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At first, Jensen thinks that a storm woke him up, lightning or thunder or something like that. But as he’s pulled further into consciousness and remembers where he is, he realizes that isn’t possible. The blackout shades and soundproofing in his new penthouse prevent that sort of thing.
And yet something woke him up. He lies perfectly still, trying to get a feel for the time of day, listening to the silence around him. He doesn’t feel alarmed, really, more like alert. When he was a child, he’d have spells like this where he’d wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, heart pounding, with the thought—the doors, the windows, even the walls won’t keep them out. Back then he’d been terrified. Now the thought that comes to mind is—okay, I’m ready.
He senses something standing quietly beside his bed, and he's now ready enough to hit the switch, open the blinds and let the light in. He's ready enough to see it.
The light that floods into the room is brilliant and warm, it must be around noon. What he sees is both surprising and familiar. Familiar in the sense that he knows this being. From before. This being told him not to be afraid. This being held his hand and put soothing thoughts into his mind during. This being rocked him to sleep afterwards. Jensen had never seen him, exactly. So much of everything that had happened had been dream-like and disconnected. It never occurred to him to think it strange that this being could be so immediate and present to him, and yet never reveal its form.
Now, as Jensen looks upon its—no, make that a very definite his—form, like a sculptor’s idea of what a man should look like, in his head he hears the voice, the one he remembers from childhood. It’s so it’s easier for you.
Jensen reaches out, lets his fingers brush the taut muscles of its flank. They’re warm and real; the skin flushes into goose bumps under his touch, and it smiles encouragingly.
“Okay, but I need a name,” Jensen whispers. “What can I call you?”
A sound forms in his mind, incomprehensible and impossible for his human tongue. Jensen is touched though, to learn its real name. It sounds like running water or falling rain.
Then a real voice, rich and low, “when you were young, you called me Jared.”
Jensen nods. That makes sense, although he’d never connected the two before. Jared had been his imaginary friend for years, a little hazel-eyed, floppy-haired boy who shared his enthusiasm for building Legos in the long afternoon hours when his mother had been too busy to entertain him. Back then, he would never had made the connection between his secret playmate and the alien being that cared for him through all the testing and… experimenting, but now the two sewed themselves seamlessly into one memory.
Jensen lifts the covers, and Jared slides into bed. He moves gracefully, as if gravity and physics don’t pull on his muscles quite the same way. He doesn’t touch Jensen yet, just lies on his side, eyes bright and quiet and watching.
“This will be different,” Jared says. “Different than you’re used to. And then, everything will be different.” He gestures out the windows at the world outside and the city below. “Everything.”
He’s not quite asking permission, but Jensen appreciates that he’s at least putting on the pretense. Jensen nods. Different would be okay. In a sense, he’s been waiting for different for a long time now. Every time he opens the papers and the headlines scream horror at him, he’s had a sense that it wouldn’t always be like this. That there was a change coming.
He touches Jared’s chest, reassuring himself once more that he’s real. Beneath his fingertips, he can feel the throb and heat of blood, the ebb and flow of breath. When Jared’s hand rests lightly on his hip, it doesn’t feel foreign. It feels comforting, welcome, familiar. Jensen presses forward into the touch, and is only somewhat startled when his body reacts in a completely unexpected way. Something shifts inside him, deep in his groin. It’s like something moving into place. Strange, but intensely pleasant. Whatever it is, it pulls on his cock gently, from the inside. He looks at Jared questioningly.
Jared smiles. “You’ll get used to it,” he says. He reaches up and caresses Jensen’s cheek, and Jensen reflexively tilts his chin, parts his lips.
With that, Jared pulls them together, lined up hip to hip, cradles Jensen in his arms. Their rapidly stiffening cocks shuffle for position, and then slot into the grooves of each other’s hips where they’re squeezed pleasantly between their bodies. The touch of Jared’s tongue is light at first, exploring playfully, sliding over Jensen’s lips and then deeper into Jensen's mouth.
That’s when the different begins. Because Jared’s tongue doesn’t stop there. Well, maybe it’s not exactly his tongue, but something extends deeper into Jensen’s mouth, caressing the back of his throat, probing into places where there are no natural entrances. His initial reaction of panic is quickly and completely extinguished as tendrils of exquisite pleasure thread their way delicately along his nerves. Jared smoothes his hands down Jensen’s back, grounding him, keeping him from falling straight down the rabbit hole, reminding him that he’s still human.
Jared slots one leg between Jensen’s, parting his thighs, and rocks their hips together. Jensen splays his knees open, not caring how awkward he looks next to Jared’s graceful form. Tiny threads of pleasure sink into his brain and Jensen can’t think. He only wants more. Gradually, he becomes aware that there is more; Jared is touching him in ways that are impossible.
It’s no longer just Jared’s hands that are running over the skin of Jensen’s back, but thousands of tiny strands, velvety and thrumming with energy. They search out and map every inch of Jensen’s skin, skimming over the contours, gently probing their way into his navel, licking their way into the shell of his ear, penetrating the base of his spine, the nape of his neck, binding him and pulling him closer. Infinitesimal threads caress up under his eyelids, stroking, skillfully seeking out his tear ducts or deeper passages into Jensen’s flesh. Pleasure radiates from each point of contact, crawling under his skin, traveling up his spine to nest in a part of his brain that becomes instantly addicted.
Other skeins find their way to more sensitive openings, delicately wrapping around the length of his cock and teasing their way into the slit. Further down, they ease into his ass, slick and pulsating, lathering warm touches over his prostate.
Jensen’s limbs shake and Jared whispers, “it’s okay, Jensen, It’s okay Jensen, it’s okay.” When he adds, in such a quiet whisper that it’s really no more than a minute vibration in Jensen’s head, “now open up for me,” Jensen knows instinctively what he needs to do. He cants his hips up as Jared pushes his thighs further apart.
There had been surgeries, he knows that now, painless but bewildering. Jared gently uses a finger to massage the thin membrane that had kept the results hidden behind Jensen’s sack, dormant and waiting all these years. When he pierces through, the pain is little more than a pinching tear, drowned in the overwhelming tide of other sensations flooding his body.
“It’s okay, Jensen, it’s okay,” Jared intones, and Jensen is glad for his calming tone, because he’s so far off the map now, he knows he’ll never find his way back without a guide. Jared nudges the head of his cock up against the small opening. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he repeats. The pain that Jensen feels as the new entrance is penetrated transforms into pleasure almost before the nerve signals can even reach his brain, but he cries out reflexively.
For the first time, Jared falters. Millions of places where Jared has latched onto him flinch and pull back, inside and out.
Jensen’s had his eyes closed, enjoying the way Jared’s minute appendages circled lovingly over his irises and beneath his lids. Now, he asks, “can I see? You, I mean.”
“If you want,” Jared answers, and the husky quality of his voice makes Jensen suspect that he’s not supposed to let Jensen see. With a little more breathing room in his brain now that Jared has withdrawn a bit, he’s actually able to take that thought one step further; that maybe Jensen isn’t supposed to be aware of any of this. Apparently reading his thoughts, Jared replies, “We're special. Go ahead, look.”
Jensen still sees Jared as he first appeared, human muscle and bone propped up over him, a fine patch of pubic hair lost and mingled in Jensen’s own. But equally there is something else. Something made of vibrantly glowing tentacles, too many to count, too tangled to pinpoint their origin of symmetry. Each one ends either in a small round bulb, pulsating with light, or a tiny single claw, segmented and grasping.
“It’s probably best not to look too long, though,” Jared says with a chuckle. “Let your gaze get lazy, and it will fade.”
Jensen does as he is told, because although the sight of Jared’s true form doesn't exactly repulse him, looking at those miniscule clutching claws gives him a distinct uneasy feeling. Jared's right, it's easier for him if he concentrates on Jared’s familiar face. He smiles, and the tension seems to leave Jared, the warmth of his searching tendrils creeping forth once more.
The sleeve of Jensen’s newly formed passage seems to be made entirely of cells devoted to pleasure. As Jared eases in, Jensen feels every exquisite fraction of movement, ratcheting up the sensations in his body until it is nearly intolerable. Every place where Jared has entered Jensen syncs with the movement, gliding in and out of his urethra, over and past his prostate and back again, circling around the stretched rim of both his ass and the new channel that Jared's penetrating. A slow, steady stream of come drains out of his cock, as if he's been continuously climaxing for some time without being aware or it.
He clutches at Jared, his muscles seizing and his back locked into a rigid arch. “It’s okay, Jensen, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Jared's mantra builds in intensity and Jensen’s mind ferociously clings to those words, because he suddenly understands that part of this is about to not be okay, but if he just trusts Jared, Jared will see him through it.
Jensen's barely had that thought when Jared slams up flush against him. Jensen feels a surge of heat and pressure then unbearable searing agony as a million hooks shoot and out sink into the inner flesh of the canal, where only moments ago he'd felt such unbelievable bliss.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jared cries out, and his voice is pained too. He’s withdrawn all his extensions, leaving only his human cock penetrating Jensen, and grips him tightly in his arms, one large hand splayed on the lower part of his back and the other on the upper. He whispers over and over in Jensen’s ear, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, but it’s okay, it’s okay Jensen.”
Although the blistering pain does not abate, Jensen holds on because he trusts Jared, and because the rules of the game as he had known them all his life have suddenly and irrevocably changed, and things would never be as they were. Jared, he knows, is his only hope of navigating these new waters.
“How long?” is all he is able to grit out between his clenched teeth.
“Soon. I’m so sorry, but soon, it will be better soon, I promise. You’ll heal. I promise.”
And it is, eventually. Sometime near dusk, as the sun sets, so does the pain. Jared holds him though it all, running his long fingers through Jensen’s sweat drenched hair, kissing his neck and whispering promises in his ear.
“How long?” Jensen asks once more, and this time he means something different.
Jared understands. “About two and a half years,” he answers. He rolls away from Jensen slightly and runs his hand over the flat expanse of Jensen’s stomach. “But you won’t be alone. I can help, I’ll teach you what you need to know.”
Jensen already misses the weight of Jared’s body pressed up against his. He has the vague sense that he's never actually been alone. Never.
Jared says they're special. Jared says it’s okay.
And somehow, Jensen believes him.