Because The End Is Red Baby
Summary:
When guilt and love team up to break the gates of a shut off heart, the insides of the heart spill out, and it's often soft , red and painful.
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of the characters are mine. Pure imagination, none of it happened in real life.
See, when Jensen says he’s a professional assassin, he means it. Not like he goes around telling people about his profession and all, cause that would ruin the whole point, but he actually is really good at killing high profile people for a living. Or used to be anyway.
So, it goes kind of like this- there’s this aspiring politician. The guy’s young, charming, has all the Texan charm, and even is the single parent to an eight-year-old little girl. The perfect formula to win people’s support. On top of it, he has a law degree, is the heir of a huge fortune, is kind of honest and everything is in his favor because the guys he’s running against are grumpy old assholes.
All in all, he can say that he was expecting it when he gets a message with ‘kill’ and ‘Jared Padalecki’ in the same sentence. But what does surprise him is that the person from whom the contract comes is a guy from team Padalecki.
Oh and, the sentence also has the word ‘daughter’ in it.
***************
Killing children is not exactly Jensen’s forte. To be more specific, he’s never killed a child before. But he’s only 35 and there’s a first time for everything, right? He’s got his work cut out for him. Padalecki lives in a mansion in Austin with his daughter. There are domestic helpers to deal with the cooking and cleaning and sitters to fill in when he’s not there, but there’s no fulltime nanny. Apparently, he loves to take care of his child himself whenever he can.
However, there is a fulltime security detail. The house is pretty much locked, even more so when Ali, the target, is without her father. Which means getting into the house to get the job done is not an option. Jensen sighs and rubs his brows. He needs more caffein for this.
Picking up the empty mug, he gets to the kitchen on socked feet and fills it with freshly brewed steaming coffee. Much better.
By the time Jensen has come up with a viable plan that will let him do his job and get away unscathed, a week has passed, it’s midnight, the living room has empty pizza boxes and used tissues scattered everywhere, and there are several mugs sitting on the tea table amid various rings of spilled coffee circles. So he gets a little messy during the initial planning period. Sue him. The thing that matters is that he can now get to the action part of things.
He stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror intently. Vibrant green eyes stare right back at him. “look at you, sexy bastard” he tells himself smugly, and it’s true. He’s aged crazily well. His overtly pretty teenage features have grown into this rugged, freckled good looks and it works wonderfully in his favor.
God has given him all the assets and he uses them accordingly.
Getting under the warm, soft covers, Jensen Ackles sighs contently and hopes for a solid few of hours of sleep. The next two days are gonna be a big deal, he needs the rest.
*********************
Genevieve, Ali Padalecki’s sitter, or more like her godmother, starts the morning as most other mornings in the past three years that she’s been taking care of the child. Wakes up late, skips her makeup, and reaches Jared’s house just in time to take Ali to school.
“Good morning Gen” greets Jared when he opens the door and offers her a brilliant smile. Gen wants to punch him in the face. Don’t get her wrong, that smile is just as beautiful as the face that it sits on, which is to say, a lot. The problem is,
1. Jared is a morning person. Eww.
2. She has a crush on Jared but Jared is still not over his late wife. Loyal to death.
“Daddy! I’ll be late!!” comes Ali’s voice. Gen offers Jared the usual hug and gets into the house to find a pigtailed Ali in school uniform. Her irritated pout instantly erases Gen’s grumpiness and makes her coo instead. That kid is absolutely adorable. Genevieve has the sneaky suspicion that she might never love even her own future children as much as she loves this kid. The Padaleckies have this kind of ability to melt people’s heart. Either that, or she’s just a mush.
“Well you’re all set baby. Aunt Gen will make sure you there in time, right Gen?”
“Absolutely” she replies then kisses Ali’s cheek. Jared comes and scoops Ali up in his huge arms and gives her a squeezing hug. When Gen had first started working here and taking Ali to school, the intensity of this hug had made her think Jared was going somewhere and they’re gonna be separated.
But no, this was just Jared hating it when he has to watch his baby leave for school. So, she’s now used to the couple of minutes long goodbye routine.
They bid Jared goodbye and head for the school. The elementary school where Ali goes isn’t all that far from home, takes about half an hour in optimum speed. She gets Ali down from the back sit and leans back in to grab her bagpack. Doesn’t even hear the bullet hitting the kid’s chest. Only a gasp and the thud of the small body hitting the asphalt.
Jensen opens his door and stumbles in around midnight. It took him an hour to erase all traces of the revolver, and another few to make sure he was never in Austin. And then he got back to Dallas and spent the rest of the day drinking and fucking. He always gets this thrill, this adrenaline rush after a good shot, and today was smooth as fuck. If there was something off, a certain small face and pigtails and the tiny size of the target feeling not-quite-right, well, he was too wasted to remember. The bed is welcoming and comfortable and Jensen falls asleep the minute his head hits the pillow.
They burry Ali in her favorite jersey. Most girls her age might have a favorite princess dress, but Ali had a jersey. It’s blue with white splashes and has her name printed in bold letters in the back. Jared has a similar one. Later, Gen would wonder more than once about what had happened to Jared’s jersey. Whether he’d gotten rid of it or had it kept somewhere safe and close. She doesn’t sleep for days afterwards, the warmth of blood and lifeless eyes and the wrong too-cold clammy skin haunting her eyelids. Jared’s screams and helpless sobs run like music in her dreams and make her wake up gasping.
About six months later, Jensen gets another text. It’s the first case he’s gotten since that Padalecki one.
He’s sitting in a diner, a double cheese burger and fries on the table and a beer already down, when his that phone chimes. It’s a text from his pervious client, but it’s more elaborate this time. It asks him to meet the client and get the detailed contract directly from him. This isn’t his usual gig, he doesn’t showface or take instructions, but this offers an awful amount of money. Over dinner, he thinks about how he’s been planning to shift to Hawaii, how he wants to get a custom-made yacht and rule the waters, and considers meeting the client. After all, meeting doesn’t necessarily mean taking the case. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll walk away.
He should’ve known that this could only end badly. He killed someone’s only child, then going back and
getting involved in his life to kill that person is a bad, bad idea. And he says getting involved because he has to get involved. What his client tells him is that killing Ali hadn’t worked the way he’d wanted to, so Jared needs to go. But he needs to make his will and then die of “natural causes” so that the inheritance goes without a hinge. Which means that Jensen has to get into Jared’s life and poison him slowly, make him believe that he’s sick and then finish him off.
To be honest, he knows that it’s risky. The risk is what intrigues him actually. That kid wasn’t his first job, but she was his first innocent victim. The others before her had all kind of dug their own graves- pissed off the wrong person, cheated on the wrong person, stolen something big enough to kill for. She hadn’t done anything, and Jensen remembered her for that. He might kinda wanna meet the person whose child he killed, see how they turned out. He’s never interacted with the victim’s family before; thinks this might be like a trophy. It’ll hopefully be his last job here anyway, so might as well enjoy the ride. And get that big paycheck.
So he moves to Austin, rents a moderate apartment close to Jared’s home with his client’s payment, takes a few days to really settle into the environment. Then he starts on paving a pathway into Jared’s life. Jared has a dog. And he takes his dog to the town park in the mornings whenever he’s not away for work. Alright then, morning grass it is.
Harley, Jared’s dog, is a big one. But he still looks tiny next to Jared. Jensen fully intends to stumble into Jared, but pauses. This scene is similar, Jared sitting on a bench under a tree, Hurley chasing his tail. This picture came up several times when Jensen was doing research for his previous case. There used to be a little girl sitting on Jared’s lap. The girl is not there, neither is Jared’s smile. Jensen sits on a bench a little away from them until Jared gets up and leaves, and sits there a little longer, watching children playing in the sunlight, parents playing and laughing with them.
He stays up late that night, sitting on the bed with his back to the headboard and laptop on his lap, glasses perched low on his nose. There is surprisingly little news on the death, the shooting covered by a handful of newspapers, the actual name only published in two news channels. A few tabloids kept the buzz going for a while, but after the funeral, things went quiet. Jared hasn’t really talked about it publicly either, his team just sending out a letter demanding justice.
Jensen’s sort of perplexed, he’d thought a politician’s daughter being shot would be a much bigger deal than this. He surfs through photos, pictures of Jared with his then-girlfriend Megan, their marriage, Megan pregnant with Ali, Jared’s blinding smile with his hand on his wife’s baby-bump. The first officialpics of Ali, an infant wrapped in a baby-pink towel, Ali growing up through the years. It’s all very public, right up until the point when Megan got diagnosed with cancer, and died only three months later. Since then, Jared has kept Ali a little more protected, a bit more to himself. Now she’s beneath the ground, covered in dirt. There is exactly one picture of the dead body circulated in the media.
Jensen sighs out a long breath and glances at the little time icon at the corner of the screen. 3.23 AM< peers up at him. Shit, his eyes are aching and his head throbs, and when he moves to put the laptop down, his back pops dangerously. “Get a grip Ackles, you’re not 20 anymore” he grumps and goes to sleep. The baby-bump picture stays in his eyelids for a little while.
Throughout the whole week, Jensen watches those pictures again and again, even saves a few on his phone. He figures this is his brain processing the information that he killed a human, that the human was loved and cherished. Well, what to do, it’s not like he kills people for fun! it’s his job, it pays his bills.
This time when he sees Jared in the park, sitting on the same bench, he’s prepared for the onslaught of images. He ignores those, takes a breath and jogs, jogs to exactly where Jared’s sitting and pauses. Wipes the sweat on his forehead, looks around, then smiles at Jared.
“Hey man, mind sharing your water?”
Jared looks up a bit startled, blinks, then hands Jensen the bottle. “Thanks” Jensen takes big gulps and realizes that he’s actually pretty thirsty. “Forgot to grab mine. Not much of a jogger” Jared just takes the bottle when Jensen holds it out, doesn’t say anything. Continues throwing a ball for Hurley to fetch.
Jensen shrugs and sits down on the other end of the bench. “Nice mutt you got”
“His name’s Hurley” it’s the first time he hears Jared’s voice. He has to admit, Jared has a real nice voice.
He’s still looking somewhere distant, and Jensen follows his line of sight to see the same children that were playing there last week. The look in Jared’s eyes tightens something in Jensen’s chest. Guilt, his brain supplies unhelpfully.
“Jensen” he says and holds his hand out. Jared finally turns to look at him, glances at his outstretched hand and takes it. “Jared” he replies, then gets up, whistles Hurley to follow him, and leaves. Jensen watches his retreating back. He seems to be doing that a lot, lately.
The picture that the internet has is bloody. Dark web has a lot more pictures of the crime scene. Apparently, Jared had put in a lot of effort to protect his daughter’s corpse from the media. And Alibeing a minor and the scene being on school grounds made it easier for him to do. The only pic on the news channels is the one released by the police; blurred out and covered up.
The pics in the dark web are a whole different thing though. They’re graphic, gross, and bloody. The body of the lifeless little girl lies limp on the grass, soaked red. Jensen knows exactly where the bullet pierced her skin because he’s very good at his aims, though he cant’s see the tiny hole because the entire white uniform shirt is stained. She lied there lifeless for about 20 minutes, bystanders holding the nanny, Genevieve, away from her. The pics in which Jared reaches the crime scene are hard to watch even for a contract killer like Jensen, and that’s when the pictures also stop, which means cops sent the rogue journalists away. Jared in those handful of pictures is such a ball of misery that Jensen flips his laptop close and sighs. He needs a change, feeling sad for his victim is not healthy. He scoofs at the thought. “right, healthy. And I’m talking to myself.”
He grabs two beers from the fridge and settles into the couch. His burger and fries are sitting on the
coffee table still. Grabbing the remote and flipping channels until he finds a crappy show, he unwraps the burger and takes a bite, shifts around, tries to find a comfortable position. The show is extremely boring. Too boring to even make fun of the bad quality. His eyes keep glancing towards his phone, where pictures of a little girl sitting on her father’s shoulders and giggling so big that the sound is almost audible through the image sits among pictures and information about chemicals to poison the said father. Jensen throws his burger in the trashcan because the ketchup was reminding him about too young blood spilled on a pavement.
Jared isn’t on the bench. Jensen frowns, he’s sure he’d seen Hurley running around with a red frisbee< clutched in his mouth. He sits down and waits. Red frisbee. The color is starting to bother him recently, making his eyes splotchy and his head ache whenever he sees dark red.
Blood red.
The client calls him at 8.11 pm. Jensen is in the kitchen making pasta, chopping onions into tiny cubes and humming softly under his breath, when his phone chimes. Huffing, he wipes his hands with a kitchen towel and picks up the device. The call doesn’t go all that well. Two weeks he’s been here, and he has little to no progress to report, keeps getting distracted by a tiny face popping up in his brain every time he tries to come up with strategies. But his client is not his boss. So he just tells them that he’s working, will inform once he starts the doses, and hangs up. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t worried though, lying to others won’t erase the fact that he’s not playing his best game at the moment. Get your head out of your ass Ackles, he tells himself.
Finishing off the onions, he starts chopping some basils, and the knife slips and nicks his thumb. It’s a small cut, and Jensen starts to instinctively suck his thumb into his mouth but can’t. A thin trickle of blood is flowing from the gap in his skin, its red covering up his fingerprint. There was a lot of this same color on Ali’s body, all over her little chest and stomach and tiny fingers. The gap in the skin was round, the bullet piercing straight through her pink baby-clean lungs. He knows this because he’s seeing it rightnow, the bullet leaving his revolver with a strong pushback, travelling silently through the air and hitting square in the chest. Bullseye. Except for the fact that it wasn’t a cardboard cutout that got torn apart. It was an eight years old girl, with brown eyes and dimple on the left cheek and two pigtails in her black hair, a tooth missing in her smile and hands holding on to her caretaker. She was breathing the exact same air as Jensen was, until Jensen tore her lungs apart; thick, warm blood, just as red as Jensen’s own, gushing through the pore.
Jensen sucks in a gasping breath and drops the knife, holds on to the counter as a wave of nausea rolls through him. A drop of blood drops from his finger and splashes onto the counter with a plop. He’s going to be sick.
Twenty minutes later, after he’s gagged his stomach out into the toilet, taken a quick shower, rubbed his hands clean off any color and wrapped the offending cut up, he goes to bed. He’s lost appetite, just gulps down some water and slips under the covers. No amount of twisting and turning gets him a comfortable position; the pillow feels lumpy and his neck throbs. He can’t keep his eyes closed for long because he keeps seeing red. Thick, clotted, caked up red on green grass and black asphalt and white shirt. Sleep doesn’t come until the sun comes up.
He’s a total mess in the morning, and his head swerves dangerously when he stands up. He should
definitely spend the day in bed. Instead, he forces down an apple and some Tylenol, puts on his jogging shoes and goes to the park.
Jared’s there, of course he is. There’s nobody in his home to keep him occupied. Jensen goes straight to the bench and drops down on it. This time when he asks for the water bottle, he’s not pretending. His throat and mouth are dry as paper. He grabs the water bottle Jared offers and gulps down water like a madman. Jared, the usually distracted and staring into oblivion Jared, frowns worriedly at him and shifts closer. “Hey man, you alright?’
“I’m Jensen” Jensen says, looks at Jared’s eyes. They’re hazel. A mix of at least four different colors woven intricately together but every single one clearly visible. Jared has dimples on both his cheeks. Ali had gotten half his genes. ‘Beautiful’ he thinks.
“Jensen? You don’t have asthma, do you?” Jared’s worried frown deepens and he puts a hand on Jensen’s back, the calming heat of it seeping through Jensen’s tee. “I don’t feel so good” Jensen gasps, and passes out, his head cradled in the same hands that carried Ali’s lifeless body into the ambulance.
He wakes up sometimes later in an unfamiliar place, and panics because he can’t move. His arms and legs and head feel like lead, pushing him down into the bed and refusing to move. “Hey” comes a voice.
“you’re awake” the owner of the voice comes into view. It’s a middle aged brunette, with sharp features but a kind smile.“Where am I?” In his entire 35 years of life, he’s never woken up in a place he consciously didn’t choose to fall asleep in.
The woman comes closer and leans down, touches his forehead. “You had a panic attack at the park Jensen. And Jared brought you home, because you told him his name but not your address.”
Home?! He’s is Jared’s HOME??
“Hey. HEY! Jensen? No need to panic okay? You’re fine now. You’re safe, I’m doctor Stevens. You’re gonna be okay, now, breath”
Jensen screws his eyes shut and hopes this is just another nightmare. He’s had a lot of those these past few days. Dreams where he’s in the room full of toys, walls painted pink and blue, a father tucking his little girl in. Then there’s a small click and a scream. Ear splitting scream. And then quiet.
“Jensen?” he knows this voice; this is Jared’s voice. He forces his heart down to a dull pounding and wills his eyes to open. Jared’s leaning over him, hazel eyes still clouded with worry. “Hey, you’re alright. You passed out man, so I brought you here.” Jared explains, as if Jensen’s not the predator here. “I hope you don’t mind? I’ll drop you off at your place if you want, but….I need the address”
“I’m okay”
The relief that instantly clears Jared’s eyes stings Jensen, makes him want to pass out again. He doesn’t though; he sits up, talks to Dr. Stevens ‘call me Emma’, tells her that this is the first time he’s had a panic attack (seriously? How and when did he turn into a chick?) and agrees to rest here until the meds stop making him wobbly. Jared and Emma leave the room and leave Jensen alone after that.
This is so not how he thought he’d get into this house. And seriously, how can Jared be so careless! He’s a politician and his daughter got killed and people are paying Jensen to get his head on a platter and he’s bringing random strangers from streets home? And leaving them unsupervised in his home? Where the hell is that security detail anyway; Jared is an idiot.
That’s exactly what Jensen tells Jared when Jared comes back in to check on him “What” Jared’s so surprised that he kind of chokes on a smile.
“You’re an idiot, a careless idiot. And your security team needs an upgrade because they’re clearly dumb” Jensen would be worried about how he’s lecturing Jared about safety, but at the moment all he can think about is how there are people out there wanting to kill Jared. “I brought you here, while you were unconscious. My guards wouldn’t stop me.” That people is him.
“Well they at least should’ve checked! And shouldn’t leave you alone with me!”
Jared frowns again and sighs, sits down on the foot of the bed, right next to Jensen’s foot. If he moved his foot a couple inches, he could be touching Jared. “Okay, it’s kind of strange that a stranger brought you home and you’re worried about the stranger’s safety instead of your own. But that’s not the thing to worry about right now. How are you feeling?” Jared looks so sincere, as if the health of a person he just met at a park really matters. Maybe it does, after all, this stranger killed his only child.Guilt, sudden and ruthless, makes Jensen want to hide from Jared’s gaze. He can’t though, because in this dim light, Jared’s eyes take on a deep shade of grey, with flecks of yellow and blue blurred together.
They help Jensen forget the red and calms him down. “I’m alright. Just got stressed, I guess. I mean, moving in and work and jogging are all kind of stressful activities” Jensen smiles lightly.
“Yeah, they are. Anyway, I’m Jared Padalecki, but I guess you already know that, and dinner’s ready. You wanna come downstairs or want me to send it here?” Jensen blinks. This is absolutely not happening.
What the actual hell?! He thinks about how he doesn’t have the little bottle of chemical with him, how easy it would be to pour some in right now.
“Uh, no. I’m okay now. I really should get going.”
Jared’s driver drops Jensen off at his door an hour later; after Jensen’s had dinner and has the meds he needs and has exchanged phone numbers with Jared so that Jared can check up on him. This must be the most ironic chain of events in the history of contract killing.
The house is cold, quiet and unwelcoming. Jensen suddenly feels ridiculously lonely. He’s lived alone since he was 15, has always welcomed the silence. Tonight, it gnaws at him like ice shards. He goes back to his laptop and stares some more at those images. He really shouldn’t, and he honestly doesn’t even< want to. But he can’t help it, transfixed by Jared’s huge hand cradling a baby-bump. Those hands had held him up today, but the smile and overflowing joy was missing. It would probably always be missing, since both the baby and the stomach that held it are gone. Jared is alone now, just as alone as Jensen.
Jared calls him at exactly 9 am the next morning, and apologizes for waking Jensen up. “No, I needed to get up anyway.”
“It’s just…. I know you don’t have asthma, and Emma told me that you’ll be fine, but…”
“But?”
“My daughter, Alison, she had asthma. And one time it got really bad and she fainted, just like you did. It kind of freaked me out.” Jensen has nothing. He just sits there numb, can feel his vision blur with salt water and can’t do anything about it. Jared mistakes his silence for disinterest and apologizes again for waking Jensen up again before hanging up. He’s wrong. So, so wrong that Jensen laughs out loud and keeps laughing until his stomach hurts and tears stream down his face. Keeps laughing until he can’t breathe and sobs wreck through his body; ugly, loud, snotty and painful. He hurts somewhere deep, somewhere unreachable and hollow.
When the sobs finally subside and he can suck in air again, he buries himself into the pillows and spends the whole day in bed, doesn’t get up until images of red wet liquid get too much for him to handle, and heaves drily into the toilet, nothing but bitter bile coming out. He calls Jared in the evening.
“I wanted to thank you, you know, for... yeah”
“You don’t sound so good. Are you okay?” “Fine. I’m fine, just groggy.”
The face looking back at him from the mirror is wrecked. Eyes red rimmed, swollen, dark circles almost purple around his eyes. A stark contrast to the rest of his face which is so pale that his veins are visible. His hair is oily and sticky, four days’ worth of beard making him look like a caveman.
He looks exactly like Jared would look after a couple of doses of his poison.
The next morning, he’s already on the bench with a water bottle in his lap when Hurley comes barking and bouncing, Jared a figure haloed by sunlight behind him. “You look better” Jared says when he sits down. It’s true; Jensen made sure he didn’t look like death before coming here, Jared’s already had enough death in his life, he doesn’t need more.
“I should thank a certain politician for that” Jensen replies, and miraculously, Jared smiles. It’s not a big, bright one, but it’s a smile. Jensen has a few ideas about why that fills his stomach with butterflies.
The mornings quickly become Jensen’s highlight of the day. Not that Jared’s there every day, in fact, Jared’s not there more often than not, gone away into one town visit or another. But Jensen’s there, sitting on the empty bench and letting the breeze flow through him. And on some mornings, Jensen just watches Jared from afar, watches him watch parents play with their kids and the glassy shine of his eyes, watches him pet Hurley like a mother pets her child. Those days, he doesn’t interrupt.
The other days though, when Jared seems lost and distracted and not quite alive, Jensen intrudes. He digs little holes through the air and sneaks into Jared’s life, makes him smile with stupid jokes and little sentences. Each moment that he pulls Jared a little towards himself, he goes a little bit further from himself. Forgets a little more about the chemical that may or may not have an expiring date.
He even meets Genevieve. That’s an unfortunate event honestly. Because when Jared asked if Jensen
was free to come over for dinner, Jensen assumed he meant only them. When he reaches, he finds out
that Jared meant a thanksgiving dinner, with other guests.
Alright, so maybe in all his other activities (read having nightmares, staring at images he should not be looking at, apologizing to ghosts, drinking, and…well, falling for Jared) he’s forgotten to look at the calendar okay? It’s not like he has a job, so sue him. It doesn’t matter anyway, because he has very little to thank for. So yeah, He’s surprised when he sees Genevieve. He remembers her scream that he’dheard first hand, and ridiculously, he feels caught. Like she’ll look at him any moment and recognize him, call him out for killing her little girl.
But he’s quickly distracted from that because the other person Jared introduces him to is Misha. Misha Collins, Jared’s best friend. Misha Collins, Jensen’s client. He actually looks happy to see Jensen there in Jared’s home, like he was expecting Jensen in Jared’s thanksgiving dinner.
There’s not much festivity going on, just the four of them quietly eating the food Jared’s housekeeper serves them. Genevieve keeps glancing nervously at Jared, trying to make halted conversations, like sh expects Jared to blow up at the single wrong word. Afterwards, she corners Jensen in the kitchen.
“Nice to meet you” she says conversationally while uncapping a beer bottle. “Jared’s been better since he started talking about you. I take it that you know about Ali?” she adds, lines of upset dimming her made up face.
“Yeah, I do. I never talked about it to Jared though.” Jensen says and leans back against the counter with fake nonchalance. She likes Jared. He can tell. He’s not sure how he feels about it.
“Whatever you’ve been talking about, it’s been good for him. Thanks for that.”
Jensen smiles, feels extremely fond and can’t help himself. “Where is she?”
Genevieve regards him thoughtfully for a few moments, and finds whatever it is she was looking for.
She gives him the name of the cemetery and the location of the headstone, asks him to not tell Jared about it, and leaves.
When Misha hugs Jared at the door, Jensen balls his hands into fists, so hard that his knuckles ache when he lets go and there are little red half-moons in his palm even minutes after Misha’s gone.
“Thanks Jared. I had fun tonight” he says, and means it. Huh, so he does have something to be thankful for after all.
Jared scoofs. “Sure, that was a lotta fun. Sitting in a table and drowning in pity.”
“Yes, it was. Far better than sitting home alone with booze. Lot better than I’ve had in a long time.” He can tell that Jared reads the truth in his words because he smiles. At the door, Jensen bypasses the hand Jared offers him and gets on his toes to hug him instead. It’s partly to erase out any trace of Misha off of Jared, and partly because he’s helpless. Can’t fight the thread that has a hook in his heart and tugs him towards the 6’5” body of muscles, heat and sadness, soft brown hair and rapid beating heart. It’s extremely hard to peel himself off before Jared gets uncomfortable, and say goodbye.
That’s the reason he startles when a car honks at him from around the corner. He’s not surprised though, calmly climbs into the back seat and stares ahead. Misha doesn’t need to ask for his address because he was the one who arranged the apartment for Jensen. “I see you’ve covered a lot of ground huh. Jared doesn’t invite over people he’s known for years! Got ass thirsty after all.” Misha smirks in aleery way, makes Jensen want to punch him. “Hasn’t fallen sick yet though. How long does it take for your juice to start working?”
Jensen wants to tell him. Scream at his face that he won’t kill Jared, and kill the bastard for even thinking about it, for making Jensen shoot that bullet. But Misha’s not alone in the car and Jensen’s not in the state to be able to take on two guys. Plus, they’re probably carrying weapons. He can’t say it and risk his life either. Because he’s disposable, easily replaceable. He has no doubts that as soon as Misha get a clue of what Jensen’s thinking, he’ll off Jensen and hire someone else. Someone who’ll not hesitate to cut Jared into pieces.
Even out of practice, Jensen is a contract killer. So, the mask comes easy to him. He grits his teeth and plays the role of himself from a few months ago; tells Misha exactly what he expects to hear, with exactly enough venom in his voice to make Misha believe him.
It leaves him sick afterwards, taste of bile replacing the expensive champagne he had with dinner. He feels trapped. What’s he supposed to do now?
“What do I do now?” is what he asks the ground that holds Ali in it. The tombstone is blue marble, “LOVE, ALI” inscribed in white on it. He stands there but doesn’t take in any details, hands in his pockets and eyes locked on the yellowish drying grass. When he can’t stand anymore, he sits down cross legged at the foot of the small grave and touches it reverently. Feels like he’s touching the actual dead body; cold and hard and lifeless under his palm. He doesn’t say the apologies that want to bubble up his throat and fall from his lips. Jensen doesn’t deserve to ask for forgiveness, doesn’t deserve for his pain to be heard by the innocent soul he wrenched out of its body. He just sits there and sobs and asks over and over about what he should do, how to protect Jared from ending up right here too. Tears fall down his nose, mix with snot and pitter-patter onto the ground below, dry on this cheeks and throat and chest.
His hand, when he brings it up to wipe his cheeks, is soaked red; both of his hands are stained with blood. Blood from Ali; Jared’s blood. Blood from other people whose names he can’t clearly recall. Blood from his own heart where it’s torn apart and bleeding sluggishly. Jared’s name and guilt pulsing through his veins and mixing together makes Jensen struggle for oxygen.
He stumbles into his apartment and right into the shower, rips his cloths from his body, leaving a trail from the door to the shower stall, and steps into the freezing water. Blindly grabbing soap and scrubber, he desperately rubs his hands and arms and chest. Scrubs everywhere he can reach. The blood refuses to leave though. Its sickening red stays right there even though the skin underneath is rubbed raw and pink. He keeps rubbing until his fingers are so numb that the scrubber slips, then stands there under the cold water as it hits his body like shards of glass. His skin is still stained red hours later and it keeps him awake and makes him scared of the dark, of the shadows.
Jared’s not in the park the next morning. Jensen sits on the bench for as long as he can. When it’s clear that Jared won’t be here, he starts walking in Jared’s direction even before his brain recognizes the road. Seeing Jared’s face when he answers the door is finally when Jensen can breathe. Jared frowns and reaches for him and Jensen grabs back gratefully. He holds onto Jared’s hand even after they drop down on the couch. “Jensen? Breathe man. Hey, hey you’re alright. You’ll be okay” Jared says and gets up.
“NO! no please” he clutches the hand desperately. Can’t let him slip away. Won’t.
“Hey, it’s okay” Jared says as he gets down on his knees between Jensen’s legs. He doesn’t pull back the hand Jensen’s clinging to, instead puts his other hand on Jensen’s shoulder, pulls him a little bit forward so that the weight of his ribs isn’t crushing Jensen’s lungs anymore. “Right here, I’m not going anywhere okay?” Jared says. The worried waver in his voice makes Jensen feel more guilty, makes him suck in air so that he can tell Jared not to worry.
He nods and keeps breathing until his lungs stop spasming and his heart moves down from his throat and into the hollow of his chest. Jared guides him through it, breathes with him. His eyes look so green today. Jensen looks down and finds exactly what he was expecting; Jared is wearing a green t-shirt, and his eyes have taken on the exact shade of green from below. They’re a mesmerizing pair of eyes. Jensen stares in them and they stare right back at him and Jared keeps murmuring soft words until Jensen has settled into his own skin again.
After making sure that Jensen is getting enough oxygen, Jared gets up off the floor. He gets Jensen some water and sits close to Jensen on the couch. Jensen is still sweating, and his heart is still pounding, but he isn’t drowning anymore. He feels exhausted. He IS exhausted. Hasn’t slept for days and the last thing he ate was the dinner right here. Jared’s warmth is such an alluring presence that he’s pulled towards it like a metal to magnet. Jared doesn’t push him away when Jensen rests his head on his shoulder and breathes in deep and long. He tucks the tired man into his chest and lets him sleep.
It’s hours later when Jensen wakes up. He’s not sitting up anymore. Instead, he’s lying on his side with
his head propped up on a pillow on the armrest. There’s a comforter covering him and someone even took off his shoes. He’s so comfortable that his eyes start drooping again. He is on the verge of dozing off when soft footsteps approach him.
He keeps his eyes closed and prays that it’s Jared and not one of the house-keepers.
The subject of his prayer answers him. “Don’t fall asleep. Jensen? I saw you wake up.”
Jensen doesn’t want to. “Uh huh. You have to. Gotta get something in your stomach before you start digesting your organs” That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He’s already decomposing on the inside. Might as well digest himself and get some nutrition.
They get a lot closer after that. Of course, “closer” doesn’t necessarily mean the kind of closer Jensen’s heart whines for. No, closer means that Jared calls a bit more to check up on him, sends his driver over with food whenever he can, and talks a little more when they’re in the park. He lets Jensen touch him a bit more too; a rub of shoulders, lingering handshakes, pats in the back. Somehow, he knows just how much Jensen depends on him. Knows without knowing that the moments he spends with Jensen are the only moments that Jensen isn’t killing himself.
Obviously, Misha calls again. He’s been paying Jensen’s bills for months and there’s no sick Jared to show for it. He demands for Jensen to hurry the fuck up, tells him that the legal documents need to start printed this year.
Jensen knows exactly what to do.
At around nine thirty that night, he knocks on Jared’s door for one last time. He knows how he looks, took a long time making sure he looked good, looked like the Jensen from before: bright eyes, healthy clean skin, good clothes and all. Jared should remember him as this Jensen. The door opens to reveal Genevieve, and Jensen is instantly disappointed. He’d wanted tonight to be just them. But, well, there’s nothing he can do now.
“You look good” Genevieve comments. She looks him up and down with appreciation in her eyes and pulls him inside. Jensen’s whole body tingles.
He follows her to the living area where Jared’s sitting on the couch with files spread all around. He looks so good wearing a soft grey V-neck and black sweats, easy and comfortable in his skin and in his world.
Jensen envies him. Loves him so much that his heart threatens to jump through his breastbone and fall down at Jared’s feet and beg him for forgiveness, for punishment. For redemption.
Jared looks up at him and smiles. A real smile. And if Jensen had thought he loved him before, it’s nothing compared to what he feels at that exact moment. In that space where Jared’s soft and lit up and smiling and nothing else exists. But no, something else does exist. And that something else is much heavier than whatever Jensen could ever be.
“I killed her.”
Jared blinks, frowns. He has no idea about what Jensen is talking about.
“I shot her for thirty thousand dollars, and took seventy to kill you.”
Jared doesn’t even move. Doesn’t scream at him and ask him why or punch him or anything at all.
Genevieve does. It takes two of Jared’s useless guards to pry her off of Jensen, and by that time he’s on the floor and bleeding from more than one places. He tries his best to keep his eyes on Jared, see him for as long as he can before he can’t anymore, but it’s hard when blood falls into his eyes and mixes with tears and covers everything in red. No matter how many tears fall, the red stays right there and doesn’t let him see Jared.
**************
See, when he said he’s a true professional, he meant it. Because try as they might, the cops cannot find a single thing to tie Jensen to the four murders that he claims he did. The only murder he can prove is Ali’s one, and the contract of Jared. The phone where all of Misha Collins’ texts are is the key evidence, along with bank statements and that bottle of poison. And Jensen himself is the witness in his own trial.
He pleads guilty and begs to be hung till death. And who says miracles don’t exist when the judge gives him exactly what he wishes for?
For the first time since he saw Jared, he’s finally at peace. In exactly forty-two hours from now, this will all be over. He’ll be free of this body, these hands that killed people and these eyes that drank Jared’s blood. He won’t be responsible for them anymore.
But he doesn’t deserve this mercy, does he? Of course not. How can he be granted a vacation from the memory of Ali’s corpse, when Jared has to live with it forever? That would be unfair. But at least his eyes aren’t curtained shut this time. Jared visits his cell the night before. And he doesn’t yell at Jensen or curse at him this time either. Nope, he just looks at Jensen for a few moments, let’s Jensen look at him for those moments. Jensen thinks he might already be dead. This must be God showing him a peek of heaven, so that he can regret what he sold for money in his eternity in hell.
Ali isn’t with Jared though, neither is Megan. And that strikes Jensen wrong and makes him sad because he doesn’t want to be the reason that separates Jared from his family again. One time was one too many.
So, he lets God know that this is cruel. That God shouldn’t take Jared away from Ali just to make Jensen repent some more. God knows that he regrets enough.
Then Jared breaks Jensen’s little whimsical bubble. By throwing the pardon sheet at him. “You asked for mercy?” he asks, and Jensen recoils at the hardness in Jared’s eyes. He feels tears threaten to fall just because he put that hatred in Jared’s beautiful eyes. He opens his mouth to say that he’s sorry, but Jared beats him to it.
“I give you mercy. I give you the years that you took away from my daughter Jensen. I hope you make them count.”
The meaning of those words hit Jensen so hard that he falls to his knees. “NO! That’s not what I meant by mercy.” but Jared has already turned away.
“NO, no please” He sobs at Jared’s retreating back. “Please don’t do this to me. LET ME DIE!! JARED!!!”
Other inmates hear his pleading and his gut wrenching sobs. Jared doesn’t. Or maybe he does but doesn’t care. He leaves Jensen on the floor with the sheet of paper that will be the hooks that Jensen hangs from for his eternity in hell, the rest of his life.
Jared is crueler than God, Jensen concludes angrily.
When guilt and love team up to break the gates of a shut off heart, the insides of the heart spill out, and it's often soft , red and painful.
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of the characters are mine. Pure imagination, none of it happened in real life.
See, when Jensen says he’s a professional assassin, he means it. Not like he goes around telling people about his profession and all, cause that would ruin the whole point, but he actually is really good at killing high profile people for a living. Or used to be anyway.
So, it goes kind of like this- there’s this aspiring politician. The guy’s young, charming, has all the Texan charm, and even is the single parent to an eight-year-old little girl. The perfect formula to win people’s support. On top of it, he has a law degree, is the heir of a huge fortune, is kind of honest and everything is in his favor because the guys he’s running against are grumpy old assholes.
All in all, he can say that he was expecting it when he gets a message with ‘kill’ and ‘Jared Padalecki’ in the same sentence. But what does surprise him is that the person from whom the contract comes is a guy from team Padalecki.
Oh and, the sentence also has the word ‘daughter’ in it.
***************
Killing children is not exactly Jensen’s forte. To be more specific, he’s never killed a child before. But he’s only 35 and there’s a first time for everything, right? He’s got his work cut out for him. Padalecki lives in a mansion in Austin with his daughter. There are domestic helpers to deal with the cooking and cleaning and sitters to fill in when he’s not there, but there’s no fulltime nanny. Apparently, he loves to take care of his child himself whenever he can.
However, there is a fulltime security detail. The house is pretty much locked, even more so when Ali, the target, is without her father. Which means getting into the house to get the job done is not an option. Jensen sighs and rubs his brows. He needs more caffein for this.
Picking up the empty mug, he gets to the kitchen on socked feet and fills it with freshly brewed steaming coffee. Much better.
By the time Jensen has come up with a viable plan that will let him do his job and get away unscathed, a week has passed, it’s midnight, the living room has empty pizza boxes and used tissues scattered everywhere, and there are several mugs sitting on the tea table amid various rings of spilled coffee circles. So he gets a little messy during the initial planning period. Sue him. The thing that matters is that he can now get to the action part of things.
He stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror intently. Vibrant green eyes stare right back at him. “look at you, sexy bastard” he tells himself smugly, and it’s true. He’s aged crazily well. His overtly pretty teenage features have grown into this rugged, freckled good looks and it works wonderfully in his favor.
God has given him all the assets and he uses them accordingly.
Getting under the warm, soft covers, Jensen Ackles sighs contently and hopes for a solid few of hours of sleep. The next two days are gonna be a big deal, he needs the rest.
*********************
Genevieve, Ali Padalecki’s sitter, or more like her godmother, starts the morning as most other mornings in the past three years that she’s been taking care of the child. Wakes up late, skips her makeup, and reaches Jared’s house just in time to take Ali to school.
“Good morning Gen” greets Jared when he opens the door and offers her a brilliant smile. Gen wants to punch him in the face. Don’t get her wrong, that smile is just as beautiful as the face that it sits on, which is to say, a lot. The problem is,
1. Jared is a morning person. Eww.
2. She has a crush on Jared but Jared is still not over his late wife. Loyal to death.
“Daddy! I’ll be late!!” comes Ali’s voice. Gen offers Jared the usual hug and gets into the house to find a pigtailed Ali in school uniform. Her irritated pout instantly erases Gen’s grumpiness and makes her coo instead. That kid is absolutely adorable. Genevieve has the sneaky suspicion that she might never love even her own future children as much as she loves this kid. The Padaleckies have this kind of ability to melt people’s heart. Either that, or she’s just a mush.
“Well you’re all set baby. Aunt Gen will make sure you there in time, right Gen?”
“Absolutely” she replies then kisses Ali’s cheek. Jared comes and scoops Ali up in his huge arms and gives her a squeezing hug. When Gen had first started working here and taking Ali to school, the intensity of this hug had made her think Jared was going somewhere and they’re gonna be separated.
But no, this was just Jared hating it when he has to watch his baby leave for school. So, she’s now used to the couple of minutes long goodbye routine.
They bid Jared goodbye and head for the school. The elementary school where Ali goes isn’t all that far from home, takes about half an hour in optimum speed. She gets Ali down from the back sit and leans back in to grab her bagpack. Doesn’t even hear the bullet hitting the kid’s chest. Only a gasp and the thud of the small body hitting the asphalt.
Jensen opens his door and stumbles in around midnight. It took him an hour to erase all traces of the revolver, and another few to make sure he was never in Austin. And then he got back to Dallas and spent the rest of the day drinking and fucking. He always gets this thrill, this adrenaline rush after a good shot, and today was smooth as fuck. If there was something off, a certain small face and pigtails and the tiny size of the target feeling not-quite-right, well, he was too wasted to remember. The bed is welcoming and comfortable and Jensen falls asleep the minute his head hits the pillow.
They burry Ali in her favorite jersey. Most girls her age might have a favorite princess dress, but Ali had a jersey. It’s blue with white splashes and has her name printed in bold letters in the back. Jared has a similar one. Later, Gen would wonder more than once about what had happened to Jared’s jersey. Whether he’d gotten rid of it or had it kept somewhere safe and close. She doesn’t sleep for days afterwards, the warmth of blood and lifeless eyes and the wrong too-cold clammy skin haunting her eyelids. Jared’s screams and helpless sobs run like music in her dreams and make her wake up gasping.
About six months later, Jensen gets another text. It’s the first case he’s gotten since that Padalecki one.
He’s sitting in a diner, a double cheese burger and fries on the table and a beer already down, when his that phone chimes. It’s a text from his pervious client, but it’s more elaborate this time. It asks him to meet the client and get the detailed contract directly from him. This isn’t his usual gig, he doesn’t showface or take instructions, but this offers an awful amount of money. Over dinner, he thinks about how he’s been planning to shift to Hawaii, how he wants to get a custom-made yacht and rule the waters, and considers meeting the client. After all, meeting doesn’t necessarily mean taking the case. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll walk away.
He should’ve known that this could only end badly. He killed someone’s only child, then going back and
getting involved in his life to kill that person is a bad, bad idea. And he says getting involved because he has to get involved. What his client tells him is that killing Ali hadn’t worked the way he’d wanted to, so Jared needs to go. But he needs to make his will and then die of “natural causes” so that the inheritance goes without a hinge. Which means that Jensen has to get into Jared’s life and poison him slowly, make him believe that he’s sick and then finish him off.
To be honest, he knows that it’s risky. The risk is what intrigues him actually. That kid wasn’t his first job, but she was his first innocent victim. The others before her had all kind of dug their own graves- pissed off the wrong person, cheated on the wrong person, stolen something big enough to kill for. She hadn’t done anything, and Jensen remembered her for that. He might kinda wanna meet the person whose child he killed, see how they turned out. He’s never interacted with the victim’s family before; thinks this might be like a trophy. It’ll hopefully be his last job here anyway, so might as well enjoy the ride. And get that big paycheck.
So he moves to Austin, rents a moderate apartment close to Jared’s home with his client’s payment, takes a few days to really settle into the environment. Then he starts on paving a pathway into Jared’s life. Jared has a dog. And he takes his dog to the town park in the mornings whenever he’s not away for work. Alright then, morning grass it is.
Harley, Jared’s dog, is a big one. But he still looks tiny next to Jared. Jensen fully intends to stumble into Jared, but pauses. This scene is similar, Jared sitting on a bench under a tree, Hurley chasing his tail. This picture came up several times when Jensen was doing research for his previous case. There used to be a little girl sitting on Jared’s lap. The girl is not there, neither is Jared’s smile. Jensen sits on a bench a little away from them until Jared gets up and leaves, and sits there a little longer, watching children playing in the sunlight, parents playing and laughing with them.
He stays up late that night, sitting on the bed with his back to the headboard and laptop on his lap, glasses perched low on his nose. There is surprisingly little news on the death, the shooting covered by a handful of newspapers, the actual name only published in two news channels. A few tabloids kept the buzz going for a while, but after the funeral, things went quiet. Jared hasn’t really talked about it publicly either, his team just sending out a letter demanding justice.
Jensen’s sort of perplexed, he’d thought a politician’s daughter being shot would be a much bigger deal than this. He surfs through photos, pictures of Jared with his then-girlfriend Megan, their marriage, Megan pregnant with Ali, Jared’s blinding smile with his hand on his wife’s baby-bump. The first officialpics of Ali, an infant wrapped in a baby-pink towel, Ali growing up through the years. It’s all very public, right up until the point when Megan got diagnosed with cancer, and died only three months later. Since then, Jared has kept Ali a little more protected, a bit more to himself. Now she’s beneath the ground, covered in dirt. There is exactly one picture of the dead body circulated in the media.
Jensen sighs out a long breath and glances at the little time icon at the corner of the screen. 3.23 AM< peers up at him. Shit, his eyes are aching and his head throbs, and when he moves to put the laptop down, his back pops dangerously. “Get a grip Ackles, you’re not 20 anymore” he grumps and goes to sleep. The baby-bump picture stays in his eyelids for a little while.
Throughout the whole week, Jensen watches those pictures again and again, even saves a few on his phone. He figures this is his brain processing the information that he killed a human, that the human was loved and cherished. Well, what to do, it’s not like he kills people for fun! it’s his job, it pays his bills.
This time when he sees Jared in the park, sitting on the same bench, he’s prepared for the onslaught of images. He ignores those, takes a breath and jogs, jogs to exactly where Jared’s sitting and pauses. Wipes the sweat on his forehead, looks around, then smiles at Jared.
“Hey man, mind sharing your water?”
Jared looks up a bit startled, blinks, then hands Jensen the bottle. “Thanks” Jensen takes big gulps and realizes that he’s actually pretty thirsty. “Forgot to grab mine. Not much of a jogger” Jared just takes the bottle when Jensen holds it out, doesn’t say anything. Continues throwing a ball for Hurley to fetch.
Jensen shrugs and sits down on the other end of the bench. “Nice mutt you got”
“His name’s Hurley” it’s the first time he hears Jared’s voice. He has to admit, Jared has a real nice voice.
He’s still looking somewhere distant, and Jensen follows his line of sight to see the same children that were playing there last week. The look in Jared’s eyes tightens something in Jensen’s chest. Guilt, his brain supplies unhelpfully.
“Jensen” he says and holds his hand out. Jared finally turns to look at him, glances at his outstretched hand and takes it. “Jared” he replies, then gets up, whistles Hurley to follow him, and leaves. Jensen watches his retreating back. He seems to be doing that a lot, lately.
The picture that the internet has is bloody. Dark web has a lot more pictures of the crime scene. Apparently, Jared had put in a lot of effort to protect his daughter’s corpse from the media. And Alibeing a minor and the scene being on school grounds made it easier for him to do. The only pic on the news channels is the one released by the police; blurred out and covered up.
The pics in the dark web are a whole different thing though. They’re graphic, gross, and bloody. The body of the lifeless little girl lies limp on the grass, soaked red. Jensen knows exactly where the bullet pierced her skin because he’s very good at his aims, though he cant’s see the tiny hole because the entire white uniform shirt is stained. She lied there lifeless for about 20 minutes, bystanders holding the nanny, Genevieve, away from her. The pics in which Jared reaches the crime scene are hard to watch even for a contract killer like Jensen, and that’s when the pictures also stop, which means cops sent the rogue journalists away. Jared in those handful of pictures is such a ball of misery that Jensen flips his laptop close and sighs. He needs a change, feeling sad for his victim is not healthy. He scoofs at the thought. “right, healthy. And I’m talking to myself.”
He grabs two beers from the fridge and settles into the couch. His burger and fries are sitting on the
coffee table still. Grabbing the remote and flipping channels until he finds a crappy show, he unwraps the burger and takes a bite, shifts around, tries to find a comfortable position. The show is extremely boring. Too boring to even make fun of the bad quality. His eyes keep glancing towards his phone, where pictures of a little girl sitting on her father’s shoulders and giggling so big that the sound is almost audible through the image sits among pictures and information about chemicals to poison the said father. Jensen throws his burger in the trashcan because the ketchup was reminding him about too young blood spilled on a pavement.
Jared isn’t on the bench. Jensen frowns, he’s sure he’d seen Hurley running around with a red frisbee< clutched in his mouth. He sits down and waits. Red frisbee. The color is starting to bother him recently, making his eyes splotchy and his head ache whenever he sees dark red.
Blood red.
The client calls him at 8.11 pm. Jensen is in the kitchen making pasta, chopping onions into tiny cubes and humming softly under his breath, when his phone chimes. Huffing, he wipes his hands with a kitchen towel and picks up the device. The call doesn’t go all that well. Two weeks he’s been here, and he has little to no progress to report, keeps getting distracted by a tiny face popping up in his brain every time he tries to come up with strategies. But his client is not his boss. So he just tells them that he’s working, will inform once he starts the doses, and hangs up. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t worried though, lying to others won’t erase the fact that he’s not playing his best game at the moment. Get your head out of your ass Ackles, he tells himself.
Finishing off the onions, he starts chopping some basils, and the knife slips and nicks his thumb. It’s a small cut, and Jensen starts to instinctively suck his thumb into his mouth but can’t. A thin trickle of blood is flowing from the gap in his skin, its red covering up his fingerprint. There was a lot of this same color on Ali’s body, all over her little chest and stomach and tiny fingers. The gap in the skin was round, the bullet piercing straight through her pink baby-clean lungs. He knows this because he’s seeing it rightnow, the bullet leaving his revolver with a strong pushback, travelling silently through the air and hitting square in the chest. Bullseye. Except for the fact that it wasn’t a cardboard cutout that got torn apart. It was an eight years old girl, with brown eyes and dimple on the left cheek and two pigtails in her black hair, a tooth missing in her smile and hands holding on to her caretaker. She was breathing the exact same air as Jensen was, until Jensen tore her lungs apart; thick, warm blood, just as red as Jensen’s own, gushing through the pore.
Jensen sucks in a gasping breath and drops the knife, holds on to the counter as a wave of nausea rolls through him. A drop of blood drops from his finger and splashes onto the counter with a plop. He’s going to be sick.
Twenty minutes later, after he’s gagged his stomach out into the toilet, taken a quick shower, rubbed his hands clean off any color and wrapped the offending cut up, he goes to bed. He’s lost appetite, just gulps down some water and slips under the covers. No amount of twisting and turning gets him a comfortable position; the pillow feels lumpy and his neck throbs. He can’t keep his eyes closed for long because he keeps seeing red. Thick, clotted, caked up red on green grass and black asphalt and white shirt. Sleep doesn’t come until the sun comes up.
He’s a total mess in the morning, and his head swerves dangerously when he stands up. He should
definitely spend the day in bed. Instead, he forces down an apple and some Tylenol, puts on his jogging shoes and goes to the park.
Jared’s there, of course he is. There’s nobody in his home to keep him occupied. Jensen goes straight to the bench and drops down on it. This time when he asks for the water bottle, he’s not pretending. His throat and mouth are dry as paper. He grabs the water bottle Jared offers and gulps down water like a madman. Jared, the usually distracted and staring into oblivion Jared, frowns worriedly at him and shifts closer. “Hey man, you alright?’
“I’m Jensen” Jensen says, looks at Jared’s eyes. They’re hazel. A mix of at least four different colors woven intricately together but every single one clearly visible. Jared has dimples on both his cheeks. Ali had gotten half his genes. ‘Beautiful’ he thinks.
“Jensen? You don’t have asthma, do you?” Jared’s worried frown deepens and he puts a hand on Jensen’s back, the calming heat of it seeping through Jensen’s tee. “I don’t feel so good” Jensen gasps, and passes out, his head cradled in the same hands that carried Ali’s lifeless body into the ambulance.
He wakes up sometimes later in an unfamiliar place, and panics because he can’t move. His arms and legs and head feel like lead, pushing him down into the bed and refusing to move. “Hey” comes a voice.
“you’re awake” the owner of the voice comes into view. It’s a middle aged brunette, with sharp features but a kind smile.“Where am I?” In his entire 35 years of life, he’s never woken up in a place he consciously didn’t choose to fall asleep in.
The woman comes closer and leans down, touches his forehead. “You had a panic attack at the park Jensen. And Jared brought you home, because you told him his name but not your address.”
Home?! He’s is Jared’s HOME??
“Hey. HEY! Jensen? No need to panic okay? You’re fine now. You’re safe, I’m doctor Stevens. You’re gonna be okay, now, breath”
Jensen screws his eyes shut and hopes this is just another nightmare. He’s had a lot of those these past few days. Dreams where he’s in the room full of toys, walls painted pink and blue, a father tucking his little girl in. Then there’s a small click and a scream. Ear splitting scream. And then quiet.
“Jensen?” he knows this voice; this is Jared’s voice. He forces his heart down to a dull pounding and wills his eyes to open. Jared’s leaning over him, hazel eyes still clouded with worry. “Hey, you’re alright. You passed out man, so I brought you here.” Jared explains, as if Jensen’s not the predator here. “I hope you don’t mind? I’ll drop you off at your place if you want, but….I need the address”
“I’m okay”
The relief that instantly clears Jared’s eyes stings Jensen, makes him want to pass out again. He doesn’t though; he sits up, talks to Dr. Stevens ‘call me Emma’, tells her that this is the first time he’s had a panic attack (seriously? How and when did he turn into a chick?) and agrees to rest here until the meds stop making him wobbly. Jared and Emma leave the room and leave Jensen alone after that.
This is so not how he thought he’d get into this house. And seriously, how can Jared be so careless! He’s a politician and his daughter got killed and people are paying Jensen to get his head on a platter and he’s bringing random strangers from streets home? And leaving them unsupervised in his home? Where the hell is that security detail anyway; Jared is an idiot.
That’s exactly what Jensen tells Jared when Jared comes back in to check on him “What” Jared’s so surprised that he kind of chokes on a smile.
“You’re an idiot, a careless idiot. And your security team needs an upgrade because they’re clearly dumb” Jensen would be worried about how he’s lecturing Jared about safety, but at the moment all he can think about is how there are people out there wanting to kill Jared. “I brought you here, while you were unconscious. My guards wouldn’t stop me.” That people is him.
“Well they at least should’ve checked! And shouldn’t leave you alone with me!”
Jared frowns again and sighs, sits down on the foot of the bed, right next to Jensen’s foot. If he moved his foot a couple inches, he could be touching Jared. “Okay, it’s kind of strange that a stranger brought you home and you’re worried about the stranger’s safety instead of your own. But that’s not the thing to worry about right now. How are you feeling?” Jared looks so sincere, as if the health of a person he just met at a park really matters. Maybe it does, after all, this stranger killed his only child.Guilt, sudden and ruthless, makes Jensen want to hide from Jared’s gaze. He can’t though, because in this dim light, Jared’s eyes take on a deep shade of grey, with flecks of yellow and blue blurred together.
They help Jensen forget the red and calms him down. “I’m alright. Just got stressed, I guess. I mean, moving in and work and jogging are all kind of stressful activities” Jensen smiles lightly.
“Yeah, they are. Anyway, I’m Jared Padalecki, but I guess you already know that, and dinner’s ready. You wanna come downstairs or want me to send it here?” Jensen blinks. This is absolutely not happening.
What the actual hell?! He thinks about how he doesn’t have the little bottle of chemical with him, how easy it would be to pour some in right now.
“Uh, no. I’m okay now. I really should get going.”
Jared’s driver drops Jensen off at his door an hour later; after Jensen’s had dinner and has the meds he needs and has exchanged phone numbers with Jared so that Jared can check up on him. This must be the most ironic chain of events in the history of contract killing.
The house is cold, quiet and unwelcoming. Jensen suddenly feels ridiculously lonely. He’s lived alone since he was 15, has always welcomed the silence. Tonight, it gnaws at him like ice shards. He goes back to his laptop and stares some more at those images. He really shouldn’t, and he honestly doesn’t even< want to. But he can’t help it, transfixed by Jared’s huge hand cradling a baby-bump. Those hands had held him up today, but the smile and overflowing joy was missing. It would probably always be missing, since both the baby and the stomach that held it are gone. Jared is alone now, just as alone as Jensen.
Jared calls him at exactly 9 am the next morning, and apologizes for waking Jensen up. “No, I needed to get up anyway.”
“It’s just…. I know you don’t have asthma, and Emma told me that you’ll be fine, but…”
“But?”
“My daughter, Alison, she had asthma. And one time it got really bad and she fainted, just like you did. It kind of freaked me out.” Jensen has nothing. He just sits there numb, can feel his vision blur with salt water and can’t do anything about it. Jared mistakes his silence for disinterest and apologizes again for waking Jensen up again before hanging up. He’s wrong. So, so wrong that Jensen laughs out loud and keeps laughing until his stomach hurts and tears stream down his face. Keeps laughing until he can’t breathe and sobs wreck through his body; ugly, loud, snotty and painful. He hurts somewhere deep, somewhere unreachable and hollow.
When the sobs finally subside and he can suck in air again, he buries himself into the pillows and spends the whole day in bed, doesn’t get up until images of red wet liquid get too much for him to handle, and heaves drily into the toilet, nothing but bitter bile coming out. He calls Jared in the evening.
“I wanted to thank you, you know, for... yeah”
“You don’t sound so good. Are you okay?” “Fine. I’m fine, just groggy.”
The face looking back at him from the mirror is wrecked. Eyes red rimmed, swollen, dark circles almost purple around his eyes. A stark contrast to the rest of his face which is so pale that his veins are visible. His hair is oily and sticky, four days’ worth of beard making him look like a caveman.
He looks exactly like Jared would look after a couple of doses of his poison.
The next morning, he’s already on the bench with a water bottle in his lap when Hurley comes barking and bouncing, Jared a figure haloed by sunlight behind him. “You look better” Jared says when he sits down. It’s true; Jensen made sure he didn’t look like death before coming here, Jared’s already had enough death in his life, he doesn’t need more.
“I should thank a certain politician for that” Jensen replies, and miraculously, Jared smiles. It’s not a big, bright one, but it’s a smile. Jensen has a few ideas about why that fills his stomach with butterflies.
The mornings quickly become Jensen’s highlight of the day. Not that Jared’s there every day, in fact, Jared’s not there more often than not, gone away into one town visit or another. But Jensen’s there, sitting on the empty bench and letting the breeze flow through him. And on some mornings, Jensen just watches Jared from afar, watches him watch parents play with their kids and the glassy shine of his eyes, watches him pet Hurley like a mother pets her child. Those days, he doesn’t interrupt.
The other days though, when Jared seems lost and distracted and not quite alive, Jensen intrudes. He digs little holes through the air and sneaks into Jared’s life, makes him smile with stupid jokes and little sentences. Each moment that he pulls Jared a little towards himself, he goes a little bit further from himself. Forgets a little more about the chemical that may or may not have an expiring date.
He even meets Genevieve. That’s an unfortunate event honestly. Because when Jared asked if Jensen
was free to come over for dinner, Jensen assumed he meant only them. When he reaches, he finds out
that Jared meant a thanksgiving dinner, with other guests.
Alright, so maybe in all his other activities (read having nightmares, staring at images he should not be looking at, apologizing to ghosts, drinking, and…well, falling for Jared) he’s forgotten to look at the calendar okay? It’s not like he has a job, so sue him. It doesn’t matter anyway, because he has very little to thank for. So yeah, He’s surprised when he sees Genevieve. He remembers her scream that he’dheard first hand, and ridiculously, he feels caught. Like she’ll look at him any moment and recognize him, call him out for killing her little girl.
But he’s quickly distracted from that because the other person Jared introduces him to is Misha. Misha Collins, Jared’s best friend. Misha Collins, Jensen’s client. He actually looks happy to see Jensen there in Jared’s home, like he was expecting Jensen in Jared’s thanksgiving dinner.
There’s not much festivity going on, just the four of them quietly eating the food Jared’s housekeeper serves them. Genevieve keeps glancing nervously at Jared, trying to make halted conversations, like sh expects Jared to blow up at the single wrong word. Afterwards, she corners Jensen in the kitchen.
“Nice to meet you” she says conversationally while uncapping a beer bottle. “Jared’s been better since he started talking about you. I take it that you know about Ali?” she adds, lines of upset dimming her made up face.
“Yeah, I do. I never talked about it to Jared though.” Jensen says and leans back against the counter with fake nonchalance. She likes Jared. He can tell. He’s not sure how he feels about it.
“Whatever you’ve been talking about, it’s been good for him. Thanks for that.”
Jensen smiles, feels extremely fond and can’t help himself. “Where is she?”
Genevieve regards him thoughtfully for a few moments, and finds whatever it is she was looking for.
She gives him the name of the cemetery and the location of the headstone, asks him to not tell Jared about it, and leaves.
When Misha hugs Jared at the door, Jensen balls his hands into fists, so hard that his knuckles ache when he lets go and there are little red half-moons in his palm even minutes after Misha’s gone.
“Thanks Jared. I had fun tonight” he says, and means it. Huh, so he does have something to be thankful for after all.
Jared scoofs. “Sure, that was a lotta fun. Sitting in a table and drowning in pity.”
“Yes, it was. Far better than sitting home alone with booze. Lot better than I’ve had in a long time.” He can tell that Jared reads the truth in his words because he smiles. At the door, Jensen bypasses the hand Jared offers him and gets on his toes to hug him instead. It’s partly to erase out any trace of Misha off of Jared, and partly because he’s helpless. Can’t fight the thread that has a hook in his heart and tugs him towards the 6’5” body of muscles, heat and sadness, soft brown hair and rapid beating heart. It’s extremely hard to peel himself off before Jared gets uncomfortable, and say goodbye.
That’s the reason he startles when a car honks at him from around the corner. He’s not surprised though, calmly climbs into the back seat and stares ahead. Misha doesn’t need to ask for his address because he was the one who arranged the apartment for Jensen. “I see you’ve covered a lot of ground huh. Jared doesn’t invite over people he’s known for years! Got ass thirsty after all.” Misha smirks in aleery way, makes Jensen want to punch him. “Hasn’t fallen sick yet though. How long does it take for your juice to start working?”
Jensen wants to tell him. Scream at his face that he won’t kill Jared, and kill the bastard for even thinking about it, for making Jensen shoot that bullet. But Misha’s not alone in the car and Jensen’s not in the state to be able to take on two guys. Plus, they’re probably carrying weapons. He can’t say it and risk his life either. Because he’s disposable, easily replaceable. He has no doubts that as soon as Misha get a clue of what Jensen’s thinking, he’ll off Jensen and hire someone else. Someone who’ll not hesitate to cut Jared into pieces.
Even out of practice, Jensen is a contract killer. So, the mask comes easy to him. He grits his teeth and plays the role of himself from a few months ago; tells Misha exactly what he expects to hear, with exactly enough venom in his voice to make Misha believe him.
It leaves him sick afterwards, taste of bile replacing the expensive champagne he had with dinner. He feels trapped. What’s he supposed to do now?
“What do I do now?” is what he asks the ground that holds Ali in it. The tombstone is blue marble, “LOVE, ALI” inscribed in white on it. He stands there but doesn’t take in any details, hands in his pockets and eyes locked on the yellowish drying grass. When he can’t stand anymore, he sits down cross legged at the foot of the small grave and touches it reverently. Feels like he’s touching the actual dead body; cold and hard and lifeless under his palm. He doesn’t say the apologies that want to bubble up his throat and fall from his lips. Jensen doesn’t deserve to ask for forgiveness, doesn’t deserve for his pain to be heard by the innocent soul he wrenched out of its body. He just sits there and sobs and asks over and over about what he should do, how to protect Jared from ending up right here too. Tears fall down his nose, mix with snot and pitter-patter onto the ground below, dry on this cheeks and throat and chest.
His hand, when he brings it up to wipe his cheeks, is soaked red; both of his hands are stained with blood. Blood from Ali; Jared’s blood. Blood from other people whose names he can’t clearly recall. Blood from his own heart where it’s torn apart and bleeding sluggishly. Jared’s name and guilt pulsing through his veins and mixing together makes Jensen struggle for oxygen.
He stumbles into his apartment and right into the shower, rips his cloths from his body, leaving a trail from the door to the shower stall, and steps into the freezing water. Blindly grabbing soap and scrubber, he desperately rubs his hands and arms and chest. Scrubs everywhere he can reach. The blood refuses to leave though. Its sickening red stays right there even though the skin underneath is rubbed raw and pink. He keeps rubbing until his fingers are so numb that the scrubber slips, then stands there under the cold water as it hits his body like shards of glass. His skin is still stained red hours later and it keeps him awake and makes him scared of the dark, of the shadows.
Jared’s not in the park the next morning. Jensen sits on the bench for as long as he can. When it’s clear that Jared won’t be here, he starts walking in Jared’s direction even before his brain recognizes the road. Seeing Jared’s face when he answers the door is finally when Jensen can breathe. Jared frowns and reaches for him and Jensen grabs back gratefully. He holds onto Jared’s hand even after they drop down on the couch. “Jensen? Breathe man. Hey, hey you’re alright. You’ll be okay” Jared says and gets up.
“NO! no please” he clutches the hand desperately. Can’t let him slip away. Won’t.
“Hey, it’s okay” Jared says as he gets down on his knees between Jensen’s legs. He doesn’t pull back the hand Jensen’s clinging to, instead puts his other hand on Jensen’s shoulder, pulls him a little bit forward so that the weight of his ribs isn’t crushing Jensen’s lungs anymore. “Right here, I’m not going anywhere okay?” Jared says. The worried waver in his voice makes Jensen feel more guilty, makes him suck in air so that he can tell Jared not to worry.
He nods and keeps breathing until his lungs stop spasming and his heart moves down from his throat and into the hollow of his chest. Jared guides him through it, breathes with him. His eyes look so green today. Jensen looks down and finds exactly what he was expecting; Jared is wearing a green t-shirt, and his eyes have taken on the exact shade of green from below. They’re a mesmerizing pair of eyes. Jensen stares in them and they stare right back at him and Jared keeps murmuring soft words until Jensen has settled into his own skin again.
After making sure that Jensen is getting enough oxygen, Jared gets up off the floor. He gets Jensen some water and sits close to Jensen on the couch. Jensen is still sweating, and his heart is still pounding, but he isn’t drowning anymore. He feels exhausted. He IS exhausted. Hasn’t slept for days and the last thing he ate was the dinner right here. Jared’s warmth is such an alluring presence that he’s pulled towards it like a metal to magnet. Jared doesn’t push him away when Jensen rests his head on his shoulder and breathes in deep and long. He tucks the tired man into his chest and lets him sleep.
It’s hours later when Jensen wakes up. He’s not sitting up anymore. Instead, he’s lying on his side with
his head propped up on a pillow on the armrest. There’s a comforter covering him and someone even took off his shoes. He’s so comfortable that his eyes start drooping again. He is on the verge of dozing off when soft footsteps approach him.
He keeps his eyes closed and prays that it’s Jared and not one of the house-keepers.
The subject of his prayer answers him. “Don’t fall asleep. Jensen? I saw you wake up.”
Jensen doesn’t want to. “Uh huh. You have to. Gotta get something in your stomach before you start digesting your organs” That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He’s already decomposing on the inside. Might as well digest himself and get some nutrition.
They get a lot closer after that. Of course, “closer” doesn’t necessarily mean the kind of closer Jensen’s heart whines for. No, closer means that Jared calls a bit more to check up on him, sends his driver over with food whenever he can, and talks a little more when they’re in the park. He lets Jensen touch him a bit more too; a rub of shoulders, lingering handshakes, pats in the back. Somehow, he knows just how much Jensen depends on him. Knows without knowing that the moments he spends with Jensen are the only moments that Jensen isn’t killing himself.
Obviously, Misha calls again. He’s been paying Jensen’s bills for months and there’s no sick Jared to show for it. He demands for Jensen to hurry the fuck up, tells him that the legal documents need to start printed this year.
Jensen knows exactly what to do.
At around nine thirty that night, he knocks on Jared’s door for one last time. He knows how he looks, took a long time making sure he looked good, looked like the Jensen from before: bright eyes, healthy clean skin, good clothes and all. Jared should remember him as this Jensen. The door opens to reveal Genevieve, and Jensen is instantly disappointed. He’d wanted tonight to be just them. But, well, there’s nothing he can do now.
“You look good” Genevieve comments. She looks him up and down with appreciation in her eyes and pulls him inside. Jensen’s whole body tingles.
He follows her to the living area where Jared’s sitting on the couch with files spread all around. He looks so good wearing a soft grey V-neck and black sweats, easy and comfortable in his skin and in his world.
Jensen envies him. Loves him so much that his heart threatens to jump through his breastbone and fall down at Jared’s feet and beg him for forgiveness, for punishment. For redemption.
Jared looks up at him and smiles. A real smile. And if Jensen had thought he loved him before, it’s nothing compared to what he feels at that exact moment. In that space where Jared’s soft and lit up and smiling and nothing else exists. But no, something else does exist. And that something else is much heavier than whatever Jensen could ever be.
“I killed her.”
Jared blinks, frowns. He has no idea about what Jensen is talking about.
“I shot her for thirty thousand dollars, and took seventy to kill you.”
Jared doesn’t even move. Doesn’t scream at him and ask him why or punch him or anything at all.
Genevieve does. It takes two of Jared’s useless guards to pry her off of Jensen, and by that time he’s on the floor and bleeding from more than one places. He tries his best to keep his eyes on Jared, see him for as long as he can before he can’t anymore, but it’s hard when blood falls into his eyes and mixes with tears and covers everything in red. No matter how many tears fall, the red stays right there and doesn’t let him see Jared.
**************
See, when he said he’s a true professional, he meant it. Because try as they might, the cops cannot find a single thing to tie Jensen to the four murders that he claims he did. The only murder he can prove is Ali’s one, and the contract of Jared. The phone where all of Misha Collins’ texts are is the key evidence, along with bank statements and that bottle of poison. And Jensen himself is the witness in his own trial.
He pleads guilty and begs to be hung till death. And who says miracles don’t exist when the judge gives him exactly what he wishes for?
For the first time since he saw Jared, he’s finally at peace. In exactly forty-two hours from now, this will all be over. He’ll be free of this body, these hands that killed people and these eyes that drank Jared’s blood. He won’t be responsible for them anymore.
But he doesn’t deserve this mercy, does he? Of course not. How can he be granted a vacation from the memory of Ali’s corpse, when Jared has to live with it forever? That would be unfair. But at least his eyes aren’t curtained shut this time. Jared visits his cell the night before. And he doesn’t yell at Jensen or curse at him this time either. Nope, he just looks at Jensen for a few moments, let’s Jensen look at him for those moments. Jensen thinks he might already be dead. This must be God showing him a peek of heaven, so that he can regret what he sold for money in his eternity in hell.
Ali isn’t with Jared though, neither is Megan. And that strikes Jensen wrong and makes him sad because he doesn’t want to be the reason that separates Jared from his family again. One time was one too many.
So, he lets God know that this is cruel. That God shouldn’t take Jared away from Ali just to make Jensen repent some more. God knows that he regrets enough.
Then Jared breaks Jensen’s little whimsical bubble. By throwing the pardon sheet at him. “You asked for mercy?” he asks, and Jensen recoils at the hardness in Jared’s eyes. He feels tears threaten to fall just because he put that hatred in Jared’s beautiful eyes. He opens his mouth to say that he’s sorry, but Jared beats him to it.
“I give you mercy. I give you the years that you took away from my daughter Jensen. I hope you make them count.”
The meaning of those words hit Jensen so hard that he falls to his knees. “NO! That’s not what I meant by mercy.” but Jared has already turned away.
“NO, no please” He sobs at Jared’s retreating back. “Please don’t do this to me. LET ME DIE!! JARED!!!”
Other inmates hear his pleading and his gut wrenching sobs. Jared doesn’t. Or maybe he does but doesn’t care. He leaves Jensen on the floor with the sheet of paper that will be the hooks that Jensen hangs from for his eternity in hell, the rest of his life.
Jared is crueler than God, Jensen concludes angrily.