We Were Here (Part III) [6/8]
For full warnings and author's notes, please go here
Go back
Jensen watched the red Ford Tempo pull away from the curb, watched Jared slip away from him. Sonya stood leaning over the kitchen sink, not exactly crying but not trying to be strong, not anymore. From his vantage point, Jensen could see the street below. He could see Jeff pull Logan into a one armed hug but he didn’t wait for the conclusion. He couldn’t breathe but he couldn’t stop trying to anyway.
He wanted nothing more than for the blanket of unconsciousness to sweep over him and keep him safe, even if only for just a moment. He wanted to forget the way the whites of Jared’s eyes shone with terror. He wanted to rip out his ears and never have to hear that desperate scream ever again.
Sonya gasped over the sink, one breath. Without warning, she slammed her palm against the counter, rattling the dishes waiting to be washed.
“Jesus fuck!”
The breaths that followed were loud, harsh. She was panting like she trying to hold it all in and quivering like she didn’t know how to let it go and just sob. “What have I done?”
Jensen didn’t get to answer the tear streaked question. Logan’s entry was quiet but not silent, and anything Sonya was about to say vanished.
“Baby, it’ll be alright,” he whispered as he gathered her in his arms. She didn’t resist. She leaned into the touch as Logan placed little kisses at her temples and stroked his fingers down her sides. “We did the right thing. He just has to get used to it.”
Jensen didn’t know how long he stood there, vibrating and edgy. He wasn’t aware of time passing. He wasn’t even aware of existence. It was only when Jeff’s hand clasped around the back of his neck, firmly but not painfully, that he snapped out of it.
“How about you stay with me tonight?”
Jensen’s world shimmered beneath the tears. “Jared,” he said.
Jeff nodded. “Yeah man.” Jeff pulled Jensen to him until his huge arm was draped across Jensen’s shoulder. “A guy’s night. Just you and me? Pizza, sugar, bad movies. Yeah?”
Jensen finally nodded and trailed after Jeff as he wandered down the hall to the bedroom. The toys that were left were pushed against the far wall. The drawers were half empty and when Jeff pulled one open to grab something for Jensen to wear the next day, the sting of reality bit through Jensen’s heart.
Everything faded to a dull haze. Jeff filled the small backpack and guided Jensen back out to the main room. Sonya was still breaking apart and hardly noticed when Jeff announced his plans. She didn’t say anything when Jeff tossed Jensen the extra helmet or when he helped him into Logan’s leather jacket.
The ride to Jeff’s apartment could have been fun. It should have been agonizing. It was nothing. The engine growling beneath him didn’t elicit any of the dangerous thrill it should have. The time it took didn’t have any meaning. It could have been half an hour or four days. In the end, Jensen stood in the middle of Jeff’s living room and waited while Jeff made up the couch like a bed, while he dragged out Lost Boys and the Goonies and Better Off Dead, and while he ordered the pizza. Jensen only made it past the credits of the first movie before he fell into a restless sleep filled with screams and tears.
May 1986
“Jensen,” said the lady with the big earrings. “This is Doug and Alice. They’re going to be taking care of you for a while, ok honey?”
Jensen pouted with his lower lip. His cheeks felt stiff and sticky from crying. He wanted his Mamma to hug him. He wanted his Daddy to swing him up in those big, strong, safe arms and just carry him away from here. He wanted to curl up around Mac and breathe in the smell of her baby skin while Josh read them stories of the Bernstein Bears and Little Critter.
“Jensen,” the lady said. Why did she keep saying his name? She didn’t say it right, not the way Mamma and Daddy said it. All wrong. “You need to tell me you understand. Can you do that for me?”
“I wanna go home,” he whispered at the floor. He clenched his hand even tighter around the handle of his small suitcase until the plastic seams bit into his skin. “I want my Mamma.”
The lady hesitated. He could see Doug and Alice’s shoes shuffle on the marked tiled floor. In the corner, the tiles were lifting to reveal the brown patterns of old glue and cement.
“Jensen, you can’t go home. You know that. You’re just going to stay here for a little while until we can find you somewhere permanent.” The lady’s voice was soft but it was frustrated, the same way Mamma’s got when she was trying to convince him to come inside and wash up for supper.
“But Josh promised to teach me how to play football.” The tears were starting fresh in his eyes. Josh’s football was sitting under the porch, right where he’d left it. Josh had been mad when he found out Jensen left it out in the rain, but in the end he just ruffled his hair with his big hand and smiled his big brother crinkly smile. Someone needed to go put the football back in the shed or the leather would get ruined.
“Maybe Doug can teach you to play. They’re very nice people. You’ll be happy here.”
He watched her shadow twitch over the floor. It moved toward his then backed away, as though she as rattler making little warning strikes at someone silly enough to get near. He didn’t want to get bitten. He didn’t want that poison making him shake and sweat. He wanted to go play in the sandbox with Mac, and he wanted to lay out under the stars with Josh while the ‘squitoes made them all itchy.
“He hasn’t been responding well since the accident.” He could hear her words, like snake hisses. He heard them but they didn’t make sense. “It’s almost like he doesn’t understand.”
Doug and Alice responded with deeper hisses, more nonsense that made his skin crawl. He wanted to back away, inch away from the threat. Instead he tensed and waited for the strike of fangs and venom. He waited to die.
Jensen woke to the quite strumming of Jeff’s guitar. The sun spilled through the open curtains, illuminating an empty pizza box from the night before. He stayed silent while Jeff almost reverently played through an entire song and then the next. He didn’t recognise them, but they were soothing, calming against his frazzled nerves. He didn’t move when Jeff switched into a third song, not wanting to let him know he was finally awake. He wanted this moment to just be, to just exist.
Jeff’s voice hummed with the new melody. It was rough and low, just like Jensen would have imagined. It suited him.
“Take these broken wings and learn to fly,” he sang. “All your life you were only waiting…”
His fingers kept dancing over the strings, quietly rhythmically. “Sonny gave me a hundred dollars,” Jeff said, suddenly, though he never stopped playing. “Wants me to take you shoe shopping.”
“I have shoes.”
Jeff paused over the notes, then lay his hand flat over the strings, stopping the sound. “Yeah, I know. But women find comfort in shopping and she doesn’t know how else to help.”
Jensen sat up and surveyed the room. He hadn’t had a chance to really look at it. A simple couch, a half dozen empty beer bottles and coke cans scattered around, a single framed photograph on the wall.
“You ever played?”
Jensen shook his head. Jeff grinned and placed the guitar in his lap. “Here, you hold it like this. That’s right. Curl your fingers here. Those are the frets.” Jeff’s fingers guided him gently, pressing on the strings and sliding up and down the neck.
“We were your age when that was taken,” he said finally. Jensen’s eyes drifted over to the photograph. He could easily identify Jeff. His dimples and his grin gave him away. A smiling freckle-faced girl was laughing beside him, her hair teased around a blocky headband. Sonya.
“That’s her older brother Michael, the guy in the leather jacket.” Jeff adjusted Jensen’s fingers. “He died not more than a week after that was taken. Car accident.” His fingers stilled. “We were drinking, high, joyriding in their daddy’s convertible.”
Jensen glanced upward. He was surprised to see the glossy sheen of tears over Jeff’s eyes.
“Sonny and I walked away with only a few scratches between us. Mikey…” Jeff’s breath shuddered. “Mikey never made it past the front seat.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Jensen fingered the strings silently, feeling them give against his fingers, feeling the way they bit and scratched at his skin.
“Just…Sonny gets it more than you think, man. She’s spent her life atoning for something that wasn’t really her fault. She’ll never say it, but she gets it.”
~*~
If Jensen had it in him to be embarrassed, he would have been. His version of Smoke on the Water involved a lot of missed chords and a broken tempo that only Jeff seemed to enjoy.
“You’re doing good, man,” he said after the third day. He had a second guitar balanced on his lap, matching Jensen’s shaky speed, giving depth to a song that sounded more like a mess than anything coherent. “Tell you what. You keep that one. Take it home with you. Keep practicing. Then we’ll have the best jam session ever. How’s that sound?”
Jensen stared down at the instrument in his lap. It was Jeff’s old one, scratched and restrung so many times no one else would probably ever want it. Jensen loved it. Each little nick in the shiny wood held a story and Jeff never seemed to get bored of relating them. “This one’s from that time in Tijuana. Thought that guy was going to keep my eyes as souvenirs,” he’d said stroking over the long scuff on the side. “This one…she was the prettiest thing you’ve ever laid eyes on,” he’d told Jensen tracing a small chip on the corner. “Of course then I found out she had a dick. Kind of threw me off my game.” He grinned cheekily. “But man, she was feisty. Wildest night of my life.”
Jensen almost laughed. He tried to.
“I can have it?”
Jeff’s eyes sparkled as he nodded. “I don’t need it anymore. It’s collected all of the memories it’s going to from me. Time to add some of your own.”
December 1986
He waited for six months. He waited on the front steps letting the summer sun kiss his skin and bring out the freckles Mamma always warned him about. He waited at the front door while the cooling autumn rain painted the window. He waited behind the big picture window, staring through the nicotine stains as people rushed by without so much as glancing up at him. He waited for six months for someone to come get him, but no one came.
On the first day of the seventh month he wandered out into the backyard and sat behind a big old oak tree. It sheltered him a bit from the wind that bit through his thin jacket. It hid him from the house, from the window in the kitchen that Alice was no doubt standing at. The bruise under his eye was just turning a sickly yellow - a reminder of what Doug did when Jensen’s crying sparked Alice’s many headaches. The bruise around his wrist was a reminder of what Doug did for no reason at all.
“I’m sorry, Mamma,” he whispered to the sky. “I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough to come with you. Tell Josh and Daddy I love them and that I’m going to learn to play football, even if Doug won’t teach me. Give baby Mac a kiss for me. Make sure she drinks all her milk so that she grows up big and strong.” The wind brushed against his forehead, wrapping around the trunk of the tree to tickle at his skin. It felt warmer, safer than before.
“I miss you so much, Mamma. Are you ever going to come back for me? They said you went to heaven. Why couldn’t you take me with you? Why can’t you come get me? I want to go too. I don’t like this place anymore.”
The wind pressed around him again, whispering in his Mamma’s voice. I love you baby, it said. Be strong for me baby, it pleaded.
“I promise,” Jensen whispered back. “Just don’t forget me.”
He sat behind the tree until the street lights came on and his fingers went numb. He listened to the wind as it conversed with the branches and the grass, as it caressed his skin and kissed his cheeks. He waited until Doug came storming out and wrenched him inside by his bruised wrist. Before the screen door slammed behind him he twisted his head and caught a glimpse of the oak tree and the fading white glow he thought he saw hovering nearby. I promise, he told his Mamma silently. I promise for you.
“Thanks Jeff,” Sonya whispered into the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Jeff just squeezed her once and nodded at Jensen who was standing in the middle of Sonya’s living room, clutching that beat up old guitar case. He didn’t know what to expect. After four days at Jeff’s, maybe he thought the immaculate condo would feel foreign. Or maybe the child friendly video collection would jar fresh tears from him.
“You keep practicing,” Jeff ordered, playfully. With one last dimpled smile he vanished from the door.
“You, uh, want lunch?” Sonya wrung her hands. “I have roast beef. We can make sandwiches…”
“I want to go downtown. To my track.”
Sonya stopped. Her eyes were flat, like the glossy blue had clouded over.
“I need to talk to someone there,” he said, slowly. “You can just drop me off at the diner, if you want. I can find my own way home.”
Sonya turned her back and breathed small, shallow breaths.
“I need to show you something first, Jensen.” He waited, expecting her to turn around and look at him. Instead, she just rested her hand on the hall closet knob. “Let me show you something and then I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
It was a rudimentary scrapbook she’d needed to show him. She slid it across the table and sat, tense and silent, as he flipped through the pages. Newspaper clippings - articles, columns, captions - folded out, clung with drying glue, and even nestled without any sort of binding to the pages.
“Are these yours?”
Sonya nodded. Her hands flinched where she held them still against the table. Jensen kept flipping, not entirely sure what he was supposed to be seeing. He knew Sonya used to write. She still did, just not as often. Her job as editor didn’t exactly give her much time anymore. There was an article on a fire that burned down an entire church. Eight pages in a row boasted a collection of advice columns. Flip, another page, another piece of Sonya’s mystery. Flip. Jensen stopped.
“You…”
Sonya licked her lips but didn’t show any other signs of distress. She nodded.
Jensen tenderly smoothed down the newspaper story. The black and white picture staring back up at him was creased and smudged from fingers touching it. The ink caught on his skin and turned his fingerprints a dusky shade of grey. It was little Jose’s face - his dark eyes reduced to a thousand tiny dots on the pages of a cut up newspaper. Foster Child Murdered, One Missing, read the title.
“You knew…”
Sonya nodded again. If Jensen looked closely he could see the tears collecting in her eyes, but he didn’t want to see them. His own vision was swimming enough as it was. Four pictures decorated the pages. Alice and Doug were resigned to the corner- little mug shot-like photos of grim faces. Jose’s was bigger, more prominent. And beside it, beside it was Jensen’s own face. His sixth grade yearbook picture - the last one ever taken of him - smiled sadly back at him, like it knew. Like he had known then everything he still didn’t know now.
“I…Is this why…how you knew my name?”
Sonya’s lips were red and slick from her constant licking.
“Is Jared in here too? Is Jared…did you know…where is he?” Jensen’s hands trembled as he fumbled frantically through the remaining pages, fingers tripping on the ragged edges, catching on the lifting articles that were no longer properly glued down.
“No, Jensen, stop.” Sonya’s voice was cracked, stilted. “Jared isn’t…I didn’t know. Just you.”
Tears burned his eyes. The blood pounding in his ears rushed in time with the black spots hovering in front of his vision, blinding him to everything else. “Just me.”
“Just you, sweetie. And when I saw you, standing out there on the side of the road…when I saw you there…I just…”
Jensen blinked away the dizziness. Everything, EVERYTHING, was a lie. Everything Sonya pretended to be, none of it fit anymore. Jensen wanted to be angry at her. He wanted to rage and throw things and call her a liar. He wanted to hate her but instead all he could feel was a cold numbness slowly spreading from his heart and paralyzing him.
“Do you think Jared’s ok? God, what if he’s not?”
Sonya’s hand finally inched across the soft wood of the table and covered Jensen’s. The shivers wracking his body echoed in her own touch. “Jared is with his family where he belongs.”
“But what if they hurt him…what if they’re like the Farrellis?”
Sonya shook her head. “Not everyone is like that, honey. Logan drives by that house every day. Jared’s fine. I promise.”
“Take me,” Jensen said at last.
April 1987
Jose cried all the time, even when he was sleeping. Little tears would leak from under his black eyelashes and stain the pillow wet and dark. By morning it would be dry but Jensen could still hear the sobs, taste the tears in the air. Jose’s daddy had pushed his mommy down the stairs and then she never woke up again. That’s what the three year old was saying anyway. Jensen should have been surprised the kid could even understand what was going on, but he’d overheard the Farrellis talking one night. It wasn’t little Jose’s first stint in foster care. It most definitely wouldn’t be his last.
Jensen tried to hush the sobs when they got too loud, too obvious. In the yard when the boys were hiding behind the big oak tree and the tears started splashing down his tanned skin, Jensen wrapped the child in his arms and pressed his nose against into the soft dark hairs at the back of his neck. On Sunday morning when the Ferrellis made them go to church and Jose would whimper through the sermon, Jensen would interlink their fingers and rub his thumb in little circles across the back of Jose’s hand.
Jose returned the favour.
His still chubby arms would encircle Jensen’s neck and cling tightly to him until the older boy stopped biting back his sobs and offered a watery smile. He would press his soft fingers against Jensen’s split lip until they were coated in blood, slippery and wet. Then he would catch the freefalling tears with his other hand. He was there after each black eye, for each backhanded slap across the face, for each cigarette butt pressed against the skin of Jensen’s belly.
It was only a matter of time, Jensen knew, before the sobs of loneliness and homesickness turned into sobs of pain and fear. He shouldn’t have been surprised the first time he came home from school to find Jose broken and bruised, his arm bound in a cast.
“He fell out of the damn tree,” Doug grunted. Alice didn’t say anything. Jose, for once, didn’t cry.
Mary stared across the chipped table. It was like her eyes saw right through everything. “You be looking good, kid,” she said carefully. Jensen dropped his eyes. The t-shirt was green - the same colour as his eyes. The jeans weren’t worn or ripped or dirty. Yeah, he did look good.
“How you been?” he asked.
Mary shrugged. She flickered her gaze behind Jensen’s head to where Mandy was standing still and silent behind the serving counter. “Not been the same without you man. No more fucking crying in the middle of the fucking night. No more sappy queer love to watch.”
Jensen quirked his lips into half a smile. “You calling me queer? Dude.” He laughed when Mary smirked and raised an eyebrow. “But seriously, you been good?”
“Yeah, man. Ramón hooked some of your regulars. Not like you need them anymore.”
Jensen nodded. The money in his pocket was folded with perfect crisp lines. Sonya said she was going to set him up with a bank account, but for now she just pressed a few bills into his hands every morning. He still had most of it.
“No one causing you no trouble?”
Mary grunted, and beckoned at Mandy to come over. “Nah. Some crazy fucker…you remember Billy? He tried to stir something. Ramón beat the shit out of his pansy boy ass. Hey Mandy, you remember our boy here, don’t you?”
Jensen twisted to see Mandy. She had a fresh bruise on her jaw but for the most part, she seemed no worse. She smiled at him, warmly. God, he missed them.
“Nice to see you healthy kid,” she said, refilling Mary’s cup. “Jared ok?”
“Yeah, he’s with his step-dad now.”
“Good. You kids need your family.”
Mary let her fingers trail lightly over Mandy’s wrist before the waitress slipped away, a blush staining her cheeks a delicate pink. “She’s fucking right, you know. Forget us sorry fuckers here. Go be safe and warm. Go back to school. Go back to life.”
“You really ok, Mare?”
Mary’s chocolate eyes softened. “Don’t worry about me, kid. I be where I belong.”
~*~
Mary thwarted each and every attempt of Jensen’s to press the wad of bills into her hand.
“I don’t wanna be no fucking charity,” she’d snapped after the fifth time. Jensen just grinned wryly and tried again ten minutes later. At least he’d been able to pay for lunch, as much as she’d protested.
“So you saying the house looks too nice? How the fuck is that even possible?”
Jensen just shrugged. The street looked different now. The boys looked smaller, frailer. The cars looked emptier, like no one was driving them. It was an illusion Jensen had never entertained before.
“I don’t know man, but the lawn was all green, and the paint was perfect. Perfect flowers and perfect fucking shutters.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and watched a boy he didn’t remember get into a white Buick. “It gave me the creeps.”
“It’s cause you be missing your boy, man.” Mary was walking closer than usual - within touching distance. “I get it.”
“No. I mean, yeah, I miss him. But…” At the corner, Ramón climbed out of the Mustang, adjusted his jeans across his hips. “The car. I have nightmares about the fucking car Thomson was driving.”
On the other side of the street, Billy pranced like he was born to be a dancer instead of a hooker. He probably was, Jensen mused as his eyes followed those graceful movements.
“You mean you think you been in that car?”
Jensen shrugged. No, he almost said. Not that kind of nightmare. But his voice stuck in his throat when his eyes landed on Ramón again, who’d finally spotted them. His dark face tried at passive, but the flicker of joy interceded with the worry and sadness, and Jensen wanted to slit his own wrists for making other people look like that. But it was more than that. A conversation flittered about at the edge of his memory, a jovial back and forth of banter.
“Dude?” Mary said softly. Jensen only heard it as a rush of sounds blurring incomprehensibly above the buzzing in his ears. “I don’t bend over for nobody. Just ‘cause you like it up the ass don’t mean -,” his memory Ramón said. He could almost hear himself hissing at him to shut up. His knees buckled. The alley, the car, Jared. The shattered pieces fit back together quietly and as he crumpled to the ground he felt two pairs of hands break his fall. Jared was anything but safe.
September 1988
Jose pressed his fingers into the bruises on Jensen’s wrists. They were angry, red, painful, but not nearly as bad as the other hurt. Jensen shuddered on his bed, unable to lay on his back, unable to move at all because of the pain that rippled through his bottom every time he flinched. There was blood in his underwear. He could feel it sticking to his skin and sliding between his legs.
“Come here,” he whispered and Jose stopped tracing over the black and blue and yellow mosaic splashed across Jensen’s skin. His dark eyelashes fluttered under the weight of his tears but he didn’t hesitate. He just slipped into Jensen’s arm, pulled himself tight against Jensen’s chest.
“Does it hurt lots?” he asked, his eyes wide and too close to Jensen’s to focus on. “I can get ice. Alice has a headache and Doug’s gone now.”
Jensen shook his head. “No, just stay with me a while, k?” He didn’t add the threat that Doug had snapped, punctuated with thrusts and closed fisted blows. He didn’t need to warn the boy. He wouldn’t fuck up again and it would never be little Jose on the receiving end of Doug’s latest discipline strategy. Jose would never have to listen to Doug panting against his back, never have to feel that whiskey tainted breath whisper strained curses and insults against his hairline. Little Jose would never have his innocence stripped away like that. Jensen would be good. He’d be strong.
“Jenna called from Children’s Aid,” Jensen said at last.
Jose’s eyes flicked up. They almost looked hopeful, almost fearful. “Why?”
Jensen shrugged. “Dunno. But the way Alice was grousing it’s probably something about your dad.”
Jose snuggled his face into Jensen’s chest. “Proberly wants to take me away, right? Don’t wanna go with my dad. Got you now.”
Jensen didn’t say anything. Rain was splattering against the window, mimicking their tears. Angel’s tears, Mamma used to tell him when he was little. Now he knew what they really were, where they really came from. Angels didn’t need to cry when Mamma was up there doing it all for them. Each drop that bounced off the window hissed in pain from being kept from him. Each rivulet that ended at the sill quivered with the need to reach out and wrap around him.
“The window,” his mumbled into Jose’s downy hair. “Window.”
Jose, like all the times before, shimmied out of Jensen’s grasp and heaved against the heavy wood and glass and metal until it inched up. It wasn’t far. Not enough to get them in trouble later. It was enough though. Enough for the rain to splash off the ledge and onto Jensen’s cooling skin. It was enough that the water was able to kiss both boys. Mamma cried all night, long after Jose fell asleep, long after Jensen followed after him.
“Jeff!”
Ramón hung back, just outside the phone booth, but Mary didn’t have any qualms about crowding right in. Her fingers wrapped around Jensen’s arm, pressed into the muscle and flesh.
“Wazzah?” was Jeff’s sleepy and slightly confused response.
“It’s me! I need you to come pick me up!”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. Then, “Jensen?”
“Yeah man. I need a ride.”
“What happened? Are you in trouble?”
Jensen scuffed his toe and wondered why he’d called Jeff. Sonya was just waiting at home, probably playing pat-a-cake with Michelle, or trying to edit some sorry article that read like a two year old had written it. Jeff had probably been sleeping by the sounds of it, probably still half in uniform from his shift that afternoon.
“No. I just…you know that place where Sonya first found me?”
“Yeah…?”
“I’ll be at that diner. Just, please, Jeff?”
Mary’s fingers left bruises. Even through the fabric of his shirt, Jensen felt like he could see them. Jeff finally agreed, he was coming, and Jensen melted against the warm body holding him up. He could only allow himself a moment. He had to be there when Jeff showed up. He owed it to his friends to make sure the cop didn’t linger too much, didn’t see too much.
But Mary’s body was warm, and when she shuffled them out of the cramped booth, Ramón’s touch was tender on his face. Their voices swam above him, like they were coming from down the hall instead of inches from his face.
“Jen, fuck man!”
“Ok, you’re kind of freaking me out now.”
“Shit, what happened?”
“Fucked if I know. Jensen?”
“‘M fine. I’m fine.”
Mary’s expression said she didn’t believe him in the slightest. Ramón’s expression said something worse. Lunging forward, Jensen grabbed onto his shoulders. “Remember how we found Jay? Remember? What would you say if you knew who did that to him? What if I sent him back there?”
“Dude?”
“My ride’s picking me up at the diner. I gotta get there.”
It was with a tinkling of bells and a few choice curses that they finally stepped through the diner door. Mandy snapped her head up from the table she was wiping. She watched wide-eyed as Mary and Ramón manhandled Jensen into a seat.
“I’ll get you some coffee,” Mary said finally, when Jensen didn’t do anything past slumping down in the chair. Her hushed conversation with Mandy drifted across the small space of the diner. Small phrases caught in the air and swirled in Jensen’s head.
“…just went down. I’m worried he…”
“…fine. Look…”
“What if he’s….”
“Baby, relax please…”
“I’m sorry.”
The tiny puffs of words were interrupted when Jeff came barrelling through the door. He was just shaking his head out of his helmet, his eyes sweeping the room hurriedly before landing on Jensen and Ramón, who were sitting in silence.
“Jensen, for fuck’s sake!” he cried, taking the distance in only three long-legged steps. “What are you doing here?”
Ramón, for his part, was pretty brave. He clutched at the table and settled for a slight quiver as Jeff boomed above them. Mary crossed her arms and watched through narrowed eyes.
Jensen was up before Jeff could repeat the question. He was out the door before Mary could move to stop him. “It’s Jared,” he said, wheeling on Jeff when he finally joined Jensen at the bike, parked haphazardly on the street. “It’s Jared. We need to go get him.”
~*~
Jeff took him home, much to his annoyance.
“I told you!” he shrieked, as Jeff hauled him up the stairs toward the condo. “Jared’s in trouble! We need to go get him!”
They were on the third floor landing when Jeff whirled on him, pressing him against the wall. His eyes flashed. This was the face that must terrify the people Jeff came across on a daily basis. Somewhere, beneath the fury though was a lining of fear.
“In less than five minutes, we’re going to step through Sonny’s door. We’re going to go back to normal life. You are going to behave. Fuck, Jensen. I would expect this from a child, but not from you. It’s been over a week.”
“But…”
Jeff’s hands were strong and it took no effort to keep Jensen pinned to the wall. “No,” he growled. “I get it man, I get that you’re hurting. But you need to accept what happened. Do you understand?”
He stared down Jensen, all playfulness gone from his face. Jensen wanted to cry. Instead, he nodded.
Satisfied, Jeff’s eyes softened. “I really do get it, Jen,” he whispered, dropping his head a little. “I do get it, but sometimes we just have to be strong and move on. You need to be strong man.” Jeff didn’t wait for a response, just ushered him up the remaining stairs. He let him walk through the door on his own with nothing more than a warning look, but if he expected Jensen to stay and talk while Jeff cracked a beer with Sonya, he was going to have to be disappointed. Jensen stumbled down the little hall, only pausing to pick up Michelle and take her with him.
She wasn’t Jared, but she let herself be curled in his arms. She clung to his t-shirt and whispered “Nen Nen,” in his ear while he sobbed into her soft hair.
November 1989
The boot that connected to his ribs was steel-toed. He could tell that much by the white hot pain that lanced down his side. He didn’t wince though. Didn’t cry or moan or grunt. He just covered his head and hoped it was enough, hope that his bloody nose and broken fingers were enough and he didn’t need to forfeit a vital organ. One more sharp kick, to his thigh this time, and then Jensen heard the heavy tread of the retreating figure. It was over, for a while, and he took the moment alone to catch his breath and let the few renegade tears slide down his face. The salty water mixed with the blood coating his chin and dripped off in pinkish splatters against the greying linoleum floor.
“Mamma,” he whispered, letting his voice drown in the empty silence of the kitchen. “Mamma, I told you I’d be strong, but -.” He never finished the sentence because his chest closed up against the racking sobs that were threatening his body. Even if it wasn’t considered bad form to cry, he’d still struggle against it because the breaths were sending bolts of pain through his bruised ribs.
A small tanned face appeared in the doorway, and Jose crept over to sit in his lap. Every inch of him ached and burned, right up from the throbbing in his ass to the sting of saliva flowing over his tongue, which he’d bitten open to avoid screaming.
Jensen buried his face against the soft hair of Jose’s head and they pressed against each other, rocking into the mutual embrace until he felt himself calming down enough to move without falling. Gently, he brushed the hair from Jose’s forehead, placed his lips against the skin there, and hoisted him up to sit on his hip. The pain in his thigh protested but Jensen didn’t want to relinquish his hold on the five year old, even when Jose shyly told him he could walk himself.
No, Jensen wanted to feel the warm life in his arms, so badly that when he entered the bedroom they shared, he curled the small boy into his bed and clung to him until dawn peeked through the shades on his window and he finally drifted into sleep.
“Jeff said you pulled quite a stunt last night.”
Jensen huffed. With a glare over his shoulder, he dropped onto the couch and turned up the volume. Daytime television wasn’t something he exactly enjoyed but it drowned out the world. From her spot on the floor, Michelle gleefully threw one of her rubber rings at Jensen.
“Look, Jensen, I know you don’t really like me all that much, but if you need to talk…”
“I’m fine,” Jensen snapped.
Logan left for work silently. Jensen had the grace to feel a little guilty.
Continue
Go back
Jensen watched the red Ford Tempo pull away from the curb, watched Jared slip away from him. Sonya stood leaning over the kitchen sink, not exactly crying but not trying to be strong, not anymore. From his vantage point, Jensen could see the street below. He could see Jeff pull Logan into a one armed hug but he didn’t wait for the conclusion. He couldn’t breathe but he couldn’t stop trying to anyway.
He wanted nothing more than for the blanket of unconsciousness to sweep over him and keep him safe, even if only for just a moment. He wanted to forget the way the whites of Jared’s eyes shone with terror. He wanted to rip out his ears and never have to hear that desperate scream ever again.
Sonya gasped over the sink, one breath. Without warning, she slammed her palm against the counter, rattling the dishes waiting to be washed.
“Jesus fuck!”
The breaths that followed were loud, harsh. She was panting like she trying to hold it all in and quivering like she didn’t know how to let it go and just sob. “What have I done?”
Jensen didn’t get to answer the tear streaked question. Logan’s entry was quiet but not silent, and anything Sonya was about to say vanished.
“Baby, it’ll be alright,” he whispered as he gathered her in his arms. She didn’t resist. She leaned into the touch as Logan placed little kisses at her temples and stroked his fingers down her sides. “We did the right thing. He just has to get used to it.”
Jensen didn’t know how long he stood there, vibrating and edgy. He wasn’t aware of time passing. He wasn’t even aware of existence. It was only when Jeff’s hand clasped around the back of his neck, firmly but not painfully, that he snapped out of it.
“How about you stay with me tonight?”
Jensen’s world shimmered beneath the tears. “Jared,” he said.
Jeff nodded. “Yeah man.” Jeff pulled Jensen to him until his huge arm was draped across Jensen’s shoulder. “A guy’s night. Just you and me? Pizza, sugar, bad movies. Yeah?”
Jensen finally nodded and trailed after Jeff as he wandered down the hall to the bedroom. The toys that were left were pushed against the far wall. The drawers were half empty and when Jeff pulled one open to grab something for Jensen to wear the next day, the sting of reality bit through Jensen’s heart.
Everything faded to a dull haze. Jeff filled the small backpack and guided Jensen back out to the main room. Sonya was still breaking apart and hardly noticed when Jeff announced his plans. She didn’t say anything when Jeff tossed Jensen the extra helmet or when he helped him into Logan’s leather jacket.
The ride to Jeff’s apartment could have been fun. It should have been agonizing. It was nothing. The engine growling beneath him didn’t elicit any of the dangerous thrill it should have. The time it took didn’t have any meaning. It could have been half an hour or four days. In the end, Jensen stood in the middle of Jeff’s living room and waited while Jeff made up the couch like a bed, while he dragged out Lost Boys and the Goonies and Better Off Dead, and while he ordered the pizza. Jensen only made it past the credits of the first movie before he fell into a restless sleep filled with screams and tears.
May 1986
“Jensen,” said the lady with the big earrings. “This is Doug and Alice. They’re going to be taking care of you for a while, ok honey?”
Jensen pouted with his lower lip. His cheeks felt stiff and sticky from crying. He wanted his Mamma to hug him. He wanted his Daddy to swing him up in those big, strong, safe arms and just carry him away from here. He wanted to curl up around Mac and breathe in the smell of her baby skin while Josh read them stories of the Bernstein Bears and Little Critter.
“Jensen,” the lady said. Why did she keep saying his name? She didn’t say it right, not the way Mamma and Daddy said it. All wrong. “You need to tell me you understand. Can you do that for me?”
“I wanna go home,” he whispered at the floor. He clenched his hand even tighter around the handle of his small suitcase until the plastic seams bit into his skin. “I want my Mamma.”
The lady hesitated. He could see Doug and Alice’s shoes shuffle on the marked tiled floor. In the corner, the tiles were lifting to reveal the brown patterns of old glue and cement.
“Jensen, you can’t go home. You know that. You’re just going to stay here for a little while until we can find you somewhere permanent.” The lady’s voice was soft but it was frustrated, the same way Mamma’s got when she was trying to convince him to come inside and wash up for supper.
“But Josh promised to teach me how to play football.” The tears were starting fresh in his eyes. Josh’s football was sitting under the porch, right where he’d left it. Josh had been mad when he found out Jensen left it out in the rain, but in the end he just ruffled his hair with his big hand and smiled his big brother crinkly smile. Someone needed to go put the football back in the shed or the leather would get ruined.
“Maybe Doug can teach you to play. They’re very nice people. You’ll be happy here.”
He watched her shadow twitch over the floor. It moved toward his then backed away, as though she as rattler making little warning strikes at someone silly enough to get near. He didn’t want to get bitten. He didn’t want that poison making him shake and sweat. He wanted to go play in the sandbox with Mac, and he wanted to lay out under the stars with Josh while the ‘squitoes made them all itchy.
“He hasn’t been responding well since the accident.” He could hear her words, like snake hisses. He heard them but they didn’t make sense. “It’s almost like he doesn’t understand.”
Doug and Alice responded with deeper hisses, more nonsense that made his skin crawl. He wanted to back away, inch away from the threat. Instead he tensed and waited for the strike of fangs and venom. He waited to die.
Jensen woke to the quite strumming of Jeff’s guitar. The sun spilled through the open curtains, illuminating an empty pizza box from the night before. He stayed silent while Jeff almost reverently played through an entire song and then the next. He didn’t recognise them, but they were soothing, calming against his frazzled nerves. He didn’t move when Jeff switched into a third song, not wanting to let him know he was finally awake. He wanted this moment to just be, to just exist.
Jeff’s voice hummed with the new melody. It was rough and low, just like Jensen would have imagined. It suited him.
“Take these broken wings and learn to fly,” he sang. “All your life you were only waiting…”
His fingers kept dancing over the strings, quietly rhythmically. “Sonny gave me a hundred dollars,” Jeff said, suddenly, though he never stopped playing. “Wants me to take you shoe shopping.”
“I have shoes.”
Jeff paused over the notes, then lay his hand flat over the strings, stopping the sound. “Yeah, I know. But women find comfort in shopping and she doesn’t know how else to help.”
Jensen sat up and surveyed the room. He hadn’t had a chance to really look at it. A simple couch, a half dozen empty beer bottles and coke cans scattered around, a single framed photograph on the wall.
“You ever played?”
Jensen shook his head. Jeff grinned and placed the guitar in his lap. “Here, you hold it like this. That’s right. Curl your fingers here. Those are the frets.” Jeff’s fingers guided him gently, pressing on the strings and sliding up and down the neck.
“We were your age when that was taken,” he said finally. Jensen’s eyes drifted over to the photograph. He could easily identify Jeff. His dimples and his grin gave him away. A smiling freckle-faced girl was laughing beside him, her hair teased around a blocky headband. Sonya.
“That’s her older brother Michael, the guy in the leather jacket.” Jeff adjusted Jensen’s fingers. “He died not more than a week after that was taken. Car accident.” His fingers stilled. “We were drinking, high, joyriding in their daddy’s convertible.”
Jensen glanced upward. He was surprised to see the glossy sheen of tears over Jeff’s eyes.
“Sonny and I walked away with only a few scratches between us. Mikey…” Jeff’s breath shuddered. “Mikey never made it past the front seat.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Jensen fingered the strings silently, feeling them give against his fingers, feeling the way they bit and scratched at his skin.
“Just…Sonny gets it more than you think, man. She’s spent her life atoning for something that wasn’t really her fault. She’ll never say it, but she gets it.”
~*~
If Jensen had it in him to be embarrassed, he would have been. His version of Smoke on the Water involved a lot of missed chords and a broken tempo that only Jeff seemed to enjoy.
“You’re doing good, man,” he said after the third day. He had a second guitar balanced on his lap, matching Jensen’s shaky speed, giving depth to a song that sounded more like a mess than anything coherent. “Tell you what. You keep that one. Take it home with you. Keep practicing. Then we’ll have the best jam session ever. How’s that sound?”
Jensen stared down at the instrument in his lap. It was Jeff’s old one, scratched and restrung so many times no one else would probably ever want it. Jensen loved it. Each little nick in the shiny wood held a story and Jeff never seemed to get bored of relating them. “This one’s from that time in Tijuana. Thought that guy was going to keep my eyes as souvenirs,” he’d said stroking over the long scuff on the side. “This one…she was the prettiest thing you’ve ever laid eyes on,” he’d told Jensen tracing a small chip on the corner. “Of course then I found out she had a dick. Kind of threw me off my game.” He grinned cheekily. “But man, she was feisty. Wildest night of my life.”
Jensen almost laughed. He tried to.
“I can have it?”
Jeff’s eyes sparkled as he nodded. “I don’t need it anymore. It’s collected all of the memories it’s going to from me. Time to add some of your own.”
December 1986
He waited for six months. He waited on the front steps letting the summer sun kiss his skin and bring out the freckles Mamma always warned him about. He waited at the front door while the cooling autumn rain painted the window. He waited behind the big picture window, staring through the nicotine stains as people rushed by without so much as glancing up at him. He waited for six months for someone to come get him, but no one came.
On the first day of the seventh month he wandered out into the backyard and sat behind a big old oak tree. It sheltered him a bit from the wind that bit through his thin jacket. It hid him from the house, from the window in the kitchen that Alice was no doubt standing at. The bruise under his eye was just turning a sickly yellow - a reminder of what Doug did when Jensen’s crying sparked Alice’s many headaches. The bruise around his wrist was a reminder of what Doug did for no reason at all.
“I’m sorry, Mamma,” he whispered to the sky. “I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough to come with you. Tell Josh and Daddy I love them and that I’m going to learn to play football, even if Doug won’t teach me. Give baby Mac a kiss for me. Make sure she drinks all her milk so that she grows up big and strong.” The wind brushed against his forehead, wrapping around the trunk of the tree to tickle at his skin. It felt warmer, safer than before.
“I miss you so much, Mamma. Are you ever going to come back for me? They said you went to heaven. Why couldn’t you take me with you? Why can’t you come get me? I want to go too. I don’t like this place anymore.”
The wind pressed around him again, whispering in his Mamma’s voice. I love you baby, it said. Be strong for me baby, it pleaded.
“I promise,” Jensen whispered back. “Just don’t forget me.”
He sat behind the tree until the street lights came on and his fingers went numb. He listened to the wind as it conversed with the branches and the grass, as it caressed his skin and kissed his cheeks. He waited until Doug came storming out and wrenched him inside by his bruised wrist. Before the screen door slammed behind him he twisted his head and caught a glimpse of the oak tree and the fading white glow he thought he saw hovering nearby. I promise, he told his Mamma silently. I promise for you.
“Thanks Jeff,” Sonya whispered into the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Jeff just squeezed her once and nodded at Jensen who was standing in the middle of Sonya’s living room, clutching that beat up old guitar case. He didn’t know what to expect. After four days at Jeff’s, maybe he thought the immaculate condo would feel foreign. Or maybe the child friendly video collection would jar fresh tears from him.
“You keep practicing,” Jeff ordered, playfully. With one last dimpled smile he vanished from the door.
“You, uh, want lunch?” Sonya wrung her hands. “I have roast beef. We can make sandwiches…”
“I want to go downtown. To my track.”
Sonya stopped. Her eyes were flat, like the glossy blue had clouded over.
“I need to talk to someone there,” he said, slowly. “You can just drop me off at the diner, if you want. I can find my own way home.”
Sonya turned her back and breathed small, shallow breaths.
“I need to show you something first, Jensen.” He waited, expecting her to turn around and look at him. Instead, she just rested her hand on the hall closet knob. “Let me show you something and then I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
It was a rudimentary scrapbook she’d needed to show him. She slid it across the table and sat, tense and silent, as he flipped through the pages. Newspaper clippings - articles, columns, captions - folded out, clung with drying glue, and even nestled without any sort of binding to the pages.
“Are these yours?”
Sonya nodded. Her hands flinched where she held them still against the table. Jensen kept flipping, not entirely sure what he was supposed to be seeing. He knew Sonya used to write. She still did, just not as often. Her job as editor didn’t exactly give her much time anymore. There was an article on a fire that burned down an entire church. Eight pages in a row boasted a collection of advice columns. Flip, another page, another piece of Sonya’s mystery. Flip. Jensen stopped.
“You…”
Sonya licked her lips but didn’t show any other signs of distress. She nodded.
Jensen tenderly smoothed down the newspaper story. The black and white picture staring back up at him was creased and smudged from fingers touching it. The ink caught on his skin and turned his fingerprints a dusky shade of grey. It was little Jose’s face - his dark eyes reduced to a thousand tiny dots on the pages of a cut up newspaper. Foster Child Murdered, One Missing, read the title.
“You knew…”
Sonya nodded again. If Jensen looked closely he could see the tears collecting in her eyes, but he didn’t want to see them. His own vision was swimming enough as it was. Four pictures decorated the pages. Alice and Doug were resigned to the corner- little mug shot-like photos of grim faces. Jose’s was bigger, more prominent. And beside it, beside it was Jensen’s own face. His sixth grade yearbook picture - the last one ever taken of him - smiled sadly back at him, like it knew. Like he had known then everything he still didn’t know now.
“I…Is this why…how you knew my name?”
Sonya’s lips were red and slick from her constant licking.
“Is Jared in here too? Is Jared…did you know…where is he?” Jensen’s hands trembled as he fumbled frantically through the remaining pages, fingers tripping on the ragged edges, catching on the lifting articles that were no longer properly glued down.
“No, Jensen, stop.” Sonya’s voice was cracked, stilted. “Jared isn’t…I didn’t know. Just you.”
Tears burned his eyes. The blood pounding in his ears rushed in time with the black spots hovering in front of his vision, blinding him to everything else. “Just me.”
“Just you, sweetie. And when I saw you, standing out there on the side of the road…when I saw you there…I just…”
Jensen blinked away the dizziness. Everything, EVERYTHING, was a lie. Everything Sonya pretended to be, none of it fit anymore. Jensen wanted to be angry at her. He wanted to rage and throw things and call her a liar. He wanted to hate her but instead all he could feel was a cold numbness slowly spreading from his heart and paralyzing him.
“Do you think Jared’s ok? God, what if he’s not?”
Sonya’s hand finally inched across the soft wood of the table and covered Jensen’s. The shivers wracking his body echoed in her own touch. “Jared is with his family where he belongs.”
“But what if they hurt him…what if they’re like the Farrellis?”
Sonya shook her head. “Not everyone is like that, honey. Logan drives by that house every day. Jared’s fine. I promise.”
“Take me,” Jensen said at last.
April 1987
Jose cried all the time, even when he was sleeping. Little tears would leak from under his black eyelashes and stain the pillow wet and dark. By morning it would be dry but Jensen could still hear the sobs, taste the tears in the air. Jose’s daddy had pushed his mommy down the stairs and then she never woke up again. That’s what the three year old was saying anyway. Jensen should have been surprised the kid could even understand what was going on, but he’d overheard the Farrellis talking one night. It wasn’t little Jose’s first stint in foster care. It most definitely wouldn’t be his last.
Jensen tried to hush the sobs when they got too loud, too obvious. In the yard when the boys were hiding behind the big oak tree and the tears started splashing down his tanned skin, Jensen wrapped the child in his arms and pressed his nose against into the soft dark hairs at the back of his neck. On Sunday morning when the Ferrellis made them go to church and Jose would whimper through the sermon, Jensen would interlink their fingers and rub his thumb in little circles across the back of Jose’s hand.
Jose returned the favour.
His still chubby arms would encircle Jensen’s neck and cling tightly to him until the older boy stopped biting back his sobs and offered a watery smile. He would press his soft fingers against Jensen’s split lip until they were coated in blood, slippery and wet. Then he would catch the freefalling tears with his other hand. He was there after each black eye, for each backhanded slap across the face, for each cigarette butt pressed against the skin of Jensen’s belly.
It was only a matter of time, Jensen knew, before the sobs of loneliness and homesickness turned into sobs of pain and fear. He shouldn’t have been surprised the first time he came home from school to find Jose broken and bruised, his arm bound in a cast.
“He fell out of the damn tree,” Doug grunted. Alice didn’t say anything. Jose, for once, didn’t cry.
Mary stared across the chipped table. It was like her eyes saw right through everything. “You be looking good, kid,” she said carefully. Jensen dropped his eyes. The t-shirt was green - the same colour as his eyes. The jeans weren’t worn or ripped or dirty. Yeah, he did look good.
“How you been?” he asked.
Mary shrugged. She flickered her gaze behind Jensen’s head to where Mandy was standing still and silent behind the serving counter. “Not been the same without you man. No more fucking crying in the middle of the fucking night. No more sappy queer love to watch.”
Jensen quirked his lips into half a smile. “You calling me queer? Dude.” He laughed when Mary smirked and raised an eyebrow. “But seriously, you been good?”
“Yeah, man. Ramón hooked some of your regulars. Not like you need them anymore.”
Jensen nodded. The money in his pocket was folded with perfect crisp lines. Sonya said she was going to set him up with a bank account, but for now she just pressed a few bills into his hands every morning. He still had most of it.
“No one causing you no trouble?”
Mary grunted, and beckoned at Mandy to come over. “Nah. Some crazy fucker…you remember Billy? He tried to stir something. Ramón beat the shit out of his pansy boy ass. Hey Mandy, you remember our boy here, don’t you?”
Jensen twisted to see Mandy. She had a fresh bruise on her jaw but for the most part, she seemed no worse. She smiled at him, warmly. God, he missed them.
“Nice to see you healthy kid,” she said, refilling Mary’s cup. “Jared ok?”
“Yeah, he’s with his step-dad now.”
“Good. You kids need your family.”
Mary let her fingers trail lightly over Mandy’s wrist before the waitress slipped away, a blush staining her cheeks a delicate pink. “She’s fucking right, you know. Forget us sorry fuckers here. Go be safe and warm. Go back to school. Go back to life.”
“You really ok, Mare?”
Mary’s chocolate eyes softened. “Don’t worry about me, kid. I be where I belong.”
~*~
Mary thwarted each and every attempt of Jensen’s to press the wad of bills into her hand.
“I don’t wanna be no fucking charity,” she’d snapped after the fifth time. Jensen just grinned wryly and tried again ten minutes later. At least he’d been able to pay for lunch, as much as she’d protested.
“So you saying the house looks too nice? How the fuck is that even possible?”
Jensen just shrugged. The street looked different now. The boys looked smaller, frailer. The cars looked emptier, like no one was driving them. It was an illusion Jensen had never entertained before.
“I don’t know man, but the lawn was all green, and the paint was perfect. Perfect flowers and perfect fucking shutters.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and watched a boy he didn’t remember get into a white Buick. “It gave me the creeps.”
“It’s cause you be missing your boy, man.” Mary was walking closer than usual - within touching distance. “I get it.”
“No. I mean, yeah, I miss him. But…” At the corner, Ramón climbed out of the Mustang, adjusted his jeans across his hips. “The car. I have nightmares about the fucking car Thomson was driving.”
On the other side of the street, Billy pranced like he was born to be a dancer instead of a hooker. He probably was, Jensen mused as his eyes followed those graceful movements.
“You mean you think you been in that car?”
Jensen shrugged. No, he almost said. Not that kind of nightmare. But his voice stuck in his throat when his eyes landed on Ramón again, who’d finally spotted them. His dark face tried at passive, but the flicker of joy interceded with the worry and sadness, and Jensen wanted to slit his own wrists for making other people look like that. But it was more than that. A conversation flittered about at the edge of his memory, a jovial back and forth of banter.
“Dude?” Mary said softly. Jensen only heard it as a rush of sounds blurring incomprehensibly above the buzzing in his ears. “I don’t bend over for nobody. Just ‘cause you like it up the ass don’t mean -,” his memory Ramón said. He could almost hear himself hissing at him to shut up. His knees buckled. The alley, the car, Jared. The shattered pieces fit back together quietly and as he crumpled to the ground he felt two pairs of hands break his fall. Jared was anything but safe.
September 1988
Jose pressed his fingers into the bruises on Jensen’s wrists. They were angry, red, painful, but not nearly as bad as the other hurt. Jensen shuddered on his bed, unable to lay on his back, unable to move at all because of the pain that rippled through his bottom every time he flinched. There was blood in his underwear. He could feel it sticking to his skin and sliding between his legs.
“Come here,” he whispered and Jose stopped tracing over the black and blue and yellow mosaic splashed across Jensen’s skin. His dark eyelashes fluttered under the weight of his tears but he didn’t hesitate. He just slipped into Jensen’s arm, pulled himself tight against Jensen’s chest.
“Does it hurt lots?” he asked, his eyes wide and too close to Jensen’s to focus on. “I can get ice. Alice has a headache and Doug’s gone now.”
Jensen shook his head. “No, just stay with me a while, k?” He didn’t add the threat that Doug had snapped, punctuated with thrusts and closed fisted blows. He didn’t need to warn the boy. He wouldn’t fuck up again and it would never be little Jose on the receiving end of Doug’s latest discipline strategy. Jose would never have to listen to Doug panting against his back, never have to feel that whiskey tainted breath whisper strained curses and insults against his hairline. Little Jose would never have his innocence stripped away like that. Jensen would be good. He’d be strong.
“Jenna called from Children’s Aid,” Jensen said at last.
Jose’s eyes flicked up. They almost looked hopeful, almost fearful. “Why?”
Jensen shrugged. “Dunno. But the way Alice was grousing it’s probably something about your dad.”
Jose snuggled his face into Jensen’s chest. “Proberly wants to take me away, right? Don’t wanna go with my dad. Got you now.”
Jensen didn’t say anything. Rain was splattering against the window, mimicking their tears. Angel’s tears, Mamma used to tell him when he was little. Now he knew what they really were, where they really came from. Angels didn’t need to cry when Mamma was up there doing it all for them. Each drop that bounced off the window hissed in pain from being kept from him. Each rivulet that ended at the sill quivered with the need to reach out and wrap around him.
“The window,” his mumbled into Jose’s downy hair. “Window.”
Jose, like all the times before, shimmied out of Jensen’s grasp and heaved against the heavy wood and glass and metal until it inched up. It wasn’t far. Not enough to get them in trouble later. It was enough though. Enough for the rain to splash off the ledge and onto Jensen’s cooling skin. It was enough that the water was able to kiss both boys. Mamma cried all night, long after Jose fell asleep, long after Jensen followed after him.
“Jeff!”
Ramón hung back, just outside the phone booth, but Mary didn’t have any qualms about crowding right in. Her fingers wrapped around Jensen’s arm, pressed into the muscle and flesh.
“Wazzah?” was Jeff’s sleepy and slightly confused response.
“It’s me! I need you to come pick me up!”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. Then, “Jensen?”
“Yeah man. I need a ride.”
“What happened? Are you in trouble?”
Jensen scuffed his toe and wondered why he’d called Jeff. Sonya was just waiting at home, probably playing pat-a-cake with Michelle, or trying to edit some sorry article that read like a two year old had written it. Jeff had probably been sleeping by the sounds of it, probably still half in uniform from his shift that afternoon.
“No. I just…you know that place where Sonya first found me?”
“Yeah…?”
“I’ll be at that diner. Just, please, Jeff?”
Mary’s fingers left bruises. Even through the fabric of his shirt, Jensen felt like he could see them. Jeff finally agreed, he was coming, and Jensen melted against the warm body holding him up. He could only allow himself a moment. He had to be there when Jeff showed up. He owed it to his friends to make sure the cop didn’t linger too much, didn’t see too much.
But Mary’s body was warm, and when she shuffled them out of the cramped booth, Ramón’s touch was tender on his face. Their voices swam above him, like they were coming from down the hall instead of inches from his face.
“Jen, fuck man!”
“Ok, you’re kind of freaking me out now.”
“Shit, what happened?”
“Fucked if I know. Jensen?”
“‘M fine. I’m fine.”
Mary’s expression said she didn’t believe him in the slightest. Ramón’s expression said something worse. Lunging forward, Jensen grabbed onto his shoulders. “Remember how we found Jay? Remember? What would you say if you knew who did that to him? What if I sent him back there?”
“Dude?”
“My ride’s picking me up at the diner. I gotta get there.”
It was with a tinkling of bells and a few choice curses that they finally stepped through the diner door. Mandy snapped her head up from the table she was wiping. She watched wide-eyed as Mary and Ramón manhandled Jensen into a seat.
“I’ll get you some coffee,” Mary said finally, when Jensen didn’t do anything past slumping down in the chair. Her hushed conversation with Mandy drifted across the small space of the diner. Small phrases caught in the air and swirled in Jensen’s head.
“…just went down. I’m worried he…”
“…fine. Look…”
“What if he’s….”
“Baby, relax please…”
“I’m sorry.”
The tiny puffs of words were interrupted when Jeff came barrelling through the door. He was just shaking his head out of his helmet, his eyes sweeping the room hurriedly before landing on Jensen and Ramón, who were sitting in silence.
“Jensen, for fuck’s sake!” he cried, taking the distance in only three long-legged steps. “What are you doing here?”
Ramón, for his part, was pretty brave. He clutched at the table and settled for a slight quiver as Jeff boomed above them. Mary crossed her arms and watched through narrowed eyes.
Jensen was up before Jeff could repeat the question. He was out the door before Mary could move to stop him. “It’s Jared,” he said, wheeling on Jeff when he finally joined Jensen at the bike, parked haphazardly on the street. “It’s Jared. We need to go get him.”
~*~
Jeff took him home, much to his annoyance.
“I told you!” he shrieked, as Jeff hauled him up the stairs toward the condo. “Jared’s in trouble! We need to go get him!”
They were on the third floor landing when Jeff whirled on him, pressing him against the wall. His eyes flashed. This was the face that must terrify the people Jeff came across on a daily basis. Somewhere, beneath the fury though was a lining of fear.
“In less than five minutes, we’re going to step through Sonny’s door. We’re going to go back to normal life. You are going to behave. Fuck, Jensen. I would expect this from a child, but not from you. It’s been over a week.”
“But…”
Jeff’s hands were strong and it took no effort to keep Jensen pinned to the wall. “No,” he growled. “I get it man, I get that you’re hurting. But you need to accept what happened. Do you understand?”
He stared down Jensen, all playfulness gone from his face. Jensen wanted to cry. Instead, he nodded.
Satisfied, Jeff’s eyes softened. “I really do get it, Jen,” he whispered, dropping his head a little. “I do get it, but sometimes we just have to be strong and move on. You need to be strong man.” Jeff didn’t wait for a response, just ushered him up the remaining stairs. He let him walk through the door on his own with nothing more than a warning look, but if he expected Jensen to stay and talk while Jeff cracked a beer with Sonya, he was going to have to be disappointed. Jensen stumbled down the little hall, only pausing to pick up Michelle and take her with him.
She wasn’t Jared, but she let herself be curled in his arms. She clung to his t-shirt and whispered “Nen Nen,” in his ear while he sobbed into her soft hair.
November 1989
The boot that connected to his ribs was steel-toed. He could tell that much by the white hot pain that lanced down his side. He didn’t wince though. Didn’t cry or moan or grunt. He just covered his head and hoped it was enough, hope that his bloody nose and broken fingers were enough and he didn’t need to forfeit a vital organ. One more sharp kick, to his thigh this time, and then Jensen heard the heavy tread of the retreating figure. It was over, for a while, and he took the moment alone to catch his breath and let the few renegade tears slide down his face. The salty water mixed with the blood coating his chin and dripped off in pinkish splatters against the greying linoleum floor.
“Mamma,” he whispered, letting his voice drown in the empty silence of the kitchen. “Mamma, I told you I’d be strong, but -.” He never finished the sentence because his chest closed up against the racking sobs that were threatening his body. Even if it wasn’t considered bad form to cry, he’d still struggle against it because the breaths were sending bolts of pain through his bruised ribs.
A small tanned face appeared in the doorway, and Jose crept over to sit in his lap. Every inch of him ached and burned, right up from the throbbing in his ass to the sting of saliva flowing over his tongue, which he’d bitten open to avoid screaming.
Jensen buried his face against the soft hair of Jose’s head and they pressed against each other, rocking into the mutual embrace until he felt himself calming down enough to move without falling. Gently, he brushed the hair from Jose’s forehead, placed his lips against the skin there, and hoisted him up to sit on his hip. The pain in his thigh protested but Jensen didn’t want to relinquish his hold on the five year old, even when Jose shyly told him he could walk himself.
No, Jensen wanted to feel the warm life in his arms, so badly that when he entered the bedroom they shared, he curled the small boy into his bed and clung to him until dawn peeked through the shades on his window and he finally drifted into sleep.
“Jeff said you pulled quite a stunt last night.”
Jensen huffed. With a glare over his shoulder, he dropped onto the couch and turned up the volume. Daytime television wasn’t something he exactly enjoyed but it drowned out the world. From her spot on the floor, Michelle gleefully threw one of her rubber rings at Jensen.
“Look, Jensen, I know you don’t really like me all that much, but if you need to talk…”
“I’m fine,” Jensen snapped.
Logan left for work silently. Jensen had the grace to feel a little guilty.
Continue