Fic: "In From the Cold" J2 AU rated-R Ch. 4/?
I feel like there should be a header block here, but y'all know what it is and who I am and whatever.
But um, here, have some Homeless!Jensen.
Beta-ed and prompted by Embroiderama
=============
From a doorway across the street, Jeff watches the front of the clinic. It’s been a full hour since he left Jensen there with Jared. No ambulance has come, so that has to be a good sign. As thorough as the ass-kicking Jensen had taken was, he had been moving under his own power, lucid (for Jensen) and not screaming in pain. Maybe Jared can just fix it, Jeff thinks, and when he’s done, Jensen’ll need somebody to get him where he needs to go and watch his back until he’s settled someplace safe.
He settles in, sniper-still, to watch the door and wait. There’s so much else he could be doing, people to protect and check on and feed and clothe and reassure, but he failed Jensen once tonight and he’s not going to let that happen again.
As bad as Jensen had looked when Jeff found him with those guys standing over him, one of them with lighter in hand, it’s nothing compared to the first time Jeff had seen him, some pretty-faced stranger staggering down the sidewalk like a drunk, clinging to the graffiti covered brick to keep him upright, slack-jawed with green eyes that stared out almost like he was blind. He’d been in rough shape in those days; Jeff had thought he probably burned out his brain on whatever new designer drug was popular at the time. Jeff had figured somebody would start missing a guy like that, with his nice clothes and sharp haircut, somebody would come looking for him which made him not Jeff’s problem.
Except he was. Nobody came. Nobody looked. He ate the kibble that the Cat Lady put out for the strays and burrowed down in piles of garbage when night fell. He skirted the little family-like clusters of homeless people, not too close, but like he was afraid to be too alone. And if Jeff shared a burger from a dumpster in those days, or dropped a threadbare jacket across his shoulders, it didn’t make him one of those Jeff watched out for. It was just enough to keep him alive until the missing person’s report was filed, until the cops came looking for him and his family got him a hundred-an-hour-shrink to help unfry his brains.
The only person that came looking for Jensen was some scumbag that tried to drag him down an alley for a little party. No way in hell Jeff was gonna let that happen. After that it was like ‘You touched him last, you can’t throw him back.’ Jensen was his. His responsibility.
The sky lightens. A pregnant woman waddles up to the clinic door and goes inside, and later a skinny guy doubled up with coughing stumbles over. Jeff waits. It’s not like the clinic is a hospital. They don’t keep people overnight or all day or whatever. Jensen has to come out soon. There hasn’t been an ambulance. Jensen has to come out.
Jeff realizes he’s starting to feel trapped, even though it’s not him that’s stuck indoors, in the roofed in walled in peopled in confines of the clinic. He gets up and starts to pace the full length of the block and back, trying to stuff that feeling of being closed in down into his guts, trying to breathe easy and free.
Fuck it, just fuck it all. He storms up to the clinic door and pushes it open, propping it there with is foot while he braces a hand on either side of the frame, bracing himself against the gravity of the room sucking him in and never letting go again.
“Hey, Jared still here?” he asks, loud enough that everybody looks his way. He doesn’t see Jared.
The acting receptionist shakes her head. “Sorry, honey, he left hours ago.”
Jeff swallows hard. He trusted Jared. He doesn’t really know the other doctors. They don’t work his shift. Even if they did, he doubts any of them would have come out to treat his stab wound on the sidewalk like Jared had that first time they met.
“He was taking care of a friend of mine, John Doe that goes by Jensen Ackles?”
The woman looks at some sort of chart. “Nope,” she says, “checked out at six this morning.”
Shit, Jeff swears, shit. Jensen left and he missed him. Son of a bitch.
=========
Jared wakes up and a wave of dread sweeps over him. He knows, knows before he even steps out his bedroom door that the living room is empty, that Jensen's gone. He wishes he was wrong but he’s not. Everything is still out there, the little heater humming away, pointed at a couch that is vacant except for a set of folded up sweats on the corner.
He swears, colorful words slipping from his lips as he runs out the door and to the stair’s railing. He looks down but doesn’t see any movement. He shouts Jensen's name because it doesn’t hurt to and is answered only by his own tinny echo.
He steps back inside, grabs his keys, shoes and a shirt. It’s cold as fuck when he steps out half-dressed, shivering as he waits for the old car’s engine to warm up enough to risk pulling away from the curb. She still sputters and almost stalls on him, and it’s only by luck or miracle that the motor catches and drags her tired tin carcass out onto the streets.
Jared doesn’t know what else to do. He’d tried to make it better and this is not better. Jensen's lost, in a strange place. So what that it’s five miles from the clinic. For a man walking who doesn’t know where he is, it could be the same as twenty with a good map. Maybe worse. Jensen doesn’t have food or water or anything, and how the hell could Jared be so stupid as to not expect this?
He circles the block surrounding his apartment, and then the one-block radius around that. He criss-crosses the area, one eye on traffic and one on the sidewalk. Horns bleat at him, irate drivers venting their frustration at how slow he’s driving. He could care less.
He drives his car’s tank empty, refuels and goes back to his apartment just in case Jensen ended up there. No such luck, and it’s getting late, so he grabs what he needs for work. On a last minute impulse, he digs an old backpack out of the bedroom closet. If he does see Jensen, he wants him to have what he needs. Jared packs a roll of toilet paper, deodorant, the toothbrush Jensen used the night before and a tube of toothpaste in the bag. From the bedroom he puts in three pairs of socks, bundled up tight. In the kitchen he stuffs in two bottles of water, two of Gatorade and an assortment of pop-tarts and granola bars.
Just having the bag ready makes him feel better, like Jensen will come because he has it, like a gesture of friendship and charity can’t be wasted. He puts it in the car as he leaves again, and brings it into the clinic with him like a security blanket.
George is giving breathing treatments to a scrawny girl that can’t be more than fourteen when Jared gets in to work, putting the tang of Albuterol into the air.
“Hey,” he says when his boss finishes up, “I need to take my lunch break out tonight.”
“Yeah?” George has this way of looking at him, like he knows all his secrets.
Jared nods. “I have to go looking for Jensen. He ran out on me while I was asleep.”
George snorts. “How much of your stuff did he take with him? Anything pawnable?”
That rankles, because Jared’s judgment may have been bad, but it wasn’t that bad.
“Nothing,” he says as he walks away. “He didn’t take anything of mine.” Not that Jared had anything worth pawning. Not that Jared even checked the things he does have.
The night passes in tense silence. Jared and George don’t say anything that’s not necessary to the work. It’s not comfortable, but Jared’s thinking about Jensen too much to be worried about it.
There’s the usual 2 a.m. rush, when drunks get brought in and hookers get roughed up and a teen overdosing on Sudafed and sleeping pills needs his stomach pumped. Same old, same old. Not long after that the stream peters off to a trickle.
“I’m taking lunch,” Jared announces and George waves him out the back door.
“If he comes here looking for you, I’ll keep him here,” the older man promises, and Jared smiles. They’re cool again.
--------
Jared considers himself a smart guy, street-smart and aware. He’s worked at the clinic for six months now, and almost two years as an EMT before that. He’s driven into turf wars and helped the homeless and nearly gotten shot in a domestic disturbance. He feels he’s pretty good at watching his own back, being aware of his surroundings.
He doesn’t even know someone’s behind him before his feet are swept out from under him, his arm is pulled back at an angle that shoots a sick wrong fucked pain through his shoulder and the side of his head is slammed into the hood of his car. He’s held like that, helpless and helpless and helpless for long seconds, his attacker proving to him that he can’t do shit to get out of this.
“Did you fuck him?” a voice growls in his ear and it takes a second before his panicking mind can make sense of it.
“What?” His voice is a ragged whisper against the pain and fear. “Fuck who?”
The fingers clenched in Jared’s hair tighten, pressing his cheekbone harder against the icy metal. “Jensen. Did you fuck him? Did you fuck him before you kicked him out in a strange place?”
Jared hisses in a few more breaths, his body heat puffing white with the cold. “Jeff?”
There’s no response. The hands on him don’t loosen at all. “I didn’t fuck him,” Jared says. “I got him a bath and took care of his skin and got him a good meal. I didn’t fuck him.” He tries to put all the sincerity a guy who’s telling the truth can have into the words. “I let him sleep on my couch and he split before I woke up.”
He waits, listening to his own heart beating out a frantic pattern in his chest. “Jeff. I didn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“You’d get him hurt, cleaning him up like that,” Jeff says, and pushes away. Jared catches his breath before turning around.
“So he’s alright?” he asks, knowing he sounds more than, less than, absolutely not professional.
“He’s not--he’s not talking,” Jeff says, his frustration evident. “He won’t talk and he’s limping and still hugging that arm. I don’t know if he’s still in too much pain or what happened to him after I left him with you.”
Jared leans against his car, freezing his ass against the metal, but he wants to look as non-threatening as possible. He puts up with it when the donors show up to see how things are doing at the clinic. Dealing with Jeff’s not so hard by comparison. “He stopped talking on me too,” he puts in, “But he didn’t seem upset.”
Jeff nods, shaky like dealing with this uncertainty is more frightening than any act of violence he’s put himself in the middle of in the six months Jared’s known him.
“Look,” Jared says, “I’ve got a lunch break. Let me run in and get him some Tylenol. I’ve got some stuff I want him to have, and we’ll go together and make sure he didn’t get more injured on his way to you. Alright?”
“Yeah,” says Jeff. “Yeah, let’s go.”
But um, here, have some Homeless!Jensen.
Beta-ed and prompted by Embroiderama
=============
From a doorway across the street, Jeff watches the front of the clinic. It’s been a full hour since he left Jensen there with Jared. No ambulance has come, so that has to be a good sign. As thorough as the ass-kicking Jensen had taken was, he had been moving under his own power, lucid (for Jensen) and not screaming in pain. Maybe Jared can just fix it, Jeff thinks, and when he’s done, Jensen’ll need somebody to get him where he needs to go and watch his back until he’s settled someplace safe.
He settles in, sniper-still, to watch the door and wait. There’s so much else he could be doing, people to protect and check on and feed and clothe and reassure, but he failed Jensen once tonight and he’s not going to let that happen again.
As bad as Jensen had looked when Jeff found him with those guys standing over him, one of them with lighter in hand, it’s nothing compared to the first time Jeff had seen him, some pretty-faced stranger staggering down the sidewalk like a drunk, clinging to the graffiti covered brick to keep him upright, slack-jawed with green eyes that stared out almost like he was blind. He’d been in rough shape in those days; Jeff had thought he probably burned out his brain on whatever new designer drug was popular at the time. Jeff had figured somebody would start missing a guy like that, with his nice clothes and sharp haircut, somebody would come looking for him which made him not Jeff’s problem.
Except he was. Nobody came. Nobody looked. He ate the kibble that the Cat Lady put out for the strays and burrowed down in piles of garbage when night fell. He skirted the little family-like clusters of homeless people, not too close, but like he was afraid to be too alone. And if Jeff shared a burger from a dumpster in those days, or dropped a threadbare jacket across his shoulders, it didn’t make him one of those Jeff watched out for. It was just enough to keep him alive until the missing person’s report was filed, until the cops came looking for him and his family got him a hundred-an-hour-shrink to help unfry his brains.
The only person that came looking for Jensen was some scumbag that tried to drag him down an alley for a little party. No way in hell Jeff was gonna let that happen. After that it was like ‘You touched him last, you can’t throw him back.’ Jensen was his. His responsibility.
The sky lightens. A pregnant woman waddles up to the clinic door and goes inside, and later a skinny guy doubled up with coughing stumbles over. Jeff waits. It’s not like the clinic is a hospital. They don’t keep people overnight or all day or whatever. Jensen has to come out soon. There hasn’t been an ambulance. Jensen has to come out.
Jeff realizes he’s starting to feel trapped, even though it’s not him that’s stuck indoors, in the roofed in walled in peopled in confines of the clinic. He gets up and starts to pace the full length of the block and back, trying to stuff that feeling of being closed in down into his guts, trying to breathe easy and free.
Fuck it, just fuck it all. He storms up to the clinic door and pushes it open, propping it there with is foot while he braces a hand on either side of the frame, bracing himself against the gravity of the room sucking him in and never letting go again.
“Hey, Jared still here?” he asks, loud enough that everybody looks his way. He doesn’t see Jared.
The acting receptionist shakes her head. “Sorry, honey, he left hours ago.”
Jeff swallows hard. He trusted Jared. He doesn’t really know the other doctors. They don’t work his shift. Even if they did, he doubts any of them would have come out to treat his stab wound on the sidewalk like Jared had that first time they met.
“He was taking care of a friend of mine, John Doe that goes by Jensen Ackles?”
The woman looks at some sort of chart. “Nope,” she says, “checked out at six this morning.”
Shit, Jeff swears, shit. Jensen left and he missed him. Son of a bitch.
=========
Jared wakes up and a wave of dread sweeps over him. He knows, knows before he even steps out his bedroom door that the living room is empty, that Jensen's gone. He wishes he was wrong but he’s not. Everything is still out there, the little heater humming away, pointed at a couch that is vacant except for a set of folded up sweats on the corner.
He swears, colorful words slipping from his lips as he runs out the door and to the stair’s railing. He looks down but doesn’t see any movement. He shouts Jensen's name because it doesn’t hurt to and is answered only by his own tinny echo.
He steps back inside, grabs his keys, shoes and a shirt. It’s cold as fuck when he steps out half-dressed, shivering as he waits for the old car’s engine to warm up enough to risk pulling away from the curb. She still sputters and almost stalls on him, and it’s only by luck or miracle that the motor catches and drags her tired tin carcass out onto the streets.
Jared doesn’t know what else to do. He’d tried to make it better and this is not better. Jensen's lost, in a strange place. So what that it’s five miles from the clinic. For a man walking who doesn’t know where he is, it could be the same as twenty with a good map. Maybe worse. Jensen doesn’t have food or water or anything, and how the hell could Jared be so stupid as to not expect this?
He circles the block surrounding his apartment, and then the one-block radius around that. He criss-crosses the area, one eye on traffic and one on the sidewalk. Horns bleat at him, irate drivers venting their frustration at how slow he’s driving. He could care less.
He drives his car’s tank empty, refuels and goes back to his apartment just in case Jensen ended up there. No such luck, and it’s getting late, so he grabs what he needs for work. On a last minute impulse, he digs an old backpack out of the bedroom closet. If he does see Jensen, he wants him to have what he needs. Jared packs a roll of toilet paper, deodorant, the toothbrush Jensen used the night before and a tube of toothpaste in the bag. From the bedroom he puts in three pairs of socks, bundled up tight. In the kitchen he stuffs in two bottles of water, two of Gatorade and an assortment of pop-tarts and granola bars.
Just having the bag ready makes him feel better, like Jensen will come because he has it, like a gesture of friendship and charity can’t be wasted. He puts it in the car as he leaves again, and brings it into the clinic with him like a security blanket.
George is giving breathing treatments to a scrawny girl that can’t be more than fourteen when Jared gets in to work, putting the tang of Albuterol into the air.
“Hey,” he says when his boss finishes up, “I need to take my lunch break out tonight.”
“Yeah?” George has this way of looking at him, like he knows all his secrets.
Jared nods. “I have to go looking for Jensen. He ran out on me while I was asleep.”
George snorts. “How much of your stuff did he take with him? Anything pawnable?”
That rankles, because Jared’s judgment may have been bad, but it wasn’t that bad.
“Nothing,” he says as he walks away. “He didn’t take anything of mine.” Not that Jared had anything worth pawning. Not that Jared even checked the things he does have.
The night passes in tense silence. Jared and George don’t say anything that’s not necessary to the work. It’s not comfortable, but Jared’s thinking about Jensen too much to be worried about it.
There’s the usual 2 a.m. rush, when drunks get brought in and hookers get roughed up and a teen overdosing on Sudafed and sleeping pills needs his stomach pumped. Same old, same old. Not long after that the stream peters off to a trickle.
“I’m taking lunch,” Jared announces and George waves him out the back door.
“If he comes here looking for you, I’ll keep him here,” the older man promises, and Jared smiles. They’re cool again.
--------
Jared considers himself a smart guy, street-smart and aware. He’s worked at the clinic for six months now, and almost two years as an EMT before that. He’s driven into turf wars and helped the homeless and nearly gotten shot in a domestic disturbance. He feels he’s pretty good at watching his own back, being aware of his surroundings.
He doesn’t even know someone’s behind him before his feet are swept out from under him, his arm is pulled back at an angle that shoots a sick wrong fucked pain through his shoulder and the side of his head is slammed into the hood of his car. He’s held like that, helpless and helpless and helpless for long seconds, his attacker proving to him that he can’t do shit to get out of this.
“Did you fuck him?” a voice growls in his ear and it takes a second before his panicking mind can make sense of it.
“What?” His voice is a ragged whisper against the pain and fear. “Fuck who?”
The fingers clenched in Jared’s hair tighten, pressing his cheekbone harder against the icy metal. “Jensen. Did you fuck him? Did you fuck him before you kicked him out in a strange place?”
Jared hisses in a few more breaths, his body heat puffing white with the cold. “Jeff?”
There’s no response. The hands on him don’t loosen at all. “I didn’t fuck him,” Jared says. “I got him a bath and took care of his skin and got him a good meal. I didn’t fuck him.” He tries to put all the sincerity a guy who’s telling the truth can have into the words. “I let him sleep on my couch and he split before I woke up.”
He waits, listening to his own heart beating out a frantic pattern in his chest. “Jeff. I didn’t hurt him. I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“You’d get him hurt, cleaning him up like that,” Jeff says, and pushes away. Jared catches his breath before turning around.
“So he’s alright?” he asks, knowing he sounds more than, less than, absolutely not professional.
“He’s not--he’s not talking,” Jeff says, his frustration evident. “He won’t talk and he’s limping and still hugging that arm. I don’t know if he’s still in too much pain or what happened to him after I left him with you.”
Jared leans against his car, freezing his ass against the metal, but he wants to look as non-threatening as possible. He puts up with it when the donors show up to see how things are doing at the clinic. Dealing with Jeff’s not so hard by comparison. “He stopped talking on me too,” he puts in, “But he didn’t seem upset.”
Jeff nods, shaky like dealing with this uncertainty is more frightening than any act of violence he’s put himself in the middle of in the six months Jared’s known him.
“Look,” Jared says, “I’ve got a lunch break. Let me run in and get him some Tylenol. I’ve got some stuff I want him to have, and we’ll go together and make sure he didn’t get more injured on his way to you. Alright?”
“Yeah,” says Jeff. “Yeah, let’s go.”