Fic: "In From the Cold" J2 AU rated-R Ch. 22/?
I'm back!
Sorry for the huge delay. Last weeks of school are eating into my time. Almost done though, and I had a breakthrough and finished up this chapter and half of the next.
Thanks to Embroiderama for the wonderful beta. It's a better fic thanks to her.
As a man who expected to wake up in jail, Jeff is far from disappointed that the first thing he sees when he pries his eyes open is a crowded and dingy office and an open door. It takes his brain more than a second to process the information. That he’s inside but not held. Not closed in.
He waits for the rush of terror. For the walls to close in and suffocate him. For the feeling of being enclosed to overwhelm the pounding in his head and the roiling in his stomach. The last of the alcohol in his system is more of a nuisance than helpful in counteracting the fear.
He waits for the fight-or-flight impulse. Steels himself to keep it under control. To make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody on his rush to a place where nothing stands between him and the sky.
He waits and nothing comes but a vague tickle along his spine. The feeling that maybe there’s a little more air outside but here isn’t bad. He waits and he breathes. The indoor/outdoor carpet prickles his palms. He can hear a radio in another room playing festive-sounding Mexican music. The door stays open and the walls don’t move.
Jeff pushes himself to his feet and stretches. He’s hung over but he’s had much worse morning-afters in the course of his life. Waking up in strange places. Beaten and robbed. The morning his wife had a bruise on her cheek and she wouldn’t tell him where it came from. Bad days.
He puts aside the memories that do nobody any good and tries to piece together the previous day. To figure out where it went wrong. He remembers Jared in a police car. Jensen gone. The bottle and the station and then a vague recollection of Jared dragging him into a cab.
He pinches the bridge of his nose between his eyes and waits for the fading of the headache. When it lessens to the point he can think straight and form a plan he knows he has to find Jared. Make sure he got out all right. Make sure Jensen is safe.
After that he isn’t sure. Maybe he still needs to turn himself in. Stop the investigation. Maybe he should move on again. Look for a new city. A new place he can do a little good to make up for his sins and his shortcomings.
He makes his way down the narrow hallway. Each step is steadier than the last. He comes out into a dining hall setting up for dinner by the smell of it. Potato soup and hotdogs. He’s never been inside here before but he recognizes the windows. Knows where he is.
Gotta find Jared, he thinks. Gotta find Jensen.
He moves through the common area and keeps in mind that the door is right there and nothing will stop him from getting out and he doesn’t need to panic. Movement to the side catches his attention though and a blonde woman struggles to carry an industrial size pot of stew much too big for her and he takes the three quick steps it takes to get in front of her.
“Can I help you with that?” He reaches out and takes the weight of it before she stumbles. She looks up and he recognizes her. Karen Hall, looking pale and delicate and prettier than he’d remembered.
“Jeff?” She smiles and lets him have the towel-wrapped handles of the pot. “Are you--wow, it’s nice to see you in here.”
He knows what she’s saying but lets it slide on by. He helps with getting food on the tables and serving the line. When there’s no more work to be done he finds himself at loose ends. Not sure what to do with himself inside. It’s been so long he’s forgotten how to be around so many people. What to do with himself.
The sidewalk outside is warm and he settles down with his foam cup of soup and hotdog on a napkin. A shadow crosses over him and he looks up. Karen is there again with a shy smile and both her boys.
“Can we join you?” And he’s embarrassed to have her come out to sit with him. That he didn’t know how to be indoors anymore. She looks like she wants to be there though so he stands up and puts his jacket on the ground.
“Please,” he says and holds her tray while she sits down.
“Will you say grace?”
It’s been a while since Jeff found any sort of peace in faith but he bows his head for her and says the words of hope and gratitude. They eat together and it feels like he’s part of their family. It feels good. To spend just a few hours on himself. To feel a part of something close and warm and safe. Just a couple hours before he’ll go looking for Jared and nobody would begrudge him that, would they?
=======
“Son of a bitch!” Jared says. He sounds like Jeff. Mad hurt scared and he stands in the doorway of their apartment like he doesn’t want Jensen to step past him. Doesn’t want Jensen to see.
Jensen looks past anyways because he can be strong and see anything Jared can see.
The room is all sideways, Jensen thinks. Like it rolled over and all the things slid to one side and then flipped and flipped again and finally fell in the place they started but all upsides down and backwards. His gifts to Jared. The forks and the towers and the waves and the maker of story shadows. All are in their pieces again and bits and already he thinks of new ways to put them into new gifts.
“Son of a bitch,” Jared says again and his knees go funny and Jensen catches him before he can fall and they go down slow together to the floor. “God, I can’t keep anything safe.” And Jensen hugs his Jared tight and tries to make words that it’s okay and it doesn’t mean anything when your house gets rolled if you aren’t in it because houses don’t bleed and things don’t hurt. He isn’t sure Jared hears over the wheezy sound of his breathing. He needs a thing to show him. A real thing Jared can touch and Jensen leaves his side and goes through the piles of once-was searching for one piece to show Jared that everything is okay.
He finds the little man with the green glass heart. It’s all bent. Twisted like a big foot stepped down on it. He leaves it that way. Wires only bend so many times before they break and it’s better to be bent on accident than broken on purpose.
He goes back to where Jared is looking at the pile like it is too big for him to see all of it. Like the weight of it is inside his head crushing out his thoughts. He goes back and he sits beside Jared and puts the little man with the green glass heart in his hands.
“Still it shines,” Jensen says. He leans in and nuzzles Jared’s cheek with his own. “Everything can change and still it shines.”
Jared’s lips twitch and Jensen worries less. “Only it is things,” Jensen says and he gets up and straddles Jared’s lap and puts their foreheads together. I am safe. You keep me safe, he wants to say but if Jared doesn’t want to talk about that part of anything then Jensen won’t make him. “I’ll make new things. Promise. New things until all the bits are done.”
Jared smiles a tired smile and Jensen kisses the corner of his lips. “Now we go sleeping.” They get up and walk to the bedroom and put the mattress back on the frame and the sheets on the mattress and they curl together in the dark and Jensen pretends that everything is like it was days ago before Mackenzie and the police and he hides his face in the curve of Jared’s neck.
Jared sleeps but Jensen is still awake when the phone in Jared’s pocket in the jacket on the floor makes its noise. Too late to hide it far away and so he grabs it and holds it tight between his hands and takes it out of the bedroom and through the apartment and out into the hall before Jared wakes up.
The name on the little square that Jared looks at when it rings says MAC and Jensen worries for her worrying and opens the phone. He has never talked to one before but the green button blinks at him and says TALK and he’s not stupid. He can read. He pushes the button and waits and listens and Mackenzie’s voice comes out strange and shivery.
“Hello?” She breathes and he breathes and nobody says anyting until she asks “Jared?”
“Jared sleeps,” Jensen tells her. “I took him home.”
She sounds funny. Scared maybe and sad maybe too. “That’s fine,” she says. “I just worried when you weren’t here.”
Jensen doesn’t think he likes talking on phones. It’s too far from the person and the plastic doesn’t smile or cry or frown and he doesn’t know how to know what she feels.
“Jared sleeps,” he says again.
“But you can talk to me, right?”
He leans against the wall and slides down. The hallway is all quiet and the doors of the neighbors are all closed.
“Right” sounds like the thing to say so he says it.
Mackenzie laughs a little. Nervous still and he doesn’t know why people laugh when they don’t feel good.
“So you and him, huh?” She doesn’t give him time to say anything. “I kind of thought--I mean, I had an idea. Back before. There was this girl and she left and she said some things as she went.”
It seems like she just needs to talk so Jensen just listens.
“He never told us. He--my brother. He hid that. And now you. It’s all messed up.”
He closes his eyes and has no idea how to deal with her pain.
“Jensen?” and she’s never called him that before. “My brother’s gone, isn’t he? I mean--it’s like he’s dead.”
“I am me,” he whispers.
Mackenzie is quiet again and he doesn’t know if he said what she heard.
“You were smiling,” she says at last. “When I saw you at the museum. You were happy and it made me so mad because we’d missed him so much.”
Jensen doesn’t like the phone because there’s no hugging on the phone.
“We should just go away and leave you alone. It’s not--it can’t be fair. And you’re not him.”
“I am me,” Jensen says again. “And you are you and maybe you could be my friend and I could be your friend.”
She cries but she doesn’t say no. Jensen wishes he knew if he was saying the right things. He tries to comfort her over the phone and when she stops her quiet sobs she says, “Go back to Jared. I’ll keep Mom out of your hair. Call me when you want to see us, okay?”
“Okay,” Jensen says and he means tomorrow and don’t be sad.
He goes back to Jared and he thinks about how if he lives in Davis’ body maybe he owes Davis’ family. Not things that will unmake him. Not things that will take him from Jared. But being a friend and giving them the hugs Davis can’t anymore. He can give them that.
========
They wake up together around noon. Jared calls to check in with his work and finds out that the police coming to the clinic has chased away half of the people who need the help and George is happy to give him a few days off. As he hangs up Jared has to wonder if part of it is that it was him getting arrested. If the donors would be pissy about employees causing that sort of a stir. If his boss was any less straight-forward of a guy he’d wonder if he was officially on suspension.
Jared makes breakfast and Jensen works on cleaning up the mess of his artworks. Jared can’t even look at it. Every broken bit of sculpture screams an accusation at him. That he couldn’t keep it safe. That he couldn’t keep Jensen safe. And maybe it would be better if Jensen went with his family to a world with all the safety money could by. Back to his crystal tower like a fairy tale.
Strong arms circle Jared’s waist and Jensen's warm body presses against his back. He realizes the eggs are burnt beyond eating and he shoves the pan off of the heat and turns around and they cling to each other like they had the night before.
“I talked to Donna last night,” Jared says and Jensen tenses in his arms. “She wants you to go stay with her while you get the testing done. I told her I’d go with you if that’s what you wanted, but it was your decision where to do it.”
“Here is home,” Jensen says without hesitation. “Days away would be bad.”
“Davis had a doctor there. Someone who would be able to see the changes you’ve gone through.” As he says the words he wonders if this doctor saw the changes when Davis started popping script-pills like Chiclets.
“Davis’ doctor.” Jensen makes a face. “Here are good doctors. You could check me or George.”
Jared has to smile at that. “You need a different kind of doctor. A brain-doctor. But yeah. There are good doctors around here.”
“Here,” Jensen says and he sounds so sure.
Jared fries up some more eggs and then calls around. George knows a doctor in family medicine who he thinks will be a good first experience for Jensen with strangers examining him. There’s little doubt she’ll prescribe the further tests and after that they should have a better idea of what’s happening physically in Jensen's head.
=========
Donna Carr takes the news that Jensen wants to see local doctors with better grace than Jared would have expected. She asks to be in on the meeting where they discuss the doctor’s findings and she offers to have her driver pick them up.
The ride over is tense. Jensen closes his eyes and leans on Jared. He’s not asleep but he doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t want to be where he is and Jared can sympathize with that.
Donna passes Jared the bottles she’d found in Davis’ apartment. Uppers to wake up and muscle relaxants to stop the shakes. Pain pills and anti-anxiety medication. Two kinds of sedatives for him to get to sleep at night. Four different doctors and five different pharmacies. Jared reads the labels and puts them in his knapsack. For all the hurt he’s seen Jensen survive he can’t imagine him so broken that he turned to self-medicating the pain away.
Nobody says another word for the rest of the drive.
The doctor’s office is ready for them when they get there. Jensen is taken straight into an examination room instead of the waiting area and Jared is ushered on along with him when Jensen won’t let go of his hand.
The doctor introduces herself as Jillian and she talks with Jensen for a while before she starts the exam. Easy questions about how he feels and what he eats and how much he exercises. Jared sits back and just listens as much as he can. Letting Jensen find his own words for how he feels and how he relates to the world.
She starts the exam by taking Jensen's temperature and blood pressure. When Jensen looks uncomfortable at the tight cuff around his arm he looks up at Jared and a single reassuring half-smile is enough for him to relax and wait it out.
Jillian moves slow and deliberate through looking in Jensen's ears and nose and down his throat. She shines a penlight in his eyes and lets him listen to his own heart and breathing with her stethoscope before she takes her turn. She checks the scar that Jared noticed that first night and frowns softly.
“Any headaches?”
“All the time for long times,” Jensen answers her. Jared has a frown for that himself. “Then more less and less and no more at all now.”
Jared touches his elbow and has to ask, “Why didn’t you tell me if you hurt?”
Jensen shakes his head as Doctor Jillian watches. “It was always. I didn’t know it could stop. So.”
Jensen looks guilty and Jared feels like an ass. “It’s not your fault,” he says. He should have asked direct questions. He should have known better. How long had Jensen hurt because he hadn’t done his damn job, much less been a good friend?
Jillian leaves while Jared helps Jensen into the thin hospital gown. She comes back and explains that she’s going to feel his belly and then check his joints and Jensen lies back to let her. She doesn’t seem to find anything abnormal. She presses around his abdomen and then he sits up and she checks out his reflexes and his joint motion at wrists and elbows, knees and ankles, neck and shoulders.
She goes out again and Jensen changes back into his clothes. They go down the hall next to a room with a treadmill and Jensen walks and then runs on it and she monitors his heart.
Jared sort of wonders at that. How much it must cost to have a doctor overseeing what a tech usually would. He’s glad of it though. That Donna has paid the money to make things as easy on Jensen as possible.
Last of all is a visit to the lab to get blood taken. Jensen looks like he might panic for a second when the nurse there sits him down and starts wrapping the rubber tube around his arm.
“It’ll be okay,” Jared whispers to him. “It won’t take long at all. It’ll pinch but she won’t hurt you. I’ll be here the whole time.”
Jensen hides his face against the crook of Jared’s neck. When the nurse says “Okay, make a fist,” he waits until Jared repeats it to him before he does. He flinches at the prick of the needle and squeezes Jared hard enough to bruise but he doesn’t twitch his other arm.
The nurse takes vial after vial. Four in total, so Jared guesses that Jillian is running all the basic tests. It’s a smart decision with a patient who isn’t so good at explaining how he feels. Jared feels incompetent. Not that he had a reason to think Jensen needed testing. Not that Jensen showed any symptoms of anything wrong. Still. He wonders if he didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to draw anyone else’s attention to his Jensen.
The post-exam meeting in Jillian’s office gives him some measure of reassurance.
“You seem fairly healthy at this point, considering where you were three months ago,” she says to Jensen. His eyes are fixed at her left shoulder and Jared recognizes his look. Tired and wanting to go home.
“You’re still putting on weight. I’d like to see you up around one-fifty or so before it levels out. If you stop gaining a pound a week or more, let me know and we’ll look at your diet to see what we can do to add some calories in.”
Jared is the one to nod and remember but she keeps talking directly to Jensen. Jared sort of wants to hug her for that.
“I’m recommending you see a neurologist for your brain and a psychologist for your mind. Do you understand?”
Jensen nods. “Meat doctor and think doctor.”
Jared wants to gather him up but Jensen's almost withdrawn and he is afraid to push the contact here in front of strangers.
Jillian smiles. “Other than that, I think you’re making great progress. I’d like to see you again in a month.”
They stand to go and Jensen grabs for Jared’s hand as soon as they’re on their feet.
“You really are good with him,” Jillian smiles and Jared wonders if she knows they’re lovers. What she’d think if she did.
Sorry for the huge delay. Last weeks of school are eating into my time. Almost done though, and I had a breakthrough and finished up this chapter and half of the next.
Thanks to Embroiderama for the wonderful beta. It's a better fic thanks to her.
As a man who expected to wake up in jail, Jeff is far from disappointed that the first thing he sees when he pries his eyes open is a crowded and dingy office and an open door. It takes his brain more than a second to process the information. That he’s inside but not held. Not closed in.
He waits for the rush of terror. For the walls to close in and suffocate him. For the feeling of being enclosed to overwhelm the pounding in his head and the roiling in his stomach. The last of the alcohol in his system is more of a nuisance than helpful in counteracting the fear.
He waits for the fight-or-flight impulse. Steels himself to keep it under control. To make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody on his rush to a place where nothing stands between him and the sky.
He waits and nothing comes but a vague tickle along his spine. The feeling that maybe there’s a little more air outside but here isn’t bad. He waits and he breathes. The indoor/outdoor carpet prickles his palms. He can hear a radio in another room playing festive-sounding Mexican music. The door stays open and the walls don’t move.
Jeff pushes himself to his feet and stretches. He’s hung over but he’s had much worse morning-afters in the course of his life. Waking up in strange places. Beaten and robbed. The morning his wife had a bruise on her cheek and she wouldn’t tell him where it came from. Bad days.
He puts aside the memories that do nobody any good and tries to piece together the previous day. To figure out where it went wrong. He remembers Jared in a police car. Jensen gone. The bottle and the station and then a vague recollection of Jared dragging him into a cab.
He pinches the bridge of his nose between his eyes and waits for the fading of the headache. When it lessens to the point he can think straight and form a plan he knows he has to find Jared. Make sure he got out all right. Make sure Jensen is safe.
After that he isn’t sure. Maybe he still needs to turn himself in. Stop the investigation. Maybe he should move on again. Look for a new city. A new place he can do a little good to make up for his sins and his shortcomings.
He makes his way down the narrow hallway. Each step is steadier than the last. He comes out into a dining hall setting up for dinner by the smell of it. Potato soup and hotdogs. He’s never been inside here before but he recognizes the windows. Knows where he is.
Gotta find Jared, he thinks. Gotta find Jensen.
He moves through the common area and keeps in mind that the door is right there and nothing will stop him from getting out and he doesn’t need to panic. Movement to the side catches his attention though and a blonde woman struggles to carry an industrial size pot of stew much too big for her and he takes the three quick steps it takes to get in front of her.
“Can I help you with that?” He reaches out and takes the weight of it before she stumbles. She looks up and he recognizes her. Karen Hall, looking pale and delicate and prettier than he’d remembered.
“Jeff?” She smiles and lets him have the towel-wrapped handles of the pot. “Are you--wow, it’s nice to see you in here.”
He knows what she’s saying but lets it slide on by. He helps with getting food on the tables and serving the line. When there’s no more work to be done he finds himself at loose ends. Not sure what to do with himself inside. It’s been so long he’s forgotten how to be around so many people. What to do with himself.
The sidewalk outside is warm and he settles down with his foam cup of soup and hotdog on a napkin. A shadow crosses over him and he looks up. Karen is there again with a shy smile and both her boys.
“Can we join you?” And he’s embarrassed to have her come out to sit with him. That he didn’t know how to be indoors anymore. She looks like she wants to be there though so he stands up and puts his jacket on the ground.
“Please,” he says and holds her tray while she sits down.
“Will you say grace?”
It’s been a while since Jeff found any sort of peace in faith but he bows his head for her and says the words of hope and gratitude. They eat together and it feels like he’s part of their family. It feels good. To spend just a few hours on himself. To feel a part of something close and warm and safe. Just a couple hours before he’ll go looking for Jared and nobody would begrudge him that, would they?
=======
“Son of a bitch!” Jared says. He sounds like Jeff. Mad hurt scared and he stands in the doorway of their apartment like he doesn’t want Jensen to step past him. Doesn’t want Jensen to see.
Jensen looks past anyways because he can be strong and see anything Jared can see.
The room is all sideways, Jensen thinks. Like it rolled over and all the things slid to one side and then flipped and flipped again and finally fell in the place they started but all upsides down and backwards. His gifts to Jared. The forks and the towers and the waves and the maker of story shadows. All are in their pieces again and bits and already he thinks of new ways to put them into new gifts.
“Son of a bitch,” Jared says again and his knees go funny and Jensen catches him before he can fall and they go down slow together to the floor. “God, I can’t keep anything safe.” And Jensen hugs his Jared tight and tries to make words that it’s okay and it doesn’t mean anything when your house gets rolled if you aren’t in it because houses don’t bleed and things don’t hurt. He isn’t sure Jared hears over the wheezy sound of his breathing. He needs a thing to show him. A real thing Jared can touch and Jensen leaves his side and goes through the piles of once-was searching for one piece to show Jared that everything is okay.
He finds the little man with the green glass heart. It’s all bent. Twisted like a big foot stepped down on it. He leaves it that way. Wires only bend so many times before they break and it’s better to be bent on accident than broken on purpose.
He goes back to where Jared is looking at the pile like it is too big for him to see all of it. Like the weight of it is inside his head crushing out his thoughts. He goes back and he sits beside Jared and puts the little man with the green glass heart in his hands.
“Still it shines,” Jensen says. He leans in and nuzzles Jared’s cheek with his own. “Everything can change and still it shines.”
Jared’s lips twitch and Jensen worries less. “Only it is things,” Jensen says and he gets up and straddles Jared’s lap and puts their foreheads together. I am safe. You keep me safe, he wants to say but if Jared doesn’t want to talk about that part of anything then Jensen won’t make him. “I’ll make new things. Promise. New things until all the bits are done.”
Jared smiles a tired smile and Jensen kisses the corner of his lips. “Now we go sleeping.” They get up and walk to the bedroom and put the mattress back on the frame and the sheets on the mattress and they curl together in the dark and Jensen pretends that everything is like it was days ago before Mackenzie and the police and he hides his face in the curve of Jared’s neck.
Jared sleeps but Jensen is still awake when the phone in Jared’s pocket in the jacket on the floor makes its noise. Too late to hide it far away and so he grabs it and holds it tight between his hands and takes it out of the bedroom and through the apartment and out into the hall before Jared wakes up.
The name on the little square that Jared looks at when it rings says MAC and Jensen worries for her worrying and opens the phone. He has never talked to one before but the green button blinks at him and says TALK and he’s not stupid. He can read. He pushes the button and waits and listens and Mackenzie’s voice comes out strange and shivery.
“Hello?” She breathes and he breathes and nobody says anyting until she asks “Jared?”
“Jared sleeps,” Jensen tells her. “I took him home.”
She sounds funny. Scared maybe and sad maybe too. “That’s fine,” she says. “I just worried when you weren’t here.”
Jensen doesn’t think he likes talking on phones. It’s too far from the person and the plastic doesn’t smile or cry or frown and he doesn’t know how to know what she feels.
“Jared sleeps,” he says again.
“But you can talk to me, right?”
He leans against the wall and slides down. The hallway is all quiet and the doors of the neighbors are all closed.
“Right” sounds like the thing to say so he says it.
Mackenzie laughs a little. Nervous still and he doesn’t know why people laugh when they don’t feel good.
“So you and him, huh?” She doesn’t give him time to say anything. “I kind of thought--I mean, I had an idea. Back before. There was this girl and she left and she said some things as she went.”
It seems like she just needs to talk so Jensen just listens.
“He never told us. He--my brother. He hid that. And now you. It’s all messed up.”
He closes his eyes and has no idea how to deal with her pain.
“Jensen?” and she’s never called him that before. “My brother’s gone, isn’t he? I mean--it’s like he’s dead.”
“I am me,” he whispers.
Mackenzie is quiet again and he doesn’t know if he said what she heard.
“You were smiling,” she says at last. “When I saw you at the museum. You were happy and it made me so mad because we’d missed him so much.”
Jensen doesn’t like the phone because there’s no hugging on the phone.
“We should just go away and leave you alone. It’s not--it can’t be fair. And you’re not him.”
“I am me,” Jensen says again. “And you are you and maybe you could be my friend and I could be your friend.”
She cries but she doesn’t say no. Jensen wishes he knew if he was saying the right things. He tries to comfort her over the phone and when she stops her quiet sobs she says, “Go back to Jared. I’ll keep Mom out of your hair. Call me when you want to see us, okay?”
“Okay,” Jensen says and he means tomorrow and don’t be sad.
He goes back to Jared and he thinks about how if he lives in Davis’ body maybe he owes Davis’ family. Not things that will unmake him. Not things that will take him from Jared. But being a friend and giving them the hugs Davis can’t anymore. He can give them that.
========
They wake up together around noon. Jared calls to check in with his work and finds out that the police coming to the clinic has chased away half of the people who need the help and George is happy to give him a few days off. As he hangs up Jared has to wonder if part of it is that it was him getting arrested. If the donors would be pissy about employees causing that sort of a stir. If his boss was any less straight-forward of a guy he’d wonder if he was officially on suspension.
Jared makes breakfast and Jensen works on cleaning up the mess of his artworks. Jared can’t even look at it. Every broken bit of sculpture screams an accusation at him. That he couldn’t keep it safe. That he couldn’t keep Jensen safe. And maybe it would be better if Jensen went with his family to a world with all the safety money could by. Back to his crystal tower like a fairy tale.
Strong arms circle Jared’s waist and Jensen's warm body presses against his back. He realizes the eggs are burnt beyond eating and he shoves the pan off of the heat and turns around and they cling to each other like they had the night before.
“I talked to Donna last night,” Jared says and Jensen tenses in his arms. “She wants you to go stay with her while you get the testing done. I told her I’d go with you if that’s what you wanted, but it was your decision where to do it.”
“Here is home,” Jensen says without hesitation. “Days away would be bad.”
“Davis had a doctor there. Someone who would be able to see the changes you’ve gone through.” As he says the words he wonders if this doctor saw the changes when Davis started popping script-pills like Chiclets.
“Davis’ doctor.” Jensen makes a face. “Here are good doctors. You could check me or George.”
Jared has to smile at that. “You need a different kind of doctor. A brain-doctor. But yeah. There are good doctors around here.”
“Here,” Jensen says and he sounds so sure.
Jared fries up some more eggs and then calls around. George knows a doctor in family medicine who he thinks will be a good first experience for Jensen with strangers examining him. There’s little doubt she’ll prescribe the further tests and after that they should have a better idea of what’s happening physically in Jensen's head.
=========
Donna Carr takes the news that Jensen wants to see local doctors with better grace than Jared would have expected. She asks to be in on the meeting where they discuss the doctor’s findings and she offers to have her driver pick them up.
The ride over is tense. Jensen closes his eyes and leans on Jared. He’s not asleep but he doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t want to be where he is and Jared can sympathize with that.
Donna passes Jared the bottles she’d found in Davis’ apartment. Uppers to wake up and muscle relaxants to stop the shakes. Pain pills and anti-anxiety medication. Two kinds of sedatives for him to get to sleep at night. Four different doctors and five different pharmacies. Jared reads the labels and puts them in his knapsack. For all the hurt he’s seen Jensen survive he can’t imagine him so broken that he turned to self-medicating the pain away.
Nobody says another word for the rest of the drive.
The doctor’s office is ready for them when they get there. Jensen is taken straight into an examination room instead of the waiting area and Jared is ushered on along with him when Jensen won’t let go of his hand.
The doctor introduces herself as Jillian and she talks with Jensen for a while before she starts the exam. Easy questions about how he feels and what he eats and how much he exercises. Jared sits back and just listens as much as he can. Letting Jensen find his own words for how he feels and how he relates to the world.
She starts the exam by taking Jensen's temperature and blood pressure. When Jensen looks uncomfortable at the tight cuff around his arm he looks up at Jared and a single reassuring half-smile is enough for him to relax and wait it out.
Jillian moves slow and deliberate through looking in Jensen's ears and nose and down his throat. She shines a penlight in his eyes and lets him listen to his own heart and breathing with her stethoscope before she takes her turn. She checks the scar that Jared noticed that first night and frowns softly.
“Any headaches?”
“All the time for long times,” Jensen answers her. Jared has a frown for that himself. “Then more less and less and no more at all now.”
Jared touches his elbow and has to ask, “Why didn’t you tell me if you hurt?”
Jensen shakes his head as Doctor Jillian watches. “It was always. I didn’t know it could stop. So.”
Jensen looks guilty and Jared feels like an ass. “It’s not your fault,” he says. He should have asked direct questions. He should have known better. How long had Jensen hurt because he hadn’t done his damn job, much less been a good friend?
Jillian leaves while Jared helps Jensen into the thin hospital gown. She comes back and explains that she’s going to feel his belly and then check his joints and Jensen lies back to let her. She doesn’t seem to find anything abnormal. She presses around his abdomen and then he sits up and she checks out his reflexes and his joint motion at wrists and elbows, knees and ankles, neck and shoulders.
She goes out again and Jensen changes back into his clothes. They go down the hall next to a room with a treadmill and Jensen walks and then runs on it and she monitors his heart.
Jared sort of wonders at that. How much it must cost to have a doctor overseeing what a tech usually would. He’s glad of it though. That Donna has paid the money to make things as easy on Jensen as possible.
Last of all is a visit to the lab to get blood taken. Jensen looks like he might panic for a second when the nurse there sits him down and starts wrapping the rubber tube around his arm.
“It’ll be okay,” Jared whispers to him. “It won’t take long at all. It’ll pinch but she won’t hurt you. I’ll be here the whole time.”
Jensen hides his face against the crook of Jared’s neck. When the nurse says “Okay, make a fist,” he waits until Jared repeats it to him before he does. He flinches at the prick of the needle and squeezes Jared hard enough to bruise but he doesn’t twitch his other arm.
The nurse takes vial after vial. Four in total, so Jared guesses that Jillian is running all the basic tests. It’s a smart decision with a patient who isn’t so good at explaining how he feels. Jared feels incompetent. Not that he had a reason to think Jensen needed testing. Not that Jensen showed any symptoms of anything wrong. Still. He wonders if he didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to draw anyone else’s attention to his Jensen.
The post-exam meeting in Jillian’s office gives him some measure of reassurance.
“You seem fairly healthy at this point, considering where you were three months ago,” she says to Jensen. His eyes are fixed at her left shoulder and Jared recognizes his look. Tired and wanting to go home.
“You’re still putting on weight. I’d like to see you up around one-fifty or so before it levels out. If you stop gaining a pound a week or more, let me know and we’ll look at your diet to see what we can do to add some calories in.”
Jared is the one to nod and remember but she keeps talking directly to Jensen. Jared sort of wants to hug her for that.
“I’m recommending you see a neurologist for your brain and a psychologist for your mind. Do you understand?”
Jensen nods. “Meat doctor and think doctor.”
Jared wants to gather him up but Jensen's almost withdrawn and he is afraid to push the contact here in front of strangers.
Jillian smiles. “Other than that, I think you’re making great progress. I’d like to see you again in a month.”
They stand to go and Jensen grabs for Jared’s hand as soon as they’re on their feet.
“You really are good with him,” Jillian smiles and Jared wonders if she knows they’re lovers. What she’d think if she did.