Fic: The Seeds You Plant (Jensen/Jared)
Fandom: J2
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Rating: R (mostly for language) -- Wordcount: 3,900
Warnings: Hero!AU, mentions of violence, mild criminal activity, teen!Jared
Notes: For brokentoy who posted this and wendy who really wanted porn that sadly is not here. This is the first bit of one of the BB ideas that didn't happen but I think it stands alone. Basically, Jensen is sort of the Red Hood, Jared is sort of Tim Drake and they're both sort of Jason Todd. Somehow. (Title from the quote "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." - R. L. Stevenson)
Summary - Depending on who you ask, the Reaper is A) a criminal B) a hero C) a lunatic or D) all of the above.
Depending on who you ask, the Reaper is A) a criminal B) a hero C) a lunatic or D) all of the above. Put in a multiple choice situation, Jared would have to go with B because he figures that’s probably the biggest part of it, but D is probably closer to the truth. Then again, it really seems like there ought to be an option E because when it comes right down to it, Reaper doesn’t fit neatly into any definition.
Jared would know - he’s spent the better part of two years stalking the guy.
Ok, wait, stalking sounds bad. He’s not, like, stalking stalking. Like, he doesn’t try to steal the guys dirty underwear or analyze how his every move is really a declaration of his love for Jared; he’s not, like, into the guy. Mostly. Ok, maybe there is a small file on his computer of surveillance photos he likes to keep for his personal use. And maybe most of those pictures involve Reaper looking particularly hot and, like, sweaty and maybe turned a little bit in the direction of the camera like he’s sort of seeing the person on the other side.
But, it isn’t like he launched out on a career of high-stakes spectating-without-permission - that sounds better than stalking, right? - because he gets turned on by masked heroes. No, Jared’s in it for the cold, hard dollar-signs.
It’s not exactly like he’s got a bad thing going here, he can basically do what he wants and his uncle will either be too drunk or disinterested to notice. A lot of people have it worse than him, so Jared’s not complaining or anything, but most of his uncle’s disability check goes straight to rent and high-proof heal-all, so if he wants stuff - like food and clothes, not to mention his laptop - he’s got to come up with it on his own. The way he looks at it, it's not actually stealing if he's scamming cash off of criminals. It's just like Robin Hood, right, only the poor he gives to happens to be himself.
Technically, it's only been five years since rumors started circulating about a black-cloaked figure joining the ranks of the infamous Masks, cleaning up the city's seedy underbelly. It doesn't sound like a very long time, but it seems like forever. Jared was still living with his parents back then, so he doesn't have a frame of reference for what this part of town must have been like before they had their patron sinner, and there's a big part of his brain that just refuses to compute the idea. The Reaper is a part of the city and - probably in a lot bigger way than for most of its residents - a part of Jared. He's worked damn hard ever since he got this thing going to not remember what life was like before he had a goal pulling him out into the dead of night.
Despite the gloves, Jared’s fingers have shot right past numb and into that back-assward hot ache that comes from being too cold. The pain flares as he makes the short jump from the trash-strewn alley to the first level of the fire escape, using Mr. Pileggi’s station wagon for a little boost he doesn’t exactly need, just to save effort. Just like when Mr. Pileggi steals the newspaper out of their box downstairs every freaking morning as if Jared doesn’t know exactly who’s doing it. Poetic justice and all that shit.
It’s been an athletic sort of night - trying to keep up with a guy who views grappling guns as a viable form of transport is a hell of a lot harder than anything they put him through in P.E. - running around, trying to jump rooftops without busting his ass on a patch of black ice. Not to mention the whole post-Reaper B&E routine, climbing through windows or sneaking in kicked-down doors, digging around to find the inevitable stash of ill-gotten cash, one ear out for the sirens because Reaper always reports a drug bust or a mob takedown to the cops after he's secured the lowlifes. It's hard work.
The cold snapped earlier than he thought it would this year and he could really use a little moolah to get a new coat. Last year’s model is just not going to cut it if his shoulders get any wider; he can already hear the seams strain as he hauls his body upward.
For neither the first nor last time, he swears to himself that when he gets his own place, he’s going to find something on the first floor, none of this scaling four flights crap, as he hoists himself up the creaking, rust-rough metal ladders. One of these days they’re going to get a building inspector down here who can’t be bought off and then this thing’s actually going to get fixed.
Right after hell freezes over.
There are some advantages to being pretty tall and pretty strong for his age - guys on the street don't hassle him near as much as they did before he started bulking up to keep pace with his vigilante payday - but stealth is not among them. Getting in and out of the lock-shot window in his bedroom was a lot easier when there was a lot less of Jared to cram through the frame.
Literally the last thing he’s expecting when he tumbles to the worn-smooth parquet floor - a motherfucking vision of poise up in here - at almost four in the morning, is to find the Reaper himself, laid out on his bed. Like, seriously, fairy princesses having an orgy with talking penguins and his uncle was higher up on the likelihood scale than this. Which almost definitely means this is another wet dream. And, like, a really lame one because he’s just kind of stuck gaping in front of the open window while Reaper lays there looking like he’s held together by some combination of sex and violence specifically formulated to make Jared want to lick him and yet be totally terrified of doing so at the same time.
Actually this is a super shitty wet dream now that he thinks about it. Usually there’s at least touching.
“How long did you figure you could get away with it?”
Wow. Okay, wow. He’s heard Reaper once or twice, making a threat to some criminal before he serves up a beatdown. Usually Jared’s perched too far away to actually make out his voice clearly - gotta be inconspicuous - but those couple of times he's really heard it are lasercut into the inside of his skull and this is like, at least four times as awesome as those because now it’s quiet so he can hear every little rolling, rumbling bit of it and it’s all directed at him.
And God, Reaper looks good. Way better up close. Whatever kind of material makes up the matte black of his body-suit looks snug against his body even though there’s got to be some Kevlar or something underneath. Jared’s seen a bullet glance off that shit before. The coat - calf-length when he’s standing, made out of something that looks kind of like leather but probably is eight different kinds of fancy and special - is flared out around him on Jared’s sheets, the wide, face-hiding hood of it pushed back so the prickle of his short dark hair catches the light filtering in through the window, strong bones of his face and a full, smirking mouth highlighted hauntingly. But none of it is quite as trippy as the black domino mask and the silvery-white, emotionless lenses set into it, covering his real eyes.
Staring right at Jared.
Way too long later, he remembers there was a question.
“What? I- I didn’t… I don’t…”
The roll of Reaper’s body as he sits up - which is really just physically impossible not to watch - is fluid, a grace as effortless as the way his boots don’t make a damned sound when they touch the floor beside Jared’s bed.
“Look, kid, spare me the crap. I’ve got all the evidence right here.” He's flipping a small black tube between his gloved knuckles like gangsters do with coins in those black and white movies. A flick of his thumb at just the right moment and the thing lights up, casting an eerie blue light that gets even freakier when it makes the fingertips of Jared's gloves glow.
Jared’s eyes follow a spotty trail of the same haunting smudges to the other side of his room where a small, beat up tin box sits on top of his dresser. Not tucked safely in its booby-trapped drawer the way he left it.
He doesn’t, in fact, mean to say, “Shit! What did you-“ but he stops himself from actually bitching at the friggin’ Reaper about breaking into his piggy bank. Mostly because he's interrupted by the sound of his own name echoing down the hall in his uncle's thick slur.
Like a brick appearing in midair to smack into his forehead, it occurs to Jared that this shit is actually happening. For real. Stone cold, dead real. Trapped in a room with an armed crimefighter real. His heart goes rabid in his chest, gnashing at the inside of his ribcage.
“I mean, it’s not- I…” His mouth is hanging open on an explanation that’s not coming because the only thing scrawling across the news ticker in his head is the Reaper’s here, the Reaper’s here, the Reaper’s here. He feels like he’s about to have some kind of spazzy, fanboy aneurism.
"J'red" comes again, louder, not because his uncle's actually moved off the couch - in, like, three years - but because he's getting ticked. Reflex, he yells back, "Yeah," which is usually enough confirmation that he's not dead to get his uncle to leave him alone. It isn't until he notices the slightly wary, sizing up that Reaper's giving him that he realizes that he could, like, yell for help or something. He wonders if it says more about him or his uncle that calling out for help over the history of violence camped out in his bedroom never crossed his mind.
And really, who’s he kidding here trying to play this off? The Reaper - fuck, don’t piss yourself, Jay - wouldn’t be wasting his time here right now if he didn’t, somehow, know about what he’s been up to. Jared had thought he’d been so careful; only ever taking small, non-sequential bills, never more than a couple hundred bucks, always with gloves on. But he guesses he shouldn’t be surprised - Reaper does track down real-life, hardcore criminals for… well, not for a living, probably, since he can't think of who would sign the paychecks, but, like, professionally. It’d probably taken him like fifteen seconds to track down Jared’s whole life story.
Holy crap, the Reaper knows about him. Like actually knows Jared, personally, exists and… this would be so much less awkward if he could have either a panic attack or a massive boner instead of both at once.
“All of it?” It would kind of be nice if that hadn’t come out sounding quite so pleading and all, but Reaper doesn’t seem particularly fazed by it. People probably plead with him all the time.
“Yeah, all of it,” he says flatly, “Including that.” His nod at the thick roll of fives bulging from Jared’s pocket is barely even a nod but it zaps through Jared's body like he’s been stuck with a cattle prod.
“But, no, you can’t-“
“I can’t?” Reaper repeats, and maybe if he wasn’t tearing away Jared’s livelihood - not to mention the biggest bright spot in his life for the last few years, which seemed a lot less pathetic until he actively acknowledged it just now - Jared would spare a moment for how completely badass and terrifying it is that the Reaper is actually talking to him. “Do you get where that money comes from?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But nothing.” All of a sudden Reaper’s standing and Jared had totally underestimated how intimidating that would be in closeup. He’s not, like, crazy-tall, in fact he’s probably only an inch or two taller than Jared, but it’s like the room is to making up for that fact by shrinking down around him so Reaper’s taking up all the space; just friggin’ massive. “Now you’re going to hand over the money, and then you’re going to give me the names of everybody else who’s in on this with you and everybody you’ve told about it.”
There’s something about the way he says it that makes it seem like there’s supposed to be an incentive tacked on to the end there. Either that or Jared is hallucinating from lack of blood to the brain and medical-grade desperation. “And?”
“No and. You’re going to do this. The end.” He steps in; just one stride but he feels close now. Jared doesn’t realize he’s taken a step backward himself until his ass hits the window ledge.
“You’re not gonna hurt me,” Jared says, wishing he felt as confident about that as he sounds, “I'm not one of them.”
That’s one the rules, everybody knows it; the Reaper goes after criminals, only criminals. Some people have a problem with the way he goes after them - and how many require hospitalization after the fact - but Jared’s watched it go down and a lot of the guys Reaper takes out come into the fight with guns and knives and back-up. Jared’s always thought that just beating them to pulpy smears was pretty damn restrained of him. Slightly less so now that he’s not sure where ‘sorta-stalker who steals from pimps and dealers’ falls on the echelon of baddies. Oh god, seriously, peeing himself would be so bad. New rule: no more Big Gulps on stakeouts.
Reaper doesn’t say anything. He just stands there - how the hell does he make that so scary? - looking at Jared so hard his skin starts to itch under the weight of it.
“I… There’s no one. I never told anyone, it’s just what I do.”
There’s a chance that the way Reaper’s face moves would be his eyebrow lifting but the mask goes up above his eyebrows, so it’s hard to say. “You’re seriously going to tell me that you took all of this by yourself." He pats a slight bulge in on side of his coat-cloak thing; Jared's hard-earned scratch. "Without me ever noticing you.”
“Why would you notice me?” he shrugs, because seriously. He’s only ever managed to catch up to the Reaper when he’s doing his thing in this part of town - although given the part of town Jared lives in, that’s still pretty often - so it's not like the venue is ever totally private; there’s always some random nobodies in the vicinity. Jared’s just a regular teenager, there’s no reason anybody would look twice at him when he’s out following the Reaper, especially not the man himself.
For whatever reason that seems to throw Reaper off track. His head cocks a little to the left, taking Jared in from a different angle. Suddenly Jared is regretting being backed up against the window because that means there’s nowhere for him to go and Reaper - the fucking Reaper - is just getting closer. Really close. So close Jared can smell sharp sweat on him and somehow that seems all wrong; that this guy could do something as human as sweat, even though reasonably Jared knows that he probably really is just a guy, no matter what the thugs down dockside whisper about vengeful spirits and shit.
“How old are you?” It isn’t exactly the same voice that Reaper’s been using, just enough off that Jared’s not sure he’d recognize it if he wasn’t looking right at Reaper’s mouth when he speaks. So not the time to notice how pretty his lips are. There’s something thoughtful to how he says it, like he’s asking himself instead of Jared, but Jared still feels like he’s supposed to answer anyway.
“I’ll be 18,” he says quietly, wondering if this is what deer feel like as the headlights hurtle toward them. It’s only a tiny bit of a lie; he will be eighteen. In two and a quarter years.
Reaper’s head turns to the other side now, nothing in the set of his expression to say whether he buys the bluff or not. “And you’ve been doing this for over a year?”
“Closer to two,” Jared admits, his face turning stupidly hot all of a sudden.
“All by yourself.” If anything Reaper’s voice keeps getting softer, as though it’s slipping off into the distance while he’s still closing the space between them.
“Yeah.” Jared nods slowly, trying to figure out why his tongue just did an impression of the Sahara.
“Huh.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, huh.”
He feels a little tickle as something brushes against his shirt, looks down just in time to see the black glove covering Reaper’s hand slip upward through the darkness. It stops just shy of his face, hangs there and for this weird semi-second Jared’s sure he's about to brush back that little bit of hair that always falls down over Jared's right eye. In the time it takes for Jared’s gaze to skirt up and catch the empty opacity of Reaper’s mask-lenses, the hand switches directions and before he even realizes what’s happening, the weight of tonight's wad of cash in his pocket has disappeared.
Because Reaper is holding it instead.
“Wait, I need that,” pops out of his mouth before he has a chance to think about it, the same way his hands come up and grab Reaper’s arm. Oh shit.
He’s just barely gotten a feel of the smooth, cool material of the suit before he’s jerking away like he’s been burned. With the mask, it’s impossible to tell exactly where Reaper’s eyes are focused, but that attention-itching is back.
After a pause so long Jared’s not even sure what’s happening, the Reaper shrugs, depositing Jared’s money somewhere in the folds of his coat. He’s halfway out of the window - a lot more gracefully than Jared had come in it - when he says, “Sorry kid.”
For just a second, Jared believes him.
The fire escape squeaks a protest as it takes the extra weight of Reaper’s body and then he’s melting into the darkness, just another in the collection of long, strange shadows cast by the city lights. Jared shuts the window hard and makes it exactly one step forward before his knees pack it in and his whole body starts to shake like he’s got Mexican jumping beans in his blood.
***
Surveillance is an integral part of the job. Surveillance is the essence of survival, and if there’s one thing Jensen’s good at, it’s surviving. Therefore, it is not inappropriate to be sitting outside of his mini fan-club’s room watching over him, it’s a survival technique.
That argument might work better if the kid weren’t asleep at the moment.
Jensen doesn’t have a good explanation, alright? He didn’t have one when Jeff asked why he let the boy slide and he doesn’t have on now; he just can’t get the kid out of his head.
Maybe he missed something. There’s always the chance that there's more to the story. Not that Jensen can track down a single person who knows the little creeper well enough to pick him out of a lineup, let alone any apparent gang affiliations… but still. He could have been working for someone, using the money as a cover or his own personal bonus. But if he was going to try and make a move against Jensen, he’s had opportunities. He doesn’t have any obvious skills that suggest he’s been trained to fight, though he must be pretty good if he’s been able to keep up with Jensen all this time. And there’s always that minute but unavoidable chance that he could know. The Big Secret. Who Jensen is.
Except Jensen doesn’t think so. It doesn’t make sense, and he doesn’t know why, but his instincts tell him to trust the kid. And that right there? That’s maybe the most dangerous thing of all about the Jared Tristan Padalecki.
He’s dug up every scrap of information that’s out there on the boy; every record, every news clipping, every rumor about anyone with a vaguely similar name that the internet could provide. The story is almost as tragic as it is fascinating. Orphaned at eleven by a car wreck, shipped off to live with his war-vet uncle in the city. Before then he’d won a couple of local trophies for spelling bees, one for his pee-wee league basketball team, first place at his school science fair. After, he dropped off the map, school records the only thing to prove he even still existed. His grades fell, hovered somewhere in the mid-range, but Jensen doubts it’s because he’s not smart enough. The magnetic lock mechanism on the drawer hiding his stash was some serious makeshift craftsmanship. He’s clever. And ballsy. Kid has major balls.
Which is exactly the sort of thing Jensen should not be thinking about because the kid’s balls are fifteen fucking years old. 'I’ll be eighteen', Jensen’s freckled ass. And hadn’t that been a close one? Jensen had, just for a second there, almost thought about… but no, because the kid’s a kid and also the Reaper does not make out with people of questionable-intent who follow him around and steal shit from the scum he takes down. Even if they are cute and passionate and smart and sort of adorably flustered just from being in the same room as Jensen and have huge brass balls that make them think that it’s a good idea to try and talk the Reaper out of justifiably taking their purloined gains.
Jared turns over in his sleep, nuzzling his face deeper into the pillow. One of his gangly legs hangs off of the too-small mattress, trailing a tail of untucked sheet. He looks peaceful; all soft and warm and relaxed. Jensen hasn’t slept that easily in years - ever maybe.
You know, it’s not as if fifteen is that much younger. Really he’s closer to sixteen which would only make it… a six year age difference. In another ten years that might not be such a big deal but it’s still incredibly jail-baity now. This is going to be a problem.
Ok, step one to avoid the massive cluster-fuck that this has the potential to turn into - stop being the pervert watching teenage boys sleep.
Jensen pulls out of his crouch - at least he'd gotten to enjoy that nice quad stretch for a while - and resettles the heavy coat on his shoulders. The fire escape outside of the kid's bedroom groans when his weight shifts and Jensen stops himself in the middle of considering how much of that polymer of Misha's he'd need to make it more stable because he does not need to be treating it like something he's going to be using on a regular basis. Three nights in a row is the absolute limit. The end.
Alright, on to step two of the plan - go out, find some crime to stop, and forget all about Jared Tristan Padalecki.
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Rating: R (mostly for language) -- Wordcount: 3,900
Warnings: Hero!AU, mentions of violence, mild criminal activity, teen!Jared
Notes: For brokentoy who posted this and wendy who really wanted porn that sadly is not here. This is the first bit of one of the BB ideas that didn't happen but I think it stands alone. Basically, Jensen is sort of the Red Hood, Jared is sort of Tim Drake and they're both sort of Jason Todd. Somehow. (Title from the quote "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." - R. L. Stevenson)
Summary - Depending on who you ask, the Reaper is A) a criminal B) a hero C) a lunatic or D) all of the above.
Depending on who you ask, the Reaper is A) a criminal B) a hero C) a lunatic or D) all of the above. Put in a multiple choice situation, Jared would have to go with B because he figures that’s probably the biggest part of it, but D is probably closer to the truth. Then again, it really seems like there ought to be an option E because when it comes right down to it, Reaper doesn’t fit neatly into any definition.
Jared would know - he’s spent the better part of two years stalking the guy.
Ok, wait, stalking sounds bad. He’s not, like, stalking stalking. Like, he doesn’t try to steal the guys dirty underwear or analyze how his every move is really a declaration of his love for Jared; he’s not, like, into the guy. Mostly. Ok, maybe there is a small file on his computer of surveillance photos he likes to keep for his personal use. And maybe most of those pictures involve Reaper looking particularly hot and, like, sweaty and maybe turned a little bit in the direction of the camera like he’s sort of seeing the person on the other side.
But, it isn’t like he launched out on a career of high-stakes spectating-without-permission - that sounds better than stalking, right? - because he gets turned on by masked heroes. No, Jared’s in it for the cold, hard dollar-signs.
It’s not exactly like he’s got a bad thing going here, he can basically do what he wants and his uncle will either be too drunk or disinterested to notice. A lot of people have it worse than him, so Jared’s not complaining or anything, but most of his uncle’s disability check goes straight to rent and high-proof heal-all, so if he wants stuff - like food and clothes, not to mention his laptop - he’s got to come up with it on his own. The way he looks at it, it's not actually stealing if he's scamming cash off of criminals. It's just like Robin Hood, right, only the poor he gives to happens to be himself.
Technically, it's only been five years since rumors started circulating about a black-cloaked figure joining the ranks of the infamous Masks, cleaning up the city's seedy underbelly. It doesn't sound like a very long time, but it seems like forever. Jared was still living with his parents back then, so he doesn't have a frame of reference for what this part of town must have been like before they had their patron sinner, and there's a big part of his brain that just refuses to compute the idea. The Reaper is a part of the city and - probably in a lot bigger way than for most of its residents - a part of Jared. He's worked damn hard ever since he got this thing going to not remember what life was like before he had a goal pulling him out into the dead of night.
Despite the gloves, Jared’s fingers have shot right past numb and into that back-assward hot ache that comes from being too cold. The pain flares as he makes the short jump from the trash-strewn alley to the first level of the fire escape, using Mr. Pileggi’s station wagon for a little boost he doesn’t exactly need, just to save effort. Just like when Mr. Pileggi steals the newspaper out of their box downstairs every freaking morning as if Jared doesn’t know exactly who’s doing it. Poetic justice and all that shit.
It’s been an athletic sort of night - trying to keep up with a guy who views grappling guns as a viable form of transport is a hell of a lot harder than anything they put him through in P.E. - running around, trying to jump rooftops without busting his ass on a patch of black ice. Not to mention the whole post-Reaper B&E routine, climbing through windows or sneaking in kicked-down doors, digging around to find the inevitable stash of ill-gotten cash, one ear out for the sirens because Reaper always reports a drug bust or a mob takedown to the cops after he's secured the lowlifes. It's hard work.
The cold snapped earlier than he thought it would this year and he could really use a little moolah to get a new coat. Last year’s model is just not going to cut it if his shoulders get any wider; he can already hear the seams strain as he hauls his body upward.
For neither the first nor last time, he swears to himself that when he gets his own place, he’s going to find something on the first floor, none of this scaling four flights crap, as he hoists himself up the creaking, rust-rough metal ladders. One of these days they’re going to get a building inspector down here who can’t be bought off and then this thing’s actually going to get fixed.
Right after hell freezes over.
There are some advantages to being pretty tall and pretty strong for his age - guys on the street don't hassle him near as much as they did before he started bulking up to keep pace with his vigilante payday - but stealth is not among them. Getting in and out of the lock-shot window in his bedroom was a lot easier when there was a lot less of Jared to cram through the frame.
Literally the last thing he’s expecting when he tumbles to the worn-smooth parquet floor - a motherfucking vision of poise up in here - at almost four in the morning, is to find the Reaper himself, laid out on his bed. Like, seriously, fairy princesses having an orgy with talking penguins and his uncle was higher up on the likelihood scale than this. Which almost definitely means this is another wet dream. And, like, a really lame one because he’s just kind of stuck gaping in front of the open window while Reaper lays there looking like he’s held together by some combination of sex and violence specifically formulated to make Jared want to lick him and yet be totally terrified of doing so at the same time.
Actually this is a super shitty wet dream now that he thinks about it. Usually there’s at least touching.
“How long did you figure you could get away with it?”
Wow. Okay, wow. He’s heard Reaper once or twice, making a threat to some criminal before he serves up a beatdown. Usually Jared’s perched too far away to actually make out his voice clearly - gotta be inconspicuous - but those couple of times he's really heard it are lasercut into the inside of his skull and this is like, at least four times as awesome as those because now it’s quiet so he can hear every little rolling, rumbling bit of it and it’s all directed at him.
And God, Reaper looks good. Way better up close. Whatever kind of material makes up the matte black of his body-suit looks snug against his body even though there’s got to be some Kevlar or something underneath. Jared’s seen a bullet glance off that shit before. The coat - calf-length when he’s standing, made out of something that looks kind of like leather but probably is eight different kinds of fancy and special - is flared out around him on Jared’s sheets, the wide, face-hiding hood of it pushed back so the prickle of his short dark hair catches the light filtering in through the window, strong bones of his face and a full, smirking mouth highlighted hauntingly. But none of it is quite as trippy as the black domino mask and the silvery-white, emotionless lenses set into it, covering his real eyes.
Staring right at Jared.
Way too long later, he remembers there was a question.
“What? I- I didn’t… I don’t…”
The roll of Reaper’s body as he sits up - which is really just physically impossible not to watch - is fluid, a grace as effortless as the way his boots don’t make a damned sound when they touch the floor beside Jared’s bed.
“Look, kid, spare me the crap. I’ve got all the evidence right here.” He's flipping a small black tube between his gloved knuckles like gangsters do with coins in those black and white movies. A flick of his thumb at just the right moment and the thing lights up, casting an eerie blue light that gets even freakier when it makes the fingertips of Jared's gloves glow.
Jared’s eyes follow a spotty trail of the same haunting smudges to the other side of his room where a small, beat up tin box sits on top of his dresser. Not tucked safely in its booby-trapped drawer the way he left it.
He doesn’t, in fact, mean to say, “Shit! What did you-“ but he stops himself from actually bitching at the friggin’ Reaper about breaking into his piggy bank. Mostly because he's interrupted by the sound of his own name echoing down the hall in his uncle's thick slur.
Like a brick appearing in midair to smack into his forehead, it occurs to Jared that this shit is actually happening. For real. Stone cold, dead real. Trapped in a room with an armed crimefighter real. His heart goes rabid in his chest, gnashing at the inside of his ribcage.
“I mean, it’s not- I…” His mouth is hanging open on an explanation that’s not coming because the only thing scrawling across the news ticker in his head is the Reaper’s here, the Reaper’s here, the Reaper’s here. He feels like he’s about to have some kind of spazzy, fanboy aneurism.
"J'red" comes again, louder, not because his uncle's actually moved off the couch - in, like, three years - but because he's getting ticked. Reflex, he yells back, "Yeah," which is usually enough confirmation that he's not dead to get his uncle to leave him alone. It isn't until he notices the slightly wary, sizing up that Reaper's giving him that he realizes that he could, like, yell for help or something. He wonders if it says more about him or his uncle that calling out for help over the history of violence camped out in his bedroom never crossed his mind.
And really, who’s he kidding here trying to play this off? The Reaper - fuck, don’t piss yourself, Jay - wouldn’t be wasting his time here right now if he didn’t, somehow, know about what he’s been up to. Jared had thought he’d been so careful; only ever taking small, non-sequential bills, never more than a couple hundred bucks, always with gloves on. But he guesses he shouldn’t be surprised - Reaper does track down real-life, hardcore criminals for… well, not for a living, probably, since he can't think of who would sign the paychecks, but, like, professionally. It’d probably taken him like fifteen seconds to track down Jared’s whole life story.
Holy crap, the Reaper knows about him. Like actually knows Jared, personally, exists and… this would be so much less awkward if he could have either a panic attack or a massive boner instead of both at once.
“All of it?” It would kind of be nice if that hadn’t come out sounding quite so pleading and all, but Reaper doesn’t seem particularly fazed by it. People probably plead with him all the time.
“Yeah, all of it,” he says flatly, “Including that.” His nod at the thick roll of fives bulging from Jared’s pocket is barely even a nod but it zaps through Jared's body like he’s been stuck with a cattle prod.
“But, no, you can’t-“
“I can’t?” Reaper repeats, and maybe if he wasn’t tearing away Jared’s livelihood - not to mention the biggest bright spot in his life for the last few years, which seemed a lot less pathetic until he actively acknowledged it just now - Jared would spare a moment for how completely badass and terrifying it is that the Reaper is actually talking to him. “Do you get where that money comes from?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But nothing.” All of a sudden Reaper’s standing and Jared had totally underestimated how intimidating that would be in closeup. He’s not, like, crazy-tall, in fact he’s probably only an inch or two taller than Jared, but it’s like the room is to making up for that fact by shrinking down around him so Reaper’s taking up all the space; just friggin’ massive. “Now you’re going to hand over the money, and then you’re going to give me the names of everybody else who’s in on this with you and everybody you’ve told about it.”
There’s something about the way he says it that makes it seem like there’s supposed to be an incentive tacked on to the end there. Either that or Jared is hallucinating from lack of blood to the brain and medical-grade desperation. “And?”
“No and. You’re going to do this. The end.” He steps in; just one stride but he feels close now. Jared doesn’t realize he’s taken a step backward himself until his ass hits the window ledge.
“You’re not gonna hurt me,” Jared says, wishing he felt as confident about that as he sounds, “I'm not one of them.”
That’s one the rules, everybody knows it; the Reaper goes after criminals, only criminals. Some people have a problem with the way he goes after them - and how many require hospitalization after the fact - but Jared’s watched it go down and a lot of the guys Reaper takes out come into the fight with guns and knives and back-up. Jared’s always thought that just beating them to pulpy smears was pretty damn restrained of him. Slightly less so now that he’s not sure where ‘sorta-stalker who steals from pimps and dealers’ falls on the echelon of baddies. Oh god, seriously, peeing himself would be so bad. New rule: no more Big Gulps on stakeouts.
Reaper doesn’t say anything. He just stands there - how the hell does he make that so scary? - looking at Jared so hard his skin starts to itch under the weight of it.
“I… There’s no one. I never told anyone, it’s just what I do.”
There’s a chance that the way Reaper’s face moves would be his eyebrow lifting but the mask goes up above his eyebrows, so it’s hard to say. “You’re seriously going to tell me that you took all of this by yourself." He pats a slight bulge in on side of his coat-cloak thing; Jared's hard-earned scratch. "Without me ever noticing you.”
“Why would you notice me?” he shrugs, because seriously. He’s only ever managed to catch up to the Reaper when he’s doing his thing in this part of town - although given the part of town Jared lives in, that’s still pretty often - so it's not like the venue is ever totally private; there’s always some random nobodies in the vicinity. Jared’s just a regular teenager, there’s no reason anybody would look twice at him when he’s out following the Reaper, especially not the man himself.
For whatever reason that seems to throw Reaper off track. His head cocks a little to the left, taking Jared in from a different angle. Suddenly Jared is regretting being backed up against the window because that means there’s nowhere for him to go and Reaper - the fucking Reaper - is just getting closer. Really close. So close Jared can smell sharp sweat on him and somehow that seems all wrong; that this guy could do something as human as sweat, even though reasonably Jared knows that he probably really is just a guy, no matter what the thugs down dockside whisper about vengeful spirits and shit.
“How old are you?” It isn’t exactly the same voice that Reaper’s been using, just enough off that Jared’s not sure he’d recognize it if he wasn’t looking right at Reaper’s mouth when he speaks. So not the time to notice how pretty his lips are. There’s something thoughtful to how he says it, like he’s asking himself instead of Jared, but Jared still feels like he’s supposed to answer anyway.
“I’ll be 18,” he says quietly, wondering if this is what deer feel like as the headlights hurtle toward them. It’s only a tiny bit of a lie; he will be eighteen. In two and a quarter years.
Reaper’s head turns to the other side now, nothing in the set of his expression to say whether he buys the bluff or not. “And you’ve been doing this for over a year?”
“Closer to two,” Jared admits, his face turning stupidly hot all of a sudden.
“All by yourself.” If anything Reaper’s voice keeps getting softer, as though it’s slipping off into the distance while he’s still closing the space between them.
“Yeah.” Jared nods slowly, trying to figure out why his tongue just did an impression of the Sahara.
“Huh.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, huh.”
He feels a little tickle as something brushes against his shirt, looks down just in time to see the black glove covering Reaper’s hand slip upward through the darkness. It stops just shy of his face, hangs there and for this weird semi-second Jared’s sure he's about to brush back that little bit of hair that always falls down over Jared's right eye. In the time it takes for Jared’s gaze to skirt up and catch the empty opacity of Reaper’s mask-lenses, the hand switches directions and before he even realizes what’s happening, the weight of tonight's wad of cash in his pocket has disappeared.
Because Reaper is holding it instead.
“Wait, I need that,” pops out of his mouth before he has a chance to think about it, the same way his hands come up and grab Reaper’s arm. Oh shit.
He’s just barely gotten a feel of the smooth, cool material of the suit before he’s jerking away like he’s been burned. With the mask, it’s impossible to tell exactly where Reaper’s eyes are focused, but that attention-itching is back.
After a pause so long Jared’s not even sure what’s happening, the Reaper shrugs, depositing Jared’s money somewhere in the folds of his coat. He’s halfway out of the window - a lot more gracefully than Jared had come in it - when he says, “Sorry kid.”
For just a second, Jared believes him.
The fire escape squeaks a protest as it takes the extra weight of Reaper’s body and then he’s melting into the darkness, just another in the collection of long, strange shadows cast by the city lights. Jared shuts the window hard and makes it exactly one step forward before his knees pack it in and his whole body starts to shake like he’s got Mexican jumping beans in his blood.
***
Surveillance is an integral part of the job. Surveillance is the essence of survival, and if there’s one thing Jensen’s good at, it’s surviving. Therefore, it is not inappropriate to be sitting outside of his mini fan-club’s room watching over him, it’s a survival technique.
That argument might work better if the kid weren’t asleep at the moment.
Jensen doesn’t have a good explanation, alright? He didn’t have one when Jeff asked why he let the boy slide and he doesn’t have on now; he just can’t get the kid out of his head.
Maybe he missed something. There’s always the chance that there's more to the story. Not that Jensen can track down a single person who knows the little creeper well enough to pick him out of a lineup, let alone any apparent gang affiliations… but still. He could have been working for someone, using the money as a cover or his own personal bonus. But if he was going to try and make a move against Jensen, he’s had opportunities. He doesn’t have any obvious skills that suggest he’s been trained to fight, though he must be pretty good if he’s been able to keep up with Jensen all this time. And there’s always that minute but unavoidable chance that he could know. The Big Secret. Who Jensen is.
Except Jensen doesn’t think so. It doesn’t make sense, and he doesn’t know why, but his instincts tell him to trust the kid. And that right there? That’s maybe the most dangerous thing of all about the Jared Tristan Padalecki.
He’s dug up every scrap of information that’s out there on the boy; every record, every news clipping, every rumor about anyone with a vaguely similar name that the internet could provide. The story is almost as tragic as it is fascinating. Orphaned at eleven by a car wreck, shipped off to live with his war-vet uncle in the city. Before then he’d won a couple of local trophies for spelling bees, one for his pee-wee league basketball team, first place at his school science fair. After, he dropped off the map, school records the only thing to prove he even still existed. His grades fell, hovered somewhere in the mid-range, but Jensen doubts it’s because he’s not smart enough. The magnetic lock mechanism on the drawer hiding his stash was some serious makeshift craftsmanship. He’s clever. And ballsy. Kid has major balls.
Which is exactly the sort of thing Jensen should not be thinking about because the kid’s balls are fifteen fucking years old. 'I’ll be eighteen', Jensen’s freckled ass. And hadn’t that been a close one? Jensen had, just for a second there, almost thought about… but no, because the kid’s a kid and also the Reaper does not make out with people of questionable-intent who follow him around and steal shit from the scum he takes down. Even if they are cute and passionate and smart and sort of adorably flustered just from being in the same room as Jensen and have huge brass balls that make them think that it’s a good idea to try and talk the Reaper out of justifiably taking their purloined gains.
Jared turns over in his sleep, nuzzling his face deeper into the pillow. One of his gangly legs hangs off of the too-small mattress, trailing a tail of untucked sheet. He looks peaceful; all soft and warm and relaxed. Jensen hasn’t slept that easily in years - ever maybe.
You know, it’s not as if fifteen is that much younger. Really he’s closer to sixteen which would only make it… a six year age difference. In another ten years that might not be such a big deal but it’s still incredibly jail-baity now. This is going to be a problem.
Ok, step one to avoid the massive cluster-fuck that this has the potential to turn into - stop being the pervert watching teenage boys sleep.
Jensen pulls out of his crouch - at least he'd gotten to enjoy that nice quad stretch for a while - and resettles the heavy coat on his shoulders. The fire escape outside of the kid's bedroom groans when his weight shifts and Jensen stops himself in the middle of considering how much of that polymer of Misha's he'd need to make it more stable because he does not need to be treating it like something he's going to be using on a regular basis. Three nights in a row is the absolute limit. The end.
Alright, on to step two of the plan - go out, find some crime to stop, and forget all about Jared Tristan Padalecki.