A Patient Man (1/?)
Title: A Patient Man
Characters: Hooker!Jared, Mysterious!Jensen, Tom, Mike, Chris, Steve, Danneel, Genevieve, bunch of OMCs
Pairings: Eventual Jensen/Jared, Tom/Mike and more to come
Summary: History would remember this tale as the rise of two of the world’s most notorious criminals, but to them it was a story of love forged between two broken teenagers that lasted a lifetime.
Warnings (Chapter Specific):Mentions of underage sex and blood, coarse language some of which I do not approve of nor do I condone the use of
Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I know Jared, Jensen or any other recognizable person. The belong to themselves and this never happened. The OMCs, the plot and the world they live in is, however, all mine. Think of it as these wonderful actors acting out my script. Also, I am not making any money from this.
AN: Thanks to my wonderful beta allybyrd for putting up with my bad grammar and inability to stay in one tense while I am writing. This is kind of a dark fic. The opinions of some of my more evil characters, are not my own, they are evil and this is fiction.
They met for the first time under the bridge at the corner of 5th and Watson.
It was a rundown neighborhood on the edge of downtown. The shittiest part of the city: dirty, disgusting, used like toilet paper on a fat, sweaty ass. Graffiti staked claim to every wall, every nook and cranny, of every decrepit building and nobody gave a fuck. Windows were bordered up, glass and garbage littered the streets and though people milled about at all times of the day, more cheer could be found at a funeral. This sullied and tattered area was a black hole in a city long ago neglected and forsaken by a corrupt government.
This was Jared’s little dark corner of the sinister world where he spent every miserable night of his life under the deserted bridge. Night after night he trolled under this area waiting for the next dirty, perverted John who got his rocks off having sex with underage boys. Mike and Tom, two runaway teens in a neighborhood full of them, shared that corner with him, subjected to the same unknown fate. They held an uneasy friendship, but the only real thing keeping them tied together was a vicious fear of their cruel pimp.
It wasn’t like they had any place else to go, though. No caring family, no friends, and a system that had let them down one too many times to be trusted. Tom and Mike, as sad as it was to admit, were the closet thing Jared had to a family.
Huddled in a Stanford sweater he stole from a thrift store, Jared shivered in the late night rain on a chilly fall day. One too many days coming home to find his mother high on meth and her drug dealer trying to stick his hands down his pants ‘for payment’ sent Jared to seek asylum on the streets. Too bad no one ever told him the streets were worse than caring for an invalid mother and servicing one old cranky pervert. But the day he left home, Jared had hope, he had faith that things would get better. He naïvely believed that one day he would find his own way.
Yeah, he found his own way all right. Right into the hands of a pimp.
That wretched night, with the cold seeping through the holes in his sweater and water soaking through his weathered pants, for the first time Jared thought maybe it was a good day to die. Jared was a tough kid; you had to be when you were practically raised on the streets. He once broke a kid’s nose for calling his Mother a whore, and Jared didn't even like his mother. But what was the point of fighting if you just kept getting kicked in the balls? Jared could fight dirty too, but maybe struggling wasn’t worth it anymore. This world had done nothing for him and he had nothing to give in return. Say the wrong thing to an angry John, cut a little too deep into the tender veins of his wrist and BAM! It was all over.
No one would even notice he was gone. It just all seemed so pointless.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched forward trying to maintain as much body heat as possible. Tonight couldn’t be more miserable.
And then the boy with the haunted eyes passed him by under the dark lonely bridge.
Green eyes, cold and calculating, stared straight at Jared: unwavering, assessing, so dead and yet so alive. They were the brightest eyes that Jared had even seen, and yet they were haunted by a deep, unsettling pain. They screamed back off and help me all in the same breath. Their eyes connected. A spark flickered and ignited a fiery passion for life Jared thought was beaten out of him a long time ago.
And then it was gone, green eyes sliding away from his.
He watched the teen, who couldn’t be much older than Jared, swagger down the streets with confident steps. He caught the barest hint of jean clad bowed legs and a worn leather jacket as the boy walked away. Then Jared blinked, and he was gone, as if he had come straight from the depths of Jared’s imagination.
“You are so lucky you aren’t dead!” Mike, one of the other two 5th and Watson whores, blurted out and waved his hands frantically. “Do you have any idea who that is?”
Jared pathetically shook his head ‘no,’ still entranced by those cold green eyes and already pining for more.
“That’s Jensen,” Tom, the last of their trio, calmly said as if that explained everything.
“So I should be dead why?” Jared shrugged his shoulders and passed this off as more tall tales murmured through the unreliable street grapevine. Word travelled quickly amongst prostitutes in a counterproductive attempt to help keep each other safe. It was like playing phone with your friends, though; the message was never the same at either end of the chain. Before long there were dozens of different stories out there about the same thing and somehow that John who gets a little too rough with his whores is suddenly a serial killer who will cut up your body into little pieces and leave it in the bay.
“You’re new to the streets, kid, so I’m going to fill you in,” Tom began and Jared rolled his eyes. True, he had only been a hooker for two months, but he’d been on the streets practically his whole life. “Jensen’s a very dangerous man and a crazy son of a bitch. Rumor is he became leader of the Ghost Brigade after he gutted the former gang leader and choked the man to death on his own intestines. I hear he still has the head.”
“I heard he burned the eyes out of a man that looked at him wrong with a hot poker,” Mike threw an arm around Jared’s shoulder. “Also I think he might eat babies for breakfast.”
“He’s barely, what, 17? You guys are making this up just to fuck with me, aren’t you?”
“It’s true,” Tom said. Jared resisted the urge to roll his eyes again. That’s the exact same thing Tom said about the three legged baby that survived in a dumpster for a week and now travels with a circus. “I heard he got that scar on his face when he massacred his whole family.”
“Scar, what scar?” Jared searched his memory of brief encounter with the feared gang leader for a scar. All he could remember, though, were his dark eyes.
“The one under his right eye,” Mike replied. He looked at Jared like the younger boy was stupid as he traced his finger over the aforementioned area on his face.
“Oh, man,” Tom moaned. He poked Jared in the shoulder and stared him dead in the eyes. “Do not fall for Jensen, Jay. He’s a ruthless killer and would rather cut your hand off than shake it. Stay away from him. You do not want to get involved with that.”
“I don’t know,” Jared teasingly replied. “I looked at him pretty funny tonight and I still have my eyes.”
“Cuz you’re still new to the streets. You only get one chance, kid.” Mike gave Jared a noogie.
“Will you guys stop calling me that,” he laughed and pushed Mike away. “I’m barely a year younger than the two of you.”
“That is one full year of wisdom, my friend.”
“You are so full of shit, Mikey.”
A sleek black Mercedes stuttered to a stop across the street from the boys. “You’re up, Jay,” Tom announced. “It’s one of your regulars.”
Jared knew that car. It belonged to the Mayor. The same Mayor with the perfect family consisting of one bleached blonde bimbo for a wife and three perfect little girls with ribbons and dimples and white summer dresses. And don’t forget the perverted old father that liked to spend every Wednesday night at 11:30pm fucking Jared.
Every fucking person who lived on the streets knew the Mayor was a corrupt son of a bitch. He raved to the masses about cleaning up the streets, driving out the homeless and eradicating all prostitution. He preached about the sins of faggots and how they were corrupting your children. He denounced evolution and contraceptives and promoted the loss of rights and the destruction of the environment. Bored housewives and ignorant assholes hung onto every one of his shallow words. While secretly he fucked underage prostitutes, accepted bribes and made good people suddenly disappear. If this town was afraid of anyone, it wasn’t the boy with the haunted eyes, it was the Mayor. Fucking hypocritical bastard.
If he had a choice, Jared would have rather bit the man’s dick off than suck it. A very rational fear of his pimp, who spent Jared’s first week on the streets beating the shit out of him with a bamboo cane, kept the asshole’s dick intact and satisfied.
That night the Mayor pounded his ass into the dirty bed at the local whore motel. Jared forced himself to at least partially pretend to enjoy it and moaned encouragingly at all the right times.
The Mayor threw some money at him, and spewed shit from his mouth about how worthless Jared was, like it was his fault the man was a pervert.
But when he limped back to his corner, he remembered those haunted green eyes and hope rekindled in his heart. There was something there. He was meant to know Jensen. Jared just knew it.
***
A whole week went by before Jared saw the boy with the haunted eyes again. He didn’t believe Tom and Mike’s bullshit that Jensen was the epitome of evil, but he’d been on the streets long enough to know you just couldn’t trust anyone.
He found himself wanting to make an exception.
Wednesday rolled around and just before the Mayor made his regular booty call, Jensen strode down the street in the same worn leather jacket and the same aura of confidence surrounding him. Jared did notice the scar then, but it was a mere blemish on his handsome face. A square jaw, short cropped brown hair and plush lips hand crafted by the God of Gays perfectly complemented his beautiful, but intense, green eyes. Jared could not look away.
Their eyes met again. The same spark ignited and roared to life inside him. He smiled shyly at Jensen, a trick he picked up from Mikey for picking up nervous Johns, and gave a small wave.
Jensen did not respond, just kept walking down the darkened road. But Jared thought he saw a hint of a glint in those haunted eyes and the ghost of a smile on his rugged face.
That was enough for Jared.
***
Thursdays were the roughest day of the week to survive. The Mayor usually left him sore, but this time he left him sore and bleeding. The Mayor wasn’t big on the whole prep thing, said it was only for faggots. And wasn’t that just fucking ironic. He had taken several customers after the Mayor and thankfully one only wanted a blowjob and one a hand job in the alley. When the third John forced his thick meaty erection into Jared’s abused hole, though, he’d nearly started crying it hurt so bad. He choked out a few appreciative moans and let a pile of filth erupt from his mouth with ‘more’ and ‘harder’ and ‘yeah, that’s it, fuck me’ when all he really wanted to say was ‘please, stop.’
Money was always tight on Thursdays, or in his case usually non-existent. Customers were infrequent and irregular in the beginning part of the week and after he paid his pimp there usually wasn’t anything left for Jared. If he was lucky Jeff Morgan and his wife, Samantha, were handing out sandwiches, toiletries and condoms at the corner of 4th and Market.
Jared wasn’t always lucky. Today was one of those days.
And just his luck it rained that night. A cold bitter chill brought buckets of fucking rain and what Jared thought might have been hail at 2am in the morning.
He actually did cry this time when a customer held him down and fucked him into the mattress , aggravating fresh wounds. At least the guy felt bad after and paid him extra.
He forced himself not to limp back to his little corner when the man was done. “Limping makes you look weak and vulnerable,” Tom had told him the first day on the job. “Attracts the real sickos. Could cost you your life.”
By morning, Jared was cold, wet, miserable and the only thing sloshing around in his stomach was water and cum. But he’d made enough money to keep his damn pimp happy and buy something to eat finally.
After a long miserable weekend that was much the same as his Thursday, Sunday was a fucking blessing. His favorite regular occupied the majority of his night every Sunday. He wasn’t sure what to expect when the young Reverend first approached him, turned out he had no need to worry. The man was an idealist, wanted to save the people on the streets.
Jared thought he was just as hypocritical as the rest, and full of just as much shit, but at least this one didn’t have a fake wife and kids.
The man was always gentle and sweet during their ‘love making’ as the Reverend called it and he generally seemed to care about Jared; even provided him with a home cooked meal every time.
Jared only liked him because he paid well, and because he fed him. This time the man even bought him flowers like Jared was some blushing virgin that he needed to woo and not some 16 year old prostitute he hired to shove his dick into.
Jared didn’t need anyone to ‘care’ for him. The whole thing was ridiculous and the man way too attached, but Jared couldn’t afford to lose him as a customer and generally needed the gentle reprieve to his ass every week. So he put on his best ‘blushing virgin’ act every week and let the Revered coddle him.
It was disgusting.
He threw the flowers in the trash the second he left the house and then thought better of it. He grabbed a handful, stashed them under his rotten mattress in his shitty room and returned to his corner for the rest of the night.
***
Wednesday night Jared could not contain his excitement. Like a goddamn girl, he had butterflies in his stomach and his heart pounded in his chest when he finally saw Jensen round the corner in those few beautiful moments before the Mayor showed up. Jared vibrated with excessive energy. Tommy glared at him and gave him a subtle shake of his head, like maybe he knew what Jared was planning and was desperately trying to tell him not too.
“He’ll fucking kill you,” Mike hissed softly in his ear. Jared just shrugged. It was a very strong possibility that anyone on the street could kill him at any second, Mike and Tom included. But Jared had a gut feeling about this, and though his gut had definitely been wrong in the past, like the time it told him to run away from home, this time he was willing to trust it.
There was a story beneath those haunted eyes, a reason for this supposed mental instability Tom and Mike spoke of. The more he saw Jensen, the more he wanted to know.
Jensen’s steps this time were a little less confident, his eyes a little meaner, face a little grimmer and shoulders a little tenser.
“Hey!” Jared boldly announced and jogged across the street to the boy with the haunted eyes, throwing all caution and self-preservation to the wind.
Up close, his face was even more stunning and the intense gaze in his green eyes even more alluring. Except for a slight intrigue, there was no emotion otherwise written on his beautiful face. He stopped for Jared, though, and that was enough to propel him forward, whether to his doom or his success.
“I’m Jared,” he smiled brightly and didn’t bother offering his hand, knowing Jensen wouldn’t take it. Jensen regarded him suspiciously but otherwise kept his expression completely blank. Jared wasn’t the kind of person to let that bother him.
“This is going to sound crazy,” Jared beamed excitedly, “but I really just wanted to say hi. Oh! And to give you these,” he said and pulled a couple of withered flowers from his hoodie pocket. “Sorry they’re a little wilted.” He smiled brightly again and held out the flowers to the other teen.
Jensen’s eyes narrowed dangerously and a flicker of what might have been anger clouded his handsome features. Jared knew that look. Strangers didn’t give you something out of the goodness of their heart. Usually they wanted something in return, a hard lesson learned for most street kids. Jared hoped he could prove to Jensen he was different.
“I just thought you could use them,” he said in a casual voice and shrugged indifferently. “Make your day a little brighter.” To his utter surprise, but great delight, after a moment of hesitation Jensen reached out and gently took the flowers from his hand. It took all of Jared’s willpower not to start dancing for joy in the street.
Jensen stared down at the flowers with the same blank expression. Jared’s confidence faltered a little then and his nervousness finally made its presence known with a sudden urge to puke, but he was determined to not let his big mouth ruin the damn moment he was trying to have.
“I’ll see you around, okay? Next Wednesday,” he half joked, half pleaded and half commanded. And yes Jared was aware that was three halves.
He turned to walk back to his corner when a soft voice stopped him. “It’s Jensen,” the boy with the haunted eyes said.
Once more Jared had to force himself not to do the victory dance. Instead he slowly turned back to face the hardened criminal. “It’s nice to meet you, Jensen,” he said with as much sincerity as he felt.
Jared returned to his corner a very happy man and once more watched Jensen, in his worn leather jacket, slowly walk away and disappear into the night.
“You are fucking crazy!” Mike yelled the minute Jensen was out of sight. He punched Jared in the arm. “And here I thought I was crazy.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t kill you,” Tom said, his jaw still on the floor where he had dropped it.
“When he reached out to take the flowers I thought he was reaching for that knife in his pocket so he could stab you…in the face.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mikey,” Jared said and rolled his eyes.
“You don’t get it, Jay,” Tom replied, voice dead serious. “You don’t mess with Jensen. You don’t touch him, you don’t speak to him, and you don’t go near him. No one does.”
“Apparently I do,” Jared softly said, a small smile tugging at his lips. If Jensen felt at least a tenth of the electricity between them that Jared felt, than it was so much more than the average person could ever feel.
“The Mayor is here.” Mikey poked a finger into his gut.
Jared’s smile fell. He closed his eyes and remembered Jensen’s intense green eyes and his soft voice and hoped it was enough to get him through this night.
Chapter Two
Characters: Hooker!Jared, Mysterious!Jensen, Tom, Mike, Chris, Steve, Danneel, Genevieve, bunch of OMCs
Pairings: Eventual Jensen/Jared, Tom/Mike and more to come
Summary: History would remember this tale as the rise of two of the world’s most notorious criminals, but to them it was a story of love forged between two broken teenagers that lasted a lifetime.
Warnings (Chapter Specific):Mentions of underage sex and blood, coarse language some of which I do not approve of nor do I condone the use of
Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I know Jared, Jensen or any other recognizable person. The belong to themselves and this never happened. The OMCs, the plot and the world they live in is, however, all mine. Think of it as these wonderful actors acting out my script. Also, I am not making any money from this.
AN: Thanks to my wonderful beta allybyrd for putting up with my bad grammar and inability to stay in one tense while I am writing. This is kind of a dark fic. The opinions of some of my more evil characters, are not my own, they are evil and this is fiction.
They met for the first time under the bridge at the corner of 5th and Watson.
It was a rundown neighborhood on the edge of downtown. The shittiest part of the city: dirty, disgusting, used like toilet paper on a fat, sweaty ass. Graffiti staked claim to every wall, every nook and cranny, of every decrepit building and nobody gave a fuck. Windows were bordered up, glass and garbage littered the streets and though people milled about at all times of the day, more cheer could be found at a funeral. This sullied and tattered area was a black hole in a city long ago neglected and forsaken by a corrupt government.
This was Jared’s little dark corner of the sinister world where he spent every miserable night of his life under the deserted bridge. Night after night he trolled under this area waiting for the next dirty, perverted John who got his rocks off having sex with underage boys. Mike and Tom, two runaway teens in a neighborhood full of them, shared that corner with him, subjected to the same unknown fate. They held an uneasy friendship, but the only real thing keeping them tied together was a vicious fear of their cruel pimp.
It wasn’t like they had any place else to go, though. No caring family, no friends, and a system that had let them down one too many times to be trusted. Tom and Mike, as sad as it was to admit, were the closet thing Jared had to a family.
Huddled in a Stanford sweater he stole from a thrift store, Jared shivered in the late night rain on a chilly fall day. One too many days coming home to find his mother high on meth and her drug dealer trying to stick his hands down his pants ‘for payment’ sent Jared to seek asylum on the streets. Too bad no one ever told him the streets were worse than caring for an invalid mother and servicing one old cranky pervert. But the day he left home, Jared had hope, he had faith that things would get better. He naïvely believed that one day he would find his own way.
Yeah, he found his own way all right. Right into the hands of a pimp.
That wretched night, with the cold seeping through the holes in his sweater and water soaking through his weathered pants, for the first time Jared thought maybe it was a good day to die. Jared was a tough kid; you had to be when you were practically raised on the streets. He once broke a kid’s nose for calling his Mother a whore, and Jared didn't even like his mother. But what was the point of fighting if you just kept getting kicked in the balls? Jared could fight dirty too, but maybe struggling wasn’t worth it anymore. This world had done nothing for him and he had nothing to give in return. Say the wrong thing to an angry John, cut a little too deep into the tender veins of his wrist and BAM! It was all over.
No one would even notice he was gone. It just all seemed so pointless.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched forward trying to maintain as much body heat as possible. Tonight couldn’t be more miserable.
And then the boy with the haunted eyes passed him by under the dark lonely bridge.
Green eyes, cold and calculating, stared straight at Jared: unwavering, assessing, so dead and yet so alive. They were the brightest eyes that Jared had even seen, and yet they were haunted by a deep, unsettling pain. They screamed back off and help me all in the same breath. Their eyes connected. A spark flickered and ignited a fiery passion for life Jared thought was beaten out of him a long time ago.
And then it was gone, green eyes sliding away from his.
He watched the teen, who couldn’t be much older than Jared, swagger down the streets with confident steps. He caught the barest hint of jean clad bowed legs and a worn leather jacket as the boy walked away. Then Jared blinked, and he was gone, as if he had come straight from the depths of Jared’s imagination.
“You are so lucky you aren’t dead!” Mike, one of the other two 5th and Watson whores, blurted out and waved his hands frantically. “Do you have any idea who that is?”
Jared pathetically shook his head ‘no,’ still entranced by those cold green eyes and already pining for more.
“That’s Jensen,” Tom, the last of their trio, calmly said as if that explained everything.
“So I should be dead why?” Jared shrugged his shoulders and passed this off as more tall tales murmured through the unreliable street grapevine. Word travelled quickly amongst prostitutes in a counterproductive attempt to help keep each other safe. It was like playing phone with your friends, though; the message was never the same at either end of the chain. Before long there were dozens of different stories out there about the same thing and somehow that John who gets a little too rough with his whores is suddenly a serial killer who will cut up your body into little pieces and leave it in the bay.
“You’re new to the streets, kid, so I’m going to fill you in,” Tom began and Jared rolled his eyes. True, he had only been a hooker for two months, but he’d been on the streets practically his whole life. “Jensen’s a very dangerous man and a crazy son of a bitch. Rumor is he became leader of the Ghost Brigade after he gutted the former gang leader and choked the man to death on his own intestines. I hear he still has the head.”
“I heard he burned the eyes out of a man that looked at him wrong with a hot poker,” Mike threw an arm around Jared’s shoulder. “Also I think he might eat babies for breakfast.”
“He’s barely, what, 17? You guys are making this up just to fuck with me, aren’t you?”
“It’s true,” Tom said. Jared resisted the urge to roll his eyes again. That’s the exact same thing Tom said about the three legged baby that survived in a dumpster for a week and now travels with a circus. “I heard he got that scar on his face when he massacred his whole family.”
“Scar, what scar?” Jared searched his memory of brief encounter with the feared gang leader for a scar. All he could remember, though, were his dark eyes.
“The one under his right eye,” Mike replied. He looked at Jared like the younger boy was stupid as he traced his finger over the aforementioned area on his face.
“Oh, man,” Tom moaned. He poked Jared in the shoulder and stared him dead in the eyes. “Do not fall for Jensen, Jay. He’s a ruthless killer and would rather cut your hand off than shake it. Stay away from him. You do not want to get involved with that.”
“I don’t know,” Jared teasingly replied. “I looked at him pretty funny tonight and I still have my eyes.”
“Cuz you’re still new to the streets. You only get one chance, kid.” Mike gave Jared a noogie.
“Will you guys stop calling me that,” he laughed and pushed Mike away. “I’m barely a year younger than the two of you.”
“That is one full year of wisdom, my friend.”
“You are so full of shit, Mikey.”
A sleek black Mercedes stuttered to a stop across the street from the boys. “You’re up, Jay,” Tom announced. “It’s one of your regulars.”
Jared knew that car. It belonged to the Mayor. The same Mayor with the perfect family consisting of one bleached blonde bimbo for a wife and three perfect little girls with ribbons and dimples and white summer dresses. And don’t forget the perverted old father that liked to spend every Wednesday night at 11:30pm fucking Jared.
Every fucking person who lived on the streets knew the Mayor was a corrupt son of a bitch. He raved to the masses about cleaning up the streets, driving out the homeless and eradicating all prostitution. He preached about the sins of faggots and how they were corrupting your children. He denounced evolution and contraceptives and promoted the loss of rights and the destruction of the environment. Bored housewives and ignorant assholes hung onto every one of his shallow words. While secretly he fucked underage prostitutes, accepted bribes and made good people suddenly disappear. If this town was afraid of anyone, it wasn’t the boy with the haunted eyes, it was the Mayor. Fucking hypocritical bastard.
If he had a choice, Jared would have rather bit the man’s dick off than suck it. A very rational fear of his pimp, who spent Jared’s first week on the streets beating the shit out of him with a bamboo cane, kept the asshole’s dick intact and satisfied.
That night the Mayor pounded his ass into the dirty bed at the local whore motel. Jared forced himself to at least partially pretend to enjoy it and moaned encouragingly at all the right times.
The Mayor threw some money at him, and spewed shit from his mouth about how worthless Jared was, like it was his fault the man was a pervert.
But when he limped back to his corner, he remembered those haunted green eyes and hope rekindled in his heart. There was something there. He was meant to know Jensen. Jared just knew it.
***
A whole week went by before Jared saw the boy with the haunted eyes again. He didn’t believe Tom and Mike’s bullshit that Jensen was the epitome of evil, but he’d been on the streets long enough to know you just couldn’t trust anyone.
He found himself wanting to make an exception.
Wednesday rolled around and just before the Mayor made his regular booty call, Jensen strode down the street in the same worn leather jacket and the same aura of confidence surrounding him. Jared did notice the scar then, but it was a mere blemish on his handsome face. A square jaw, short cropped brown hair and plush lips hand crafted by the God of Gays perfectly complemented his beautiful, but intense, green eyes. Jared could not look away.
Their eyes met again. The same spark ignited and roared to life inside him. He smiled shyly at Jensen, a trick he picked up from Mikey for picking up nervous Johns, and gave a small wave.
Jensen did not respond, just kept walking down the darkened road. But Jared thought he saw a hint of a glint in those haunted eyes and the ghost of a smile on his rugged face.
That was enough for Jared.
***
Thursdays were the roughest day of the week to survive. The Mayor usually left him sore, but this time he left him sore and bleeding. The Mayor wasn’t big on the whole prep thing, said it was only for faggots. And wasn’t that just fucking ironic. He had taken several customers after the Mayor and thankfully one only wanted a blowjob and one a hand job in the alley. When the third John forced his thick meaty erection into Jared’s abused hole, though, he’d nearly started crying it hurt so bad. He choked out a few appreciative moans and let a pile of filth erupt from his mouth with ‘more’ and ‘harder’ and ‘yeah, that’s it, fuck me’ when all he really wanted to say was ‘please, stop.’
Money was always tight on Thursdays, or in his case usually non-existent. Customers were infrequent and irregular in the beginning part of the week and after he paid his pimp there usually wasn’t anything left for Jared. If he was lucky Jeff Morgan and his wife, Samantha, were handing out sandwiches, toiletries and condoms at the corner of 4th and Market.
Jared wasn’t always lucky. Today was one of those days.
And just his luck it rained that night. A cold bitter chill brought buckets of fucking rain and what Jared thought might have been hail at 2am in the morning.
He actually did cry this time when a customer held him down and fucked him into the mattress , aggravating fresh wounds. At least the guy felt bad after and paid him extra.
He forced himself not to limp back to his little corner when the man was done. “Limping makes you look weak and vulnerable,” Tom had told him the first day on the job. “Attracts the real sickos. Could cost you your life.”
By morning, Jared was cold, wet, miserable and the only thing sloshing around in his stomach was water and cum. But he’d made enough money to keep his damn pimp happy and buy something to eat finally.
After a long miserable weekend that was much the same as his Thursday, Sunday was a fucking blessing. His favorite regular occupied the majority of his night every Sunday. He wasn’t sure what to expect when the young Reverend first approached him, turned out he had no need to worry. The man was an idealist, wanted to save the people on the streets.
Jared thought he was just as hypocritical as the rest, and full of just as much shit, but at least this one didn’t have a fake wife and kids.
The man was always gentle and sweet during their ‘love making’ as the Reverend called it and he generally seemed to care about Jared; even provided him with a home cooked meal every time.
Jared only liked him because he paid well, and because he fed him. This time the man even bought him flowers like Jared was some blushing virgin that he needed to woo and not some 16 year old prostitute he hired to shove his dick into.
Jared didn’t need anyone to ‘care’ for him. The whole thing was ridiculous and the man way too attached, but Jared couldn’t afford to lose him as a customer and generally needed the gentle reprieve to his ass every week. So he put on his best ‘blushing virgin’ act every week and let the Revered coddle him.
It was disgusting.
He threw the flowers in the trash the second he left the house and then thought better of it. He grabbed a handful, stashed them under his rotten mattress in his shitty room and returned to his corner for the rest of the night.
***
Wednesday night Jared could not contain his excitement. Like a goddamn girl, he had butterflies in his stomach and his heart pounded in his chest when he finally saw Jensen round the corner in those few beautiful moments before the Mayor showed up. Jared vibrated with excessive energy. Tommy glared at him and gave him a subtle shake of his head, like maybe he knew what Jared was planning and was desperately trying to tell him not too.
“He’ll fucking kill you,” Mike hissed softly in his ear. Jared just shrugged. It was a very strong possibility that anyone on the street could kill him at any second, Mike and Tom included. But Jared had a gut feeling about this, and though his gut had definitely been wrong in the past, like the time it told him to run away from home, this time he was willing to trust it.
There was a story beneath those haunted eyes, a reason for this supposed mental instability Tom and Mike spoke of. The more he saw Jensen, the more he wanted to know.
Jensen’s steps this time were a little less confident, his eyes a little meaner, face a little grimmer and shoulders a little tenser.
“Hey!” Jared boldly announced and jogged across the street to the boy with the haunted eyes, throwing all caution and self-preservation to the wind.
Up close, his face was even more stunning and the intense gaze in his green eyes even more alluring. Except for a slight intrigue, there was no emotion otherwise written on his beautiful face. He stopped for Jared, though, and that was enough to propel him forward, whether to his doom or his success.
“I’m Jared,” he smiled brightly and didn’t bother offering his hand, knowing Jensen wouldn’t take it. Jensen regarded him suspiciously but otherwise kept his expression completely blank. Jared wasn’t the kind of person to let that bother him.
“This is going to sound crazy,” Jared beamed excitedly, “but I really just wanted to say hi. Oh! And to give you these,” he said and pulled a couple of withered flowers from his hoodie pocket. “Sorry they’re a little wilted.” He smiled brightly again and held out the flowers to the other teen.
Jensen’s eyes narrowed dangerously and a flicker of what might have been anger clouded his handsome features. Jared knew that look. Strangers didn’t give you something out of the goodness of their heart. Usually they wanted something in return, a hard lesson learned for most street kids. Jared hoped he could prove to Jensen he was different.
“I just thought you could use them,” he said in a casual voice and shrugged indifferently. “Make your day a little brighter.” To his utter surprise, but great delight, after a moment of hesitation Jensen reached out and gently took the flowers from his hand. It took all of Jared’s willpower not to start dancing for joy in the street.
Jensen stared down at the flowers with the same blank expression. Jared’s confidence faltered a little then and his nervousness finally made its presence known with a sudden urge to puke, but he was determined to not let his big mouth ruin the damn moment he was trying to have.
“I’ll see you around, okay? Next Wednesday,” he half joked, half pleaded and half commanded. And yes Jared was aware that was three halves.
He turned to walk back to his corner when a soft voice stopped him. “It’s Jensen,” the boy with the haunted eyes said.
Once more Jared had to force himself not to do the victory dance. Instead he slowly turned back to face the hardened criminal. “It’s nice to meet you, Jensen,” he said with as much sincerity as he felt.
Jared returned to his corner a very happy man and once more watched Jensen, in his worn leather jacket, slowly walk away and disappear into the night.
“You are fucking crazy!” Mike yelled the minute Jensen was out of sight. He punched Jared in the arm. “And here I thought I was crazy.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t kill you,” Tom said, his jaw still on the floor where he had dropped it.
“When he reached out to take the flowers I thought he was reaching for that knife in his pocket so he could stab you…in the face.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mikey,” Jared said and rolled his eyes.
“You don’t get it, Jay,” Tom replied, voice dead serious. “You don’t mess with Jensen. You don’t touch him, you don’t speak to him, and you don’t go near him. No one does.”
“Apparently I do,” Jared softly said, a small smile tugging at his lips. If Jensen felt at least a tenth of the electricity between them that Jared felt, than it was so much more than the average person could ever feel.
“The Mayor is here.” Mikey poked a finger into his gut.
Jared’s smile fell. He closed his eyes and remembered Jensen’s intense green eyes and his soft voice and hoped it was enough to get him through this night.
Chapter Two