Vultures 1/3

[soncnica]

"What are you doing?"

Jensen stood in front of a low bench that had its home in the middle of Jared's room; the seat of it was covered in blood red fabric that he didn’t know the name of, but knew that when he sat on it butt naked, felt really warm and really soft under his skin. He appreciated that, because he really didn’t like it when any surface Jared stretched him on, chaffed at his skin. But, he suspected, if the bench could talk, it wouldn’t like him, because of all the stains and ruffled fabric that he made with his bodily fluids and fingernails.

So he stood there, knees almost touching the edge of it and tried not to blush with any memories that tried to resurface, because that wasn’t the point of his visit here. Not at all. He watched as Jared was, quite ruthlessly to be honest, throwing clothes into a plastic bag. It wasn't one of those trash bags, no, this one had a zipper on one side and it was quite big, laying across the huge bed.

The question didn't stop Jared with what he was doing though, because he kept on bringing clothes from the closet that stood on Jensen's left to the big, king sized bed right in front of him.

He kept on walking back and forth; the room was big and the distance closet-bed took Jared around four big steps.

Jensen kept turning his head left and center, left and center, left and center, following Jared’s every step. It was sort of mesmerizing in a very weird kind of way. But if Jared would continue to do this for some more time, he suspected he'd get a crick in his neck and Jared would exhaust himself and demand an early afternoon nap. Which just wouldn’t do, because the day was lovely; sunny, bright and warm and perhaps the last of its kind before the winter would come.

"What's it look like I'm doing?"

Frankly, Jensen had no clue. He could guess though. He knew that Jared wasn’t packing to leave anywhere, because if that was the case, Jensen would’ve been asked to pack too, so … yeah … that wasn’t what the man was doing.

"Ummm, putting clothes into a plastic bag?" he shrugged, but Jared was too busy walking back and forth to notice.

He sighed. Jared was a man of ... well, he was a man that bended life to suit his needs. Yes, that was a good description of the guy. Jensen had been with him, living in this huge manor for a lot of years now, and what a life it had been. But even after all these years, Jared still managed to throw a curve ball at him, one that he was always destined not to catch.

"Yup, that's exactly what I'm doin’."

Jared said and pushed a thin coat into the bag, patted the top and zipped it up. The bag was bulging with all the clothes, Jensen thought that half of them should've gone in another bag, but that was Jared.

Bending volumes of plastic bags to suit his needs, also.

The sun showed around nine in the morning, give or take an hour, but it was bright, and it was warm as it shone through the huge floor to ceiling window on Jensen's right. There were flecks of dust swimming in the air, illuminated by the streaks of sunlight.

The room was spacious; the floor made of cobblestone, gray but still very warm or perhaps that was just because the room was Jared's and everything about that man was warm.

Even the walls, made of cobblestone as well, were warm even if they should've been cold as ice. But, well, that was Jared, Jensen supposed. Even stone bended to fill his needs.

"'kay, all packed."

Even that gave Jensen zero information about what the hell Jared was doing, but he was patient. He'd get his answers soon enough.

And sure enough, when Jared picked up the bag, his muscles straining and bulging around a pristine white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and tossed it on the ground beside the bed, Jensen got his answer.

"So, that's my fall clothes all packed up. Now, I have to get to the attic to get my winter clothes. I think that," he kicked the bag with his leg and the bag went sliding across the floor, under the low bench Jensen was standing in front of to stop at the other side of the room, under another low bench, "the winter is gonna be,” he clapped his hands together in glee, “cold."

So, basically, Jared had been doing his variation of spring, uh, autumn cleaning. He rolled his eyes, pretty sure that Jared saw it this time, but the man said nothing. All he got in return was a smirk and eyes glowing with a heavy dose of glee – all of that never spelled anything good for Jensen.

He wanted to sigh again, but restrained himself, not wanting to give the man any satisfaction whatsoever to see just how annoyed Jared made him.

“Riiight…” he mumbled and watched as Jared grabbed a gray, almost silver vest from the bed and started walking towards the door, all the while getting the vest to sit perfectly on him, hugging all the right places that left Jensen think about how all those right places felt under his fingers.

Jared wasn’t a fashion guru, that was for sure, but still, somehow, all the clothes he wore, fit him like a glove. Style and color vise and how Jared managed that, Jensen still hadn’t figured out.

And that was the moment his brain finally decided to come back from the dead and told him that there was actually a reason why he was in Jared's room so early in the morning.

"Wait, I have to ..." he started to say, but Jared's long legs had already carried the man to the door and he was starting to push them open.

One more second and he'd lose the man in the hallway and he really didn’t want to talk about this in places where everyone else in the house could hear him. This was a private matter, one he really wanted to discuss with Jared and Jared alone, without any other audience.

"Jared, wait ..."

Too late. Jared was opening the door and had one foot already out on the hallway and this was the end of this rather short discussion. Actually it had never even been a discussion, it was more of a Jensen watches what Jared is doing with a stupefied expression on his face, kind of a thing.

"Damn it."

"Whatever it is, you can tell me at breakfast, come on, I'm starving."

No, actually, he really couldn't talk about this during breakfast, because this was between him and Jared and no one else's business.

Damn it.

He clenched his fingers into a fist; he was angry, but all right. He could handle this. Maybe he’d get Jared alone sometime during the day. The chances were slim, but he wouldn’t lose hope. Surely, the others had things to do during the afternoon and not just hang around the manor all day long. Right?

Riiiiight.

He made his legs obey him and ran after the man, barely catching the heavy wooden door before it closed on him. While he really enjoyed spending his time in Jared’s room, he actually never wanted to be in there … alone.

He wasn’t a scaredy-cat, but like he said, the room was spacious, bright, warm, letting in the sun from late morning to late evening, with a view on literally hundreds of brick-red roofs of the town's houses, that stretched below the window. No house in town was build higher than this manor, so there was also nothing blocking the view of the sky.

How many times had Jared fucked him, while he held on to the cold glass of the window for dear life, his eyes glazed over with pleasure, but still being able to see all those bright stars. Still being able to see all the lights in the windows, still being conscious that if someone would come to the roof of the nearby houses, they’d be able to see him and his dick rubbing on the slick surface of the window.

He gulped.

It was a very lively town too. Houses build, small and big, thin and fat, all pressed together with only room for toothpick thin streets to run among them. Some roofs had thin chimneys, while others had nothing. Some roofs had antennas on them, some had nothing.
Those that weren’t slopped down, had small terraces on them, a place for people to get their green thumb on, making gardens for vegetables or even fruit trees. Some of those had clothes lines attached from one side to the other, for the ladies of the house to dry clothes on. Lively town, and the noise from the market place a mile away, nestled in the middle of the town could be heard straight into Jared's room, if the window was opened. Sometimes the breeze carried in the smell of fabric softener, or food cooking. The laughter of children and indistinct chatter could also be heard, when the window was open and all of that combined; the room felt alive. Felt as if it
was soaking up all the life and becoming nicer, bigger, fresher. He couldn’t describe it and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to. It was his little secret, to know that the room was a living creature.

Noises and smells and the view on hundreds of rooftops and a shimmering glimpse of tree tops way, way in the distance ... it filled the room up. Made it better than any other room in the manor, made it way, way better than his own room down on the first floor, pushed into shadows and next to the kitchen. It was great for whenever he wanted a midnight snack, but his room had absolutely no view, had no sunlight, just light from the candles he had sitting on his desk. He’d told Jared once, that his room reminded him of somewhere a monk would live, but Jared just laughed and told him to stop being dramatic. He wasn’t being dramatic, thank you very much, it was the truth, but then he remembered that having a room so far away from the living quarters of the rest of the manor’s inhabitants, was what had kept his sanity intact all these years. He could handle them all just fine, but there were times when he really needed some sort of space to breathe and that it was off limits to everyone else – except for Jared. They all respected that, it was a rule made by Jared and no one disobeyed the man.

But the room without Jared in it, seemed ... dead. Cold. Lifeless. Nothing from the outside could fill the room with life as much as Jared could. As soon as Jared left the room, the walls turned into gray, cold stone, no matter how bright the sun made them shine. The floor turned into stone too, filling his whole body with cold from the soles of his feet up to the tips of his hair. Shadows immediately made nests in the corners, next to the bed, under the low benches and especially behind the heavy velvet curtains. Dust became thick and alive like tumbleweed, the wood the furniture was made of, became rotten and worm eaten. It also became loud; critters eating bugs, spiders running around the ceiling, worms eating their way through anything wooden, moths munching on the curtains, spider webs being build. So loud and so rotten. Grimy. Dirty. Carcasses of dead insects lying in the corners, light becoming dim, low, muted.

PART 2