tebtosca | FIC: Heart-Shaped Hole (Jared/Jensen NC-17)

Title: Heart-Shaped Hole
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2582
Warnings: underage (Jared 16), slightly pseudo-incestuous step-brothers

Summary: Money is tight in the Padalecki-Ackles household. Jared wears his stepbrother Jensen close to his chest.

Author's Notes: Written for

salt_burn_porn for

homo_pink's prompt of in ratty old clothes

Thanks to

dugindeep for the speedy beta!

The first time it happens is when Jared's dad loses his job at the factory.

Jared is ten, a motherless boy for half that time. Not nine months before the factory made their cuts, his dad marries the widow Ackles from church. She’s a nice lady with cornflower hair who makes the vanilla bean cupcakes that Jared loves at every bake sale.

Jared’s excited about those cupcakes when he first hears about their engagement. Then he thinks about a stranger in their kitchen, and doesn’t know how to feel anymore.

Struggle is good, Jared's dad tells him. It's going to help them bond in their new family. Jared isn't sure at first if he wants Mrs. Ackles' son Jensen to be his family, but a ten-year-old boy doesn't have much say in the matter.

Jensen is twelve. He goes through a mini-growth spurt right before school starts, and needs a few new outfits that fit him.

Jared is jealous. He stays exactly the same, even though he tries to cheat and stand on his tippy-toes when his dad measures him on the wall with the etched-in inch marks.

“Money is tight, son,” his dad says, even as he sees Jensen coming in with a bag from Marshalls clutched tightly in his hand. Jensen looks at him with pink cheeks, like he knows how Jared is feeling, but still heads up to the room with the Salvation Army bunk beds and foreign quilts from Grandma Ackles.

“Here you go, honey,” Jensen’s mama says later on that night, holding a neatly-folded scrap of material.

Jared takes it and opens it up, even though he knows from the flash of faded yellow that it’s going to be Jensen’s favorite Batman t-shirt.

It smells like Downy fabric softener and not like Jensen at all. The last time Jensen wore the shirt, it rode up the soft roundness of his belly, and he had to tug it down.

Jared looks up at his stepmother (mother, weird, so weird), and sees the look of nervous anticipation on her face. She made vanilla bean cupcakes for dessert that night, only half a batch this time, but she made sure Jared had two while Jensen only had one. Jensen didn’t look jealous though, and Jared feels annoyed about that.

“Jensen wants you to have it. Thought you’d like to wear it your first day of class. Isn’t that right, baby?” she says, gesturing over to where Jensen is sitting in the corner of the living room reading a book.

Jensen looks up, shrugging awkwardly. Jared thinks maybe he is trying to pretend he isn’t listening in, and Jared’s strangely grateful for that.

“Say ‘thank you’, Jared,” his dad says, suddenly appearing to lean against the doorframe. He’s big and solid, but the weary look on his face is what makes the words tumble out of Jared’s mouth.

“Thank you, Jensen.”

==

Jared wears the shirt his first day of fifth grade.

His buddy Chad asks him where he got such a cool shirt, and Jared finds himself beaming the entire way home.

==

It takes over a year, but Jared’s dad eventually gets a job working in a garage owned by his cousin Jeff. Times are hard in their little town, and even a position like that is tough to come by. Jensen’s mama gets a job part-time as a seamstress to help out, and they manage.

Jensen always out-paces Jared in the growth department, those two years taunting Jared every time. Jensen’s new clothing doesn’t come from Marshalls anymore, and aren’t so new themselves. He picks out plaid from the Goodwill instead, but he’s starting high school and that seems to be exactly what he needs to fit in.

Jared gets Jensen’s old clothes, the ones from middle school. He feels like a baby, thinks that everyone will be able to tell that Jensen walked these halls in the exact same pair of corduroy pants or faded green Transformers shirt.

But the clothes fit, snug and warm against the scrawny planes of Jared’s arms and hips.

On occasion, Jared will catch Jensen looking at him, and he’ll puff out his chest. Jared can’t tell what the look on Jensen’s face means, whether he’s feeling nostalgic for the scrap of soft, well-worn fabric against his skin, or if it’s something else.

Sometimes, Jared gets the clothes before Jensen’s mama can wash them. He doesn’t know why he likes that they still smell like Jensen, but he does.

==

Jared starts high school in Jensen’s red-and-white plaid. He wears it like a shield as he walks down the unknown hallway. Students are milling about, ignoring him mostly. His best friend Chad moved away during the summer, and Jared’s spent the last two weeks moping about it in his room and ignoring the final remnants of hot sticky Texas weather.

He’s just about managed to figure out the combination on his locker, when he feels a sudden blow against his shoulder that almost manages to knock him to the ground.

“What—“ he huffs out, stumbling to catch himself in time, but not before his books tumble out of his grasp and crack their spines on the floor.

Jared’s first instinct is to bend down and get them, but he knows that would leave him vulnerable, so he keeps to his feet and tilts his chin up with his bravest expression.

There are two boys, seniors probably, both bigger and wider than fourteen-year-old Jared. He’s never wished for the elusive growth spurt more than he has at this moment, even as he pulls Jensen’s plaid tighter around his body.

“Hey, newbie,” says the bigger boy, mouth twisted into a mean smirk.

“I just want to get my books and go to class,” Jared says, holding up his hands but trying to keep his voice calm and steady.

“We all want lots of things,” the boy says, stepping closer to crowd Jared against the locker. Jared’s face is level with the boy’s neck, and he can smell the cloying scent of a teenage country boy’s first aftershave.

“Get the fuck away from my brother, Tom.”

Jared coughs, sucking in air when he realizes he was holding his breath this entire time. He’s suddenly free to move, the boy jumping back immediately at the sound of Jensen’s voice.

“Didn’t know you had a brother, Ackles.”

For some reason that stings, even though Jared doesn’t really think about Jensen as his brother either. Or maybe he tries not to think about Jensen like that.

“Well, now you do, so get.”

The two bullies flash a look at each other, but start back down the hallway. Their expressions say they are trying to save face from the fact that they are running away after only two sentences from a junior.

“Thanks,” Jared says, awkward.

Jensen just nods his head a little bit. His eyes dart down to red-and-white plaid, but he doesn’t say anything else about it before turning on his heel and leaving Jared alone to pick up his books and whatever’s left of his dignity.

==

Jared can pretend that his first wet dream about Jensen is that night, and has everything to do with some sudden damsel-in-distress feelings, but it would be a lie.

What is new, however, is when he reaches up into Jensen’s top bunk and pulls out the worn Henley that Jensen usually sleeps in.

It’s definitely new when Jared bunches it in his fist and brings it right up under his nose, the fabric tickling his nostrils and getting the scent of lingering summer and teenage boy sweat and Jensen-Jensen-Jensen right up into the corners of his brain that control the lower half of Jared’s body.

Jensen’s staying over at his friend Christian’s house that night, so Jared is alone for once. It’s because of that that he allows himself to moan low in his throat as he slips his hand into the cotton pajama bottoms and curls a fist around his suddenly-aching cock.

Jared’s dick is still small, his fist covering the whole thing as he tugs at it. He thinks about what Jensen’s dick must be like, knows that it’s probably longer, maybe thicker, would probably take two of Jared’s hands to make Jensen feel as good as he does right now.

Jared bites down on the fabric, teeth indenting the space that usually covers the sweet slope of Jensen’s belly. He’s drooling into it, his spit seeping into the tiny pores of the olive-green fabric, and he can’t help how much hotter that makes him. He tugs his dick, squeezes it, dips his fingernail right into the tiny wet slit, and then laps the cotton in his mouth like it’s the pink slip of Jensen’s tongue before coming into his fist with a grunt and a sigh.

The next night, Jensen puts the Henley on like normal before slipping into his bed. Jared’s gaze zooms in on the exact spot that his own teeth gripped, and his dick is so instantaneously hard that he has to run to the bathroom before Jensen has time to see the shame of it.

==

The summer Jared turns sixteen is when it happens. He grows five inches in a matter of two months, and, along with the extra food his suddenly-ravenous stomach is forcing him to consume, the seams of Jensen’s jeans are tugging along the insides of his thighs.

Jared’s helping Jensen wash his dad’s truck when he bends over to grab a sponge and the once-tiny hole under the back pocket shreds into a long open space.

Jared hears the sound, the embarrassing tearing of it, and jumps back up to cover his ass with his hand out of instinct.

He catches Jensen looking, eyes dark and half-lidded, just a split second before Jensen looks back at the soap-covered metal shining in the Texas sun.

Jared suddenly feels warm all over, and it has nothing to do with the weather.

==

Jensen’s leaving for college the next morning. Jared calculates the drive to Lubbock will take just over five hours, if Christian’s old Chevy manages to not break down along the way.

Jared’s dad offers to take him, but Jensen just waves it off. Jared thinks that Jensen is still wary of his dad. Jensen was ten when his real father passed, old enough to remember rides on his shoulders and tossing a baseball, and more than enough to keep him loyal to that memory.

Jared’s real mama died when he was four, and he doesn’t remember much more than the fact that she smelled like flowers in spring. He thinks sometimes that by still thinking of Jensen’s mom as “Mrs. Ackles”, he can keep that same loyalty as well. But he knows, in truth, he only thinks that way to keep distance between the idea of himself and Jensen being brothers. Even the shadow of that thought makes him feel even guiltier about wanting what he wants.

And, oh, how he wants. He can’t pretend that it’s a passing phase anymore, or hero worship, or the consequences of growing up in Jensen’s literal shoes.

He’s spent the last month wearing the most worn of Jensen’s hand-me-downs. The ones that are so small they ride up his belly, or have holes like little mouths dotting his skin.

Because Jensen looks now. Sometimes, even when Jared catches his eye, he doesn’t look away. Will just hold Jared’s gaze with an expression on his face that is both wonder and resignation.

It’s their parents’ (their parents, fuck) anniversary that last night before Lubbock, and Jensen’s mama flutters around guiltily before Jensen tells her to shush up and go have a nice dinner. Money is still tight, will probably always be tight, but Samantha from church runs the local Italian restaurant and she loves a good celebration of romance.

The boys sit there on the couch watching a Bruce Willis movie on TBS. They’ve both seen it before, but the explosions are loud enough to momentarily drown out the tension palpitating between them.

Jared doesn’t know if he does it on purpose when he starts picking at the hole right in the middle of the threadbare Superman shirt he’s wearing. It doesn’t smell like Jensen anymore, and he mourns that fact every time he slips it over his head.

Jared won’t remember later who moves first, but before he knows what is happening, Jensen is tugging Jared onto his lap and pressing his lips against the nape of his neck, right under the too-long strands of Jared’s hair.

They sit like that, still, quiet, Jared’s back pressed up against the hard curve of Jensen’s chest. No one moves, and Bruce Willis yippie-kay-yays into the silence.

Then slowly, so fucking slowly, Jensen’s hand slides up alongside Jared’s ribs and his finger is pressing into the tiny hole that Jared himself was just picking at. Jensen’s thumb slides in alongside it, and Jared realizes with a growing internal hysteria that the digit is wet with what must be Jensen’s saliva.

Jared thinks of that fact, of Jensen slipping his own thumb past those plump pink lips, all with the intention of making the glide over the nub of Jared’s nipple that much smoother.

Jensen starts rolling the little bud with his thumb and his index finger, still just mouthing at Jared’s nape like he’s singing a wordless song right into the flesh.

Jared’s hard in Jensen’s old basketball shorts, his dick begging for attention, but when he reaches down instinctively to give himself some relief, Jensen bites the back of his neck with a low growl and slaps Jared’s hand away.

Jared whines, high-pitched and helpless, as Jensen brings his own hand, the one not playing Jared’s nipple like a string instrument, down to cup the no-longer-small bulge that Jared’s packing.

Jensen’s hard, too, Jared can feel it underneath himself like a promise, and he starts rocking his hips in tiny little movements. It takes a minute, but then Jensen gets a rhythm, his cock riding the crack of Jared’s ass in the same steady way his hand is stroking Jared’s dick through a thin piece of fabric.

It’s over too quick, two teenage boys living out the edges of every one of their fucked-up fantasies, too much sensation to last for long. Jared knows he needs to kiss him though, has to get his mouth on that mouth before he comes or else he might die right here on the raggedy brown living room couch.

Jared twists his head just enough to capture Jensen’s mouth, teeth clacking together noisily, as Jensen’s presses down hard on Jared’s nipple and they both shoot white hot all over the inside of their pants.

It takes a while to come down, but they don’t move, a now too-big Jared snug in Jensen’s lap like it’s the most natural place on Earth for him to be. Jensen kisses his shoulder, so tenderly that Jared hopes beyond anything that it’s more “see you later” than “goodbye.”

They don’t speak, but that gives Jared enough time to run plans through his head. He only has two more years of high school. Lubbock is only five hours away. Texas Tech has a great engineering program, and Jared can get a 4.0 GPA and a scholarship if he busts his ass.

It’s going to be okay. It has to be. Besides, it’s not like Jensen is really going anywhere.

After all, they’re family.