Jeff? Still Badass.
Jared is a saint.
Jensen is unpredictable.
Beta and Bunny by Embroiderama
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Finding the guy takes Jeff a month or more. Watching. Talking to people who were poisoned and others who knew them. Figuring out who had a hate-on big enough to want folks dead.
He ends up with a list of six. Owners of buildings or small businesses. The dude who keeps petitioning the city to build a shelter out in the country and bus the homeless out to somewhere too far to walk back from if they didn’t like it. The lady who calls the cops three times a week on the kids who sleep on her stoop.
He can feel parts of his brain he hasn’t used in ages waking up. His old skills of observation and interrogation and pattern-finding reawaken to this new purpose. He watches the people on his list. Checks their garbage. Looks for odd packages being brought in or going out.
He assesses the threats each may pose and calculates his windows of opportunity. The first four locations he breaks into have tissue-paper for security. Deadbolts on the doors but a window unlocked around back or on the second floor. Maybe a sliding glass door that he can lift off the tracks and circumvent the bar keeping it closed. Nothing difficult for a man who has seen hundreds of B&Es in his day. Heart pounding and the smell of his own panic in his nose he searches for some sign or proof. The fear wells up and he locks it away in a cell of stone. The mission is everything.
The fifth--a mid-renovation storefront on the strip--has security with a capital S. Metal grates over the windows and welded-on padlock latches on steel doors. Jeff watches his mark going in and out with his hardware and supplies. Broad daylight is too risky and the guy never comes or leaves at night.
Jeff goes to the store next door and buys a soda for the privilege of using their men’s room. He pulls his gloves on even though the weather is too warm for them now. The ceiling is hung tiles and he climbs from the back of the toilet up into the crawl-space. He has to move carefully to keep from falling through but he smiles as he sees the spaces are open up top. Nothing at all between him and his suspect but another layer of acoustic tile.
He hides up there for hours until the construction noises below stop for the day. The drop to the floor is longer than he would have hoped for and he isn’t as young as he used to be. The fall twists his knee and ankle but he shakes it off as he walks around searching the place.
Hidden between some buckets of spackling compound he finds what he’s looking for. Eight boxes with the skull and crossbones on the side. Long chemical name he doesn’t recognize but he knows what the hell WARNING! POISON! means and this has to be his guy.
Still, never pays to be impatient or jump to conclusions. He finds a yard-long wooden rod that fits nice in his hand. Thinks it was probably a closet rod at one time. Heavy enough to do the job and already on-site.
He waits. Sitting most of the time but walking enough to keep that knee limber.
He guesses it must be just past ten in the morning when he hears keys outside the door. He pulls the brim of his hat low over his eyes and moves into position.
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Jared is a man desperately in need of someone to talk to. He can’t talk to Jensen because Jensen is the topic at hand. He can’t talk to George because as his boss George doesn’t officially know about Jensen and it doesn’t help anything to keep challenging that willing ignorance.
Frightening as the concept is, Jeff seems like his best bet. Somebody who knows Jensen and can give an honest evaluation of his progress and capabilities. Jeff, of course, decides that this is the one night not to come by for their Tuesday late-night lunches. Jared hates him a little for that.
Jared is a man with a problem. He thought about all that Jensen had said or tried to say as he drove into work. As far as Jared can figure it boils down to this: Jensen doesn’t feel like the man in the mirror has any relevance to his present self. And Jared can either wait for that man who may be dead and gone or he can love the Jensen here and now and that should include some physical lovin’ because the Jensen of here and now is horny.
Jared thinks the problem over all night at work. What to do and how to make sure Jensen doesn’t get hurt in the process. In a way he’s almost glad the winter lull is over and patients come in at all hours. Having George there all night keeps him from totally brooding about his issues and having people to treat distracts him from thoughts of Jensen at home spread out on the bed--their bed--in nothing but a bow. Twelve hours thinking about that would give him a medical condition of his own.
There’s nothing like a teenager injured in a knife fight to take the glow off of a sexy image and after that an immigrant mother’s concern for her baby’s life overwhelms her fear of INS and she brings in a two year old with a raging fever and Jared has his hands and mind full with cooling packs and thermometers and the sound of sobbing prayers in Spanish behind him.
By sunrise he nearly forgets his relationship issues and his worry about what kept Jeff. He is turning the key in the door when he remembers and sudden worry clenches his guts because what if Jensen wants too much too fast? What if Jared isn’t strong enough to resist and take things at the right speed for Jensen? What if he does something that hurts all the wonderful progress Jensen has made in his life these past few months?
Jared takes a deep breath and turns the knob. The Gatorade bottle on the other side falls in its comforting predictability and Jensen looks up from where he sits fully dressed and working on a new project.
“Come see,” he says in his happiest voice and Jared doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed to not be pressured into awkward eager sex the minute he walks in the door.
He goes though, to see whatever has Jensen so happy. The thing on the table has to be the ugliest blob of crap Jensen's ever made. Jared circles it twice and looks for any redeeming beauty in it but all he can see are random bundles of garbage and wire and paper and cardboard all glued or taped or tied together.
“It’s um…I don’t get it?”
And Jensen grins like that was the point. “Here.” He pushes Jared to sit on the couch and starts turning off lights and pulling the blackout blinds over the windows. When only the one bare bulb by the table is still lit Jared sees it. The shadows of the ugly thing on the wall. Stretched and distorted they have become people. A couple. Two men embracing.
“God,” Jared breathes. “It’s beautiful.” And more than that it shows a complexity of thought he can’t even imagine. To build it for the shadow of one light in one place. He wonders if it would work at all if the light was an inch off or the table an inch higher and he doesn’t think so.
Jensen comes over and sits beside him with his knees curled up to his chest. He leans against Jared’s shoulder and closes his eyes and says “Yes,” like he’s not talking about the sculpture at all.
Jared runs his fingers through Jensen's hair and he’s happy to be home and happy that Jensen's happy and whatever happens with them they’ll work it out together.
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Getting a confession is easy, Jeff thinks. Make a man more afraid of what will come if he lies than if he tells the truth and the words spill out. Let him think the truth won’t hurt him. Beat a confession out of a man and it won’t stand up in court. Let him think you want to see him in jail. Let him think you already dialed 911 and just want someone else to hear him admit what he’s done. Let him think there are witnesses.
The man would rather spill words than blood. What sane person wouldn’t? He gives dates and places. Where and when he put poison out for people. Hettie and Cinnamon Girl. Tom Tom and Junkie Sean. Eli White and some poor runaway. Dead for property values and his kids’ college funds and decent neighborhoods for decent people.
Jeff hits him then. Gloves doing nothing to pad the impact that runs up to his shoulder. That he feels all the way down to his sprained knee. Hits him until the chair he’s tied to falls over and Jeff gasps for air like his first day at boot camp.
“You die here,” Jeff tells him and opens one of the boxes. Hard fingers crush in at the corners of the man’s jaw and Jeff tips the white powder into his mouth. The guy chokes on the dryness of it. Coughs as it takes the moisture out of his throat and dusts his lungs.
Jeff stands back and watches the man squirm. Slows his breathing. Feels the weight of what he’s done and righteous violence never felt so good before.
He makes one last check of the scene. No fingerprints. No footprints. Not so much as a drop of his blood or sweat. Clean as a CSI’s nightmare.
Beside the door he opens the bastard’s fancy little phone and dials 911. Death would be an easy way out. Let him try to explain the poison and why he was beaten. Let him try to feel safe again when every shadow and every shuffling street person could be his attacker come back to finish the job. Jeff knows fear. How to make a victim slow to recover and never to forget.
Jeff slips out the door and down the alleyway and nobody looks at him at all.
Hours later he sits on a rooftop and the enormity of what he’s done hits him. Inside. The small places and crawling through the ceiling. He didn’t even think of it at the time. Mission overtook fear and he just did it.
He shakes and vomits and thinks of his wife’s hand cool on his forehead and how he misses her and all the mistakes he’s made.