spn_reversebang "Go Save The World, I’ll Be Around" (J2/AU PG-13) 2/3
The English block is the farthest away from the courtyard, so during breaks it’s practically a ghost town. Jared usually likes to sit on the steps at the end of the hall and catch up on his reading, taking advantage of the quiet that he rarely finds in the common or the cafeteria.
The door to the classroom is the third down from the lockers, Jared knows it well. He’s walked this route a hundred times already this year. Fourth period English is the only class he shares with Jensen; that’s not necessarily why it’s his favourite, but it might have something to do with it.
His teacher is probably the other reason.
Jared really needs to start questioning his character judgement.
The door’s already open when he gets there, but Jared knocks his knuckles against the wood anyway; Mr. Morgan looks up from the stack of papers he’s seemingly grading. He smiles and tilts his chin to the empty classroom.
“Padalecki,” he grunts, setting his pen down and leaning back in his chair. “Can I help you with something, son?”
He probably can, actually. He can probably answer every question Jared’s been sitting on for the last year. But Jared’s not entirely sure anymore how he can guess what are truths and what are lies.
Before now, he always thought he was an excellent judge of character. Funny, how he can prove himself so thoroughly and drastically wrong without even meaning to.
Jared cleared his throat and stepped into the room, keeping the door open behind him. “Yes, actually. I uh…I have a question.”
Morgan’s eyebrow twitches. “Okay.” He waits, his lips quirking when Jared makes no attempt to continue. “Well let’s have it, kiddo. I ain’t getting any younger here.”
“I’m writing a story, for the next issue of the paper, and I’m having a moral dilemma.”
Morgan nods slowly, but there’s a shadow in his eyes that Jared can’t quite ignore. Jared’s so sick of trying to ignore things that it’s ridiculous.
“Well then, as the official head of the school paper, it’s only fitting I help you out, isn’t it, Jared?”
Morgan’s hands sweep out towards the vacant chair in front of his desk and Jared pauses for only a split second before dropping his backpack to the floor and dropping into it. He’s pretty sure a seemingly upstanding high school teacher wouldn’t murder a student in broad daylight with his door wide open in the middle of lunch period.
Then again, before now, he was also pretty sure that fifteen year old boys couldn’t scale sheer walls or infiltrate burning buildings without gas masks or be in more than one place at one time. Jared’s really being forced to reassess his standing on a whole bunch of things, if he’s honest. So yeah, he’s a little jumpy nowadays.
“So there’s this story I want to run, on this guy, at the school…”
Morgan’s face is impassive. Not a flicker. Jared swallows and continues. “And it’s a good story, too. I mean, this one’ll put me on the map for sure…”
“Then what’s the problem?” Jared’s gaze snaps to Morgan at his casual delivery and stays there, watching as the fingers he has clasped under his chin splay out to show how very much this is not a problem. “You’ve got a story. You’re a journalist. You run it.”
Jared stares for a second and has to bite down on his tongue to stop him from screaming bullshit. He blinks a couple times. Morgan still doesn’t move.
“That’s it? That’s your advice?” Jared asks eventually, his voice lifting a bit in disbelief as his eyebrows dip simultaneously. “Just run the story?”
Morgan lifts a shoulder and leans forward so his elbows rest on the edge of the desk. “You want to be a journalist, right?”
It catches Jared off guard, because yeah, he does want to be a journalist. He’s had his majors picked out since he was seven. Everyone knows that.
“Yeah.”
Morgan’s smile twists slightly into something Jared can’t quite decipher. “Then it’s best you learn now, son. Sometimes, in this job, you gotta put moral dilemmas to one side and do what you gotta do.”
Jared blinks again, once, twice. And then he loses it.
“Sell him out?” he spits. “You want me to sell him out? Do you have any idea what will happen if it gets out? What would happen to him? Do you even care? What the hell kind of person are you?”
Morgan skirts a look towards the still-open door, then leans all the way forward on his elbows so his face is only a foot away from where Jared is still seething.
“The way I see it,” his voice drops to something Jared’s never heard before, immediately forcing him to lean in and listen up, “is that I’m the kind of person who’s looking at a pint sized wannabe Lois Lane with a half-cocked fairytale, and he’s hell bent on becoming the laughing stock of this entire school.”
Jared bristles at the Lois Lane comment and wonders just how savvy Mr. Morgan is when it comes to him.
“You wanna run it, son, you go right ahead.” Morgan’s smile twists a little as he slides back in his chair and splays his hands out again, and Jared’s kind of reminded of the Bond villains his dad makes him watch on old reruns. “I would.”
Jared narrows his eyes and contemplates throwing the hard copy of The Great Gatsby at his elbow at Mr. Morgan’s face.
“I don’t believe you,” Jared says quietly, perfectly calm.
There’s not a lot Jared trusts anymore, but there are some things. Some things he’d be willing to bet his own life on. Any good journalist knows to take those things and build on them; it’s all instinct, really. Gut work, he likes to call it.
Morgan doesn’t give much away, but the twitch of his left cheek tells Jared he’s piqued the guy’s interest. “Oh really?” He lets out a gruff laugh and raises his eyes. “And why’s that?”
Jared draws a newspaper clipping from his left pocket, carefully unfolds it, and slides it over the massacred wood top of the desk so that Morgan can see the black and white snapshot with his name emblazoned along the bottom.
“Because if I blow the lid off Jensen, I blow it off of all of you.” Jared smiles when Morgan’s gaze pins him into his chair. “And you know it.”
It’s the first time Jared learned never to underestimate his gut.
In the past, when Jared thought of Jensen’s work, he always thought in terms of Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls.
Jared thinks it’s because he finds it easier to focus on the super nerdy sonic guns and spandex than the super dangerous bombs and fire fights aspects.
Jensen thinks it’s because Jared watches too much Cartoon Network.
Either way, in all of his ponderings and occasional deductions, he never imagined it quite like this.
“It’s a fucking .45, Jared. It can’t be that difficult.”
Jared frowns down at the gun in his hand and then up at the target that’s currently dancing back and forwards in front of the twelve bullet holes in the wall.
Jim sighs heavily and heaves himself up off the stool he’d been resting on. He runs a hand down his face and mumbles something about “fucking idiots and the horses they rode in on” as he ambles over to the counter to pour himself yet another whiskey.
If Jared was braver, he’d mention that he isn’t 100% conformable being trained in the art of firearms by a drunk 70-year old who keeps slurring death threats at him, but Uncle Jim is as scary and off-putting as Jared remembers, so he keeps quiet.
“You’ve gotta aim, boy.” Jim swigs back half the tumbler of amber liquid and turns to point in the vague direction of the target. “Aiming is where you concentrate on one spot and pull the trigger real quick.”
The target is actually a piece of cardboard, cut out into a vague human shape with R. Speight scrawled across the front in blue sharpie. The little X’s marking his eyes are slightly off putting, but not as much as Osric, who’s perched in the rafters, swinging the thing back and forwards on a piece of string.
He kept looking at Jared and rolling his eyes every time the bullet sped past the target to embedded itself in the plasterboard and it’s really starting to get on Jared’s nerves. He’s just about to suggest they stand Osric there instead of R. Speight to encourage this whole aiming thing when something occurs to him, and he turns to Jim.
“Why the hell am I learning to fire a gun anyway?” He waves the thing around. “Will guns even work on this guy if he’s like…super enforced?”
Jim gets this pissy look like he’s going to punch him and Jared take an involuntary step backwards when he advances.
“First,” he snatches the gun out of Jared’s flailing hand and expertly unclips it, “super enforced is not a thing.” He empties the bullets out into his palm and then starts digging around in his pocket. “Second, the next time you wave a loaded gun at me, imma punch you in the neck.”
Jared smiles sheepishly as Jim raises a warning eyebrow at him. “And lastly, it’s not Speight you’re gonna be aiming for.” He pulls his fist free from his jacket pocket and Jared leans in to inspect the bright silver bullets resting in his palm.
“Silver is moon metal.” Misha’s propped against the counter, dipping his hand rhythmically into a bowl of popcorn he’d made in the microwave earlier. “The elements inside the silver bullet can kill a shape shifter more definitely than a regular bullet in its shape shifter form due to the shape shifter moon cycles.”
“Stop saying Shape shifter.” Chris tells him seriously and Misha frowns.
“Like a werewolf?” Jared asks.
“No,” Misha replies instantly, plucking his attention from where he’s been flicking kernals at Chris’ head. He shoves a handful into his mouth and chews slowly. “There’s no such thing as werewolves, don’t be ridiculous.”
Jared can feel Osric rolling his eyes.
“Right, silly me,” Jared mumbles as he sees Osric idly create a tiny fireball in the hand that isn’t still swinging the string.
The gun is pressed into his hand again and draws Jared’s attention back to Jim staring him down impatiently. “But even silver bullets aren’t gonna drop a big mean wall, so maybe we should go back to listening to what the fuck I say and try and learn how not to die, huh?”
Jeff reappears with Danneel and Chris in tow half an hour and thirteen fresh bullet holes later.
Chris glances at the wall and the smoking hole through R. Speight’s groin and raises his eyebrows. “Going well, I see.”
Jared tosses the now-empty gun down onto the counter and throws his hands out. “This is ridiculous. Why the hell are we here putting me through firing practise when you all could be out there getting him back?”
“Because charging in half cocked with no cover and no plan will get us killed, you killed, and Jensen killed.” Jeff puts a camera onto the desk in front of the giant plasma screen and turns to lean against it, arms folded decisively. “We do recon. We get smart.” He nods to the wall of destruction. “We get you skilled in something that doesn’t require me to explain things to my decorator.”
The target falls to the floor with a clatter and Osric lands perfectly on two feet, breezing past them with a mumbled, “Thank God,” that does nothing to elevate Jared’s self esteem in gun toting.
Jared sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s been four hours and eighteen minutes since he learned Jensen had been taken. God knows how long since it actually happened; like always, he’s probably only filled in on a need-to-know basis. God knows what they’re keeping from him to keep him sweet.
This is their show, after all. Jared’s just doing as he’s told at this point.
“How do we even know he’s still alive?” Jared asks, even with Jensen’s smile and Jensen’s laugh and Jensen’s hands flash in Technicolor behind his eyes. “How do we know it’s not just a trap?”
“Oh, it is a trap,” Jim replies easily, frowning as he pokes his fingers neatly through one of the bullet holes in the plasterboard. “It’s definitely trap, we’re not freakin’ idiots. But Jensen is alive. Speight needs your intel. Jensen doesn’t know it; Speight’ll’ve figured out that much by now. So he needs you.”
“And the only way to get you is through Jensen,” Osric supplies, now propped against Misha and sharing the popcorn supply.
“And he knows we’re not about to send you in alone, so we’re a bonus little side dish,” Danneel chirps. “He won’t risk all that by killing Jensen straight off.” She’s stripping what look to be an automatic laser gun of some sort.
It looks terrifying in her hands, actually, and Jared wonders for the hundredth time that day just how the fuck he managed to get himself into this shit.
“Ok, fine.” Jared sighs, because however it happened, he’s in. He’s so far in it’s ridiculous. “Tell me what I have to do.”
He catches Jeff’s eyes then and sees something in them that he doesn’t think he’s actually seen before, or at least not directed at him. One blink and it’s gone.
“Maybe we’re approaching this wrong,” Misha says finally, pushing his bowl of snacks into Osric’s hands and approaching Jared the way Jared imagines he approaches a mathematic conundrum. He comes to stand directly in front of Jared and raises his hands. “What are you good at, Jared?”
Jared opens his mouth to reply, but Jeff’s gruff voice sounds from where he’s helping Danneel catalogue inventory.
“Keeping in mind we can’t stop super strength villains using a notebook and impressive alliteration.”
He snaps it shut again.
Misha is watching him like he’s about to reveal the meaning of life. Chris’s eyebrows are somewhere up near the brim of his hat. Jim lets out a disgruntled huff and pours another finger of Beam into his glass. The only sounds in the room are the clanging of metal from the ammo table and Osric’s rhythmic chewing.
Jared swallows and clears his throat. “I…uh…” He shrugs and rubs the back of his neck awkwardly as he delves through his list of characteristics that may be of use to these people. Struggling, he’s just about to start waxing poetic about a pen being mightier than a sword when something occurs to him amidst a flash of warm skin and strong hands and green eyes. He drops his hand from his neck and looks up hopefully.
“I can fight?”
Chris eyebrows rack up a notch and Jim winces as he throws back his final mouthful and slams the tumbler back onto the counter.
“Define, fight?”
Twenty minutes later, Chris’s back slams hard onto the wooden loft floor. Jared straightens out of his inward-defence stance and looks up to see everyone gaping at him.
A little piece of popcorn falls out of Osric’s mouth and lands back into the bowl.
“Four hours, Jared!” Jim bellows suddenly, and Osric jumps and drops the bowl with a clatter. Jim flings his hands out at the ruined wall and then at Chris rubbing his ribs grumpily. “That’s four hours of my life I’m not gettin’ back!”
Jared grins sheepishly, still trying to catch his breath, and shrugs. “Sorry?”
Not even a little bit.
Jared thought that once the truth was out, he would look at Jensen differently.
It’s not every day you discover your boyfriend is actually a secret superhero who fights crime when he’s not in English class. Not that Jared ever had reason to ponder the possibility, but he imagines it would change his perception of a guy.
It doesn’t, really, and Jared curses the anti-climatic nature of real life as he props himself up in the doorway of Uncle Jim’s garage and watches Jensen vacuum the Impala.
“Hey.”
Jensen grins when he sees him standing there through the windscreen, and Jared just out his chin in greeting. Jeff hasn’t told him, he figures. Probably part of some creepy teacher superhero plan to suss out exactly what Jared’s stand is on all of this.
Good luck with that, Jared thinks, because fuck if he knows.
Jensen shuts of the switch and the vacuum dies with a soft humming whine. “I thought you were busy today with that big story thing…?”
“I know,” Jared says, because he was right: This isn’t some movie. This is real life. Jensen is real. What they have is real…or at least Jared thought it was.
A drawn-out monologue isn’t going to change any of that. It isn’t going to change the fact that Jared’s been lied to for the entirety of their relationship thus far.
It isn’t going to change the fact that in reality, Jared doesn’t have the faintest idea who the hell Jensen Ackles is at all.
But Jensen still looks exactly the same, down to the confused little dimple he gets between his eyes like when Jared tries to explain their algebra homework to him.
“Huh?”
Jared shrugs, pushes off the doorframe and steps closer to where Jensen is still standing with the vacuum nozzle in his hand.
His hair is still sandy fair, his eyes still perfectly green. He’s still got the freckles scattered across his nose that the sunshine brought out on their beach trip last weekend.
He looks exactly the same. He is exactly the same.
Except Jared knows everything’s about to change entirely.
“I know about your father.”
Jared speaks slowly, softly. Perfectly clear and matter-of-fact because what he’s delivering here is fact. “I know about Jeff, about Chris, Danneel, Jim, all of you…”
Jensen isn’t Jeff. He has tells and he doesn’t try to hide any of them.
His face slowly drops, his hand going lax and dropping the vacuum nozzle to the floor with a clatter that vibrates throughout the whole garage. But he doesn’t say anything, just staring at Jared like he’s watching a car wreck.
“I know what you are, what you can do…” Jared takes another step towards Jensen and Jensen doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink, and Jared should be cautious. He should be scared, because he’d only skimmed the truth before. He knows what Jensen is. He knows what he can do - but he doesn’t know everything. Not yet.
He doesn’t know if he really wants to.
Jensen’s mouth opens to take a shaky breath. “What did you do?”
Jared cocks his head. “I spoke to Jeff,” he says simply.
Jensen’s eyes nearly bulge out of his face and he shakes his head back and forth in jerky little movements, “No. No, no, no… Jared, this is bad.” He backs up, one step at a time, towards the open door of the Impala’s front seat, and lowers himself into it. “Jared, this is really bad.”
Yeah, no shit, Jared thinks. Because Jared’s never been one to point fingers of blame in situations like this, but this was all Jensen’s fucking fault.
“You should have told me,” is what he says out loud, and Jensen’s eyes snap up to him from between his fingers as he cradles his face in his hands and mumbles nonsense into them.
A little laugh falls unchecked from his parted lips. “Told you?”
Jensen’s up suddenly, and Jared takes a halting step backwards because there wasn’t really a manual he could read before he put himself into this new situation, and he doesn’t know for sure how many ways a superhero can brain a mere moral with the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner.
“What the hell was I supposed to tell you, Jared?”
Jared meets his eyes and doesn’t move away. “The truth.”
Jensen seems to deflate then, lowering his head so he’s speaking to the floor. “I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
“Why not?”
“Because the truth would get you killed!” Jensen yells, and Jared wonders how strange this conversation sounds to any of the neighbours listening over their hedges.
They’ve probably turned a blind eye to worse.
“You don’t know that,” Jared says eventually, calmly, because he’s so sick of running on assumptions and half-truths.
Jensen steps closer to him. Another and another, until they’re standing toe to toe. Until Jensen can reach out and grab Jared’s shoulders in his hands.
“All I know is that I can’t let something bad happen to you.” His eyes bore into Jared’s, perfectly sincere, and Jared wonders what the hell is wrong with him that he completely believes him.
There’s something wrong with him, clearly. Probably a mind meld, he figures, and yeah, he’s got to start acquiring some superhero knowledge that didn’t fall out of Marvel.
Jared drops his gaze. “You still should have told me the truth.”
He hears Jensen sigh and he presses their foreheads together for a second before stepping back. “Okay.” He throws his hands out to the side in surrender. “What do you wanna know?”
And god, the things Jared wants to know.
He wants to know if Alan always knew he was a superhero. If it got passed on to Jensen like he inherited his jaw line. Like he inherited his mother’s eyes.
He wants to know if Jeff and Jim were as blown away as Jared had been when Alan finally came clean to them. When he held his hands up and admitted he needed their help. When an old boxing trainer and a budding journalist dropped everything they knew and to help their friend hone the parts of himself he couldn’t control.
He wants to know why they had called themselves The Crew, way back in 1974 when this whole thing started. He wanted to know why in the world they thought establishing an elite crew of crime fighters to battle San Francisco’s crime wave would end in anything other than a murdered Alan and a five year old orphan.
He wants to know whose decision it was to raise Jensen the same way, to find others like him. Other kids who needed saving. Who might not have been as lucky as Alan had been back then to have friends like he had.
He wants to know why they think this will end any better than before.
Jared wants to know a hell of a lot more than he knows he’ll ever get answers for, but that’s okay. Because there’s only one answer he wants to hear, only one truth that matters to him.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” He catches Jensen’s eyes and holds them, because Jeff lies with his words, Jared’s found, but Jensen lies with his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Jensen answers. And it’s’ the truth. “I wanted to, but Jeff, he thought…”
And yeah, Jared is aware of what Jeff thought.
Jensen’s face twists then into something akin to a wince, and he looks away again. “I like you,” Jared hears, mumbled somewhere south of his shoulders, and Jensen looks up to catch Jared’s gaze again and Jared can’t breathe. “I really like you.”
For one second, for one horrible second, Jared thinks is it: he’s getting the speech. The “It’s not you, it’s the fact that I have hidden super talents and my mentors don’t approve” speech.
But then Jensen is lurching forward, tipping up onto his toes to crush Jared’s mouth to his and Jared feels his breath release in one swift, relieved swoop.
“You were too risky. I was supposed to break it off with you,” Jensen mumbles against Jared’s lips, pulling back only long enough to take tiny little sips from his bottom lip before he leans in again to sweep his tongue in.
Jared smiles against the onslaught, wrapping his arm around Jensen’s waist to pull him flush along his body. “You’re not doing a very good job.”
He feels Jensen shrug as he pulls back, his hands resting either side of Jared’s neck. His eyes skip over Jared’s face and he frowns a little.
“I definitely think you should be more freaked out than this.”
Jared shrugs back and pulls Jensen tighter against him, his hands linking up at the small of Jensen’s back as he bends down to press his forehead against Jensen’s. “Dude, I faced down Jeff today. There’s not much that can shake me anymore.”
Jensen barks out a laugh, shaking his head without making any move to shift out of Jared’s grasp. He looks up at Jared, suddenly with a serious little tilt to his mouth.
“It’s not gonna be easy, you know,” he says. “Being with me.”
Jared stares back and thinks of everything he knows now, all of his puzzle pieces slotted into place. He thinks of everything he’s read. He thinks about all the warnings Jeff dealt out in full disclosure this afternoon with a cocky little smirk on his face like he knows anything about Jared at all.
He thinks of burning buildings, and giant ferries wheels and matching coffins. Of neat little obituaries all lined up in the newspaper. Of screaming children, and shining medals and bright red capes blowing on the skyline of the Golden Gate Bridge.
He looks down into Jensen’s dubious eyes and smiles.
“Where’s the fun in easy?”
The lab has a window. One solitary bay window that stretches almost the whole of the wall, tinted out from the outside, but showing off the whole of San Fran bay from the inside.
Jared sits at one of the tables there and nurses a tumbler of something brown that Jim pushed into his hand earlier and called liquid courage in case things go to shit.
Somewhere behind him, the others are putting the end game together. Occasionally, Jared hears Chris’s outraged snort over Felicia and Misha’s steady, measured tones. Mostly he just drinks his drink.
“You know, as much Jim has you believing it, that stuff doesn’t actually hold the answers.”
Jeff’s admonition startles him as he sits beside Jared and rests his weight on his elbows. Jared doesn’t look up from his glass. He also doesn’t point out that Jeff has one of his own.
They don’t speak for two and half minutes.
“So where’d you learn to fight like that?”
Jared shrugs. “Jensen.”
Jeff’s gruff chuckle startles him and he glances out the corner of his eye at Jeff running a hand down his face, like he’s trying to wipe the smile away. “Yeah, I figured.” He shoots Jared a look knowing. “I didn’t assume you just guessed Chris’s weak spots.”
Jared can’t help the pull of a smile, but he directs it down into his glass all the same. “Yeah, well, I can’t see through walls or hear a car alarm from ten blocks away, so it was still a fair fight, in my opinion.”
Super senses trump super intelligence - even in a knuckle fight.
Jared can still hear Jensen’s voice thrum low and steady in his ear, feel his body, a warm sinewy strip of heat down his back as he adjusts Jared’s hips and throws his elbow out.
“Chris is all brawn. He’ll throw himself into the punch, but he’s not as agile on his feet as Osric. Makes him sloppier and more exposed, if you know where to hit him.”
It’s not like Jared thought he would ever really need to use it, outside a stupid bar fight or a possible street mugging. Just in case, Jensen liked to say.
Just in case you run into the wrong person. Just in case one of them turns. Just in case their tempers get the better of them and they forget you can’t bend steel or manipulate tsunamis or teleport yourself to the Bahamas with the blink of an eye.
“Just in case I’m kidnapped by an evil genius and you have to hold your own in a rescue mission” had never come up.
Now, Jared wonders if this was his intention all along. If this whole thing was some inevitable end game carved out by fate to prove them both wrong.
It wouldn’t piss Jared off as much if it didn’t mean proving Jeff right.
“…trust issues.”
Jared’s startled out of his thoughts by the realization that Jeff has been talking to him again. “Huh?”
Jeff shoots him a look that resembles his mother’s when she knows he’s not listened to word of parental wisdom she’d been bestowing.
“I said I don’t want this to become some soap opera about feelings and trust issues…”
His delivery was a lot more direct than Jared’s momma’s, evidently.
“I know you think I never trusted you. That I didn’t want you around.”
“You don’t,” Jared retorts immediately, knocking back some of his drink because Jim was right about that much, at least; liquid courage is not something to snort at.
“Not for the reasons you think,” Jeff says back almost as fast, and Jared smirks.
“Did Jensen ever tell you about his mother?”
Jared shrugs and rubs his fingers over a chip in the glass. “She died when he was five.”
“She was murdered when he was five,” Jeff corrects, and Jared doesn’t flinch because he knows.
Kidnapped, held in exchange for her husband. For her son. Alan couldn’t get to her in time. In this instance, Jared’s really hoping the apple fell hard and far from the tree.
Jared might not be a big believer in fate, but he’s well aware of history and its poetic ability to repeat itself.
“Alan wasn’t the same after,” Jeff says, and Jared can’t help the scowl he directs at the guy.
“Of course he wasn’t the same. His wife was fucking murdered.”
“And it was his fault,” Jeff replies like it was nothing. Like it was the truth. “Our fault. Donna was… She didn’t ask for this. She didn’t sign up for the life she got - for the end she got.”
“She married him,” Jared replies, picking up the glass to swirl the liquid inside, just to do something with his hands and keep from lashing out. “She loved him.” He makes sure to catch Jeff’s eyes before adding matter-of-factly, “That’s signing off.”
He’s surprised by Jeff’s smile. “And that was always the problem, wasn’t it?”
Jared’s confused scowl is enough to prompt Jeff to go on: “I know you think that we’re ruining his life, not letting him be normal, trying to get himself killed, but Jensen’s meant for great things Jared.” Now Jared does want to lash out, because if he has to sit through another lecture about fate and destiny and greater good when his boyfriend is tied up somewhere, terrified and alone and half dead, then he’s going to claw his own eyes out. “Alan knew that, we all know that - he’s always going to be that guy.” At the pause, Jared raises his eyebrows to indicate that he’s lost.
“The guy who saves the world,” Jeff adds wryly, and Jared’s gaze drops to trembling his grip around his drink. “And I know you might not get it, but it’s important for him to have this. To have them - watching out for him”
“I know that,” Jared mumbles, because he does. Jensen was always destined to save the world. And for people who believed in all that destiny crap, that was a pretty big deal. Jared knew that. He wasn’t an idiot.
Jeff sighs tiredly and Jared glances over as he leans back. “But the thing that I hated, the thing that I always worried about - the thing I don’t think even you really get - is that our world is out there.” He gestures out of the bay windows, at the lights of San Francisco all the way down to bay.
Jeff’s mouth twitches and he catches Jared’s eyes briefly, just for a moment as Jared watches him intently. “Jensen’s is sitting right here beside me.”
The plan is pretty straightforward in the end. Really, Jared was expecting a lot more explosions and fanfare - and possibly a cape.
He gets none of that.
“Jared, the main thing you’ve got to remember is not to get dead,” Misha reiterates, pointing the laser pen he’s been using to map out the crew’s resting positions on the blueprint that Felicia had thrown up onto the plasma screen. “Can you do that?”
Jared nods. “I will certainly try my best.”
Misha nods back. “Good.” He claps once and presses his pen with a little flourish so the laser beam contracts, and looks around with a wide grin. “This concludes my presentation; please hold for the geographical low down from Miss Day, and once again, I would like to reiterate that we not get dead.”
There’s a smattering of applause from Chris, Osric, and Danneel that seems to be common fare, judging by the roll of Jim’s eyes.
“So they managed to nab your boy in a warehouse not too far from Sea Cliff.”
Jared leans back in chair and blinks rapidly, because Shepherd was definitely not in front of him half a second ago. No one else shifts one muscle.
“According to my sources, they haven’t moved him.” Shepherd shrugs, leans against the table, and picks up a pen there to twirl in between his fingers like a baton. “No need, really. What with all of his…” The pen stops as he turns his palms up, his eyes widening dramatically, “fanfare.”
“Wait,” Jared sits forward suddenly, grabbing Shepherds attention, “you’ve seen Jensen? He’s alright?”
Shepherd sighs. “Still as pouty and handsome as when you last laid lips on him, you atrocious sinner.”
Across the table, Danneel rolls her eyes. “Right. And we’re just going to trust you and your sources?”
Jared’s no stranger to Danneel and her trust issues when it comes the opposite sex. It’s slightly unusual for her strapping a switch blade to her ankle while she’s doing it, though. Jared’s liking this side of her.
She shoots Shepherd a dirty glare. “Because any acquaintance of yours couldn’t possibly be a scummy fucking liar.”
Shepherd offers a disarming smile. “No, my dear. You’re supposed to trust me. The sources I don’t trust have a nasty habit of falling dead.” He turns to Jeff suddenly. “It’s a handy motivational tool. You could do with a bit of pizzazz to keep these rugrats in line.”
Jeff, as always, brings “unamused” to a whole new level.
Shepherd blows out a low whistle and turns back to the group. “Ooo-kay. So, bad guys, eh?” He claps his hands as if to bring the class to order and Misha leans forward, offering his laser pointer. Shepherd looks at Misha like he’s just shot a rainbow out of his ass and Misha slides back in his seat with a shrug.
“Richard Speight. Super name The Trickster. Birth date, unknown - but if I were to guess, I’d say a really long time ago.” Shepherd throws a photo onto the table, a simple 4x6 of Speight leaning over a bound and gagged Jensen. He grins at Danneel. “Proof enough for you darling?”
Jared grabs for the photo, brings it up close to his face to get a better look. It’s not enough that he can count fingers and toes, but it’s Jensen. Alive, whole…and extremely pissed off.
“He’s okay,” Jared breathes, feeling the knot in his gut loosen a shred for the first time since this whole mess started.
“Well, I wouldn’t go as far as okay.” Shepherd plucks the photo out of his hand and spins it to face the group, “That stuff they’ve got him bound with is reinforced steel. And even if he does manage to get out of that, because let’s face it - Jensen? Typical overachiever - getting out of there is gonna be impossible.”
Jared frowns. “Impossible how? What’s this guy’s deal? Why Trickster?”
“He calls it illusion.” Shepherd scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Mainly because he’s a pretentious little wanker,”
“It’s smoke and mirrors, Jared. That’s all it is,” Jeff says, rubbing his fingers together all casual-like as he lounges in his seat. “Nothing to worry about.”
Jared thinks it might damper morale if he points out that they all look pretty worried.
“Not just him, though.” Shepherd throws down another photograph and Misha shifts in his seat and sends a longing glance up at his plasma screen.
This picture is of a stocky, dark haired guy, about Jared’s height. Cohen, Jared’s mind supplies. Sam.
Once they’ve got Jensen untied, Jared’s going to ask him to kindly obliterate this guy’s stupid ever-changing face.
“Matt Cohen. Speight’s new boy toy slash henchman.” Shepherd spins the photo round to take a glance himself. “Pretty little thing, isn’t he? My best guess is Speight brought him in to do the recon with beanpole here and kept him around for his face. He also seems to have a strict ‘no shirt’ uniform policy for this one, so look forward to that.”
“Yee haw,” Chris grumbles sarcastically, as Danneel suddenly perks up to take interest in the photo getting passed around.
“They’re the only ones there?” Felicia asks, taking the photo and passing it on without even a glance. “Two against five? Seems...unfair.”
“They’re not looking for a fight.” Shepherd props his hip against the table, his eyes pointedly going to Jared. “They’re looking for a trade.”
“Maybe we should rethink this,” Jim says. “A trade? I mean, when has that ever been a good idea?”
“It’s the only plan we got,” Jeff rebukes, and Jim looks at him levelly.
“Jensen would kill us if he knew what we were doing with him.”
“Well lucky for us, Jensen’s not here.” Jared is, though, and he would very much appreciate not being talked about like he’s not sitting there in front of them, fully capable of making his own decisions.
He pretends not to catch the uneasy glance Jeff and Jim share.
“There is still one tiny aspect of this whole endeavour that we haven’t hammered out yet.” Felicia lifts her finger to draw their attention back to her, clearing her throat and shifting uneasily, rearranging the files in her arms. “I’ve been through this article with one of Jim’s fine-toothed moustache combs, three times. I’ve taken Jared’s research material to pieces; I’ve been through his hard drive twice…”
“Hey!”
She winces and looks apologetic. “Sorry.”
“And?” Chris prompts, still cradling a bow and arrow like it’s a security blanket.
Felicia shrugs delicately and spills the files in her arms over the desk, gesturing to them forlornly. “And nothing. I got nothing,” She looks up at them with solemn eyes through her glasses. “I have no idea what’s in here that Speight would kill for.”
Jared stomach knots unpleasantly as Felicia drops onto the stool beside him and leans in. “Although I did reinforce the firewall on your computer while I was in there. You’re welcome.”
Everyone is reluctantly reaching for one of the files when a voice stops them.
“Hold those horses, minions.”
Shepherd already has one of the files open in his hands, his eyes trained on one of the pictures there. A photo, Jared can see from where’s he’s sitting.
Shepherd spins the file so everyone can see the picture, a black and white wide shot of the old St. Thomas building.
“I think I might just go for the hat trick on ‘helpful and meaningful intel’ today.”
Everyone looks at him expectantly. Chris jiggles the bow slightly.
Shepherd smiles widely, and Jared’s reminded of one of those sharks they have in the snorkelling tanks in Disney World.
They probably won’t maul your child. But they could.
“I believe I know what the big bad wants after all.
The warehouse turns out to be pretty nondescript.
Jared is relieved, but Chris sighs when he sees it, like he was aiming for something a bit more challenging.
“They could have at least put a couple of guards on the perimeter to warm us up,” he grumbles after Danneel sets them down on the grassy hill overlooking the building.
Jared could live for a thousand years, ride a thousand roller coasters, drive his car at thousand miles an hour and never feel quite as nauseated as he felt after his first flight.
Turns out it’s not quite the same when you’re not strapped in with a bag of peanuts.
Jared takes a gulp of air and tries to steady his roiling stomach as Chris continues mumbling, adjusting the Stetson resting on his head. “Fucking insulting is what it is.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Osric says before disappearing on a gust of wind, and Jared feels his stomach lurch again as he squeezes his eyes shut.
He knows what they do - in theory. He knows what they’re all about, knows all their tricks and quirks - in theory. Seeing it in real life, right before his eyes, makes Jared’s head feel a little like he’s on acid.
Chris frowns and says something about goddamn wind blower as he crouches in the grass and squints towards the warehouse. After a bit, his eyes shut and then there’s silence for about thirty seconds straight.
Jared’s about to open his mouth to check if this is Chris’s version of sleeping on the job when Danneel’s neatly manicured hand wraps around his forearm and she smiles and shakes her head.
Jared snaps his mouth shut just as Chris snaps his eyes open.
“Two floors, three rooms. The back perimeter is closed off, two bodies plus Jensen.” Chris stands stiffly and tugs at the bow on his back. “They’re holding Jensen in the first room. Open plan. One way in, one way out. Easy access. No obstacles between them and the door.” He frowns, disgruntled. “Too easy. My spidey senses are all a-tingle.”
“Easy, Cowboy,” Danneel croons, and for some reason her hair looks redder now. All loose and flowing in waves over her shoulder, down past her tight black shirt and black jeans. She looks like, well, like a superhero. And Jared’s having a hard time reconciling Danneel “The Vixen” who saves San Francisco from total destruction every other Tuesday with Danneel “His Friend” who always shares half his Fudge Brownie Sundae because Jensen prefers pie.
“Chris will stay here and monitor the perimeter. Osric has eyes from the sky; one word and we’re coming in hot, ‘kay sweetie?” She taps the earpiece in her ear, mirroring the one Jeff pushed into Jared’s hand before they left. She shoots Jared a promising smile, the way he remembers his third grade teacher doing when he recited his three times table correctly.
“Okay.” Jared smiles back in what he hopes is a reassuring manner, because they’ve had a good run, after all.
It’d be damn shame if Jared’s the reason they all get blown to hell in the end.
“You’re gonna be fine,” she says. Then she blinks and he’s in the dusty parking lot in front of the warehouse doors, and she sounds sure, if nothing else. “It’s gonna be fine.”
It’s not fine.
The warehouse doors swing open easily enough when Jared pushes on them, but Jared has to give Chris his dues; they were idiots if they thought this was gonna be easy.
“Uh…” Jared hopes that the static in his left ear is going to break into something helpful and wise very shortly because what he’s looking at is…well. It’s nothing.
No Jensen, no Speight, no Cohen.
Just a dusty, empty warehouse. The earpiece stays silent and Jared’s just about to tell Chris he maybe needs to squint a bit harder through that wall of his when the air starts to crackles around him and suddenly, the warehouse isn’t empty anymore. Jared blinks, his vision clearing. Blinks again.
It takes him a minute to realise where he is. A flash of memory, of clumsy hands - the smell of drying paint thick in the air.
He tries to think of the name of the guy standing to his left but can’t. Tenth grade Spanish class. Brock? Brady?
He stumbles forwards, tells himself to keep moving, even as Misha’s laugh fills his ears. As Danneel waves at him from her perch on the stage steps, her hair just as long, just as red as it is now.
Just smoke and mirrors, he hears Jeff say in his head. But it doesn’t feel like smoke and mirrors. It feels real. He feels fifteen. He feels like he’s so far out of his depth that he can barely breath.
“Jensen?” he yells, and the girl who’s busy painting Juliet’s tower scowls over at him in agitation.
His feet quicken, but he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to go. All he can hear is his footsteps on the wooden stage floor as he crosses over to the steps and brushes past Danneel on his way down to…where? Out? Home? English class?
But Danneel’s tiny hand grabs his arm as he passes and Jared turns. Watches her face turn up to his in confusion.
“Where’re you going, Jared?” she asks, but her voice is wrong. Too concerned. Too sweet to be the Danneel Jared knows.
Jared snatches his arm back and stumbles down the last step. “Jensen,” he yells again, because he should be here. Even if it’s not him, not really. Even smoke-and-mirrors Jensen should be here, hanging those stupid lights, up on that stupid ladder.
If it wasn’t for those lights, they probably never would have met. Who’s going to hang the lights if Jensen isn’t here?
Jared shakes his head, trying to clear out the fog that’s clouding his judgement.
“Jensen’s not here, Jared,” Smoke Danneel says solemnly, her lip protruding in a soft little pout as Misha barks out a laugh behind her. “Jensen’s dead.”
Jared’s head pounds, but his gut says no. “No.” Jared says, and he plants his feet steadily. “No, he’s not dead.”
The pout suddenly breaks into a blinding grin, all teeth, and Danneel laughs. “You’re right. He’s not. But you are.”
White-hot pain bursts behind Jared’s eyes and he crumples to the ground. He blinks his eyes open, rolls enough onto his back to see Misha standing over him with a crowbar and nothing’s right. Nothing makes sense anymore.
Then there’s blackness.
There’s a ticking noise when he comes alert and everything’s blurry around the edges. He tries to thrust his hand out to prod Jensen. Tell him to turn the alarm off, five more minutes won’t make a difference, but his hand’s stuck.
“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!” And yeah, that’s not Jensen.
His eyes open of their own accord and blinding pain bursts through his skull and spills into his eyes. He squeezes them shut again and muffles a yell.
“Yeah, that might smart a bit.”
All Jared can see when he squints his eyes open again is a moustache and teeth. Fucking evil geniuses and their facial hair, Jared thinks even as he scowls at it.
Speight steps back when Jared lifts his head up and he gestures to where Cohen is standing just behind him, idly swinging a crowbar. “The kid got a bit excited with the crowbar. I apologise - I should monitor his weapon play, it’s getting out of hand.”
Jared doesn’t say anything because just past Cohen, just behind him, is Jensen.
Bound and gagged and rough-looking sure, but it’s Jensen. Real Jensen, and Jared feels every knot that had been twisting inside him for the past twelve hours dissipate. Just like that.
“Jensen,” he releases in on an exhale, hears the word rattle around in his head, still foggy and heavy, and Speight kind of stutters in his movements and turns to face the man in question.
“Oh sure, Jensen,” he says comically, rolling his eyes at Cohen, who, to be honest, isn’t really paying much attention other than to swing the crowbar a little harder and grin menacingly. “Don’t bother asking about me, I’m fine.” Speight raises his hand to his chest and peers over at Jared with faux sincerity. “I mean this kidnapping thing is harder than it looks, you know. Lots of planning and scheming, it’s exhausting!”
Yeah, this guy is a trip. He gestures to where Jensen is staring at Jared, his eyes bugging a little as he struggles with his restraints.
“All he’s done is sit there!” Speight seems to deflate and he turns back to Jared with a smile. “But, that’s all we needed him to do, wasn’t it?” He shakes his head solemnly and takes a step closer to where Jared’s bound as Jared catalogues Jensen, scanning for every scrape and bruise and bone, just in case.
Speight reaches out and pokes a bony finger into Jared’s cheek to pull his attention. Jared jerks his head out of the way, frowning up at him.
“It sucks when this kryptonite thing goes both ways, don’t it?” Speight says with concealed glee. “I mean, great for us bad guys - makes the whole ‘trapping you’ thing easy as pie, let me tell you. On behalf of all of us, from the bottom of our hearts, I would like to sincerely thank any and all boneheaded super idiots who think falling ass over tea kettle in love is a good idea in regards to the general wellbeing of all parties involved. I mean…” Speight looks between him and Jensen exasperatedly and throws his arms up. “Guys? Does history not speak well enough for itself?”
He shakes his head and meanders over to stand behind Jensen, resting his hands on his shoulders and rubbing them encouragingly. Jensen doesn’t try to shrug him off, just holds Jared’s gaze, and Speight meets Jared’s eyes over his head.
“You do know I’m going to kill you, yes?”
Jared figured as much.
He knew going into this that there was a very real possibility that they weren’t getting out alive. That much is a given, and Jared doesn’t need any instruction.
But if they are going to die, they’re going to die together. That’s better than Jensen dying alone in some bumfuck dirty warehouse in the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what Jared thought. Now, he’s not too sure.
“Not before I tell you what you want to know, though.” Jared smiles a little and hopes it comes off as ruthless. It must, at least a little, because Speight’s irritating smirk slips a little and Jared wishes Jeff was here to see it. “Right?”
Speight’s smirk is way off now. He drops his hands from Jensen’s shoulders and his voice is void of its earlier gleeful tease. “And here I was thinking that fuck-tard Collins and his magic laboratory were the brains of the operation.”
He knocks Jensen’s shoulder, hard, as he passes and Jensen gives a muffled grunt, his eyes having flown straight to Jared’s as soon as he’d opened his mouth. It’s similar to the expression he makes when Jared leans over to “whisper” his running commentary at the movies, “Shut up, asshole.”
“And I can’t tell you if I’m dead, right?” Jared’s on a roll, his voice just this side of panicked but able to pass for breezy if Speight isn’t paying too close attention. He’s a reporter, after all. He can lie with the best of them; fuck super smoke and magic mirrors.
“Right again.” Speight laughs humourlessly and he’s close enough to Cohen’s side to reach out and knock him with his elbow. “Giving you a run for your money on the brain stakes, this one, huh cutie?” Cohen sways a little at the jostle, but his eyes are trained on Jared and Jared thinks that maybe he just heard a growl.
“Tell you what.” Speight is grinning again, wide and feral. “How ‘bout you give him another couple of knocks across the brain box with your bar and see how many secrets fall out, huh?”
Cohen gladly takes a step forwards looking like all his Christmases have come at once, and Jensen surges against his binds, his muffled yells coarse-sounding and strained as he thrashes.
“No need for that,” Jared says, halting Cohen in his tracks with the crowbar raised over one shoulder in preparation for a blow that Jared doubts he’d see the other side of. “I’ll tell you.” He grins past the shirtless shape shifter at Speight and makes sure to put all of his teeth into it. “Just tell me what you want to know.”
Speight raises his eyebrow mockingly and juts his hip out to one side. Cohen pouts and slowly lowers the crowbar back to his side.
“A bad guy monologue?” Speight drawls disdainfully. “You want me to monologue? Are you kidding me? What is this, fucking Scooby Doo?
“Actually, I just wanted you to verify which aspect of the story you want cleared up.” Jared elaborates, speaking slowly. His head feels like it’s on fire from the tips of his ears up to his crown, and his brain has been stuffed full of cotton balls. He figures he’s got about another ten minutes, tops, of effective consciousness in him. Might as well use it wisely.
He seems to have gotten the bad guys’ attention, at least.
“Is it the part where Alan found a way to bind superhero powers indefinitely? To make them completely powerless. To make them perfectly -”
Jared pauses on the word, because he doesn’t know Speight from Adam, but Jared knows superheroes. Knows them better than he knows himself. And he knows how much they loathe that word, “normal.”
In his periphery, he feels more than sees Jensen stop struggling, his eyes going dark and wide in his head. Yeah, Jared had been pretty shocked too by the revelations that spilled pretty hard and fast out of Shepherd’s lips once the old St. Thomas medical files jogged his memory.
For a time travelling super sleuth, he has a surprisingly slow recall of long-term history.
“Or maybe you’d like to rehash the moment you realised that Samantha Smith didn’t actually have the answers you needed? That Alan had wiped her memory of all of it before he died, to protect her. Because he knew scum like you would go after her if you ever found out! Sam didn’t have your fucking cure!” He meets Speight’s eyes dead on and hold them, smiling slowly. “And now there’s only one person alive who does?”
It’s as simple as a formula, in the end. So small and indiscrete that it became embedded inside the files Sam had handed over to Jared and gone unnoticed.
Just algebraic dribble that Jared had put down to some medicinal concoction, at the time. When he thought it was something more sinister than super sensory cures being conducted in the basements of St. Thomas in the 1970s. When Sam had confirmed that the flashbacks she was having in her nightmares weren’t of patients. They weren’t of treatments. They were something else.
Nothing good, she had told Jared, teary eyed, as she’d slipped him the last of the medical files she had pulled out of storage. She couldn’t remember writing them. Couldn’t make any more sense out of them than Jared could. Car accident, she’d told him, they call it retrograde amnesia.
She died thinking she’d done terrible things, Jared knows. She died before Jared could give her any answers. Before he could give her any of the truth she came to him searching for.
Alan had trusted her with his secret - with something that he’d only ever entrusted to one other person, and that secret got her killed. Truth is funny like that, sometimes.
Trust is even funnier.
“That fucking time lord!” Speight yells suddenly, like Shepherd’s been lurking just out of earshot, laughing at him.
Jared bites back a grin, because only one person could have told him all of this. Only one person who could have gotten himself out of Alan’s lab once he’d been captured with nothing but a silver tongue and a promise to play turncoat all those years ago.
Shepherd owes Alan his life. Alan’s life was Jensen, in the end. And Mark Shepherd has been a great many things, over many a century, but he is nothing if not a man of his word. He will help them out when he can. Trust, Jared thinks; it’s a conundrum wrapped in an enigma.
“Your fucking father,” Speight points an accusatory finger at Jensen, who looks a bit put out by all of the history having been flung out in the last thirty seconds, “your fucking father wanted to strip us! Wanted to ruin us! For what? To be like them?”
He turns to Jared. “To be fucking normal I’ll show you normal. I’ll show everyone normal…when San Francisco’s pious little crew is stripped down to nothing but John Does and Joe Blogs, I’ll show everyone what new normal will be taking over this pathetic little city…”
Jared quells the urge to roll his eyes, because Cartoon Network or not, they just can’t fucking help themselves with the goddamn monologues. As if the moustache on this one isn’t overkill enough.
“Are you done?” Jared asks, taking a moment to note how pathetically awkward Cohen looks now, just standing with his crowbar dangling prone in one hand while his eyes jerk back and forwards between Speight and Jared.
They probably hadn’t gotten as far as the actual reasoning behind the kidnapping in their Team Evil orientation, Jared guesses. Cohen looks like the type of kid who just likes to beat the piñata, regardless of what falls out in the end.
Jared might take the time to feel bad for him if not for the pounding of his own skull.
Speight freezes for a moment before he nods. “Yeah, I’m done.” He takes a step closer to Jared, and that’s fine by Jared, because a step closer to Jared means a step away from Jensen. Cohen’s eyes jump to him, looming over Jared and smiling down. “And so are you.” His voice drops to a grave warning: “So give me the formula.”
Jared blinks owlishly. “Oh, I don’t actually have it.”
It takes a second for his words to register, for Speight’s stoic expression to crease into a frown and for Cohen’s eyes twitch, before he grins. “I just wanted to distract you so they could do that.”
“Wh…?” The frown on Speight’s forehead deepens, but then he spins around to find Jensen standing upright and surprisingly sprightly for someone who’s been tied up in steel for half a day straight.
Danneel leans oh so causally on the chair that Jensen had been sat in, the chains and gag abandoned on the floor on top of a prone and unconscious Cohen. She gives them a little wave as Jared feels a gust of wind ruffle the hairs on the back of his neck and his grin widens.
Between one blink and the next, there’s a silver-tipped arrow through Speight’s left shoulder. Jensen reaches out to grab the arrow’s shaft and twists it in one fluid motion so that Speight has no choice but to follow with a pained scream, his back pressed against Jensen’s front.
Speight’s laugh is high and panicked, but it still holds his characteristic arrogance. “A silver arrow through the shoulder?” He giggles, glancing down at the offending wound with what little manoeuvring room Jensen’s allowing him. “Are you kidding me? Not even close!”
“Not even meant to be,” Chris responds just as cockily, appearing out from behind Jared’s back with Osric in tow, slinging the bow back over his shoulder and grinning discreetly at Jared. Asshole with his stupid shooting skills, Jared thinks grumpily.
“I, for one, am excited to see how a normal trickster handles normal prison cell in a normal correctional facility for the rest of his natural bound days,” Danneel croons, aiming a localised kick to Cohen’s twitching body when he groans.
Chris steps up to Speight and flicks the end of the arrow, grinning when Speight flinches and then narrows his eyes in suspicion. “We’ve named the first batch of the formula, Speight Lite.” He glances at Jensen. “What d’you think?”
Speight pales, his face falling in the first move of weakness Jared’s seen as Jensen nods. “Catchy. I like it.”
Speight’s already started to spasm when Jensen pushes him towards Chris to take over, and Jared’s just about to ask him where the fuck he thinks he’s going, but his heads hurting too much and there’s a ringing in his ears and it takes him a couple more minutes to realise that he can move his hands again.
Which is good, because he really needs to prod Jensen into turning off that stupid alarm clock.
Turns out Jared only had about twelve minutes of consciousness left in him.
EPILOGUE
