looked, helpless, crumpling in on itself, at the thought of being on his own again. He swallows back absurdities - since the world ended, I’ve been thinking we should get back together- and painful truths - I still love you, I know this because I never stopped - that’ll make nothing better.

His apartment is quiet enough that he can just about hear his own heartbeat. It’s as slow and steady as though he’d never seen Jared again, and if he faces the wall, he can forget about it all. They hold out for three days, and Jensen thinks how easy it would be to lose each other altogether. To let them walk their own separate concentric circles across the city, stones tossed in a pond, ripples that don’t intersect until it’s too late. He wonders how they could live, knowing another person was so close.

In the end, Jared climbs into bed with him, let himself in, no need for keys in this brave new world, and curled up close, feet digging painfully into Jensen’s, solid chest against his back, and they both stared at the wall, at the tear that marred the flocked wallpaper the last tenant had put up, and Jensen had never bothered stripping.

Jared fucks him like that, on his side, and Jensen can feel the faint scratchiness of the new linen he’d stolen from the bedding store under his cheek, the slow rock of Jared in and out of him, but mostly pressed deep and hardly moving, as though if he pulls back too much, then Jensen will disappear. There’s no momentum to it and Jensen appreciates that. A slower lifestyle, he thinks. Perhaps they should move to the country. He comes almost in surprise, pulling at his own dick and tries not to move too much, because Jared’s face is against his back and if he moves then he’ll know if Jared’s crying. As long as he stays there, motionless, then they’re Schrodinger’s tears. He falls asleep like that, gross and sticky, and when he wakes, the danger is past. Jared’s asleep against his back and Jensen rides it out before he breaks and goes for the water bottle.

That day, they wander together, footsteps loud in the encroaching quiet of the city, and their hands brush, but do not catch and hold. They don’t walk in the road - old habits engrained too deep - but on the sidewalk, and Jensen amuses himself by occasionally shying stones at intact windows, because to add to his old habits, he’s acquired new ones. He can feel the look of surprise on Jared’s face, pointless destruction had never been his hobby before. But now the quiet breaks with every smashed piece of glass. The second time he throws one, Jared’s arm curves up and over as well, a second stone in tandem, twin mirrors of sound.

On the way back home, threading through the abandoned city, Jensen squeezes Jared’s hand briefly, slips his thumb over Jared’s palm, and lets go before he can clutch back, plausible deniability maintained. Under their feet, a solemn train of ants goes marching past, destination unknown.

When they get back, Jensen fucks Jared over a kitchen counter too low for any other use, presses a hand in the small of his back and listens to Jared curse and beg and sweat for it, head hanging low, hair stuck to the back of his neck, spine concave as he slouches down and spreads for it, and this time Jensen shuts his eyes, relies on touch and the way Jared feels underneath him, taut hard muscle under his hands and thighs and arms.

Afterwards Jared walks around naked, bright and unafraid and Jensen watches, his heart thumping loudly enough now that it provides a point of reference within his own chest. He thinks that they’re retracing back old steps but with a new energy, and his hands seize with a need to reach out. What’s the worst that could happen if I did? he thinks, but his hands stay by his side. That night, he watches while Jared sleeps, the worst of old clichés given a new twist, before Jared pulls him closer with one arm, an unconscious movement unreplicated in the day, and Jensen sleeps like that, there with him.

When the world comes back, it never knew it was gone. With the bright, blinded instinct of normality, it papers over the smashed windows and the ground in coffee-footprints on the floor. Some of the stolen chains are recovered from the ground by helpful citizens, others spirited away. Jensen locks himself away, from the noise, the brightness, the sound, everything he had missed, too much for the moment. When Jared answers the phone, he is bright, a stranger, and Jensen puts it down.

When the city quietens, he thinks. Thinks of dampness against his back, and Pearl Jam on the CD-player, and a presence that expands to ward away the quiet, and he ends up outside Jared’s apartment.

The door is open when he pushes. New habits die as hard as old ones, and he walks on through, feels the quiet of Jared sinking into his bones, a quiet he’d never known existed. He swallows back all the words that’ll fail to say exactly what he means and relies on Jared to know exactly what he means without them.

He is not met with disappointment.

The ants retreat back under the sidewalk, no longer welcome or unchecked.