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There’s a universe where it went like this:
Jared grew up with a gift and a curse he inherited from his murdered parents: to see everybody’s desires when he touched them. The son of two people who were both part of a failed and supposedly secret government experiment, Jared lived in hiding until he was discovered. He fled with Chad across the universe, to become a companion on a violent mining planet. That’s where he met Jensen, a man genetically engineered to become a killing machine, and now, after the war, wracked by guilt and nightmares, unable to sleep and resistant to medication. It wasn’t a fairy tale romance, and they had a more than a rocky start, but they did end up saving each other. Their story is Chasing Darkness.
But what if Jared was never discovered? What if Chad never crashed into his house? What if Jared lived in solitude on an icy planet?
Jensen still went to Wora with Dani, but he didn’t have Jared to help him sleep. He battled it out on Wora, tried to lose himself in the darkness of the mines, but eventually, it all caught up with him. Sleep deprived and half crazy, he almost lost his foot to the monsters in the mines and Dani almost lost her life.
Jensen left on the next supply ship and Dani didn’t try to stop him. She’d found a new life on Wora and she’d tried to get Jensen there too, but Jensen had retreated so much into himself, lashing out whenever she tried to help, eventually she had to let him go. She couldn’t help him and she couldn’t watch him wither away. Better for him to go out there and kill himself in a fight she didn’t have to watch.
Except Jensen doesn’t die. He finds the fight, and there’s always a fight; different place, every day. He never stops moving, seeks out noise and violence and over time, it drowns out the memory. One bloody corpse blends into another, one dead face becomes indistinguishable from the rest. Jensen is a survivor, always has been, on the streets of Ferasion as a scrawny kid, in the military and every fight they threw him in, even in the dark mines filled with near indestructible monsters. Jensen survives. Carves out a new life, without Dani to watch his back, on his own for the first time since he was eight. It makes him hard in a way he wasn’t before. But it lets him survive.
Then the war comes back.
And this time, the rebels take down the empire. Jensen freelances occasionally, but he doesn’t go too close. Too dangerous, too many memories. When all is done, the galaxy is in shambles. There’s enough jobs for Jensen in the ruins.
And one day, things go wrong. Jensen thinks it’s finally caught up to him, and he’s finally gonna pay, and yet. He lives. Saved by a kid with a small smile and a big heart. He’s not young, kid’s fought his own battles, but there’s an innocence about him, something in the way he watches Jensen with constant incredible amazement, in the way a dimple appears in his cheek whenever Jensen hits on him and he tries to hide how much he likes it.
Jensen finds a kind of comfort he never thought possible. But it’s quiet. Too quiet. And the nightmares threaten. Jensen had nothing left after the crash, not even the burnt clothes off his back, but the kid gives him coins to pay for passage off the planet. Jensen leaves, doesn’t even think about going back. It’s not what he does, not since he left Dani on Wora. And yet. When he’s down to the last coin, he doesn’t spend it.
Jared’s alone, always alone. He gets used to it. Life keeps him busy. He doesn’t go into town to trade often so he lives off what he can hunt and forage. It keeps his body busy, but not his mind.
For a while, Jared thought about leaving. He got as far as negotiating passage on a ship and shaking the captain’s hand. It was just a brief moment, but after years of being alone in his own mind, the assault of her thoughts had made him stumble and sweat.
He’d turned back and hadn’t looked for company again.
Then a ship crash landed next to the lake.
Jared investigated, found a man passed out in the wreck. His face was hard and lined, even while unconscious, but there was a delicate slope to his slightly crooked nose, clearly broken in the past, and the way his dark lashes fanned over his pale cheeks, the barest hint of freckles. A man who spent most of his time in space, in war if his many scars visible through the burnt holes in his clothes were anything to go by. When the man opened his eyes, as green as the leaves that only bloomed for one month in summer, Jared was lost. He saw the same isolation, the same resigned acceptance, the same mutedness he lived with every day.
So Jared reached out to drag the man back to his house.
He learned his name was Jensen, that he was hard and coarse, and that he appreciated Jared’s ass. Jared made it clear that wasn’t going to happen, no matter how attractive Jared found Jensen’s battered beauty. Jensen wouldn’t get to touch Jared’s ass or any other part of his body.
But then their hands brushed when Jared handed Jensen a bowl of soup, and nothing happened.
Jared didn’t ask, couldn’t think how he’d explain it without giving up his secret, but he did let Jensen touch him. All over.
Jared didn’t know how good Jensen was, how he’d compare to other people, but for him, it was unbelievable. Jensen was warm and hard, but his skin where it was unscarred was smooth, almost soft. Jared got to explore all the texture, the raises and bumps, the fine hairs and the intangible freckles. He got to bury his hands in Jensen’s short hair, just long enough at the top to grip, got to hold on to the strong muscles of his shoulders, and explore the bumps of his spine.
And he got to feel what it was like to have a pair of hands all over him, how it was to be pressed against someone, front to front, shoulder against shoulder, got to feel someone’s pulse beat and their chest rise with a breath. He got to feel a wet, hot mouth all over him and he got to feel what it was like to have someone inside of him.
Jared loved every second of it.
And when Jensen got antsy and his eyes got stormy after a few days, when the silence was getting to him and his sleep got restless, Jared wasn’t surprised. He’d always known he wouldn’t stay.
Jared’s quiet wasn’t for Jensen. And the violence Jensen bring with him when he tosses and turns at night, when he yells and flinches, it’s not for Jared. He’s seen the scars on Jensen’s body, but he’s glad he can’t see into Jensen’s mind. He’s afraid of the darkness he’d find there.
So Jared let Jensen go. He’d remember Jensen’s touch in the dark of night for a long time.
Jared knew Jensen wouldn’t come back and it was okay. He told himself it was easier that way.
But then.