Someone you might have been (j2 au, 3/39)
I'm sorry - writing this is like eating junk food: totally counter-productive but an awful lot of fun.
Someone you might have been
Jared's a secret agent, Jensen's his handler, eventually there will be angst, porn and plot. Right now, Jared is just a badass and Jensen is stubbornly unimpressed.
part two
The fourth guy goes down without a sound, just like the first, second and third did. It's the fifth guy who is mildly trickier and Jared has to throw in a kick to the back of the knee before he can jab the guy in the collarbone, and stun him long enough to snap his neck.
Jared doesn't actually enjoy killing people. He's not just saying that for decency's sake, he really doesn't. You can check his most recent psych analysis. It's not like he gets torn up and angsty about it - they're doing their job and he's doing his job and sometimes their jobs are to try to kill each other, and it's not Jared's fault if he's just better than them at his job. But if he can avoid upping the body count without putting the mission in jeopardy, then he will.
Still, sometimes he's gets a little tired of the assignments where he's expected to not even exist, where he ghosts in and out and it's only weeks or months later - or maybe never - that they realise that security's been compromised. Sometimes, he has to admit, he appreciates the chance to fight his way in, do his thing and then fight his way back out.
Jensen's his eyes and ears on this one again, but has kept mostly silent so far. Sometimes Jared thinks he can hear the sound of Jensen breathing, soft and intimate. Sometimes he finds himself thinking of Jensen, sitting alone in his hotel room over on the other side of the city, tracking Jared's progress on the monitor, effortlessly taking tech and security obstacles out of Jared's path before he even reaches them. Mostly though, Jared doesn't let himself think of that, because he's working and he needs to concentrate, and thoughts of Jensen are crazily distracting.
It's enough just to know that Jensen's with him. Silent or otherwise.
It's not until Jared's made his way through the tunnels and is up on the first floor of the communications tower, that Jensen says, "Heat readings indicate another two bodies heading your way. Estimate visual in six, five, four-"
Jared pulls the small Sig Mosquito, readies it - Three, two, one - and fires twice. The Sig spits the bullets out and the two guys go down, each with a neat little hole between the eyes. Jared steps over their bodies and takes the stairs, bounding up four at a time.
The quality of the light inside the tower is grainy and poor, and what little moonlight makes it in through the single window in the stairwell is welcome. As far as most people are concerned, the communications tower has been out of use for the last ten years. There's debris of newspapers and assorted litter shoved into the corners, left over from the homeless folk who moved in, before the building was co-opted by an unfriendly agency. It won't have been a bloodless renovation, which might soothe any pangs of conscience Jared were to have.
If he were the kind of guy to have pangs like that.
"Second control terminal on this floor," Jensen murmurs, cool and calm and really kind of aurally pleasing in Jared's ear.
There are another three guys between Jared and the control terminal. It's done quick and efficient: Jared walks in, shoots, and the third guy's dead before the first one's hit the floor. No need for Jared to run or find cover. No time for the guys to realise they're about to die. It's the kind of neatness of execution that Jared's renowned for - among other things.
It probably would have been tougher if any of them had even the faintest idea that Jared was coming. As it is, with them all caught off-guard, it's almost pathetically easy.
Their blood pools out over the floor, dark and glimmering, and runs together into one large puddle, which Jared carefully steps over. Naturally, he's wearing boots, but leaving a trail of bloody footprints is a pretty amateur thing to do and the kind of mistake Jared hasn't made in fucking years.
Jensen's already taken down most of the external computer-network security, so all Jared has to do at the control terminal is to upload the virus Jensen prepared and paralyse the system.
"Zoolander, are we good?" he mutters.
"Firewall's down. Virus is disabling the secondary lock," Jensen tells him.
He sounds distant, and Jared has a clear idea of him paying more attention to monitoring the virus's attack than Jared's question. In the pause, as Jensen's mind is elsewhere, Jared finds himself wondering, ever so briefly, what Jensen's wearing right now. He wets his lips, then glances back at the three cooling corpses on the floor to remind himself that he really should try to be professional.
"Okay, Sasquatch, we're good," Jensen says. He's back with Jared now, focused on him again. "Last terminal and satellite base on the fourth floor." He pauses, then adds, "It's pretty hot up there. I'm reading six, maybe seven bodies."
Explosives then, Jared thinks. Something small but flashy.
In the end, he goes for a smoke bomb, rolls it hissing and spitting across the floor, and steps in behind it, firing his Sig, and listens to the startled curses and blundering about switch to grunts of pain and bodies going down. As he empties the Sig's clip into the room, he pulls out his Glock, and finishes the job with that.
The smoke clears and from where he stands amidst the carnage, Jared casts a cursory glance over each body - seven, as Jensen had said - to ensure nobody's getting back up.
Same process with the control terminal takes it out as easy as the other two fell. As he waits for the disabled control terminals to unlock the satellite's base computer, Jared rubs the pad of his thumb absent-mindedly over the muzzle of his Glock. The metal feels almost warm to the touch. In his ear, Jensen's tapping away at his keyboard and Jared's head is full of him again.
Jensen is in a cheap hotel room in the city, and he'll be wearing his headset and he'll have those little lines between his brows that he gets when he's concentrating, and his lips will be soft and parted, and his shoulders will be hunched over ever so slightly. And maybe, when he's thinking something through, his fingers will go to his mouth, rub his thumb over his lips, just like Jared's doing with the Glock. It's his own little tell, that tiny mannerism that Jared picked up on and now can't stop noticing whenever Jensen does it.
"Sasquatch?" Jensen says. "Is there a problem?"
Jared startles and realises the satellite base is sitting open and ready for him, cursor flashing expectantly on the screen. Swearing beneath his breath, Jared gets to work and inputs the new string of commands. Once it's discovered that security in the tower has been breached, the satellite will be shut down. It won't be long, hours maybe. But it'll be long enough for the new information being relayed from the satellite to do some serious damage.
It could have been done already if Jared hadn't been busy contemplating the drag of Jensen's lip when he smoothes his thumb over it.
Jared's just finishing up embedding the new command sequence when Jensen says, "Movement behind you." And Jared twists about-
-And catches the bullet in his shoulder instead of his chest.
Turns out one guy isn't quite as dead as Jared thought. Or, more accurately, wasn't quite as dead. Jared remedies the error pretty much immediately, ignoring the aching flare of heat where the bullet's lodged in his flesh, and then liberally fires a few rounds into the corpses just to make fucking sure.
"Jesus," he mumbles at them. "No need to be so fucking vindictive."
"Sasquatch? Status report?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Fucker put a bullet in me." He hears Jensen's swift intake of breath, and gratifying as his concern is, Jared'd prefer to deal with it later, when Jensen can do some hands-on pampering. "Just a flesh wound. Gonna be fine. Heading for the extraction point now. ETA forty-five seconds."
In this line of work, getting shot isn't anything all that unusual. Jared's been shot and beaten and stabbed and run over and tortured and even, on one memorable occasion, blown up. It stopped being awesome and pants-wettingly terrifying a good long while ago. Now it's a nuisance and really kind of uncomfortable. Obviously, Jared can handle pain, but that doesn't mean he isn't very aware of the bullet in his shoulder.
It hurts and he feels stupid for not checking properly that the corpses were all actually corpses like they were supposed to be and he feels embarrassed that Jensen saw him screw up and then had to save his life. Well, not exactly saved his life; the guy had been bleeding out, hand shaky, and by Jared's estimate, if Jensen hadn't warned him, Jared would have caught a shot that was serious but not fatal.
Still, the guy should have been cooling meat.
"Gettin' cocky, man," he tells himself, as he makes his way out onto the roof. It's a clear, starry night and the sky is huge and purple-blue above him.
"What?" says Jensen. "Are we talking about your cock again? Fuck, did they shoot you in the cock?"
"Nah, still in possession of that. Believe me, they shoot my dick off and you won't have to ask." He steps up onto the ledge and grins at nothing in particular. "But hey, if you're worrying, feel free not to take my word for it."
The breeze is chill over Jared's cheeks and hands, the only patches of skin exposed. Black combat gear is practical, sure, but it's also nice and warm for nights like this. Doesn't matter where they send him, Jared's a Texas boy at heart and he's never learnt to like the cold.
He affixes the grappling hook to the thick stone ledge of the roof, and then shoots the other directly at the ground. It whistles through the air, descending into darkness, and then digs in way below. Jared tugs on the line, gives one look back over his shoulder to check for anyone else who might have risen from the dead and be coming gunning for him, and then drops over the edge.
part four
Someone you might have been
Jared's a secret agent, Jensen's his handler, eventually there will be angst, porn and plot. Right now, Jared is just a badass and Jensen is stubbornly unimpressed.
part two
The fourth guy goes down without a sound, just like the first, second and third did. It's the fifth guy who is mildly trickier and Jared has to throw in a kick to the back of the knee before he can jab the guy in the collarbone, and stun him long enough to snap his neck.
Jared doesn't actually enjoy killing people. He's not just saying that for decency's sake, he really doesn't. You can check his most recent psych analysis. It's not like he gets torn up and angsty about it - they're doing their job and he's doing his job and sometimes their jobs are to try to kill each other, and it's not Jared's fault if he's just better than them at his job. But if he can avoid upping the body count without putting the mission in jeopardy, then he will.
Still, sometimes he's gets a little tired of the assignments where he's expected to not even exist, where he ghosts in and out and it's only weeks or months later - or maybe never - that they realise that security's been compromised. Sometimes, he has to admit, he appreciates the chance to fight his way in, do his thing and then fight his way back out.
Jensen's his eyes and ears on this one again, but has kept mostly silent so far. Sometimes Jared thinks he can hear the sound of Jensen breathing, soft and intimate. Sometimes he finds himself thinking of Jensen, sitting alone in his hotel room over on the other side of the city, tracking Jared's progress on the monitor, effortlessly taking tech and security obstacles out of Jared's path before he even reaches them. Mostly though, Jared doesn't let himself think of that, because he's working and he needs to concentrate, and thoughts of Jensen are crazily distracting.
It's enough just to know that Jensen's with him. Silent or otherwise.
It's not until Jared's made his way through the tunnels and is up on the first floor of the communications tower, that Jensen says, "Heat readings indicate another two bodies heading your way. Estimate visual in six, five, four-"
Jared pulls the small Sig Mosquito, readies it - Three, two, one - and fires twice. The Sig spits the bullets out and the two guys go down, each with a neat little hole between the eyes. Jared steps over their bodies and takes the stairs, bounding up four at a time.
The quality of the light inside the tower is grainy and poor, and what little moonlight makes it in through the single window in the stairwell is welcome. As far as most people are concerned, the communications tower has been out of use for the last ten years. There's debris of newspapers and assorted litter shoved into the corners, left over from the homeless folk who moved in, before the building was co-opted by an unfriendly agency. It won't have been a bloodless renovation, which might soothe any pangs of conscience Jared were to have.
If he were the kind of guy to have pangs like that.
"Second control terminal on this floor," Jensen murmurs, cool and calm and really kind of aurally pleasing in Jared's ear.
There are another three guys between Jared and the control terminal. It's done quick and efficient: Jared walks in, shoots, and the third guy's dead before the first one's hit the floor. No need for Jared to run or find cover. No time for the guys to realise they're about to die. It's the kind of neatness of execution that Jared's renowned for - among other things.
It probably would have been tougher if any of them had even the faintest idea that Jared was coming. As it is, with them all caught off-guard, it's almost pathetically easy.
Their blood pools out over the floor, dark and glimmering, and runs together into one large puddle, which Jared carefully steps over. Naturally, he's wearing boots, but leaving a trail of bloody footprints is a pretty amateur thing to do and the kind of mistake Jared hasn't made in fucking years.
Jensen's already taken down most of the external computer-network security, so all Jared has to do at the control terminal is to upload the virus Jensen prepared and paralyse the system.
"Zoolander, are we good?" he mutters.
"Firewall's down. Virus is disabling the secondary lock," Jensen tells him.
He sounds distant, and Jared has a clear idea of him paying more attention to monitoring the virus's attack than Jared's question. In the pause, as Jensen's mind is elsewhere, Jared finds himself wondering, ever so briefly, what Jensen's wearing right now. He wets his lips, then glances back at the three cooling corpses on the floor to remind himself that he really should try to be professional.
"Okay, Sasquatch, we're good," Jensen says. He's back with Jared now, focused on him again. "Last terminal and satellite base on the fourth floor." He pauses, then adds, "It's pretty hot up there. I'm reading six, maybe seven bodies."
Explosives then, Jared thinks. Something small but flashy.
In the end, he goes for a smoke bomb, rolls it hissing and spitting across the floor, and steps in behind it, firing his Sig, and listens to the startled curses and blundering about switch to grunts of pain and bodies going down. As he empties the Sig's clip into the room, he pulls out his Glock, and finishes the job with that.
The smoke clears and from where he stands amidst the carnage, Jared casts a cursory glance over each body - seven, as Jensen had said - to ensure nobody's getting back up.
Same process with the control terminal takes it out as easy as the other two fell. As he waits for the disabled control terminals to unlock the satellite's base computer, Jared rubs the pad of his thumb absent-mindedly over the muzzle of his Glock. The metal feels almost warm to the touch. In his ear, Jensen's tapping away at his keyboard and Jared's head is full of him again.
Jensen is in a cheap hotel room in the city, and he'll be wearing his headset and he'll have those little lines between his brows that he gets when he's concentrating, and his lips will be soft and parted, and his shoulders will be hunched over ever so slightly. And maybe, when he's thinking something through, his fingers will go to his mouth, rub his thumb over his lips, just like Jared's doing with the Glock. It's his own little tell, that tiny mannerism that Jared picked up on and now can't stop noticing whenever Jensen does it.
"Sasquatch?" Jensen says. "Is there a problem?"
Jared startles and realises the satellite base is sitting open and ready for him, cursor flashing expectantly on the screen. Swearing beneath his breath, Jared gets to work and inputs the new string of commands. Once it's discovered that security in the tower has been breached, the satellite will be shut down. It won't be long, hours maybe. But it'll be long enough for the new information being relayed from the satellite to do some serious damage.
It could have been done already if Jared hadn't been busy contemplating the drag of Jensen's lip when he smoothes his thumb over it.
Jared's just finishing up embedding the new command sequence when Jensen says, "Movement behind you." And Jared twists about-
-And catches the bullet in his shoulder instead of his chest.
Turns out one guy isn't quite as dead as Jared thought. Or, more accurately, wasn't quite as dead. Jared remedies the error pretty much immediately, ignoring the aching flare of heat where the bullet's lodged in his flesh, and then liberally fires a few rounds into the corpses just to make fucking sure.
"Jesus," he mumbles at them. "No need to be so fucking vindictive."
"Sasquatch? Status report?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Fucker put a bullet in me." He hears Jensen's swift intake of breath, and gratifying as his concern is, Jared'd prefer to deal with it later, when Jensen can do some hands-on pampering. "Just a flesh wound. Gonna be fine. Heading for the extraction point now. ETA forty-five seconds."
In this line of work, getting shot isn't anything all that unusual. Jared's been shot and beaten and stabbed and run over and tortured and even, on one memorable occasion, blown up. It stopped being awesome and pants-wettingly terrifying a good long while ago. Now it's a nuisance and really kind of uncomfortable. Obviously, Jared can handle pain, but that doesn't mean he isn't very aware of the bullet in his shoulder.
It hurts and he feels stupid for not checking properly that the corpses were all actually corpses like they were supposed to be and he feels embarrassed that Jensen saw him screw up and then had to save his life. Well, not exactly saved his life; the guy had been bleeding out, hand shaky, and by Jared's estimate, if Jensen hadn't warned him, Jared would have caught a shot that was serious but not fatal.
Still, the guy should have been cooling meat.
"Gettin' cocky, man," he tells himself, as he makes his way out onto the roof. It's a clear, starry night and the sky is huge and purple-blue above him.
"What?" says Jensen. "Are we talking about your cock again? Fuck, did they shoot you in the cock?"
"Nah, still in possession of that. Believe me, they shoot my dick off and you won't have to ask." He steps up onto the ledge and grins at nothing in particular. "But hey, if you're worrying, feel free not to take my word for it."
The breeze is chill over Jared's cheeks and hands, the only patches of skin exposed. Black combat gear is practical, sure, but it's also nice and warm for nights like this. Doesn't matter where they send him, Jared's a Texas boy at heart and he's never learnt to like the cold.
He affixes the grappling hook to the thick stone ledge of the roof, and then shoots the other directly at the ground. It whistles through the air, descending into darkness, and then digs in way below. Jared tugs on the line, gives one look back over his shoulder to check for anyone else who might have risen from the dead and be coming gunning for him, and then drops over the edge.
part four