SPN Fic: I Don't Care If I Never Get Back (5/5)
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But it’s not weird the next morning when-after a long night of staring at the guest room’s dark ceiling-Jensen wakes up, sunshine on his face once more.
It should be. It should be wretched and uncomfortable as hell. Jensen had sex with Jared and then freaked out on him in the middle of the night. Jared ought to be calling the nearest Uber driver to offer a thousand bucks to get Jensen out of here the minute he shows his face.
But instead Jensen’s clean clothes are outside in the hall and there’s a little yellow post-it note on the coffee machine and another post-it note with only a question mark on it stuck to a box of blueberry muffin mix.
Jared’s clearly trying to make it as easy as possible to look him in the eye when they’re in the same room together again.
He walks over to the kitchen window to see if Jared’s working in the barn like he was yesterday, but what he spots is Megan’s Mercedes coming up the drive.
He quickly sets his mug of coffee down and heads outside.
Jensen must’ve slept in a lot later this morning than he’d realized, because the first game has already started and Jared is already in the stands, along with Danneel and a couple of Jared’s buddies from last night.
But even the visitors aren’t going to deter Jensen from finding out what kind of threat Megan might pose today. Jensen makes his way down the porch stairs and across the lawn and manages to arrive at the bleachers just as Megan does.
From inside her purse, Jared’s sister produces a sheaf of papers, shoving them up at Jared who’s sitting on the highest row of benches.
Jared stands so he can loom over her.
“You’re going to have to face the facts,” Jensen hears Megan say. “Your financial position is no secret. You’re going to have to sell the farm to me now or lose it before winter. Even if you have a bumper crop, which doesn’t appear likely, you’ll never be able to keep up with the mortgage with the acreage you’ve got planted.”
“You don’t know my finances,” Jared responds sharply, “and you don’t know what I can pay. Now either sit down and watch the game, or go on home.”
“What game?” Megan yells. "There's nothing there! You build a baseball field in the middle of nowhere and you sit around here and stare at nothing!"
Jensen tries to imagine how Megan must view the field, blind to all the activity. No wonder she thinks they’re all bat-shit crazy.
“Come down from there,” Megan demands.
“I’m staying right here. As long as I own the land, I own it, and I’m staying.” Jared’s holding a handful of grapes and he shoves them in his mouth to cap his defiance.
And then it happens. Megan reaches up to grab at Jared, tugging on the leg of his jeans. His weight shifts and his foot skids on a slick, worn spot on the wood. Jared’s arms pinwheel and then he falls forward as if diving into a pool. Jensen’s heart is a steel wrecking ball smashing through the walls of his chest as he watches helplessly. Jared seems to fall in slow motion, and it takes forever for him to come down with a sickening thud on the hard, sun-baked sod behind the bleachers.
Jensen can’t run, but he does anyway. Then he’s standing over Jared where he lies on his back. Megan hovers, her hands opening and closing, reaching, then pulling back.
“Should we move him?” Jensen asks, looking wildly around at the others who’ve gathered around, hoping for advice.
Megan looks like she’s about to burst into tears. “I don’t know!”
“Any of you a doctor? A nurse?”
Jared’s friends all shake their heads no.
Jensen curses himself for not knowing anything about first aid, not knowing any medical techniques. After the accident, you’d think he’d have immersed himself in Red Cross training. But goddamn him to hell, he had not.
Jared’s lips are turning a frightening bluish shade, his chest hitching for breath that he can’t catch. His skin appears pale through his tan. It seems to Jensen that he’s convulsing.
“Call an ambulance!” he cries.
“It’s a twenty-minute drive from town,” Megan answers mournfully, but she pulls out her phone anyway.
Jensen glances toward the field. The ball players have assembled on the left-field grass and stand silent, staring, like an honor guard, or like vultures.
All except for Aldis. He’s loping in from right field, lean and agile. But as he gets closer, his features start to change, his step slows. He seems to become smaller. His baseball uniform fades away and is replaces by a black suit and tie. His ballcap disappears, leaving a bald head. As Jensen watches, the dark leather of his glove expands and reshapes into an old-fashioned doctor’s bag.
The man who comes to the edge of the fence is not Moonlight Hodge, the rookie baseball player, but the elderly Doctor Hodge that he and Jared spoke with in the wee hours of their strange night in Michigan.
He hesitates for only a second, but in that second Jensen lives a dozen anguished hours. Then Doc steps over the line and makes his way toward them.
Jensen hears Megan gasp in surprise, but he doesn’t even bother glancing her way. Every iota of his attention is on Jared, lying lifeless at his feet.
“What have we got here?” Doc says matter of factly, his voice once more creaking with age.
“He fell,” Jensen grits out.
Doc puts a hand on Jensen’s shoulder for support and eases himself down to his knees. He brushes a hand across Jared’s forehead and then his chest.
“He’s choking,” Doc says simply. “Help me sit him up.”
Jensen grabs Jared’s limp form under one armpit, the guy named Chad steps up to grab the other, and together they heave Jared’s torso up to a sitting position. Doc slaps Jared on the back sharply, but there’s no result.
Jensen can feel tears of frustration forming at the corners of his eyes. Doc remains calm. “Jensen, get down behind him,” he instructs.
Jensen doesn’t balk, doesn’t suggest someone else do it. He quickly clambers gracelessly to the ground, ignoring the sharp protests from his knee, until he’s got Jared in the vee of his spread legs, Jared’s back leaning against his chest.
Doc looks at Jensen. “I don’t have the strength anymore. You’re going to have to do the Heimlich Maneuver. Do you know it?”
Jensen shakes his head no, but then dimly recalls someone describing it once, he can’t even remember the context. He quickly wraps his arms around Jared, grabbing him around the middle and balling his fist in his gut.
Doc adjusts Jensen’s hands. “A quick jab,” he orders. “Up and in.”
Jensen does.
“Again,” Doc urges.
Jensen heaves so hard he’s gonna break one of Jared’s ribs, but suddenly he feels Jared’s chest expand as he sucks in air.
Doc reaches up and pries Jared’s mouth open, hooking out whole grape. Jensen feels Jared cough, gasp, pulling in a deep, unhampered breath. His head lolls against Jensen’s shoulder.
Doc puts a hand on Jared's neck to feel his pulse, then pulls away to pat his cheek tenderly. Jensen can feel Jared’s eyelashes flutter against his neck.
“Looks to be okay,” he says. “He’s coming around now. He a strong young man. I don’t imagine there’ll be any after effects.”
Relief washes over Jensen in a wave. “Thank you, Doc.”
The old man lifts up a hand and a few of the onlookers hurry forward to help him up from where he’s kneeling. They haul Jensen and Jared up as well. Jensen reaches out and slings one of Jared’s arms over his shoulders as they stand, before anyone tries to move him away. He shifts all his weight onto his good leg so he can support Jared without both of them falling back down.
Megan’s got her hand on Doc’s arm, looking up at him with wonder.
“I saw-“ she says, blinking slowly, dumbfounded, “All of a sudden this kid runs off the field and-” She glances toward the diamond, where the rest of the players still stand lined up. She gulps. “-Where did all these people come from?”
Doc gives Megan a small smile. “There’s hope for you yet.”
He leans over to pick up his bag and when he stands he jerks his chin at Jared. “You all right, son?”
Jensen looks up into Jared’s face, sees his color is back and his eyes are clear again. He’s barely leaning on Jensen at all anymore, but hasn’t moved away from where he’d tucked up against Jensen’s side.
“Yeah, Doc,” Jared replies, voice raw and sounding unexpectedly somber. “But what about you? You can’t go back, can you?”
And just when Jensen thought he’d recovered from his panic, the bottom drops out of his stomach again. Because Jared’s question exposes exactly what Doc has sacrificed by stepping off the field.
There’s no bringing young Aldis back again.
“It’s okay,” Doc says gently, his gaze shifting back and forth between the two of them. “I got someone waiting for me out there.” His face breaks into a grin. “Better get home before Beth starts to thinking I have a girlfriend.”
He gives them a little salute, like he’s touching the brim of a ballcap, and then to the rest of the little crowd around them. As he turns and walks back toward the corn, the players on the field make way. As he goes by, they call out.
“Good work, Doc.”
“Way to go, Doc.”
Before he reaches the edge of the crop, Shoeless Joe calls out. “Hey, Rookie!”
Doc turns to look over his shoulder.
“You were good.”
Doctor Hodge nods and disappears into the corn.
Next to him, Jensen feels Jared give a little sniffle. He looks up in time to catch Jared wiping his eyes on the heel of his hand like a kid. The sight makes Jensen’s heart nearly melt with tenderness.
“I thought I lost you,” Jensen says, voice pitched low, his own throat unexpectedly tight.
“You didn’t. You saved me.”
“Doc saved you.”
“Listen,” Jared says pulling away so he can turn and look Jensen in the eye. “You were here when I needed you and you saved my life. You tried to tell me that all you do is hurt people? I know first-hand that’s not true.”
Jensen’s shaking his head in denial, but something in Jared’s words strikes deep, a keen blade slicing through ancient, knotted ropes.
“Jared? We’re gonna take a break,” Shoeless Joe interrupts from near home plate, indicating the rest of the players who are filing out toward the same spot in the corn where Doc had departed. “Glad you’re okay. We’ll start up again after lunch. See you in a while, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jared replies absently, still staring at Jensen.
“Hey! You wanna come with us?”
“Who, me?” At that, Jared’s head jerks up. He sounds amazed, like the thought had never occurred to him.
“Not you,” Joe says, and points at Jensen. “Him.”
“Oh,” Jared says, a mixture of surprise and distress.
At the same time, Jensen rocks back on his heels as if Joe’s finger had actually poked him in the chest. “Come with you?”
“Out there.” Joe jerks a thumb toward the corn.
Jensen blinks, tries to harness his whirling thoughts. “When I went looking before, I only found more questions. Are there actually any answers out there?”
“Come find out,” the player says, his expression inscrutable.
This is it. It feels like his entire trip has been leading up to this moment. Curiosity bubbles up in him like a hot spring. Jensen glances at Jared to see what he thinks of this… this bizarre invitation. To his surprise, Jared’s face seems even more stricken than when he lay on the ground dying, minutes before. But before Jensen can ask him what’s wrong, Jared straightens up to his full height and sucks in a deep breath. He puts his hands on Jensen’s shoulders.
“Okay, so look,” Jared urges. “I think this is your chance. It’s your chance at peace. Out there?” He indicates the vast, breeze-blown field. “There’s no injured knee. No regrets for past mistakes. You can go with them and be young and whole, like Aldis was.”
Oh. There’s that blade again.
It’s funny how, just a week ago, Jared’s description would’ve sounded like heaven. But Jensen finds now that all he can feel is Jared’s hands on him, and all the can think to ask is one question.
“Do you want me to go?”
Jared doesn’t answer at first. The skin around his eyes is tight, the corners of his lips tucked in. How typical, that he can’t bring himself to lie. But he obviously thinks Jensen wants to go, and is willing to let him, to encourage him.
“That’s not important. This’s about what you need. The Voice told me: ‘Ease his pain.’ Your pain, Jensen. That’s why you’re here. The field can ease all that pain.”
Even as the words are leaving Jared lips, they start to fade, mute, like a radio dial turning down. Jensen’s head is filled with that same silent hum he’s felt before. In New York. In Michigan. His fingertips tingle and the whole word comes into sharper focus, everything outlined in bright strokes.
“No-” he says slowly. “No. I think I’ve already found the way to ease my pain. And it’s not out in that cornfield.”
“What?”
Jensen sucks in a breath, his tone rising with excitement, with the certainty that fills him head to toe. “The Voice first told you: ‘if you build it, he will come,’ right? Well, what if-what if it wasn’t talking about Joe, or the other players? What if it was me? What if you built it for me?”
“Oh." Jared blinks. "Oh, I did. I built it for you.” He whispers it back, like it’s a secret only the two of them can share.
“And ‘go the distance.’ We needed to find Doc, to have that quest that would get me here. And once I was here, when I was told to ‘believe in it?’ The Voice wasn’t referring to that,” he waves a dismissive hand toward the field and the players and the corn. “It was this.” Jensen gestures back in forth in the small space between them. The two of them. “I have to believe in this. We have to believe in this.”
He sees understanding dawn across Jared's face, hope and agreement reflecting back at him.
He turns toward Joe. “Thanks for the invitation,” Jensen calls out, projecting from the gut like he’s on stage and needs everyone in the audience to hear his lines. “But I think I’m going to stick around here for awhile.”
He backs up a few steps, so that he’s almost pressed against Jared’s chest, just to make his point clear.
From out on the diamond, Joe gives him one of those long, judgmental looks. But then he cracks a smile. “I thought you might say that.”
He nods and the turns to trot off the field, gone like the rest.
Jensen hears Megan murmur behind him. “Holy shit.” And then louder she says, “Jared, you’re keeping this field.”
Jensen jumps a little in surprise. He’d forgotten anyone else was here.
Jared glances over his shoulder to look at her, slinging an arm around Jensen to pull him closer. “You bet your ass we are.”
“We?” Jensen cocks an eyebrow at him. The rest of Jared’s friends who’d been hanging back start to wander up toward them. “So you’re going to let me help you pay the mortgage on your farm?”
“I guess so… but then it will be our farm. Are you okay with that?”
Jensen allows himself one deep breath before answering. “I'm okay.” And he realizes, with surprise, that it might even be true.
He lets himself lean into Jared's side. Just a little.
This was Iowa. This was heaven.
