Someone you might have been (part 38 of 39)
Thank you ever so much to everyone who's still reading! Just two more chapters to go! Also, seeing as we're so close to the end, I've temporarily locked the warnings post I made. I'll unlock it once we're done but nothing has changed. The warning I gave remains accurate. :)
part thirty-seven
banner made by the fabulously talented nyaubaby
After Jensen presents Jeff with his proposed strategy for infiltrating Kripke and Kring, Jeff questions him about it for two and a half hours. Jensen answers each question thoroughly and patiently, but it doesn't take long for Jared to realise just how much information is missing.
The assignment for which every single detail is known does not exist. There are also areas where information is sketchy or unreliable, and agents are trained to be able to deal with whatever is thrown at them.
This assignment, though, is nothing but uncertainties.
Knowing what he does of Coalition SOP, Jensen has made some reasonable assumptions and combined them with what few facts are known about the setup to produce a plan. Once Jeff is done quizzing him, Jensen is allowed to brief Jared.
"Where are you at this point?" Jared says, touching a finger to one of the sheets.
"Still at the second terminal," Jensen says. When Jared raises an eyebrow at him, Jensen says, "My job isn't done until you're out. Besides, there's no way you're getting out without me working the system."
It's true: there are two points at which Jared is solely dependent on Jensen. What Jensen has just said is the closest anyone has come to acknowledging it. They all know it, it's in the way Jeff watches Jensen, and how there's been nothing even remotely resembling an actual expression on Jensen's face for the last forty minutes.
If Jared were to refuse the assignment, he doesn't think anyone would be too surprised. It's unlikely that any attempt by Jeff to persuade him to take it would hinge on Jensen's reliability. Jeff would have to work on Jared's willingness to do the right - and suicidal - thing. But there's also the fact that Jared could count the number of people in the world who could successfully complete this assignment and get out alive on the fingers of one hand, and three of those would be his more commonly used aliases.
And there's also that thing about how Jared seems completely incapable of staying the fuck away from Jensen, whether Jensen's his handler, a terrorist, or all of the above.
Jared's in this, and he doesn't know if it's part of some master plan Jensen's playing or not, but he doesn't think he's got the option of walking away anymore.
:::
There's an unsettling quietness about the facility Jeff's got them hidden away in. All the windows face inwards, looking at paved courtyards, and the corridors are deserted. The majority of the doors are locked but when Jared picks a couple of them open, he finds just more of the same, drab meeting rooms. One of Jeff's agents showed him to a small room with a bed and attached bathroom, told him to rest up, but Jared doesn't want to rest. He wants to find Jensen or a gym, or if he's really lucky, he'll find Jensen in a gym.
Even Jeff would be welcome right now, because he could point Jared in the direction of Jensen or a gym or maybe even something to fucking eat. And speaking of Jeff, the guy must have balls of steel to allow someone like Jared to wander around his top-secret facility without a babysitter of some kind. So it serves him right when Jared decides he's had enough of the same three floors and bypasses the security seals to enter the lower levels of the building.
It's like a fucking psych test. It's more of the same: same corridors, same doors, no windows. Jared feels like he might be going crazy. He's supposed to be doing this insanely dangerous thing for them in just a few hours that could really easily kill him, and he's alone and kind of freaking out and he just wants to see Jensen. The silence is smothering him, and frustrated energy has got him trembling with having to restrain the urge to take the whole fucking building apart.
Screw it. If Jared's gonna die tomorrow, according to plan or otherwise, then right now, he kind of doesn't exist. He'll exist again once it's all over. It really doesn't matter how badly behaved he is tonight.
He stops where he is, draws in breath, and yells, "Jensen!" at the top of his lungs. "Jensen! Where the fuck are you?" It's almost hard to breathe. This must be what panic feels like. "Jensen, c'mon, where are you?"
Still silence. Jared's hands hurt. They're fists, balled tight. They hurt. The muscles in Jared's arm bunch, because he needs to punch something now. He needs this violence to go somewhere.
A door opens near the end of the corridor and Jensen steps into sight. They look at each other.
"Why are you shouting?" Jensen says, mild reproach in his voice.
Jared doesn't answer him. He strides down the corridor towards him and barges into the room. It's an archive, stalls and stalls of card boxes illuminated by a creamy blue light. Jensen is obviously working at one of the desks - a cup of black coffee is set beside several open files. Another of Jeff's agents is at the far end of the room. He's a big, good-looking guy with a large forehead. He's not doing anything and it's not hard to figure out that he's here for the sole purpose of monitoring Jensen.
Jared looks down at the papers Jensen's reading and he catches sight of his own face looking up at him before Jensen reaches over and flips the file shut.
"It's getting late," Jensen says. "Shouldn't you get some rest?"
Jared's gaze stays fixed on the closed file. Then, slowly and deliberately, he opens it back up again. Beside him, Jensen sighs.
"I'm just trying to make sure I know as much about how to support you as I can," he says. "That's all."
He sounds tired and maybe a little pissed. He's got no right to be pissed.
"What happens after this?" Jared says. Jensen looks at him blankly and Jared wants to hit him, if only to get a reaction. Instead, he grits his teeth and says, "After the assignment, what happens?"
"ISA will be shut down, probably permanently. It just doesn't look good to have harboured two double agents for extended periods of time, y'know? Your contract will be expired, obviously, and higher authorities will step in to reassign you. Jeff says he'll speak on your behalf, explain your role in this."
"Yeah, awesome," Jared says shortly. "What about you? What about you and me?"
Jensen sighs again and straightens one of the piles of papers on the desk. Even his hands are pretty, Jared registers distantly. He smells of stale cigarettes and sweat - it's not pleasant. But his hands are so pretty.
"It won't be as bad as the ISA prison they'd have locked me up in." Jared draws in an angry breath but Jensen cuts him off, his own voice sharply raised. "I've admitted my role in the murders of more than a few agents. I've been an accomplice to acts of international terrorism. I've leaked classified information. I've betrayed the government in just about every way it is possible to do so. What do you think they're gonna do to me?"
"Well that sucks." Jared's snarl has got Jeff's agent on his feet, not approaching them, not yet, but watching. Jared ignores him. He'll break all ten of the fucker's fingers if he tries to intervene. "You go to prison and I might get to carry on with my life. Wonderful. And I guess me being in love with you just isn't your problem, right?"
Jensen screws his eyes shut and scratches his fingers through his hair, shoulders hunched. There's a coffee stain on his t-shirt Jared didn't notice earlier, little spots where his cup must have dribbled and he didn't realise.
God, his hands are pretty.
"To be in love with me, you'd have to have met me," Jensen says very calmly. "The guy you've met is a combination of personality traits I picked because I thought they'd appeal to you. He's not real. You have no future with him."
Jeff's agent looks almost embarrassed to be witness to this. He meets Jared's gaze for a second then looks away. His suit strains over his broad frame as he shifts and sits back down.
"You're so full of bullshit," Jared tells Jensen, every bit as calmly as Jensen spoke to him. "If you're such an awesome fucking puppet-master, then why are we here? You'd have shaken me off already. Unless this is what you wanted all along, in which case, I'm screwed, so I might as well go along with it until you manipulate me some more. So stop fucking lying to me. I'm in love with you, least you can do is give a damn about it."
Jensen's eyes narrow. "It's funny," he says, "somehow it's always so much easier for people to believe me when I'm lying than when I tell the truth. You don't know me. I was never that guy, not really. I just let you believe it."
Jared starts to take a step towards Jensen, sees Jensen lift his chin just a little, to take the hit he thinks might be coming, and Jared gives up.
"You are not in control of this," Jared says, "and you are not in control of me."
He slams the door shut as he leaves. It's not nearly violent enough.
:::
It's 3am. The room is still dark and the facility is still silent. It feels like death, like being buried. Jared isn't scared. He lies there in the nothingness and experiences the sensation, and he anchors himself with the sound of his own breathing.
Not long and he'll be heading out with Jeff's team and Jensen. Not long and it'll be over, one way or another.
He should sleep but he's not tired. He's not tired but he wants it all over. Maybe, he thinks, maybe the day he retires is not too far off. It's not exciting like it used to be. Nothing's like it used to be. It's complicated and painful and it makes Jared's heart beat faster but for all the wrong reasons.
The door opens and Jared turns his head, watches Jensen move hesitantly through the doorway. He stands there in the meagre shaft of light from the corridor outside. Without a word, Jared throws back the coverlet on his bed. Jensen closes the door and crosses to him. The bed creaks slightly at his added weight as he curls in against Jared. He's warm and still a little damp from the shower, his wet hair brushes Jared chin while they figure out between them how to get as close and comfortable to each other as possible.
Jared swallows down the thickness in his throat and nuzzles Jensen's temple.
"If I had a choice," Jensen says, "I'd spend the rest of my life making sure you never had reason to doubt me again. If I had a choice."
Jared tugs the blanket over them both more tidily and, brushing a kiss over Jensen's forehead, he pulls him in tighter against his body.
He closes his eyes and sleeps. It'll be morning soon.
chapter thirty-nine
part thirty-seven
banner made by the fabulously talented nyaubaby
After Jensen presents Jeff with his proposed strategy for infiltrating Kripke and Kring, Jeff questions him about it for two and a half hours. Jensen answers each question thoroughly and patiently, but it doesn't take long for Jared to realise just how much information is missing.
The assignment for which every single detail is known does not exist. There are also areas where information is sketchy or unreliable, and agents are trained to be able to deal with whatever is thrown at them.
This assignment, though, is nothing but uncertainties.
Knowing what he does of Coalition SOP, Jensen has made some reasonable assumptions and combined them with what few facts are known about the setup to produce a plan. Once Jeff is done quizzing him, Jensen is allowed to brief Jared.
"Where are you at this point?" Jared says, touching a finger to one of the sheets.
"Still at the second terminal," Jensen says. When Jared raises an eyebrow at him, Jensen says, "My job isn't done until you're out. Besides, there's no way you're getting out without me working the system."
It's true: there are two points at which Jared is solely dependent on Jensen. What Jensen has just said is the closest anyone has come to acknowledging it. They all know it, it's in the way Jeff watches Jensen, and how there's been nothing even remotely resembling an actual expression on Jensen's face for the last forty minutes.
If Jared were to refuse the assignment, he doesn't think anyone would be too surprised. It's unlikely that any attempt by Jeff to persuade him to take it would hinge on Jensen's reliability. Jeff would have to work on Jared's willingness to do the right - and suicidal - thing. But there's also the fact that Jared could count the number of people in the world who could successfully complete this assignment and get out alive on the fingers of one hand, and three of those would be his more commonly used aliases.
And there's also that thing about how Jared seems completely incapable of staying the fuck away from Jensen, whether Jensen's his handler, a terrorist, or all of the above.
Jared's in this, and he doesn't know if it's part of some master plan Jensen's playing or not, but he doesn't think he's got the option of walking away anymore.
:::
There's an unsettling quietness about the facility Jeff's got them hidden away in. All the windows face inwards, looking at paved courtyards, and the corridors are deserted. The majority of the doors are locked but when Jared picks a couple of them open, he finds just more of the same, drab meeting rooms. One of Jeff's agents showed him to a small room with a bed and attached bathroom, told him to rest up, but Jared doesn't want to rest. He wants to find Jensen or a gym, or if he's really lucky, he'll find Jensen in a gym.
Even Jeff would be welcome right now, because he could point Jared in the direction of Jensen or a gym or maybe even something to fucking eat. And speaking of Jeff, the guy must have balls of steel to allow someone like Jared to wander around his top-secret facility without a babysitter of some kind. So it serves him right when Jared decides he's had enough of the same three floors and bypasses the security seals to enter the lower levels of the building.
It's like a fucking psych test. It's more of the same: same corridors, same doors, no windows. Jared feels like he might be going crazy. He's supposed to be doing this insanely dangerous thing for them in just a few hours that could really easily kill him, and he's alone and kind of freaking out and he just wants to see Jensen. The silence is smothering him, and frustrated energy has got him trembling with having to restrain the urge to take the whole fucking building apart.
Screw it. If Jared's gonna die tomorrow, according to plan or otherwise, then right now, he kind of doesn't exist. He'll exist again once it's all over. It really doesn't matter how badly behaved he is tonight.
He stops where he is, draws in breath, and yells, "Jensen!" at the top of his lungs. "Jensen! Where the fuck are you?" It's almost hard to breathe. This must be what panic feels like. "Jensen, c'mon, where are you?"
Still silence. Jared's hands hurt. They're fists, balled tight. They hurt. The muscles in Jared's arm bunch, because he needs to punch something now. He needs this violence to go somewhere.
A door opens near the end of the corridor and Jensen steps into sight. They look at each other.
"Why are you shouting?" Jensen says, mild reproach in his voice.
Jared doesn't answer him. He strides down the corridor towards him and barges into the room. It's an archive, stalls and stalls of card boxes illuminated by a creamy blue light. Jensen is obviously working at one of the desks - a cup of black coffee is set beside several open files. Another of Jeff's agents is at the far end of the room. He's a big, good-looking guy with a large forehead. He's not doing anything and it's not hard to figure out that he's here for the sole purpose of monitoring Jensen.
Jared looks down at the papers Jensen's reading and he catches sight of his own face looking up at him before Jensen reaches over and flips the file shut.
"It's getting late," Jensen says. "Shouldn't you get some rest?"
Jared's gaze stays fixed on the closed file. Then, slowly and deliberately, he opens it back up again. Beside him, Jensen sighs.
"I'm just trying to make sure I know as much about how to support you as I can," he says. "That's all."
He sounds tired and maybe a little pissed. He's got no right to be pissed.
"What happens after this?" Jared says. Jensen looks at him blankly and Jared wants to hit him, if only to get a reaction. Instead, he grits his teeth and says, "After the assignment, what happens?"
"ISA will be shut down, probably permanently. It just doesn't look good to have harboured two double agents for extended periods of time, y'know? Your contract will be expired, obviously, and higher authorities will step in to reassign you. Jeff says he'll speak on your behalf, explain your role in this."
"Yeah, awesome," Jared says shortly. "What about you? What about you and me?"
Jensen sighs again and straightens one of the piles of papers on the desk. Even his hands are pretty, Jared registers distantly. He smells of stale cigarettes and sweat - it's not pleasant. But his hands are so pretty.
"It won't be as bad as the ISA prison they'd have locked me up in." Jared draws in an angry breath but Jensen cuts him off, his own voice sharply raised. "I've admitted my role in the murders of more than a few agents. I've been an accomplice to acts of international terrorism. I've leaked classified information. I've betrayed the government in just about every way it is possible to do so. What do you think they're gonna do to me?"
"Well that sucks." Jared's snarl has got Jeff's agent on his feet, not approaching them, not yet, but watching. Jared ignores him. He'll break all ten of the fucker's fingers if he tries to intervene. "You go to prison and I might get to carry on with my life. Wonderful. And I guess me being in love with you just isn't your problem, right?"
Jensen screws his eyes shut and scratches his fingers through his hair, shoulders hunched. There's a coffee stain on his t-shirt Jared didn't notice earlier, little spots where his cup must have dribbled and he didn't realise.
God, his hands are pretty.
"To be in love with me, you'd have to have met me," Jensen says very calmly. "The guy you've met is a combination of personality traits I picked because I thought they'd appeal to you. He's not real. You have no future with him."
Jeff's agent looks almost embarrassed to be witness to this. He meets Jared's gaze for a second then looks away. His suit strains over his broad frame as he shifts and sits back down.
"You're so full of bullshit," Jared tells Jensen, every bit as calmly as Jensen spoke to him. "If you're such an awesome fucking puppet-master, then why are we here? You'd have shaken me off already. Unless this is what you wanted all along, in which case, I'm screwed, so I might as well go along with it until you manipulate me some more. So stop fucking lying to me. I'm in love with you, least you can do is give a damn about it."
Jensen's eyes narrow. "It's funny," he says, "somehow it's always so much easier for people to believe me when I'm lying than when I tell the truth. You don't know me. I was never that guy, not really. I just let you believe it."
Jared starts to take a step towards Jensen, sees Jensen lift his chin just a little, to take the hit he thinks might be coming, and Jared gives up.
"You are not in control of this," Jared says, "and you are not in control of me."
He slams the door shut as he leaves. It's not nearly violent enough.
:::
It's 3am. The room is still dark and the facility is still silent. It feels like death, like being buried. Jared isn't scared. He lies there in the nothingness and experiences the sensation, and he anchors himself with the sound of his own breathing.
Not long and he'll be heading out with Jeff's team and Jensen. Not long and it'll be over, one way or another.
He should sleep but he's not tired. He's not tired but he wants it all over. Maybe, he thinks, maybe the day he retires is not too far off. It's not exciting like it used to be. Nothing's like it used to be. It's complicated and painful and it makes Jared's heart beat faster but for all the wrong reasons.
The door opens and Jared turns his head, watches Jensen move hesitantly through the doorway. He stands there in the meagre shaft of light from the corridor outside. Without a word, Jared throws back the coverlet on his bed. Jensen closes the door and crosses to him. The bed creaks slightly at his added weight as he curls in against Jared. He's warm and still a little damp from the shower, his wet hair brushes Jared chin while they figure out between them how to get as close and comfortable to each other as possible.
Jared swallows down the thickness in his throat and nuzzles Jensen's temple.
"If I had a choice," Jensen says, "I'd spend the rest of my life making sure you never had reason to doubt me again. If I had a choice."
Jared tugs the blanket over them both more tidily and, brushing a kiss over Jensen's forehead, he pulls him in tighter against his body.
He closes his eyes and sleeps. It'll be morning soon.
chapter thirty-nine