Blackout approaches (Jensen + Chris, Jared/Jensen, 3400 words, pg-13)
This is, as promised, for everyone who read and liked Someone you might have been. ♥ ♥ ♥
Blackout approaches
(Jensen + Chris, Jared/Jensen, 3400 words, pg-13)
"You beautiful, beautiful genius," Chris says. "It's official, I want you to have my babies."
Jensen rolls his eyes even as his cheeks flush with warm, slightly drunken pride. "You're only saying that 'cause you owe me your ass, again."
"Now I will confess that you being able to keep my head in its rightful place and free from big old bullet holes does make it real easy for me to overlook certain problematic parts of your anatomy." He raises his beer bottle. "To not dying again today."
Jensen nods and touches his bottle to Chris's. "Well worth drinking to."
They're slumped on the floor of Chris's living room, in the house he hasn't quite finished moving into yet. He's been in the process of moving into it for as long as Jensen's known him. Whenever Jensen mocks him about it, Chris always says the government keeps him too busy with saving the world for him to have time. Jensen offered to do it himself but Chris didn't like that either, said Jensen handled his professional, secret agent side and could kindly keep his hands off the civilian, home-decorating aspect of his life.
So Jensen's propped up between the foot of the couch and a large moving crate. He's buzzing from the day's victory and the alcohol. He blinks back his bleary-eyed blurring of the room and stifles a yawn in his shoulder.
"You're a lightweight, son," Chris says. "Have another."
Jensen shakes his head at the bottle Chris is offering him. "Full debrief tomorrow. Prefer not to be hungover for that."
The bottle is waggled in front of him enticingly before Chris gives up, shrugs and sets it down again. He flops down on his back next to Jensen, his own bottle propped up between his lips and his chest. There's a big black bruise ringing one of his eyes and Jensen knows that if Chris were to stand up, his weight wouldn't be distributed evenly on his feet due to one of his ankles currently being all fucked up. Doesn't matter about the damage though. Somehow, Jensen got him out alive yet again.
"You tried to windsurf on a fighter jet's wing," Jensen blurts out, just in case Chris might have forgotten. "You crazy fuck. Fighter jets aren't for windsurfing on."
Chris laughs. "Good times," he says. He mouths thoughtfully at the neck of his bottle. "Wish I could tell the boys back home 'bout that one." He tilts his face up at Jensen. "What's the goddamn point in being an international rockstar in the field of secret agents if I don't get to brag?"
"I think you're supposed to feel rewarded by the humanitarian good you're doing," Jensen says.
Chris snorts. "Screw that. Gimme my phone. I wanna call someone and tell them how fucking amazing I am."
"No, I'm afraid that's not going to happen," Jensen says. "I don't want to have to fill in the paperwork for that tomorrow morning."
It shuts Chris up for a while. Jensen would be silently considering the odds of him getting to Chris's cellphone before Chris does, if he could actually remember where Chris's cellphone was. Instead, they slump together in a comfortably beery haze. Jensen's arm is slowly going numb where Chris's head is pinning it down but he doesn't think he cares enough to get Chris to move. His eyelids start getting heavy.
"I wish I could tell my mom," Chris says.
Jensen nods and thinks about the subtle shift in Chris's tone. Something cold creeps in on his skin, under the previously comfortable flush of heat.
"I miss my mom," Chris says. "Even miss my fucking dad, bad-tempered old sonofabitch that he is. They don't explain it right, do they? When they recruit you. Don't tell you what a crock of shit this double-life thing is. It's not a double-life, it's not a fucking life at all. Just lies. All of it."
Jensen's throat closes up a little. He looks away at Chris's half-unpacked crates because his eyes are prickling. A headache is settling right behind his temples, loud and obnoxious and not giving Jensen a moment to think.
"Too late now," he mumbles. "We signed up. We signed on the dotted line. No getting out now."
The headache is getting worse. His throat still won't open up. Jensen's leg twitches on some instinctive urge to run. It's going bad. It's going all bad and Jensen can't hang on to the happy feeling. He can feel himself sinking back into the misery. And Chris keeps talking, keeps making it worse.
"Yep, we signed up. We do what they want until we die. Or we die in the middle of doing what they want. Or we die because someone else is doing what their bosses want 'em to. Any way you look at, we die. Might as well be honest about it. All comes to the same thing, doesn't matter what side you're on. Lying just… what's the fucking point?"
Something is wrong. The knowledge makes it through the suddenly fluid rush of disorganised thoughts in Jensen's head. Terror, colder and harder than Jensen's ever known it before, rises up in his chest. It takes him over. Something is wrong and it feels like the last truly conscious thought Jensen might ever have.
"Chris," he says. "Chris, what've you done?"
After a moment, Chris sets his beer bottle down. Then he rolls over onto his knees in front of Jensen, and Jensen can only stare at him, horrorstruck, as Chris peers into his face, peels his eyelids up to examine his pupils. Jensen looks at him, really looks at him. Chris is sober. He's sober. He's been drinking for hours with Jensen and he's sober. Jensen's breath shivers out him.
"You put something in my drink," he says. "Jesus. You drugged me."
Chris shrugs. "Like we could have this conversation with you locked up as tight as you are. Needed to loosen your tongue a little, Jenny. Sorry, but I wanted a straight answer outta your mouth for once."
He lets Jensen go as Jensen pushes to his feet, stumbles towards the bathroom, blindly bouncing off the walls as he goes. Jensen isn't aware of Chris following along behind until he's on his knees in front of the toilet, two fingers jammed down into the soft flesh of his throat, teeth grazing his knuckles as he forces his stomach to empty. Chris stands behind and watches as Jensen retches and hacks.
"You're about twelve hours too late for that to do any good," Chris says. "Slipped 'em to you this morning. Long since metabolised in your system."
The regurgitated alcohol comes up bitter and Jensen keeps pushing, his shoulders heaving as he tries to drag out more. But there isn't anything. There's a sharp pain in his chest from the forced vomiting and his heartbeat shudders.
He sags back against the side of the tub, his eyes streaming, and his fingers all hot and slimy with bile. His head aches even worse than before and his tongue feels numb.
"I gotta say it, you're real good, Jensen," Chris tells him. "Keep it all shut away, don't you? They don't one of 'em suspect a thing about you. But I know you now. And I know you're lying. I just don't know what about."
He drops to a crouch in front of Jensen. His expression is sympathetic but it's a sympathetic expression on the face of a trained killing machine that's really good at what it does.
"Please," Jensen croaks. "Please don't do this to me."
"Who are you working for, Jensen?"
"Mike," Jensen thinks, and the name comes tumbling out. He bites down hard on his lip, makes it swell and ache between his teeth, but the name's already out. He's already given Mike away. The collision of him speaking Mike's name to Chris feels like something integral to the world's structure snapping. It feels like the ground lurching out from under him.
Jensen has lost control.
There's only one way to get it back.
Still, Chris doesn't stop him when Jensen starts moving, just follows him, like he's a doctor taking symptoms from a patient's acting out. Even if he's swaying on his feet when he walks, Jensen feels calmer for having a plan. Just a few seconds and he'll be in control again, not one more forbidden word spilling out of his useless mouth. He'll be in control again.
"You the one gave Singer the passcode for the Grenada vault?" Chris says.
"Yes," Jensen says helplessly. It's okay, he tells himself, even as his stomach is jumping with the panic of the truth slip-sliding out of him like this. It’s just a temporary glitch, he tells himself. It'll all be locked up again in his head in no time at all.
Back in the lounge, he crosses to one of Chris's crates, removes the handgun from its holster, and chambers a bullet. Chris looks unimpressed as he lounges in the doorway.
"And what the fuck are you gonna do with that? C'mon, don't be an idiot," he says. He cocks his head at Jensen, saying, "Hey, Jenny, you ever used one of those before? You ever kill one of your own agents?"
"Jessica," Jensen says, and this time when he bites down on his lip he tastes blood, thin and dark. He sees the look in Chris's eyes go black, and, so desperate, he scrabbles with the gun, clawing hold of control and gripping it tight.
"You killed her," Chris says. "You gonna kill me too? Dirty little double, aren't you? You gonna shoot me too? I'll take you down before you even get that thing aimed at me, boy."
Jensen's grip on the gun wobbles but carefully, ever so deliberately, he raises the gun and puts it to his temple. The coolness of the muzzle is soothing to his headache. He's gonna shut up in a moment. Chris isn't going to get another damning word out of him. He'll be in control again.
He sees Chris's eyes slam wide-open, sees his hands fly up in some sort of surrender.
"I can't talk about this," Jensen says. His fingers are sweaty on the trigger but his voice is calm.
"No," Chris says quickly. "No, and I ain't gonna make you. Not gonna ask you any more questions, I promise. Just… c'mon, put the gun down. It ain't worth this. It can't be. Sure as hell isn't worth it to me."
Jensen's finger stays on the trigger as Chris approaches him. Chris keeps it slow and cautious. He seems freaked. Jensen should pull the trigger; everything will be okay if he pulls the trigger, Jensen won't have to talk about it and Chris won't have to know about it and won't hate Jensen, hurt Jensen, turn him in.
"You don't have to say a word. It was wrong a'me to drug you and I'm real sorry for that, but you just keep your lips pressed together tight. That's good, just like that. Now, just let me have the gun. Then we'll get you t'bed, let you sleep it off. Don't you say a word to me, Jenny. It's gonna be okay."
Feeling sick and caught in slow-motion, Jensen watches Chris reach out to the gun. Between them, they get Jensen's grip to go loose and Chris slides the gun free. Within seconds, Chris has got the bullets out and is tossing the gun back on the couch.
Then he looks at Jensen, puts his hand up again, this time to Jensen's face, and Jensen doesn't realise what he's doing until he sees the pad of Chris's thumb come away wet.
"It's gonna be okay, Jensen. I promise you. I'm gonna make this right for you."
:::
Dizzy and dehydrated, Jensen wakes up on Chris's bed. The memory of last night is right there with him, with the hot and unreal quality of a nightmare. He feels nauseous with fear, even though Chris is just sitting there across from him, looking at him. He supposes he should count his blessings and be grateful he didn't wake up in a cell. But everything that has held him together for so long has fallen down and Jensen doesn't know how to put it back together. Doesn't know where he goes from here.
He watches Chris warily, ready to run, while his head throbs and bears down too heavy on the rest of him.
"This doesn't have to be a conversation," says Chris. "You let me say my piece and if you feel like talking about it after, we will. Otherwise, you can keep your mouth shut and we can pretend this never happened. We'll put in for transfers for different partners and that'll be the end of it. I won't turn you in, but you try coming after me and I'll put you down so fucking hard your head won't stop spinning 'til next week."
He looks at Jensen, gives him an opening to respond. Jensen stares back at him, mirror-eyed. Chris nods like he expected silence.
"I don't know exactly what kind of game you're playing but I've got a few good ideas. And it's making you fucking miserable. See, the others? The branch execs? They don't see it. But I know you and I give a damn about you, and I can see just how turned around you are."
His black eye is the colour of blueberries in the dim morning light. His tone is even, confident, like he's been thinking about this for a while.
"Now," he says, "seems to me you've probably done some godawful things, maybe even still doing 'em, but you don't give me the impression of enjoying 'em much." He wets his lips, fixes Jensen with that same dark look from the night before. "You're my friend, Jensen, and I wanna help you, if you'll let me. You just gotta say the word. You just gotta let me in. So," Chris raises his chin, almost challenging, "you a double?"
Right then, Jensen thinks of the wind stirring Jessica's hair, the distant light in her eyes as she looked out over the night sea. He thinks of how stupidly surprised he was that she just fell; she didn't turn around, even though the silenced bullet sounded so loud between them. He thinks of how she was still warm when he threw her body from the plane, dropping through the darkness and disappearing into the sea.
The first time Jensen thought of her as human was after he shot her. The first time he thought of Weatherly as human was when he was quietly manipulating him into believing she was a double. After he killed Jessica, the whole world suddenly filled up with people.
And then there was Chris, who irrevocably smudged Jensen's line between Mike and Tom, and everyone else.
It all got fucked up for Jensen somewhere along the way. Mike didn't get it. Chris does.
"Okay," Chris says, standing up. "Well, guess that's that. I'll go see Schneider, tell him that I think it's time for a change, make something up, and you can speak to Glover and-"
"Yes," Jensen says. "Yes, I'm a double agent for the Coalition." Chris is staring at him again and Jensen almost wishes he could take the words back. But he doesn't. He's trembling and his throat is closing up on him again. And he's terrified.
"Help me," he says.
Chris grins and nods, pleased and self-assured. "That was the hard part. It all gets easier from here."
Jensen believes him.
:::
For eighteen hours after Chris is murdered, Jensen is a mess.
He's dead-eyed and silent the first time they try to debrief him. He functions but the machine's running on automatic. Mike makes brief contact and he hesitates over every word he says, frustrated by his own inability to snap Jensen out of it, to make it better for him. They take Jensen to the morgue to see Chris but he's not allowed to touch him because the internal haemorrhaging was too severe. He can't apologise to the corpse of his best friend because they're listening, watching.
It's not until the funeral that Jensen regains his clarity of purpose. He's sitting there in the church and the picture suddenly swims back into focus. He looks at the branch executives in turn - Glover, Schneider, O'Toole and Weatherly - and wonders which of them it is he'll find at the end of the line. He can wait. He'll get there eventually. He'll get them. Everything crystallises to that single thought.
It feels good to have something to believe in again.
:::
"You're seriously saying you don't want me to kiss you?" Jared says. "You don't think you'd like it if I kissed you? I'm talking about me kissing you, not you laying one on me while I'm not even paying attention. You don't wanna see what that's like?"
He's right up in Jensen's space, barely touching Jensen but taking him over all the same, and he doesn't know what he's doing to Jensen. Nobody's ever had this power over Jensen. Mike fascinates him, Tom makes him feel safe, Chris grounded him - but nobody's ever got so deep under Jensen's skin before.
It's just a game to Jared, just a harmless bit of flirting to see if he can tumble Jensen into bed. He doesn't see the damage he's doing.
If he knew what Jensen was, he'd kill him. Sure, he wants to fuck Jensen, but he doesn't care about him, not really. Maybe one day he will, but right now, the desire to fuck Jensen wouldn't take priority over the removal of a threat. Jensen reminds himself of this fact. Jared would put a bullet between his eyes without thinking if he knew what Jensen is. Jensen can't let him close enough to see. Jensen can't let Jared fuck him when just the offer of a kiss has him shaking.
And even if by some miracle Jensen kept Jared fooled, it'd be a distraction. His mind already keeps wandering back to Jared and there's only been one fucking kiss so far.
Jared has the potential to ruin everything.
Jensen blinks, licks his lips and squeezes the bullet he took out of Jared's shoulder tight in his palm, lets the discomfort bring him back to himself. He looks away from Jared's eyes, studies the bandage on his shoulder instead.
"What I want and what I will allow to happen aren't the same thing," Jensen says. He catches his breath and looks back at Jared and he almost breaks again then, just at the look in Jared's eyes. Kiss me, he wants to say. Don't listen to what I'm saying, just do it. Just kiss me until I can't remember why it's a bad idea. "You need to put a shirt on and leave," he says instead.
Jared doesn't move.
Just do it. Kiss me. I won't be able to stop you. Jensen can't hold on much longer. All of his effort, all of his time and planning - it's going to be for nothing because of some fucking agent who can turn Jensen into a stuttering idiot just by flashing his dimples at him.
For a heartbeat, Jensen wants to be kissed by Jared more than he wants to put Chris's death right.
Then Jared takes a step back, turns away to get dressed. Jensen doesn't dare let go of himself yet, doesn't feel released because Jared is still in the room, still too close. He watches Jared, his stomach fluttering and his expression clamped tightly into nothingness.
"See you next time," Jared says, and the only reason Jensen has for calling him back is that Jared's already heading for the door.
Jared stops, pauses, then turns back to him. Somehow, Jensen manages a smile. He tosses the bullet to Jared.
"If you gotta bring me back a souvenir, I liked the cocktail umbrella better than the bullet," he says.
A grin crosses Jared's face as he glances down at the bullet.
After he's gone, Jensen sinks down on the couch and lets out a dry sob. His jaw hangs unhitched and his unseeing eyes are fixed on the floor. He can feel panic rising in him and he doesn't know how to stop it. He doesn't know how to factor Jared into his plans because he can't even think when Jared gets too close to him. It's all slipping away from him.
He's losing control again.
~end
Blackout approaches
(Jensen + Chris, Jared/Jensen, 3400 words, pg-13)
"You beautiful, beautiful genius," Chris says. "It's official, I want you to have my babies."
Jensen rolls his eyes even as his cheeks flush with warm, slightly drunken pride. "You're only saying that 'cause you owe me your ass, again."
"Now I will confess that you being able to keep my head in its rightful place and free from big old bullet holes does make it real easy for me to overlook certain problematic parts of your anatomy." He raises his beer bottle. "To not dying again today."
Jensen nods and touches his bottle to Chris's. "Well worth drinking to."
They're slumped on the floor of Chris's living room, in the house he hasn't quite finished moving into yet. He's been in the process of moving into it for as long as Jensen's known him. Whenever Jensen mocks him about it, Chris always says the government keeps him too busy with saving the world for him to have time. Jensen offered to do it himself but Chris didn't like that either, said Jensen handled his professional, secret agent side and could kindly keep his hands off the civilian, home-decorating aspect of his life.
So Jensen's propped up between the foot of the couch and a large moving crate. He's buzzing from the day's victory and the alcohol. He blinks back his bleary-eyed blurring of the room and stifles a yawn in his shoulder.
"You're a lightweight, son," Chris says. "Have another."
Jensen shakes his head at the bottle Chris is offering him. "Full debrief tomorrow. Prefer not to be hungover for that."
The bottle is waggled in front of him enticingly before Chris gives up, shrugs and sets it down again. He flops down on his back next to Jensen, his own bottle propped up between his lips and his chest. There's a big black bruise ringing one of his eyes and Jensen knows that if Chris were to stand up, his weight wouldn't be distributed evenly on his feet due to one of his ankles currently being all fucked up. Doesn't matter about the damage though. Somehow, Jensen got him out alive yet again.
"You tried to windsurf on a fighter jet's wing," Jensen blurts out, just in case Chris might have forgotten. "You crazy fuck. Fighter jets aren't for windsurfing on."
Chris laughs. "Good times," he says. He mouths thoughtfully at the neck of his bottle. "Wish I could tell the boys back home 'bout that one." He tilts his face up at Jensen. "What's the goddamn point in being an international rockstar in the field of secret agents if I don't get to brag?"
"I think you're supposed to feel rewarded by the humanitarian good you're doing," Jensen says.
Chris snorts. "Screw that. Gimme my phone. I wanna call someone and tell them how fucking amazing I am."
"No, I'm afraid that's not going to happen," Jensen says. "I don't want to have to fill in the paperwork for that tomorrow morning."
It shuts Chris up for a while. Jensen would be silently considering the odds of him getting to Chris's cellphone before Chris does, if he could actually remember where Chris's cellphone was. Instead, they slump together in a comfortably beery haze. Jensen's arm is slowly going numb where Chris's head is pinning it down but he doesn't think he cares enough to get Chris to move. His eyelids start getting heavy.
"I wish I could tell my mom," Chris says.
Jensen nods and thinks about the subtle shift in Chris's tone. Something cold creeps in on his skin, under the previously comfortable flush of heat.
"I miss my mom," Chris says. "Even miss my fucking dad, bad-tempered old sonofabitch that he is. They don't explain it right, do they? When they recruit you. Don't tell you what a crock of shit this double-life thing is. It's not a double-life, it's not a fucking life at all. Just lies. All of it."
Jensen's throat closes up a little. He looks away at Chris's half-unpacked crates because his eyes are prickling. A headache is settling right behind his temples, loud and obnoxious and not giving Jensen a moment to think.
"Too late now," he mumbles. "We signed up. We signed on the dotted line. No getting out now."
The headache is getting worse. His throat still won't open up. Jensen's leg twitches on some instinctive urge to run. It's going bad. It's going all bad and Jensen can't hang on to the happy feeling. He can feel himself sinking back into the misery. And Chris keeps talking, keeps making it worse.
"Yep, we signed up. We do what they want until we die. Or we die in the middle of doing what they want. Or we die because someone else is doing what their bosses want 'em to. Any way you look at, we die. Might as well be honest about it. All comes to the same thing, doesn't matter what side you're on. Lying just… what's the fucking point?"
Something is wrong. The knowledge makes it through the suddenly fluid rush of disorganised thoughts in Jensen's head. Terror, colder and harder than Jensen's ever known it before, rises up in his chest. It takes him over. Something is wrong and it feels like the last truly conscious thought Jensen might ever have.
"Chris," he says. "Chris, what've you done?"
After a moment, Chris sets his beer bottle down. Then he rolls over onto his knees in front of Jensen, and Jensen can only stare at him, horrorstruck, as Chris peers into his face, peels his eyelids up to examine his pupils. Jensen looks at him, really looks at him. Chris is sober. He's sober. He's been drinking for hours with Jensen and he's sober. Jensen's breath shivers out him.
"You put something in my drink," he says. "Jesus. You drugged me."
Chris shrugs. "Like we could have this conversation with you locked up as tight as you are. Needed to loosen your tongue a little, Jenny. Sorry, but I wanted a straight answer outta your mouth for once."
He lets Jensen go as Jensen pushes to his feet, stumbles towards the bathroom, blindly bouncing off the walls as he goes. Jensen isn't aware of Chris following along behind until he's on his knees in front of the toilet, two fingers jammed down into the soft flesh of his throat, teeth grazing his knuckles as he forces his stomach to empty. Chris stands behind and watches as Jensen retches and hacks.
"You're about twelve hours too late for that to do any good," Chris says. "Slipped 'em to you this morning. Long since metabolised in your system."
The regurgitated alcohol comes up bitter and Jensen keeps pushing, his shoulders heaving as he tries to drag out more. But there isn't anything. There's a sharp pain in his chest from the forced vomiting and his heartbeat shudders.
He sags back against the side of the tub, his eyes streaming, and his fingers all hot and slimy with bile. His head aches even worse than before and his tongue feels numb.
"I gotta say it, you're real good, Jensen," Chris tells him. "Keep it all shut away, don't you? They don't one of 'em suspect a thing about you. But I know you now. And I know you're lying. I just don't know what about."
He drops to a crouch in front of Jensen. His expression is sympathetic but it's a sympathetic expression on the face of a trained killing machine that's really good at what it does.
"Please," Jensen croaks. "Please don't do this to me."
"Who are you working for, Jensen?"
"Mike," Jensen thinks, and the name comes tumbling out. He bites down hard on his lip, makes it swell and ache between his teeth, but the name's already out. He's already given Mike away. The collision of him speaking Mike's name to Chris feels like something integral to the world's structure snapping. It feels like the ground lurching out from under him.
Jensen has lost control.
There's only one way to get it back.
Still, Chris doesn't stop him when Jensen starts moving, just follows him, like he's a doctor taking symptoms from a patient's acting out. Even if he's swaying on his feet when he walks, Jensen feels calmer for having a plan. Just a few seconds and he'll be in control again, not one more forbidden word spilling out of his useless mouth. He'll be in control again.
"You the one gave Singer the passcode for the Grenada vault?" Chris says.
"Yes," Jensen says helplessly. It's okay, he tells himself, even as his stomach is jumping with the panic of the truth slip-sliding out of him like this. It’s just a temporary glitch, he tells himself. It'll all be locked up again in his head in no time at all.
Back in the lounge, he crosses to one of Chris's crates, removes the handgun from its holster, and chambers a bullet. Chris looks unimpressed as he lounges in the doorway.
"And what the fuck are you gonna do with that? C'mon, don't be an idiot," he says. He cocks his head at Jensen, saying, "Hey, Jenny, you ever used one of those before? You ever kill one of your own agents?"
"Jessica," Jensen says, and this time when he bites down on his lip he tastes blood, thin and dark. He sees the look in Chris's eyes go black, and, so desperate, he scrabbles with the gun, clawing hold of control and gripping it tight.
"You killed her," Chris says. "You gonna kill me too? Dirty little double, aren't you? You gonna shoot me too? I'll take you down before you even get that thing aimed at me, boy."
Jensen's grip on the gun wobbles but carefully, ever so deliberately, he raises the gun and puts it to his temple. The coolness of the muzzle is soothing to his headache. He's gonna shut up in a moment. Chris isn't going to get another damning word out of him. He'll be in control again.
He sees Chris's eyes slam wide-open, sees his hands fly up in some sort of surrender.
"I can't talk about this," Jensen says. His fingers are sweaty on the trigger but his voice is calm.
"No," Chris says quickly. "No, and I ain't gonna make you. Not gonna ask you any more questions, I promise. Just… c'mon, put the gun down. It ain't worth this. It can't be. Sure as hell isn't worth it to me."
Jensen's finger stays on the trigger as Chris approaches him. Chris keeps it slow and cautious. He seems freaked. Jensen should pull the trigger; everything will be okay if he pulls the trigger, Jensen won't have to talk about it and Chris won't have to know about it and won't hate Jensen, hurt Jensen, turn him in.
"You don't have to say a word. It was wrong a'me to drug you and I'm real sorry for that, but you just keep your lips pressed together tight. That's good, just like that. Now, just let me have the gun. Then we'll get you t'bed, let you sleep it off. Don't you say a word to me, Jenny. It's gonna be okay."
Feeling sick and caught in slow-motion, Jensen watches Chris reach out to the gun. Between them, they get Jensen's grip to go loose and Chris slides the gun free. Within seconds, Chris has got the bullets out and is tossing the gun back on the couch.
Then he looks at Jensen, puts his hand up again, this time to Jensen's face, and Jensen doesn't realise what he's doing until he sees the pad of Chris's thumb come away wet.
"It's gonna be okay, Jensen. I promise you. I'm gonna make this right for you."
:::
Dizzy and dehydrated, Jensen wakes up on Chris's bed. The memory of last night is right there with him, with the hot and unreal quality of a nightmare. He feels nauseous with fear, even though Chris is just sitting there across from him, looking at him. He supposes he should count his blessings and be grateful he didn't wake up in a cell. But everything that has held him together for so long has fallen down and Jensen doesn't know how to put it back together. Doesn't know where he goes from here.
He watches Chris warily, ready to run, while his head throbs and bears down too heavy on the rest of him.
"This doesn't have to be a conversation," says Chris. "You let me say my piece and if you feel like talking about it after, we will. Otherwise, you can keep your mouth shut and we can pretend this never happened. We'll put in for transfers for different partners and that'll be the end of it. I won't turn you in, but you try coming after me and I'll put you down so fucking hard your head won't stop spinning 'til next week."
He looks at Jensen, gives him an opening to respond. Jensen stares back at him, mirror-eyed. Chris nods like he expected silence.
"I don't know exactly what kind of game you're playing but I've got a few good ideas. And it's making you fucking miserable. See, the others? The branch execs? They don't see it. But I know you and I give a damn about you, and I can see just how turned around you are."
His black eye is the colour of blueberries in the dim morning light. His tone is even, confident, like he's been thinking about this for a while.
"Now," he says, "seems to me you've probably done some godawful things, maybe even still doing 'em, but you don't give me the impression of enjoying 'em much." He wets his lips, fixes Jensen with that same dark look from the night before. "You're my friend, Jensen, and I wanna help you, if you'll let me. You just gotta say the word. You just gotta let me in. So," Chris raises his chin, almost challenging, "you a double?"
Right then, Jensen thinks of the wind stirring Jessica's hair, the distant light in her eyes as she looked out over the night sea. He thinks of how stupidly surprised he was that she just fell; she didn't turn around, even though the silenced bullet sounded so loud between them. He thinks of how she was still warm when he threw her body from the plane, dropping through the darkness and disappearing into the sea.
The first time Jensen thought of her as human was after he shot her. The first time he thought of Weatherly as human was when he was quietly manipulating him into believing she was a double. After he killed Jessica, the whole world suddenly filled up with people.
And then there was Chris, who irrevocably smudged Jensen's line between Mike and Tom, and everyone else.
It all got fucked up for Jensen somewhere along the way. Mike didn't get it. Chris does.
"Okay," Chris says, standing up. "Well, guess that's that. I'll go see Schneider, tell him that I think it's time for a change, make something up, and you can speak to Glover and-"
"Yes," Jensen says. "Yes, I'm a double agent for the Coalition." Chris is staring at him again and Jensen almost wishes he could take the words back. But he doesn't. He's trembling and his throat is closing up on him again. And he's terrified.
"Help me," he says.
Chris grins and nods, pleased and self-assured. "That was the hard part. It all gets easier from here."
Jensen believes him.
:::
For eighteen hours after Chris is murdered, Jensen is a mess.
He's dead-eyed and silent the first time they try to debrief him. He functions but the machine's running on automatic. Mike makes brief contact and he hesitates over every word he says, frustrated by his own inability to snap Jensen out of it, to make it better for him. They take Jensen to the morgue to see Chris but he's not allowed to touch him because the internal haemorrhaging was too severe. He can't apologise to the corpse of his best friend because they're listening, watching.
It's not until the funeral that Jensen regains his clarity of purpose. He's sitting there in the church and the picture suddenly swims back into focus. He looks at the branch executives in turn - Glover, Schneider, O'Toole and Weatherly - and wonders which of them it is he'll find at the end of the line. He can wait. He'll get there eventually. He'll get them. Everything crystallises to that single thought.
It feels good to have something to believe in again.
:::
"You're seriously saying you don't want me to kiss you?" Jared says. "You don't think you'd like it if I kissed you? I'm talking about me kissing you, not you laying one on me while I'm not even paying attention. You don't wanna see what that's like?"
He's right up in Jensen's space, barely touching Jensen but taking him over all the same, and he doesn't know what he's doing to Jensen. Nobody's ever had this power over Jensen. Mike fascinates him, Tom makes him feel safe, Chris grounded him - but nobody's ever got so deep under Jensen's skin before.
It's just a game to Jared, just a harmless bit of flirting to see if he can tumble Jensen into bed. He doesn't see the damage he's doing.
If he knew what Jensen was, he'd kill him. Sure, he wants to fuck Jensen, but he doesn't care about him, not really. Maybe one day he will, but right now, the desire to fuck Jensen wouldn't take priority over the removal of a threat. Jensen reminds himself of this fact. Jared would put a bullet between his eyes without thinking if he knew what Jensen is. Jensen can't let him close enough to see. Jensen can't let Jared fuck him when just the offer of a kiss has him shaking.
And even if by some miracle Jensen kept Jared fooled, it'd be a distraction. His mind already keeps wandering back to Jared and there's only been one fucking kiss so far.
Jared has the potential to ruin everything.
Jensen blinks, licks his lips and squeezes the bullet he took out of Jared's shoulder tight in his palm, lets the discomfort bring him back to himself. He looks away from Jared's eyes, studies the bandage on his shoulder instead.
"What I want and what I will allow to happen aren't the same thing," Jensen says. He catches his breath and looks back at Jared and he almost breaks again then, just at the look in Jared's eyes. Kiss me, he wants to say. Don't listen to what I'm saying, just do it. Just kiss me until I can't remember why it's a bad idea. "You need to put a shirt on and leave," he says instead.
Jared doesn't move.
Just do it. Kiss me. I won't be able to stop you. Jensen can't hold on much longer. All of his effort, all of his time and planning - it's going to be for nothing because of some fucking agent who can turn Jensen into a stuttering idiot just by flashing his dimples at him.
For a heartbeat, Jensen wants to be kissed by Jared more than he wants to put Chris's death right.
Then Jared takes a step back, turns away to get dressed. Jensen doesn't dare let go of himself yet, doesn't feel released because Jared is still in the room, still too close. He watches Jared, his stomach fluttering and his expression clamped tightly into nothingness.
"See you next time," Jared says, and the only reason Jensen has for calling him back is that Jared's already heading for the door.
Jared stops, pauses, then turns back to him. Somehow, Jensen manages a smile. He tosses the bullet to Jared.
"If you gotta bring me back a souvenir, I liked the cocktail umbrella better than the bullet," he says.
A grin crosses Jared's face as he glances down at the bullet.
After he's gone, Jensen sinks down on the couch and lets out a dry sob. His jaw hangs unhitched and his unseeing eyes are fixed on the floor. He can feel panic rising in him and he doesn't know how to stop it. He doesn't know how to factor Jared into his plans because he can't even think when Jared gets too close to him. It's all slipping away from him.
He's losing control again.
~end