"don't let the sun (go down on me)"
A long overdue birthday fic for deirdre_c.
Title: don't let the sun (go down on me)
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 9,000
Spoilers: None
Fandom: RPS - Jared/Jensen
By: kellifer_fic
Category: AU
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Notes: Set in the world of Daybreakers. No knowledge of the movie is needed.
Summary: Jensen thought immortality was challenging, but then he met Jared.
The children were the worst.
Jensen would see them when he surfaced from the subway, clustered around the bottoms of office buildings. They would mostly be smoking or drinking, neither doing much for them other than the visual aesthetic. They were always heavily made up, trying to look older than they appeared. The sad thing was, they were adults, every single one, just trapped in the bodies of the age they were when they were infected.
A small boy skated past Jensen now, hood pulled up so you could only see his eyes glow from within its depths. That and a piece of blood licorice that poked out like an obscene tongue. Jensen sidestepped, swinging his briefcase up under his arm so it wouldn't get knocked. The kid looked back, rolling onto the street as he did so and with his attention diverted, he didn't see the car bearing down on him. Jensen watched with a kind of detached acceptance when the kid was knocked clean off his board and bounced over the hood of the car, smashing the windshield and then rolling into the street. The car swerved to a halt and the driver appeared, scowl already on his face, yelling at the kid about the damage.
The kid dragged himself to his feet, looked forlornly at his skateboard which had been smashed flat in the accident and then bent to fish the blood licorice out if a pool of dirty gutter water. He jammed it back in his mouth, gave the driver the finger and sauntered away, dusting at the sleeves of his sweat shirt. The driver looked around for a moment, seemingly flustered before he noticed Jensen. "Little ones huh?" he called. "Always the fuckin' same!"
Jensen sighed, watching the car pull away.
That much, unfortunately, was true.
000
Jensen didn't really remember what it felt like to be tired, but it didn't mean he still didn't get fatigued.
The whole situation with the race to find the right synthetic blood, good enough so it would save the population, was definitely fatiguing. The ongoing tests and trials were wearing and it didn't help that Jensen was still ringing the guts and brain matter from his last subject out of his hair when Facinelli entered his lab. His boss watched him towel-drying his hair with one side of his mouth pulled up, Jensen unable to tell if it was in amusement or displeasure. "That... didn't go well," Facinelli finally said when Jensen emerged from his makeshift bath.
"I told you the compound was too unstable," Jensen said, hating the way his voice was scratchy and his hands trembled. It was getting harder to hide the tells of starvation.
Thankfully, Facinelli didn't seem to notice, instead skirting Jensen's desk to peer at his laptop, hit a few keys so he could get at Jensen's research. "It all looked sound enough," he said, a frown tugging his features down. Jensen looked across at Hodge, his assistant, who merely raised his own eyebrows. Aldis had been the smarter of the two of them, refusing to witness the latest test. They were rushing it and they were all well aware of it.
When you rushed, you made mistakes. Unfortunately for the volunteer from the Corps, fatal ones.
"Hmm," Facinelli grunted and then looked up, his expression jovial. "Well, I'm sure you'll get it. Just... make sure its sooner rather than later, yeah? The investors are starting to get antsy."
Jensen opened his mouth but Hodge, always the more diplomatic of the two of them piped up with a "Yes sir," before Jensen could make another fatal mistake.
Facinelli wasn't known for reacting well to bad news.
When he left, Jensen turned to Hodge and spread his hands. "Sooner or later, despite our best efforts, we're going to find that this is impossible."
"I don't believe that," Hodge said, rounding the lab table to thump Jensen on the shoulder. When Jensen stumbled sideways with the contact, Hodge's face clouded with concern. "Hey, you haven't been skipping rations again have you?" he asked.
"Of course not," Jensen hedged, turning away from Hodge's penetrating glare. He'd certainly accepted the company rations he'd been handed but he'd passed them off to his neighbor, a sweet girl named Alona. She'd lost her job the month before and the unemployment rations were much more dire than his company ones were. Jensen could cope with half or even a third of what he was receiving and the tremors were something he could deal with. Just one look at Alona had told him she'd needed his rations much more than he had. She'd had the definite shakes, dark black circles under her eyes and when she'd reached out to take the ration packet Jensen had offered, there'd been signs of her cutting on herself.
"Man, you don't want to be doing that. I've been hearing rumors that there's been some bad shit going down over in the Rabbit Warren. The homeless have been feeding on each other and there's been... side affects."
"Do you believe everything you hear on the vids?" Jensen asked, snorting. He'd seen the same kind of stories popping up and he knew it was all just the higher ups trying to control the populace through fear. The last thing they wanted was an outbreak of self-feeding or people trying to feed off each other.
"I believe it drives you bug-shit crazy. We've seen that first-hand," Hodge pointed out and Jensen squeezed the bridge of his nose, nodding. When the population ratio of pure humans verses the infected had first tipped many knew that this day was coming. They'd thought maybe blood was blood and there had been some experimentation with feeding from the infected.
It hadn't gone well.
Not as spectacularly badly as the test that day but the findings had been more sinister. Mental faculties were compromised, aggression went through the roof and eventually the test subjects had had to be put down. Even with their diets switched back to pure human, the subjects had not stopped their steady decline. Even though it was cruel, the small but purely scientific part of Jensen had wished that they had seen those experiments out to the end because no one knew what really happened, what could happen.
"You look done in, man," Hodge said, patting Jensen on the shoulder again but this time far more gently. "Least I can do after you got splattered with soldier guts is write up the reports for you. How about you head home?"
"Yeah, I guess," Jensen agreed, not even really wanting to put forward a token protest. "Thanks."
"No, thank you. I did not need to see some dude explode today and you took that hit. That stuff will haunt you."
Jensen nodded, pulling together his laptop and papers and nodding thanks again as he headed out.
When Jensen hit the lobby of his office building, the sunrise sirens were blaring. He cursed, having not realised how late it had gotten. The desk clerk, a man who would always be balding but never bald, looked up and smiled. "Need one of the pool cars Mr. Ackles?" he asked and Jensen nodded gratefully.
"Thanks Kenny, that would be great," he said, letting Kenny lead the way through the lobby to the elevators that reached the basement parking levels. Kenny smiled, tossing Jensen a set of keys when they reached the basement level and waved him through. Jensen pushed the button on the key fob he had in hand and then headed to the one car in the black and anonymous fleet that bleeped at him. When he slid inside, he set the car for day driving and the windshield and windows automatically flooded black, a small view screen appearing at the bottom.
Jensen punched his address in the navigation console and then hit the auto driver.
He closed his eyes and not for the first time Jensen wished he was still capable of sleep when the car hummed to life around him.
000
Jensen knew he wasn't alone when he got home. There was a duffel by his door and a pair of boots kicked off haphazardly in the entryway. Jensen sighed, checking his hands again and squeezing them into fists when he realised that the tremors had gotten worse. He wasn't exactly in shape for company. He thought longingly of the emergency stash of rations he kept in a freezer in the attic but tamped down the urge to dip into them. He was one of the handful of people in the world that knew just how close to disaster they were as a people.
He could handle a little discomfort.
Jensen followed the sound of movement to his kitchen and plastered on a smile before he braved the space, rounding the doorway to see Joseph with his head stuck in Jensen's empty fridge. Joseph was in uniform, black with silver accents.
"I'm pretty sure break and enter is still a crime, you know," Jensen commented and Joseph appeared, grinning. He'd had long hair since Jensen could remember so it was weird to see him with the Corps required short back and sides. His face looked harder, sharper with the cut.
It seemed like hundreds of years had passed since Joseph had been merely the smaller and more annoying younger brother who he'd had to protect from the street's bullies.
"No one would call man. They'd just think I was here on official business," Joseph said, rolling his eyes.
"Fabulous," Jensen grunted. "So instead all my neighbors will think I'm a sympathiser."
"I'm going to think you're a sympathiser, way you look," Joseph remarked, leaning across and thumbing at the skin under Jensen's eyes. Jensen batted his hand away and ducked his head. Blood starvation showed up in all different ways, the most obvious being the hand tremors but you would also go dark under the eyes. Jensen inwardly cursed himself for not having thought to check just how bad he looked before he left the office. Hell, he should have just stayed and worked the day through with Hodge.
"We're all on rations," Jensen snapped. "Everyone in the city looks a little hungry."
Joseph was bouncing on his feet and when Jensen tossed an annoyed glance at him, he ducked into a bag set on Jensen's kitchen island, bringing out a dark bottle. "Well hell. I've got something that'll fix you right up," he said, waggling the bottle. The liquid inside sloshed lazily and Jensen's stomach cramped just looking at it. Joseph crossed to Jensen's cupboards over his never-used stove top and started pawing through them, bottle held precariously out to the side with just two fingers curled around the neck. "Where you keepin' the company glasses, huh?" Joseph asked, then made a crow of triumph, pulling forth a set of heavy-cut whiskey glasses. "Perfect."
"Where'd you get that?" Jensen asked, suspicious. For months he and everyone he knew had only seen blood in the little government-stamped ration packets. No one had fresh these days as the human stocks dwindled.
"Let's just say its home brew," Joseph said with a smirk and Jensen frowned. He knew what the Corps were doing these days, he wasn't an idiot. It was strange and disheartening however to see evidence of it, to see his friend so... gleeful about it. The Corps were hunting humans, trying to find the few pockets of free-rangers left. There wouldn't be many, but Jensen knew they were out there, literally hiding to save their own lives.
"This is illegal as hell," Jensen tried to protest as Joseph unscrewed the cap on the bottle and the smell assaulted Jensen. The ration packets were so clinical and so small that just the odour that poured forth from the bottle nearly had Jensen tackling Joseph to get at it. Instead he watched Joseph pour two glasses and then hold one out to Jensen.
"Tapped it myself. No one's gonna know," Joseph said, making the glass dance side to side hypnotically just under Jensen's nose. Jensen snatched it and before he could think better of it he threw it at the wall opposite, blood and glass exploding.
"What the hell?" Joseph barked. He was so surprised that Jensen was able to wrench the bottle out of his hands and he had half poured down his sink before Joseph was able to scrape his wits together enough to protest.
"What are you doing?" Joseph yelled, elbowing Jensen aside and rescuing the bottle, groaning when he saw there were only dregs left in the bottom. "Are you insane?"
"Are you?" Jensen snapped. "You were a musician for chrissakes! I know you, or at least I used to. This isn't you."
"What's not?" Joseph demanded.
"You're hunting people. Someone's sister or mother or brother. Jesus, when did we all become monsters?"
"You'd better be careful Jensen," Joseph said slowly, advancing. He was still smaller than Jensen, all lean and wiry, but muscle mass didn't matter any longer. Not when you knew what to do with your strength and Joseph had always been one to maximise the very little he had. "Now you're starting to sound like a sympathiser."
For a moment the two of them stared at each other but a crash from Jensen's living room interrupted their tense stand-off.
Jensen could feel Joseph at his back and then he was sliding around him, graceful and predatory in his movements. There were three of them in Jensen's living room, two males and a female that Jensen didn't recognize, all looking feral and starved, all with eyes only for the blood splashed against the wall. Unfortunately, the blood was behind Jensen and one of the males barrelled at him in his single-minded pursuit, tossing Joseph aside like a rag doll, Joseph going through Jensen's glass dining table and hitting the floor underneath.
Jensen slid backwards, feeling behind him blindly, his hand coming to rest on a glass bowl on a side table. He hefted it and then flung it, the bowl smashing against the charging male's skull. He hissed angrily at Jensen, blue-black blood oozing from a gash in his temple. He made for the wall again but Joseph was up and on him, jumping him from behind and bearing him to the ground. Jensen turned away as the intruder's cries became less angry and more shrill as Joseph tore him apart and the others fled.
000
"Had a string of these happen," the cop was explaining. Jensen was relieved to have the local authorities instead of more Corps in his house, his eyes skipping to Joseph who was talking to the man's partner. "Just in this area alone. Folks are desperate." He gestured at the black and bloodied corpse on Jensen's carpet and Jensen shuddered. "You got anywhere else you can stay while we call in to get this cleaned up?"
"I'll probably head back into the office," Jensen said, knowing he had to return the pool car anyway and not wanting to make the trip during peak hour. He mostly got the subway into work because he hated the press of other cars, the total disregard everyone had because they couldn't exactly die in a car accident. It was best just after sunset when the streets were still mostly empty. "Probably should have stayed there."
"Uhuh," the cop agreed, writing in a notebook, already distracted. Jensen tossed a wave at Joseph and even though he watched him with narrowed eyes, he let Jensen go without incident.
000
Jensen didn't know whether it was the day's events or just everything getting to him, but he didn't see the car bearing down on him until the last moment, having drifted onto the wrong side of the road. Headlights swept over him and that was what truly startled him. Most drove without them, their vision made poorer by bright lights. Jensen wrenched the wheel sideways but it was too late. His car glanced off the other and sent him into a tree on the side of the road. He looked in his rear vision mirror and watched the other car bump off the road and come to a halt in a ditch. The wheels spun for a second, the driver obviously trying to pull back onto the road but they were bogged and couldn't move.
Jensen pushed his own door open. The damage to his car was minor and the least he could do was offer the other driver a lift back into the city considering there wouldn't be much in the way of passing traffic for another hour and most roadside assistance places wouldn't attend a call-out until at least two hours after sundown.
Jensen put a hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the headlights and that's what saved his life. The crossbow bolt intended for his heart went through his wrist instead of his chest and Jensen staggered backwards in surprise. "Wait, no!" he called out, putting his hands up in surrender, nearly catching the tip of the crossbow through his wrist in the eye.
A man was advancing on him, tall but all other features hidden because the light was behind him. Jensen was at a disadvantage but suddenly it all came together for him, the need for the headlights and the use of a crossbow telling him more than a good look at the guy could have. "I won't hurt you!" Jensen tried to assure.
The guy paused in his advance, the crossbow he held dipping briefly before coming back up. The sound of sirens in the distance though had him looking back at his stricken car. Jensen seized the only chance he knew he had, stepping forward himself. "I can get you out of here but you have to come with me now," he said. The guy, clearly torn, looked from Jensen back to his car and then to Jensen again. Jensen had no idea why he felt the need to help but right now, he knew he had to. "Please. There isn't much time."
The guy finally lowered the crossbow the whole way and gestured at the car behind him. The passenger and back doors opened and four other people emerged, moving quickly. They paused when they caught sight of Jensen but then scurried across to his car and in when he waved at them and then at the now visible pulsing lights of the approaching Corps van. Jensen watched them get in and hunker down, invisible to a casual observer before he took a breath and yanked the crossbow bolt out of his wrist, tossing it aside at the last moment as the Corps van pulled up.
Jensen was relieved to see it was a general patrol, a single driver stepping out. The officer waved at Jensen as he jogged up. "Are you alright sir?"
"Yeah, stupid really. I was changing a disc and wandered onto the wrong side of the road. I would have apologised to the other driver but he took off."
"Just the one other driver?" the officer asked, peering back at the car in the ditch.
"Pretty sure," Jensen said, nodding.
"Huh," the officer said, his attention back on Jensen. "You sure you're okay? We've had a report of humans moving through the area."
"Wow, really?" Jensen asked, making his eyes wide and hoping he sounded suitably shocked and intrigued.
"I'll have to call this in, stay with the other car. Are you okay to drive yourself?"
"Yeah, just a small ding," Jensen said with a wave at the pool car. "I was returning it to work anyway. Not mine."
"Lucky," the officer said with a grin and Jensen nodded, walking backwards. He got into the pool car and pulled out, carefully skirting around the Corps van and away, only looking at the occupants of his car when he was sure he was out of sight.
They had all been squashed awkwardly in the back seat but as Jensen drove, the guy he had first encountered maneuvered himself into the front seat, pointing the crossbow at Jensen again. Jensen glanced back and there was also two women, an older man and a small boy. Jensen risked a glance at the first guy and saw brown hair and narrowed eyes. "Drive another hour then pull over. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to relieve you of this car since you wrecked ours."
"That's okay, it's not mine," Jensen said for the second time that night and chuckled to himself. He glanced sideways again and then said, "What?" when he noticed that the guy's brow was furrowed.
"Are you okay?" the guy asked and when the guy's query took Jensen by surprise, the reason became clear all too quickly and it wasn't concern for his well being. "You ran us off the road and now you're drifting all over again."
"Just a little..." Jensen didn't want to say hungry with a car load of distrustful humans but when he brought a hand up and it wasn't so much trembling anymore as actually shaking the guy huffed a sigh.
"Sam, would you put a hand over Deacon's eyes?"
"Jared, no!" one of the women, Jensen could only assume was Sam, hissed at the now identified Jared.
"Sam, would you just please? We need him to drive at least out of the city limits and currently he's likely to kill us all instead."
Sam grumbled something unflattering but also tugged the small boy into her lap and dropped a hand over his face. The other woman also looked out the window and Jensen wanted to ask why but when Jared handed the crossbow back to the man and yanked a knife out from behind him, Jensen suddenly realised what he meant to do. "Hey, no!" Jensen barked as Jared raised his own hand up and sliced across the back of it, one quick, neat cut.
"I'm pretty sure you're running on empty at the moment and we need someone who can drive without headlights in the pitch black. They're a dead giveaway and I should have known it but we were later getting out of the city than I would have liked." Jared's hand bumped up under Jensen's nose and Jensen let out a curse and leaned away. When he'd been infected, most of the population had already been on rations. Jensen had never had blood straight from the source but he was pretty sure if he did he would have trouble being satisfied with anything less.
At least, that's what everyone said.
"My god, a squeamish vampire. Never would have thought I'd see that," Sam muttered from the back.
"Don't call me that," Jensen grated out.
"So what's the politically correct term then?" Jared asked, sounding bemused. "Solarly challenged? Morbidly extended?"
"Infected," Jensen growled and he could see out of the corner of his eye Jared blink at that. Jared reached across Jensen with his uncut hand and plucked Jensen's work ID that he'd slung around his neck before leaving home from off his chest. Jared held it closer to the dashboard lights and made a contemplative sound in the back of his throat. The ID jangled when Jared let it go and it thunked back against Jensen's chest.
"Here. Just a little should at least stop the worst of the tremors and help you concentrate," Jared said, proffering his hand again. Jensen still resisted for a moment but the salt-tang smell of the blood had entered his nose and he was starving. When Jared started to pull his hand away the second time, Jensen followed it, lips coming to rest on Jared's skin.
Jensen sucked just once and the explosion of flavor in his mouth was unlike anything he'd ever had before. He let go of the steering wheel with one hand so he could grasp Jared's wrist and press Jared's hand more firmly to his mouth. He was embarrassed when he realised he'd moaned but he couldn't help it, feeling Jared's gaze on him. He was able to pull a few more mouthfuls in before Jared started tugging his hand back, becoming more insistent when Jensen was reluctant to let go. Finally Jared reached over and pressed his fingers into Jensen's still-healing wound on his wrist and Jensen's hand opened automatically, releasing Jared.
"I think he's taken us far enough," the older man said and Jensen felt the tip of the loaded crossbow tap at his ear. He wanted to laugh because although Jared had known to aim for the chest, this man obviously didn't and a bolt to the head would only be a minor annoyance and not much of a threat.
"Yeah, you're probably right," Jared said but there was something hesitant in his voice. Jensen nodded and pulled the car over, putting a hand to the driver's side and pushing out. Jared climbed out of the passenger side, once again in possession of the crossbow which he held on Jensen as he rounded the front of the car. "You think you can make it back to the city alright?" he asked and Jensen was confused by the question.
"Do you care?" he asked, actually surprised that Jared didn't just put a bolt in his heart here and now and be done with it.
"You didn't have to help us back there but you did. Why?"
"Jared, c'mon," Sam called from inside the car.
Jared hesitated by the driver's side door but when it was clear he wasn't going to get an answer, he ducked inside, folding his long limbs gracefully, the crossbow the last thing inside. Jensen watched the car peel out and away, not able to tear his eyes off it until it was just a dim speck on the horizon.
"I don't know."
000
Jensen went back to work, solidly pressed through two days before he got a call that his place was clear and he could return. He was hesitant but Hodge insisted he get a break and practically marched him out of the place, in plenty of time to make the predawn train. When Jensen arrived home there wasn't a trace of his intruder and most of the damage done had been repaired, his smashed dining table removed. Joseph was also gone although Jensen was sure it wasn't the last he would see of him and his next visit might not be so friendly.
The term sympathiser still rang through his head and he thought about it now, what it meant. It was a word bandied about loosely, an insult to use when you really wanted to piss someone off. There were those who were infected that had trouble with their way of living, not able to marry the need for blood with their moral compass. The term kissing the sun had become common for those that felt the need to end their existence rather than face what they had to do to prolong it, because one of the surest ways to kill themselves was to watch a sunrise that one, final time.
Jensen had thought about it himself when he'd first...
Some that didn't seek a way out instead tried to change the system from within. There were those that had been found helping humans, harboring them. Some did it for selfish reasons, trading fresh blood for their help but quite a few did it because they couldn't let go of the last shreds of their humanity, trying to find a way to atone for what they'd become.
Jensen figured his work was atonement enough, or at least he used to. Finding a blood alternative would be the best way to stop the killing, maybe allowing humans and the infected to live side by side but Jensen started to doubt if that would be ever true if what he'd tasted that night were any indication.
Jensen couldn't imagine being able to manufacture... that.
000
There was someone in his house again, but this time Jensen knew who it was before even passing through the front door.
Jensen had gotten out of the habit of turning on lights in the house but he did so now for the benefit of his visitor, tracking the scent of him into the living room and finding Jared sitting on one of his leather chairs with the now familiar crossbow pointed towards the entryway. Jensen put his hands up, sketching a small wave with his right and Jared rolled his eyes and put the crossbow aside, but not out of reach completely, Jensen noted.
"Why are you smiling?" Jared asked and Jensen hadn't realised he was, lifting a hand to his mouth and touching fingertips to confirm that indeed his lips were curved upwards.
"Just surprised, I guess," Jensen said. "Which doesn't happen very often."
"You work for Synth Tech, the guys trying to produce the blood substitute right?"
"Trying and failing dismally," Jensen admitted and watched Jared's face fall a fraction before he folded his expression back to a neutral one.
"I guess that's not really going to help us anyway," Jared said, coming to his feet. In the light Jensen was able to finally make out features and one thing he noted was that Jared's skin was tanned, soft coloring on his face, neck and hands. The other startling thing was Jared's eyes, an odd mix of brown and green, shifting with the shadows. Jensen was so used to looking into eyes the exact same light gold as his own that seeing something different was truly fascinating. "We need help," Jared blurted while Jensen had been lost in studying him.
"Excuse me?" Jensen asked, seeing that Jared looked about as surprised as he was himself.
"Look, there's someone you have to meet. If I tell you where and when, will you come?"
"What's this all about?" Jensen asked and then narrowed his eyes, watching Jared abandon the cool act and fidget. "Why do you trust me?"
"You could have handed us over, been a good little citizen but you didn't," Jared said and then shrugged, letting out a small huff of laughter. "I guess I'm not surprised that often anymore either."
000
Jensen loathed day-driving, avoided it if he could but Jared had insisted.
Jensen supposed he could understand. If the person he was meeting was another human then an open field in the middle of the day was probably the safest bet. The Corps had measures for daylight travel and dispatch but they wouldn't be at full strength and humans would have the advantage.
Still, as Jensen bumped across the rutted patch of land with the large tree in the center he'd been guided to, he couldn't help the growing sense of unease.
He drove as close to the tree as he could get and then stopped the car, pushing the driver's side door open gingerly and stepping out into the shade. There were slivers of light here and there but not many and Jensen was careful to avoid the places the foliage above didn't quite meet. He rounded the base of the tree and came upon a man sitting with a rifle across his lap. The man was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt and he had a scruffy, unkempt look. He rose to his feet when Jensen approached and Jensen could see the man had burn scarring on one side of his neck and around his jaw-line, only mostly hidden by the stubble that darkened his chin and cheeks.
"Oh good, you are the Jensen Ackles I thought you were," the man said.
"Do I know you?" Jensen asked, because the man was familiar but Jensen couldn't see how. He hadn't encountered an honest to god human in a good long while.
"We've met before. My name's Jeff Morgan and I converted the pool cars for Synth Tech to day-drivers."
"You...?" Jensen blinked hard. "No... that's..."
"Impossible?" Morgan said with a gruff chuckle. He shrugged and spread his hands wide. "Believe me, I thought so to."
"But you're... " Jensen's mouth worked for a moment, trying to form the word right before he could spit it out properly. "Human."
"Now, yes."
"You were infected?"
Morgan gazed at Jensen levelly, head cocked sideways. "Jared told me you called it that. Interesting."
"What... what happened?"
"I want you to help us figure that out," Morgan said. "When Jared told me who his good Samaritan was I couldn't believe our luck. Someone who could possibly work out just what the fuck happened to me and who I'd actually met... prior."
"You want to reverse it?" Jensen asked slowly, not liking the idea at all but Morgan just laughed again.
"Hell no. I want you to figure out how to replicate it."
"That's - " Impossible Jensen was going to say but their attention was diverted by an approaching Corps van. It was coming up fast and Jensen cursed, feeling horribly exposed. He could possibly make it back to the car in time but it would be close and a Corps van would definitely be able to run down his little electric number.
"What the fuck?" Morgan yelled, face flushing with anger. "Jesus I knew I shouldn't have listened to Jared. Kid has a good heart but no common sense."
"Hey, no! I didn't turn you in. I must have been followed," Jensen said quickly.
"Yeah?" Morgan asked, raising an eyebrow. "Well, I guess it doesn't matter now. We're both in a world of hurt."
The van screeched to a halt, back-end fishtailing and kicking up dust. A single figure leaped from it kitted out in the Corps day-wear, helmet with black visor and full uniform. The figure advanced and Jensen was wondering what the chances were of fighting his way out when just being shoved outside the protection of the tree would be the end of him when the officer hit the shade and shoved his visor up. Jensen nearly collapsed with relief.
"Joseph! You scared the crap out of me," he barked but his relief was short-lived when he saw how stormy Joseph's expression was.
"Wow, I knew you were in some kind of shit but I never would have even imagined this much," Joseph snarled, throwing an arm in Morgan's direction. "Are you harboring humans? Smuggling them out of the city or something?"
"What? Joseph, no," Jensen said, putting his hands up to Joseph's shoulders but Joseph stepped away.
"I got here first because I didn't want you getting hurt but considering what this is, there's probably no way I can stop that," Joseph said and gestured behind himself. Jensen looked to where he was gesturing and could see dust plumes in the distance, more Corps vans.
"I'm sorry Joseph," Jensen said.
"It's a bit late to apologise for this," Joseph said with a scowl.
"No, I mean, I'm sorry Joseph," Jensen said and lunged forward, smacking Joseph's visor down, slamming it with the heel of his palm so it shattered and then shoving Joseph into the sunlight. Joseph cried out in surprise and then pain as he caught sunlight in the face. He went down hard, smashing his face into the dirt to try and protect it. Jensen didn't hesitate, merely grabbed Morgan by the collar of the shirt and propelled him towards his car. "Go!"
"Let me drive," Morgan said, reaching for the key fob Jensen had yanked from his pocket. When Jensen hesitated Morgan rolled his eyes. "If they reach us, Corps shoot windows out first, it's their standard procedure. All I'm going to get when the windshield is gone is a dose of vitamin D. How about you?"
000
"We need you to figure out what happened to me."
Jensen sat opposite Morgan, letting his mind switch to a purely scientific space. "How do we know you're actually human again?" Jensen asked the most obvious question.
"This," Morgan said, reaching out and snagging Jensen's hand and tapping it against his chest. The feeling of the heartbeat underneath wasn't a surprise, Jensen could hear it a mile away, but the gesture wasn't lost on him. He nodded for Morgan to continue.
"Scared the crap out of me actually," he said, releasing Jensen's hand and then shaking his head ruefully. "I didn't really remember what a heartbeat actually felt like. Silly thing was, I thought I was dying." Morgan looked steadily at Jensen. "Plus, I'm aging."
"It hasn't been that long though since this happened, right? Maybe a year? How would you know you were aging?"
"Jensen, I know. Tell me after staring at the same damn reflection for so long you wouldn't notice an extra line, another grey hair, something different?" Jensen opened his mouth but then closed it again. It was true what Morgan was saying, when your reflection was exactly the same day in and out, any difference no matter how minor would be startling and obvious. "Every little change is both terrifying and wonderful."
"Wonderful?" Jensen asked, curious.
"I don't know about you but the biggest fear in most people's lives before was that they were gonna end. That fear was a great motivator. We stopped fighting, we stopped creating, hell we stopped fucking."
"I don't know about that," Jensen started to protest but paused. When he'd first been infected he'd certainly over-indulged in everything. Most tested the boundaries of their immortality and found them practically limitless. Like the passage of days however, it all seemed to become unimportant. Jensen didn't remember the last time he'd been with anyone and didn't even remember the last time he'd been concerned about it.
"Apathy is the great destroyer. It kills passion just as surely as everything else. Do you recall the last time you felt that need, the last time you wanted."
Jensen's eyes skipped unwillingly across the space and came to rest on Jared, the long line of him bent over a high table that had maps spread across it. He was talking to a dark-haired woman and as Jensen watched, he flicked his hair out of his eyes and smiled, a small and genuine thing. Jensen had certainly recognised something within himself being drawn to Jared but he'd thought it was blood lust.
He had to admit to himself that it might have been the old-fashioned kind instead.
"Hell, I day-drove just to feel something again, to feel scared. I don't know if I was actually suicidal but I was certainly leaving it all to chance. I ended up getting more than I bargained for."
Morgan stood and stretched, his back popping. With the sound he grinned down at Jensen. "I used to find a long stretch of straight road, turn off the view port and auto-drive and just floor it. I got away with it for a while but eventually my luck ran out. I kept the hammer down too long and reached a river I didn't even know was there. I hit a tree stump just before the water and while the car stopped, I didn't.
"I went straight through the windshield and burned. The water saved me, put the fire out and was enough protection that I was able to reach the other side and a pipe that was jutting out over the water. I pulled myself inside and that's when I felt it and thought maybe I was going to kick off anyway."
Morgan paused for a moment, like he was measuring Jensen's reaction to his story. "That's when I felt my heart."
000
Jared approached him when Jensen had been set up in a makeshift lab with some samples of Morgan's blood.
"Listen," Jared said, tugging Jensen aside. "You still look... hungry." Jared already had the knife out again and he gestured with it. Jensen narrowed his eyes.
"Hey, why the compulsion to feed me? You're not an ex-blood doll or anything are you?" he asked. When the first infected showed up it was a novelty that some of the darker corners embraced and the giving of blood had been as addictive as the taking of it. Those humans addicted had been colloquially referred to as Blood dolls and Jared's urge to help had made Jensen suspicious of his motives.
Jared did the last thing Jensen was expecting. He threw his head back and laughed. When Jensen just looked at him in confusion, Jared sobered but there was still amusement in his eyes that Jensen didn't really understand until Jared explained. "Man, those kinds of things were long gone before I was even born."
Jensen looked at Jared, all of maybe twenty years old at Jensen's best guess. Jensen swallowed hard, wondering if it had really been that long. The infected kept a strict eye on the time, it was necessary for survival. The estimated times for sunrise and sunset were checked much like the weather had been, the most important bit of information you gleaned from the news vids.
The passage of days, months, years however...
Jensen wasn't even really sure what year it was, he hadn't seen a calendar in a long time. It was something you just didn't keep track of when your life wasn't slipping away like grains of sand through an hourglass.
When you were endless, that kind of thing could drive you mad.
Jensen himself had been infected well before rationing had started but long after humans were actually giving their blood freely. Jensen started his new life after the population balance had already been tipped in the unsustainable direction. He looked at Jared again with new eyes and not a little bit of wonder. Had it actually been so long that there were now living adults who didn't know what life had been like before, who hadn't existed in a world before the infection?
"Seriously," Jared said, tapping the knife against the skin of his hand, just above the still-healing cut that had been Jensen's last meal. "We need you firing on all cylinders."
Jensen should say no. Wait until he was actually hurting before he gave in again but Jared was so warm and vital and there, a blush tinging his cheeks and betraying his feigned nonchalance. Jensen remembered what Morgan had said.
When was the last time you actually wanted?
Jensen reached out, nudging the knife aside and circling Jared's wrist with his fingers. "If I... do it myself I don't leave..." he brought his other hand up and touched the cut on the back of Jared's hand. Jensen felt Jared's pulse pick up under his fingers and had to take a few controlled breathes before he drew Jared's wrist to himself. He let his eyes dart around the space just before he touched teeth to Jared's skin, almost feeling like it was far too intimate for anyone else to witness and smiling when he noted that they were truly alone.
The first taste was like a punch to the gut again and Jensen marvelled inwardly that it didn't seem to have lost any potency with repetition. Facinelli had often talked of a synthetic blood source being a hard sell to the older generation of infected and Jensen was starting to see why if this was what they had been used to. Nothing he came up with would be the same, of that Jensen was sure.
Jensen almost lost himself again but a tugging at the hair on his temple had him breaking away, passing his tongue over the break in Jared's skin to heal the wound before he did. Jared left his free hand tangled in Jensen's hair for just a moment after Jensen released him before stepping away. He was breathing hard and the slight tinge to his cheeks had become a ruddy patch of high color that also flushed his neck and the part of his collarbone Jensen could see.
"Well, back to work," Jared said, voice falsely cheerful.
Jensen nodded slowly and watched Jared retreat.
000
"Doesn't your back hurt?" Jared asked. He had a mug of something that he was holding with two hands and was rugged up. Jensen supposed it must be cold but feeling the elements was something he left behind with his mortality. Jensen didn't really miss all that much about being human that he could remember, but the first bite of a winter's day and the relief of curling up somewhere warm was definitely a lingering memory that he couldn't let go of. "You've been hunched like that for hours."
"One position is as much the same as another to me," Jensen said with a shrug. "This would be as comfortable as sprawling on a couch."
"Weird," Jared huffed and Jensen had to laugh at that.
"Did you... was there something you wanted?" Jensen asked as Jared continued to hover. The space Jensen had been occupying had cleared out, despite the number of people that were currently occupying the small country house and attached barn Jensen had been taken to. Jensen was in a cordoned off area out the back and he could see a number of cots set up in the main space but no people. He supposed he could understand, no deer would linger in a field when a wolf lurked nearby.
Jared was the only one, apart from Morgan, who didn't seem phased by his continued presence.
"Are you really going to be able to find out what happened to Jeff?" Jared asked, finally reducing the space between them by approaching.
Jensen leaned back on the chair he'd been perched on and nudged his notebooks and equipment aside. "Honestly? I don't think so."
Jared's face fell and he didn't try to hide it this time. Instead he moved closer, frowning. "Really? I mean, Jeff was sure-"
"We've been trying to come up with a scientific explanation for the... infection for years," Jensen explained. "Best we can come up with is that it's a virus with a non-segmented, negative stranded RNA genome." At Jared's bewildered look, Jensen shrugged and rose from his seat. "But trying to define it, I've really always thought it a pretty futile exercise." Jensen skirted Jared and paused at the pile of books that he'd been supplied with by Morgan and his people. There were mostly titles and authors he recognized, people who'd made it their life's work to try to explain away the majority of the race's current condition as something akin to evolution, a natural leap.
There was nothing natural about it, as far as Jensen was concerned.
"In every one of these books they try to find reasons why we stop aging, why we become stronger, why we're sensitive to sunlight. Mundane explanations for the extraordinary. According to this," Jensen said, holding up one of the books. "I'm faster than you because ninety percent of my muscles are the fast-twitch variety, as opposed to fifty percent. I'm stronger because my skeleton, ligaments and tendons all thicken because of the extra stress on them."
"That all sounds..." Jared made a circle with his hand, the meaning of which Jensen wasn't sure of.
"Convenient?" Jensen interrupted. "We combust in sunlight, Jared. Trying to just... explain that is ludicrous. This book," Jensen tossed aside the first book he was holding up in favour of a second one. "Says that this happens because we excrete a magnesium based substance like humans sweat."
"What are you saying?" Jared asked slowly.
"I'm saying that Morgan returned to a completely healthy state, recovering from an unknown virus because he was briefly on fire. I can't... I just can't find an explanation for that."
"You will though," Jared said quickly as he moved back into Jensen's space. He plucked the book from Jensen's hand and tossed it aside.
"I've tested burning infected blood under UV light. It remains infected," Jensen said as he shuffled away from Jared again. "I mean, maybe the only way to purify infected blood is inside the body but that would mean..." Jared watched him pace, looking worried. "Morgan said the moment the sun hit him he felt his heart beat again. A return of circulation and the immune system kicked back in."
"Jensen, what-?"
"I need to know if this was a fluke," Jensen said, tapping fingers on his chin.
"How are you going to do that?" Jared huffed but when Jensen just looked at him, Jared raised his hands. "Wait, no. No!"
"It's the only way," Jensen said, casting about the small space. He shoved boxes and papers aside until he finally moved out to the space with the cots and grabbed up a blanket. He turned to the door where a strip of sunlight edged the bottom. Jensen took a deep breath, threw the blanket over his head and just as he was about to barrel outside, Jared grabbed his elbow.
"Hang on!" Jared practically shouted. "You're a scientist for chrissakes. Think of a less lethal way to do this."
000
Jensen rapped on the side of the thirty-foot high steel wine tank. "It's air tight?"
"Yep, needs to be for the fermentation," Morgan said, looking between Jensen, Jared and back to the tank. The next property down had been a winery and when Jensen had explained what he'd needed, what he wanted to try, Morgan had remembered its presence. "There's an extraction fan that sucks the air out to stop it from oxidising."
"It might just work," Jensen said.
"For what exactly?" Morgan asked.
"An experiment."
000
"The sun's going to be down in thirty minutes. We need to do this now," Jensen said, opening the access hatch on the side of the tank. Jared touched his shoulder, not stopping him but not looking happy.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" he asked, handing Jensen the blanket he'd been going to use which was now soaked in water. Morgan was already at the top of the tank, ready to slam the oxygen purge valve on as soon as Jensen caught alight. The wet blanket would help but the removal of air was what was important to stop him burning once he started.
"Not at all," Jensen said, then grinned, touching fingers to Jared's chin. "But we'd better hurry, I'm sick of you making me hungry."
Jared chuckled and bumped his own hand against the side of Jensen's head. "This is a good look for you," he said, indicating Jensen's hair that was slicked down with a fire retardant gel. He stepped away, letting Jensen enter the tank. Jared hefted a mirror that would bounce sunlight from a hole they'd made in the roof in through the access hatch. His and Jensen's eyes locked for a moment before Jensen nodded.
"Do it."
000
Jensen burned three times, demanded after the first and second that they go again when his heart refused to start and his eyes remained gold. The third time, something kicked in his chest and he felt like he'd been punched, closing the blanket around himself and collapsing to the floor as he heard the whoosh of the fire being dragged up and out. He gasped as the pressure in his chest increased. He heard the access hatch opening, Jared having to slam it shut every time he hit Jensen with sunlight and then there was arms hauling him up and out.
Jensen gasped as he hit the floor outside, grabbing at the blanket as it was yanked away, thinking he would burn again. "It's okay, you're okay. Jesus!" he heard Jared try to reassure, his voice shaky. Jensen blinked open his eyes and Jared's worried face swam into focus. Jared's eyes widened as he looked down at Jensen. "Green," he blurted.
"What?" Jensen managed to get out through a throat that felt like it had been scraped raw.
"Your eyes," Jared said, now sounding full of wonder. "They're green."
000
Jensen stood in the driveway of the winery, arms out, palms facing the sky. The light from the day was dying but he could feel its warmth all the same, feel the cold creeping in, turning the skin on his arms to goose flesh. Jensen felt a hand grip one of his and looked sideways, smiled at Jared who was more beautiful in the sunlight than Jensen could have imagined. Jensen breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air that smelled of the cloying sweetness of dying grass and flowers. He grasped Jared's hand, bringing it up to his chest, against his heartbeat.
"When people were being turned, when whole families, friends, everyone was being turned, I said I would rather die than end up like that."
Jared turned to Jensen, tightening his fingers in Jensen's own. "What happened?"
"My kid brother was turned first and he came after me. Probably thought he was doing the right thing by me or he didn't want to let me go, I don't know. I was an easy target, I wouldn't fight him...not him."
"Do you regret doing this?" Jared asked, sounding hesitant. "You can't ever go back."
"I couldn't anyway," Jensen said, turning. With his and Jared's hands still linked, still pressed between their bodies his movement drew Jared closer. He smiled. "Plus, it's nice to be able to do this and know I won't hurt you," Jensen added, pressing forward and biting at Jared's lips until he opened under Jensen's insistent press. Jensen could feel Jared's grin against his mouth and it made him smile too.
"Definite benefit," Jared agreed.
000
Jensen ran his hand down Jared's flank and then back up again, coming to rest against his chest with the steady thrum of Jared's heartbeat under his fingers.
He was never going to get tired of that feeling.
"You do realize you're totally screwed, right?" Jared asked. They were curled together on one of the single cots, not enough room for one grown man let alone two but they were making it work. The other survivors had been giving the space a wide berth but for a completely different reason than because Jensen was a predator.
Jensen grinned to himself. "Yeah, but I was before anyway, probably from the moment I ran you off the road," Jensen agreed amiably. His grin dimmed however and he turned so he could see Jared's face, careful not to jostle Jared off the cot. "There's something I've got to do though and you're not going to like it."
"Your brother?" Jared asked, knowing exactly where Jensen's thought lay.
"He wouldn't leave me behind and now..." Jensen huffed a sigh. "I'm not sure what's going to happen but I can't -"
"Jensen, it's okay," Jared said, burying a small in Jensen's shoulder. "It's weird how you're the most human person I've met in a long time, you know, considering."
"You think we'll find a way to fix people?" Jared asked, tone turned serious.
"I really don't know," Jensen said. "Plus, there will be people who won't want to be fixed. We'll just have to play it by ear."
"Okay," Jared said. "I can do that."
Title: don't let the sun (go down on me)
Rating/Warning: PG
Wordcount: 9,000
Spoilers: None
Fandom: RPS - Jared/Jensen
By: kellifer_fic
Category: AU
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Notes: Set in the world of Daybreakers. No knowledge of the movie is needed.
Summary: Jensen thought immortality was challenging, but then he met Jared.
The children were the worst.
Jensen would see them when he surfaced from the subway, clustered around the bottoms of office buildings. They would mostly be smoking or drinking, neither doing much for them other than the visual aesthetic. They were always heavily made up, trying to look older than they appeared. The sad thing was, they were adults, every single one, just trapped in the bodies of the age they were when they were infected.
A small boy skated past Jensen now, hood pulled up so you could only see his eyes glow from within its depths. That and a piece of blood licorice that poked out like an obscene tongue. Jensen sidestepped, swinging his briefcase up under his arm so it wouldn't get knocked. The kid looked back, rolling onto the street as he did so and with his attention diverted, he didn't see the car bearing down on him. Jensen watched with a kind of detached acceptance when the kid was knocked clean off his board and bounced over the hood of the car, smashing the windshield and then rolling into the street. The car swerved to a halt and the driver appeared, scowl already on his face, yelling at the kid about the damage.
The kid dragged himself to his feet, looked forlornly at his skateboard which had been smashed flat in the accident and then bent to fish the blood licorice out if a pool of dirty gutter water. He jammed it back in his mouth, gave the driver the finger and sauntered away, dusting at the sleeves of his sweat shirt. The driver looked around for a moment, seemingly flustered before he noticed Jensen. "Little ones huh?" he called. "Always the fuckin' same!"
Jensen sighed, watching the car pull away.
That much, unfortunately, was true.
000
Jensen didn't really remember what it felt like to be tired, but it didn't mean he still didn't get fatigued.
The whole situation with the race to find the right synthetic blood, good enough so it would save the population, was definitely fatiguing. The ongoing tests and trials were wearing and it didn't help that Jensen was still ringing the guts and brain matter from his last subject out of his hair when Facinelli entered his lab. His boss watched him towel-drying his hair with one side of his mouth pulled up, Jensen unable to tell if it was in amusement or displeasure. "That... didn't go well," Facinelli finally said when Jensen emerged from his makeshift bath.
"I told you the compound was too unstable," Jensen said, hating the way his voice was scratchy and his hands trembled. It was getting harder to hide the tells of starvation.
Thankfully, Facinelli didn't seem to notice, instead skirting Jensen's desk to peer at his laptop, hit a few keys so he could get at Jensen's research. "It all looked sound enough," he said, a frown tugging his features down. Jensen looked across at Hodge, his assistant, who merely raised his own eyebrows. Aldis had been the smarter of the two of them, refusing to witness the latest test. They were rushing it and they were all well aware of it.
When you rushed, you made mistakes. Unfortunately for the volunteer from the Corps, fatal ones.
"Hmm," Facinelli grunted and then looked up, his expression jovial. "Well, I'm sure you'll get it. Just... make sure its sooner rather than later, yeah? The investors are starting to get antsy."
Jensen opened his mouth but Hodge, always the more diplomatic of the two of them piped up with a "Yes sir," before Jensen could make another fatal mistake.
Facinelli wasn't known for reacting well to bad news.
When he left, Jensen turned to Hodge and spread his hands. "Sooner or later, despite our best efforts, we're going to find that this is impossible."
"I don't believe that," Hodge said, rounding the lab table to thump Jensen on the shoulder. When Jensen stumbled sideways with the contact, Hodge's face clouded with concern. "Hey, you haven't been skipping rations again have you?" he asked.
"Of course not," Jensen hedged, turning away from Hodge's penetrating glare. He'd certainly accepted the company rations he'd been handed but he'd passed them off to his neighbor, a sweet girl named Alona. She'd lost her job the month before and the unemployment rations were much more dire than his company ones were. Jensen could cope with half or even a third of what he was receiving and the tremors were something he could deal with. Just one look at Alona had told him she'd needed his rations much more than he had. She'd had the definite shakes, dark black circles under her eyes and when she'd reached out to take the ration packet Jensen had offered, there'd been signs of her cutting on herself.
"Man, you don't want to be doing that. I've been hearing rumors that there's been some bad shit going down over in the Rabbit Warren. The homeless have been feeding on each other and there's been... side affects."
"Do you believe everything you hear on the vids?" Jensen asked, snorting. He'd seen the same kind of stories popping up and he knew it was all just the higher ups trying to control the populace through fear. The last thing they wanted was an outbreak of self-feeding or people trying to feed off each other.
"I believe it drives you bug-shit crazy. We've seen that first-hand," Hodge pointed out and Jensen squeezed the bridge of his nose, nodding. When the population ratio of pure humans verses the infected had first tipped many knew that this day was coming. They'd thought maybe blood was blood and there had been some experimentation with feeding from the infected.
It hadn't gone well.
Not as spectacularly badly as the test that day but the findings had been more sinister. Mental faculties were compromised, aggression went through the roof and eventually the test subjects had had to be put down. Even with their diets switched back to pure human, the subjects had not stopped their steady decline. Even though it was cruel, the small but purely scientific part of Jensen had wished that they had seen those experiments out to the end because no one knew what really happened, what could happen.
"You look done in, man," Hodge said, patting Jensen on the shoulder again but this time far more gently. "Least I can do after you got splattered with soldier guts is write up the reports for you. How about you head home?"
"Yeah, I guess," Jensen agreed, not even really wanting to put forward a token protest. "Thanks."
"No, thank you. I did not need to see some dude explode today and you took that hit. That stuff will haunt you."
Jensen nodded, pulling together his laptop and papers and nodding thanks again as he headed out.
When Jensen hit the lobby of his office building, the sunrise sirens were blaring. He cursed, having not realised how late it had gotten. The desk clerk, a man who would always be balding but never bald, looked up and smiled. "Need one of the pool cars Mr. Ackles?" he asked and Jensen nodded gratefully.
"Thanks Kenny, that would be great," he said, letting Kenny lead the way through the lobby to the elevators that reached the basement parking levels. Kenny smiled, tossing Jensen a set of keys when they reached the basement level and waved him through. Jensen pushed the button on the key fob he had in hand and then headed to the one car in the black and anonymous fleet that bleeped at him. When he slid inside, he set the car for day driving and the windshield and windows automatically flooded black, a small view screen appearing at the bottom.
Jensen punched his address in the navigation console and then hit the auto driver.
He closed his eyes and not for the first time Jensen wished he was still capable of sleep when the car hummed to life around him.
000
Jensen knew he wasn't alone when he got home. There was a duffel by his door and a pair of boots kicked off haphazardly in the entryway. Jensen sighed, checking his hands again and squeezing them into fists when he realised that the tremors had gotten worse. He wasn't exactly in shape for company. He thought longingly of the emergency stash of rations he kept in a freezer in the attic but tamped down the urge to dip into them. He was one of the handful of people in the world that knew just how close to disaster they were as a people.
He could handle a little discomfort.
Jensen followed the sound of movement to his kitchen and plastered on a smile before he braved the space, rounding the doorway to see Joseph with his head stuck in Jensen's empty fridge. Joseph was in uniform, black with silver accents.
"I'm pretty sure break and enter is still a crime, you know," Jensen commented and Joseph appeared, grinning. He'd had long hair since Jensen could remember so it was weird to see him with the Corps required short back and sides. His face looked harder, sharper with the cut.
It seemed like hundreds of years had passed since Joseph had been merely the smaller and more annoying younger brother who he'd had to protect from the street's bullies.
"No one would call man. They'd just think I was here on official business," Joseph said, rolling his eyes.
"Fabulous," Jensen grunted. "So instead all my neighbors will think I'm a sympathiser."
"I'm going to think you're a sympathiser, way you look," Joseph remarked, leaning across and thumbing at the skin under Jensen's eyes. Jensen batted his hand away and ducked his head. Blood starvation showed up in all different ways, the most obvious being the hand tremors but you would also go dark under the eyes. Jensen inwardly cursed himself for not having thought to check just how bad he looked before he left the office. Hell, he should have just stayed and worked the day through with Hodge.
"We're all on rations," Jensen snapped. "Everyone in the city looks a little hungry."
Joseph was bouncing on his feet and when Jensen tossed an annoyed glance at him, he ducked into a bag set on Jensen's kitchen island, bringing out a dark bottle. "Well hell. I've got something that'll fix you right up," he said, waggling the bottle. The liquid inside sloshed lazily and Jensen's stomach cramped just looking at it. Joseph crossed to Jensen's cupboards over his never-used stove top and started pawing through them, bottle held precariously out to the side with just two fingers curled around the neck. "Where you keepin' the company glasses, huh?" Joseph asked, then made a crow of triumph, pulling forth a set of heavy-cut whiskey glasses. "Perfect."
"Where'd you get that?" Jensen asked, suspicious. For months he and everyone he knew had only seen blood in the little government-stamped ration packets. No one had fresh these days as the human stocks dwindled.
"Let's just say its home brew," Joseph said with a smirk and Jensen frowned. He knew what the Corps were doing these days, he wasn't an idiot. It was strange and disheartening however to see evidence of it, to see his friend so... gleeful about it. The Corps were hunting humans, trying to find the few pockets of free-rangers left. There wouldn't be many, but Jensen knew they were out there, literally hiding to save their own lives.
"This is illegal as hell," Jensen tried to protest as Joseph unscrewed the cap on the bottle and the smell assaulted Jensen. The ration packets were so clinical and so small that just the odour that poured forth from the bottle nearly had Jensen tackling Joseph to get at it. Instead he watched Joseph pour two glasses and then hold one out to Jensen.
"Tapped it myself. No one's gonna know," Joseph said, making the glass dance side to side hypnotically just under Jensen's nose. Jensen snatched it and before he could think better of it he threw it at the wall opposite, blood and glass exploding.
"What the hell?" Joseph barked. He was so surprised that Jensen was able to wrench the bottle out of his hands and he had half poured down his sink before Joseph was able to scrape his wits together enough to protest.
"What are you doing?" Joseph yelled, elbowing Jensen aside and rescuing the bottle, groaning when he saw there were only dregs left in the bottom. "Are you insane?"
"Are you?" Jensen snapped. "You were a musician for chrissakes! I know you, or at least I used to. This isn't you."
"What's not?" Joseph demanded.
"You're hunting people. Someone's sister or mother or brother. Jesus, when did we all become monsters?"
"You'd better be careful Jensen," Joseph said slowly, advancing. He was still smaller than Jensen, all lean and wiry, but muscle mass didn't matter any longer. Not when you knew what to do with your strength and Joseph had always been one to maximise the very little he had. "Now you're starting to sound like a sympathiser."
For a moment the two of them stared at each other but a crash from Jensen's living room interrupted their tense stand-off.
Jensen could feel Joseph at his back and then he was sliding around him, graceful and predatory in his movements. There were three of them in Jensen's living room, two males and a female that Jensen didn't recognize, all looking feral and starved, all with eyes only for the blood splashed against the wall. Unfortunately, the blood was behind Jensen and one of the males barrelled at him in his single-minded pursuit, tossing Joseph aside like a rag doll, Joseph going through Jensen's glass dining table and hitting the floor underneath.
Jensen slid backwards, feeling behind him blindly, his hand coming to rest on a glass bowl on a side table. He hefted it and then flung it, the bowl smashing against the charging male's skull. He hissed angrily at Jensen, blue-black blood oozing from a gash in his temple. He made for the wall again but Joseph was up and on him, jumping him from behind and bearing him to the ground. Jensen turned away as the intruder's cries became less angry and more shrill as Joseph tore him apart and the others fled.
000
"Had a string of these happen," the cop was explaining. Jensen was relieved to have the local authorities instead of more Corps in his house, his eyes skipping to Joseph who was talking to the man's partner. "Just in this area alone. Folks are desperate." He gestured at the black and bloodied corpse on Jensen's carpet and Jensen shuddered. "You got anywhere else you can stay while we call in to get this cleaned up?"
"I'll probably head back into the office," Jensen said, knowing he had to return the pool car anyway and not wanting to make the trip during peak hour. He mostly got the subway into work because he hated the press of other cars, the total disregard everyone had because they couldn't exactly die in a car accident. It was best just after sunset when the streets were still mostly empty. "Probably should have stayed there."
"Uhuh," the cop agreed, writing in a notebook, already distracted. Jensen tossed a wave at Joseph and even though he watched him with narrowed eyes, he let Jensen go without incident.
000
Jensen didn't know whether it was the day's events or just everything getting to him, but he didn't see the car bearing down on him until the last moment, having drifted onto the wrong side of the road. Headlights swept over him and that was what truly startled him. Most drove without them, their vision made poorer by bright lights. Jensen wrenched the wheel sideways but it was too late. His car glanced off the other and sent him into a tree on the side of the road. He looked in his rear vision mirror and watched the other car bump off the road and come to a halt in a ditch. The wheels spun for a second, the driver obviously trying to pull back onto the road but they were bogged and couldn't move.
Jensen pushed his own door open. The damage to his car was minor and the least he could do was offer the other driver a lift back into the city considering there wouldn't be much in the way of passing traffic for another hour and most roadside assistance places wouldn't attend a call-out until at least two hours after sundown.
Jensen put a hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the headlights and that's what saved his life. The crossbow bolt intended for his heart went through his wrist instead of his chest and Jensen staggered backwards in surprise. "Wait, no!" he called out, putting his hands up in surrender, nearly catching the tip of the crossbow through his wrist in the eye.
A man was advancing on him, tall but all other features hidden because the light was behind him. Jensen was at a disadvantage but suddenly it all came together for him, the need for the headlights and the use of a crossbow telling him more than a good look at the guy could have. "I won't hurt you!" Jensen tried to assure.
The guy paused in his advance, the crossbow he held dipping briefly before coming back up. The sound of sirens in the distance though had him looking back at his stricken car. Jensen seized the only chance he knew he had, stepping forward himself. "I can get you out of here but you have to come with me now," he said. The guy, clearly torn, looked from Jensen back to his car and then to Jensen again. Jensen had no idea why he felt the need to help but right now, he knew he had to. "Please. There isn't much time."
The guy finally lowered the crossbow the whole way and gestured at the car behind him. The passenger and back doors opened and four other people emerged, moving quickly. They paused when they caught sight of Jensen but then scurried across to his car and in when he waved at them and then at the now visible pulsing lights of the approaching Corps van. Jensen watched them get in and hunker down, invisible to a casual observer before he took a breath and yanked the crossbow bolt out of his wrist, tossing it aside at the last moment as the Corps van pulled up.
Jensen was relieved to see it was a general patrol, a single driver stepping out. The officer waved at Jensen as he jogged up. "Are you alright sir?"
"Yeah, stupid really. I was changing a disc and wandered onto the wrong side of the road. I would have apologised to the other driver but he took off."
"Just the one other driver?" the officer asked, peering back at the car in the ditch.
"Pretty sure," Jensen said, nodding.
"Huh," the officer said, his attention back on Jensen. "You sure you're okay? We've had a report of humans moving through the area."
"Wow, really?" Jensen asked, making his eyes wide and hoping he sounded suitably shocked and intrigued.
"I'll have to call this in, stay with the other car. Are you okay to drive yourself?"
"Yeah, just a small ding," Jensen said with a wave at the pool car. "I was returning it to work anyway. Not mine."
"Lucky," the officer said with a grin and Jensen nodded, walking backwards. He got into the pool car and pulled out, carefully skirting around the Corps van and away, only looking at the occupants of his car when he was sure he was out of sight.
They had all been squashed awkwardly in the back seat but as Jensen drove, the guy he had first encountered maneuvered himself into the front seat, pointing the crossbow at Jensen again. Jensen glanced back and there was also two women, an older man and a small boy. Jensen risked a glance at the first guy and saw brown hair and narrowed eyes. "Drive another hour then pull over. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to relieve you of this car since you wrecked ours."
"That's okay, it's not mine," Jensen said for the second time that night and chuckled to himself. He glanced sideways again and then said, "What?" when he noticed that the guy's brow was furrowed.
"Are you okay?" the guy asked and when the guy's query took Jensen by surprise, the reason became clear all too quickly and it wasn't concern for his well being. "You ran us off the road and now you're drifting all over again."
"Just a little..." Jensen didn't want to say hungry with a car load of distrustful humans but when he brought a hand up and it wasn't so much trembling anymore as actually shaking the guy huffed a sigh.
"Sam, would you put a hand over Deacon's eyes?"
"Jared, no!" one of the women, Jensen could only assume was Sam, hissed at the now identified Jared.
"Sam, would you just please? We need him to drive at least out of the city limits and currently he's likely to kill us all instead."
Sam grumbled something unflattering but also tugged the small boy into her lap and dropped a hand over his face. The other woman also looked out the window and Jensen wanted to ask why but when Jared handed the crossbow back to the man and yanked a knife out from behind him, Jensen suddenly realised what he meant to do. "Hey, no!" Jensen barked as Jared raised his own hand up and sliced across the back of it, one quick, neat cut.
"I'm pretty sure you're running on empty at the moment and we need someone who can drive without headlights in the pitch black. They're a dead giveaway and I should have known it but we were later getting out of the city than I would have liked." Jared's hand bumped up under Jensen's nose and Jensen let out a curse and leaned away. When he'd been infected, most of the population had already been on rations. Jensen had never had blood straight from the source but he was pretty sure if he did he would have trouble being satisfied with anything less.
At least, that's what everyone said.
"My god, a squeamish vampire. Never would have thought I'd see that," Sam muttered from the back.
"Don't call me that," Jensen grated out.
"So what's the politically correct term then?" Jared asked, sounding bemused. "Solarly challenged? Morbidly extended?"
"Infected," Jensen growled and he could see out of the corner of his eye Jared blink at that. Jared reached across Jensen with his uncut hand and plucked Jensen's work ID that he'd slung around his neck before leaving home from off his chest. Jared held it closer to the dashboard lights and made a contemplative sound in the back of his throat. The ID jangled when Jared let it go and it thunked back against Jensen's chest.
"Here. Just a little should at least stop the worst of the tremors and help you concentrate," Jared said, proffering his hand again. Jensen still resisted for a moment but the salt-tang smell of the blood had entered his nose and he was starving. When Jared started to pull his hand away the second time, Jensen followed it, lips coming to rest on Jared's skin.
Jensen sucked just once and the explosion of flavor in his mouth was unlike anything he'd ever had before. He let go of the steering wheel with one hand so he could grasp Jared's wrist and press Jared's hand more firmly to his mouth. He was embarrassed when he realised he'd moaned but he couldn't help it, feeling Jared's gaze on him. He was able to pull a few more mouthfuls in before Jared started tugging his hand back, becoming more insistent when Jensen was reluctant to let go. Finally Jared reached over and pressed his fingers into Jensen's still-healing wound on his wrist and Jensen's hand opened automatically, releasing Jared.
"I think he's taken us far enough," the older man said and Jensen felt the tip of the loaded crossbow tap at his ear. He wanted to laugh because although Jared had known to aim for the chest, this man obviously didn't and a bolt to the head would only be a minor annoyance and not much of a threat.
"Yeah, you're probably right," Jared said but there was something hesitant in his voice. Jensen nodded and pulled the car over, putting a hand to the driver's side and pushing out. Jared climbed out of the passenger side, once again in possession of the crossbow which he held on Jensen as he rounded the front of the car. "You think you can make it back to the city alright?" he asked and Jensen was confused by the question.
"Do you care?" he asked, actually surprised that Jared didn't just put a bolt in his heart here and now and be done with it.
"You didn't have to help us back there but you did. Why?"
"Jared, c'mon," Sam called from inside the car.
Jared hesitated by the driver's side door but when it was clear he wasn't going to get an answer, he ducked inside, folding his long limbs gracefully, the crossbow the last thing inside. Jensen watched the car peel out and away, not able to tear his eyes off it until it was just a dim speck on the horizon.
"I don't know."
000
Jensen went back to work, solidly pressed through two days before he got a call that his place was clear and he could return. He was hesitant but Hodge insisted he get a break and practically marched him out of the place, in plenty of time to make the predawn train. When Jensen arrived home there wasn't a trace of his intruder and most of the damage done had been repaired, his smashed dining table removed. Joseph was also gone although Jensen was sure it wasn't the last he would see of him and his next visit might not be so friendly.
The term sympathiser still rang through his head and he thought about it now, what it meant. It was a word bandied about loosely, an insult to use when you really wanted to piss someone off. There were those who were infected that had trouble with their way of living, not able to marry the need for blood with their moral compass. The term kissing the sun had become common for those that felt the need to end their existence rather than face what they had to do to prolong it, because one of the surest ways to kill themselves was to watch a sunrise that one, final time.
Jensen had thought about it himself when he'd first...
Some that didn't seek a way out instead tried to change the system from within. There were those that had been found helping humans, harboring them. Some did it for selfish reasons, trading fresh blood for their help but quite a few did it because they couldn't let go of the last shreds of their humanity, trying to find a way to atone for what they'd become.
Jensen figured his work was atonement enough, or at least he used to. Finding a blood alternative would be the best way to stop the killing, maybe allowing humans and the infected to live side by side but Jensen started to doubt if that would be ever true if what he'd tasted that night were any indication.
Jensen couldn't imagine being able to manufacture... that.
000
There was someone in his house again, but this time Jensen knew who it was before even passing through the front door.
Jensen had gotten out of the habit of turning on lights in the house but he did so now for the benefit of his visitor, tracking the scent of him into the living room and finding Jared sitting on one of his leather chairs with the now familiar crossbow pointed towards the entryway. Jensen put his hands up, sketching a small wave with his right and Jared rolled his eyes and put the crossbow aside, but not out of reach completely, Jensen noted.
"Why are you smiling?" Jared asked and Jensen hadn't realised he was, lifting a hand to his mouth and touching fingertips to confirm that indeed his lips were curved upwards.
"Just surprised, I guess," Jensen said. "Which doesn't happen very often."
"You work for Synth Tech, the guys trying to produce the blood substitute right?"
"Trying and failing dismally," Jensen admitted and watched Jared's face fall a fraction before he folded his expression back to a neutral one.
"I guess that's not really going to help us anyway," Jared said, coming to his feet. In the light Jensen was able to finally make out features and one thing he noted was that Jared's skin was tanned, soft coloring on his face, neck and hands. The other startling thing was Jared's eyes, an odd mix of brown and green, shifting with the shadows. Jensen was so used to looking into eyes the exact same light gold as his own that seeing something different was truly fascinating. "We need help," Jared blurted while Jensen had been lost in studying him.
"Excuse me?" Jensen asked, seeing that Jared looked about as surprised as he was himself.
"Look, there's someone you have to meet. If I tell you where and when, will you come?"
"What's this all about?" Jensen asked and then narrowed his eyes, watching Jared abandon the cool act and fidget. "Why do you trust me?"
"You could have handed us over, been a good little citizen but you didn't," Jared said and then shrugged, letting out a small huff of laughter. "I guess I'm not surprised that often anymore either."
000
Jensen loathed day-driving, avoided it if he could but Jared had insisted.
Jensen supposed he could understand. If the person he was meeting was another human then an open field in the middle of the day was probably the safest bet. The Corps had measures for daylight travel and dispatch but they wouldn't be at full strength and humans would have the advantage.
Still, as Jensen bumped across the rutted patch of land with the large tree in the center he'd been guided to, he couldn't help the growing sense of unease.
He drove as close to the tree as he could get and then stopped the car, pushing the driver's side door open gingerly and stepping out into the shade. There were slivers of light here and there but not many and Jensen was careful to avoid the places the foliage above didn't quite meet. He rounded the base of the tree and came upon a man sitting with a rifle across his lap. The man was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt and he had a scruffy, unkempt look. He rose to his feet when Jensen approached and Jensen could see the man had burn scarring on one side of his neck and around his jaw-line, only mostly hidden by the stubble that darkened his chin and cheeks.
"Oh good, you are the Jensen Ackles I thought you were," the man said.
"Do I know you?" Jensen asked, because the man was familiar but Jensen couldn't see how. He hadn't encountered an honest to god human in a good long while.
"We've met before. My name's Jeff Morgan and I converted the pool cars for Synth Tech to day-drivers."
"You...?" Jensen blinked hard. "No... that's..."
"Impossible?" Morgan said with a gruff chuckle. He shrugged and spread his hands wide. "Believe me, I thought so to."
"But you're... " Jensen's mouth worked for a moment, trying to form the word right before he could spit it out properly. "Human."
"Now, yes."
"You were infected?"
Morgan gazed at Jensen levelly, head cocked sideways. "Jared told me you called it that. Interesting."
"What... what happened?"
"I want you to help us figure that out," Morgan said. "When Jared told me who his good Samaritan was I couldn't believe our luck. Someone who could possibly work out just what the fuck happened to me and who I'd actually met... prior."
"You want to reverse it?" Jensen asked slowly, not liking the idea at all but Morgan just laughed again.
"Hell no. I want you to figure out how to replicate it."
"That's - " Impossible Jensen was going to say but their attention was diverted by an approaching Corps van. It was coming up fast and Jensen cursed, feeling horribly exposed. He could possibly make it back to the car in time but it would be close and a Corps van would definitely be able to run down his little electric number.
"What the fuck?" Morgan yelled, face flushing with anger. "Jesus I knew I shouldn't have listened to Jared. Kid has a good heart but no common sense."
"Hey, no! I didn't turn you in. I must have been followed," Jensen said quickly.
"Yeah?" Morgan asked, raising an eyebrow. "Well, I guess it doesn't matter now. We're both in a world of hurt."
The van screeched to a halt, back-end fishtailing and kicking up dust. A single figure leaped from it kitted out in the Corps day-wear, helmet with black visor and full uniform. The figure advanced and Jensen was wondering what the chances were of fighting his way out when just being shoved outside the protection of the tree would be the end of him when the officer hit the shade and shoved his visor up. Jensen nearly collapsed with relief.
"Joseph! You scared the crap out of me," he barked but his relief was short-lived when he saw how stormy Joseph's expression was.
"Wow, I knew you were in some kind of shit but I never would have even imagined this much," Joseph snarled, throwing an arm in Morgan's direction. "Are you harboring humans? Smuggling them out of the city or something?"
"What? Joseph, no," Jensen said, putting his hands up to Joseph's shoulders but Joseph stepped away.
"I got here first because I didn't want you getting hurt but considering what this is, there's probably no way I can stop that," Joseph said and gestured behind himself. Jensen looked to where he was gesturing and could see dust plumes in the distance, more Corps vans.
"I'm sorry Joseph," Jensen said.
"It's a bit late to apologise for this," Joseph said with a scowl.
"No, I mean, I'm sorry Joseph," Jensen said and lunged forward, smacking Joseph's visor down, slamming it with the heel of his palm so it shattered and then shoving Joseph into the sunlight. Joseph cried out in surprise and then pain as he caught sunlight in the face. He went down hard, smashing his face into the dirt to try and protect it. Jensen didn't hesitate, merely grabbed Morgan by the collar of the shirt and propelled him towards his car. "Go!"
"Let me drive," Morgan said, reaching for the key fob Jensen had yanked from his pocket. When Jensen hesitated Morgan rolled his eyes. "If they reach us, Corps shoot windows out first, it's their standard procedure. All I'm going to get when the windshield is gone is a dose of vitamin D. How about you?"
000
"We need you to figure out what happened to me."
Jensen sat opposite Morgan, letting his mind switch to a purely scientific space. "How do we know you're actually human again?" Jensen asked the most obvious question.
"This," Morgan said, reaching out and snagging Jensen's hand and tapping it against his chest. The feeling of the heartbeat underneath wasn't a surprise, Jensen could hear it a mile away, but the gesture wasn't lost on him. He nodded for Morgan to continue.
"Scared the crap out of me actually," he said, releasing Jensen's hand and then shaking his head ruefully. "I didn't really remember what a heartbeat actually felt like. Silly thing was, I thought I was dying." Morgan looked steadily at Jensen. "Plus, I'm aging."
"It hasn't been that long though since this happened, right? Maybe a year? How would you know you were aging?"
"Jensen, I know. Tell me after staring at the same damn reflection for so long you wouldn't notice an extra line, another grey hair, something different?" Jensen opened his mouth but then closed it again. It was true what Morgan was saying, when your reflection was exactly the same day in and out, any difference no matter how minor would be startling and obvious. "Every little change is both terrifying and wonderful."
"Wonderful?" Jensen asked, curious.
"I don't know about you but the biggest fear in most people's lives before was that they were gonna end. That fear was a great motivator. We stopped fighting, we stopped creating, hell we stopped fucking."
"I don't know about that," Jensen started to protest but paused. When he'd first been infected he'd certainly over-indulged in everything. Most tested the boundaries of their immortality and found them practically limitless. Like the passage of days however, it all seemed to become unimportant. Jensen didn't remember the last time he'd been with anyone and didn't even remember the last time he'd been concerned about it.
"Apathy is the great destroyer. It kills passion just as surely as everything else. Do you recall the last time you felt that need, the last time you wanted."
Jensen's eyes skipped unwillingly across the space and came to rest on Jared, the long line of him bent over a high table that had maps spread across it. He was talking to a dark-haired woman and as Jensen watched, he flicked his hair out of his eyes and smiled, a small and genuine thing. Jensen had certainly recognised something within himself being drawn to Jared but he'd thought it was blood lust.
He had to admit to himself that it might have been the old-fashioned kind instead.
"Hell, I day-drove just to feel something again, to feel scared. I don't know if I was actually suicidal but I was certainly leaving it all to chance. I ended up getting more than I bargained for."
Morgan stood and stretched, his back popping. With the sound he grinned down at Jensen. "I used to find a long stretch of straight road, turn off the view port and auto-drive and just floor it. I got away with it for a while but eventually my luck ran out. I kept the hammer down too long and reached a river I didn't even know was there. I hit a tree stump just before the water and while the car stopped, I didn't.
"I went straight through the windshield and burned. The water saved me, put the fire out and was enough protection that I was able to reach the other side and a pipe that was jutting out over the water. I pulled myself inside and that's when I felt it and thought maybe I was going to kick off anyway."
Morgan paused for a moment, like he was measuring Jensen's reaction to his story. "That's when I felt my heart."
000
Jared approached him when Jensen had been set up in a makeshift lab with some samples of Morgan's blood.
"Listen," Jared said, tugging Jensen aside. "You still look... hungry." Jared already had the knife out again and he gestured with it. Jensen narrowed his eyes.
"Hey, why the compulsion to feed me? You're not an ex-blood doll or anything are you?" he asked. When the first infected showed up it was a novelty that some of the darker corners embraced and the giving of blood had been as addictive as the taking of it. Those humans addicted had been colloquially referred to as Blood dolls and Jared's urge to help had made Jensen suspicious of his motives.
Jared did the last thing Jensen was expecting. He threw his head back and laughed. When Jensen just looked at him in confusion, Jared sobered but there was still amusement in his eyes that Jensen didn't really understand until Jared explained. "Man, those kinds of things were long gone before I was even born."
Jensen looked at Jared, all of maybe twenty years old at Jensen's best guess. Jensen swallowed hard, wondering if it had really been that long. The infected kept a strict eye on the time, it was necessary for survival. The estimated times for sunrise and sunset were checked much like the weather had been, the most important bit of information you gleaned from the news vids.
The passage of days, months, years however...
Jensen wasn't even really sure what year it was, he hadn't seen a calendar in a long time. It was something you just didn't keep track of when your life wasn't slipping away like grains of sand through an hourglass.
When you were endless, that kind of thing could drive you mad.
Jensen himself had been infected well before rationing had started but long after humans were actually giving their blood freely. Jensen started his new life after the population balance had already been tipped in the unsustainable direction. He looked at Jared again with new eyes and not a little bit of wonder. Had it actually been so long that there were now living adults who didn't know what life had been like before, who hadn't existed in a world before the infection?
"Seriously," Jared said, tapping the knife against the skin of his hand, just above the still-healing cut that had been Jensen's last meal. "We need you firing on all cylinders."
Jensen should say no. Wait until he was actually hurting before he gave in again but Jared was so warm and vital and there, a blush tinging his cheeks and betraying his feigned nonchalance. Jensen remembered what Morgan had said.
When was the last time you actually wanted?
Jensen reached out, nudging the knife aside and circling Jared's wrist with his fingers. "If I... do it myself I don't leave..." he brought his other hand up and touched the cut on the back of Jared's hand. Jensen felt Jared's pulse pick up under his fingers and had to take a few controlled breathes before he drew Jared's wrist to himself. He let his eyes dart around the space just before he touched teeth to Jared's skin, almost feeling like it was far too intimate for anyone else to witness and smiling when he noted that they were truly alone.
The first taste was like a punch to the gut again and Jensen marvelled inwardly that it didn't seem to have lost any potency with repetition. Facinelli had often talked of a synthetic blood source being a hard sell to the older generation of infected and Jensen was starting to see why if this was what they had been used to. Nothing he came up with would be the same, of that Jensen was sure.
Jensen almost lost himself again but a tugging at the hair on his temple had him breaking away, passing his tongue over the break in Jared's skin to heal the wound before he did. Jared left his free hand tangled in Jensen's hair for just a moment after Jensen released him before stepping away. He was breathing hard and the slight tinge to his cheeks had become a ruddy patch of high color that also flushed his neck and the part of his collarbone Jensen could see.
"Well, back to work," Jared said, voice falsely cheerful.
Jensen nodded slowly and watched Jared retreat.
000
"Doesn't your back hurt?" Jared asked. He had a mug of something that he was holding with two hands and was rugged up. Jensen supposed it must be cold but feeling the elements was something he left behind with his mortality. Jensen didn't really miss all that much about being human that he could remember, but the first bite of a winter's day and the relief of curling up somewhere warm was definitely a lingering memory that he couldn't let go of. "You've been hunched like that for hours."
"One position is as much the same as another to me," Jensen said with a shrug. "This would be as comfortable as sprawling on a couch."
"Weird," Jared huffed and Jensen had to laugh at that.
"Did you... was there something you wanted?" Jensen asked as Jared continued to hover. The space Jensen had been occupying had cleared out, despite the number of people that were currently occupying the small country house and attached barn Jensen had been taken to. Jensen was in a cordoned off area out the back and he could see a number of cots set up in the main space but no people. He supposed he could understand, no deer would linger in a field when a wolf lurked nearby.
Jared was the only one, apart from Morgan, who didn't seem phased by his continued presence.
"Are you really going to be able to find out what happened to Jeff?" Jared asked, finally reducing the space between them by approaching.
Jensen leaned back on the chair he'd been perched on and nudged his notebooks and equipment aside. "Honestly? I don't think so."
Jared's face fell and he didn't try to hide it this time. Instead he moved closer, frowning. "Really? I mean, Jeff was sure-"
"We've been trying to come up with a scientific explanation for the... infection for years," Jensen explained. "Best we can come up with is that it's a virus with a non-segmented, negative stranded RNA genome." At Jared's bewildered look, Jensen shrugged and rose from his seat. "But trying to define it, I've really always thought it a pretty futile exercise." Jensen skirted Jared and paused at the pile of books that he'd been supplied with by Morgan and his people. There were mostly titles and authors he recognized, people who'd made it their life's work to try to explain away the majority of the race's current condition as something akin to evolution, a natural leap.
There was nothing natural about it, as far as Jensen was concerned.
"In every one of these books they try to find reasons why we stop aging, why we become stronger, why we're sensitive to sunlight. Mundane explanations for the extraordinary. According to this," Jensen said, holding up one of the books. "I'm faster than you because ninety percent of my muscles are the fast-twitch variety, as opposed to fifty percent. I'm stronger because my skeleton, ligaments and tendons all thicken because of the extra stress on them."
"That all sounds..." Jared made a circle with his hand, the meaning of which Jensen wasn't sure of.
"Convenient?" Jensen interrupted. "We combust in sunlight, Jared. Trying to just... explain that is ludicrous. This book," Jensen tossed aside the first book he was holding up in favour of a second one. "Says that this happens because we excrete a magnesium based substance like humans sweat."
"What are you saying?" Jared asked slowly.
"I'm saying that Morgan returned to a completely healthy state, recovering from an unknown virus because he was briefly on fire. I can't... I just can't find an explanation for that."
"You will though," Jared said quickly as he moved back into Jensen's space. He plucked the book from Jensen's hand and tossed it aside.
"I've tested burning infected blood under UV light. It remains infected," Jensen said as he shuffled away from Jared again. "I mean, maybe the only way to purify infected blood is inside the body but that would mean..." Jared watched him pace, looking worried. "Morgan said the moment the sun hit him he felt his heart beat again. A return of circulation and the immune system kicked back in."
"Jensen, what-?"
"I need to know if this was a fluke," Jensen said, tapping fingers on his chin.
"How are you going to do that?" Jared huffed but when Jensen just looked at him, Jared raised his hands. "Wait, no. No!"
"It's the only way," Jensen said, casting about the small space. He shoved boxes and papers aside until he finally moved out to the space with the cots and grabbed up a blanket. He turned to the door where a strip of sunlight edged the bottom. Jensen took a deep breath, threw the blanket over his head and just as he was about to barrel outside, Jared grabbed his elbow.
"Hang on!" Jared practically shouted. "You're a scientist for chrissakes. Think of a less lethal way to do this."
000
Jensen rapped on the side of the thirty-foot high steel wine tank. "It's air tight?"
"Yep, needs to be for the fermentation," Morgan said, looking between Jensen, Jared and back to the tank. The next property down had been a winery and when Jensen had explained what he'd needed, what he wanted to try, Morgan had remembered its presence. "There's an extraction fan that sucks the air out to stop it from oxidising."
"It might just work," Jensen said.
"For what exactly?" Morgan asked.
"An experiment."
000
"The sun's going to be down in thirty minutes. We need to do this now," Jensen said, opening the access hatch on the side of the tank. Jared touched his shoulder, not stopping him but not looking happy.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" he asked, handing Jensen the blanket he'd been going to use which was now soaked in water. Morgan was already at the top of the tank, ready to slam the oxygen purge valve on as soon as Jensen caught alight. The wet blanket would help but the removal of air was what was important to stop him burning once he started.
"Not at all," Jensen said, then grinned, touching fingers to Jared's chin. "But we'd better hurry, I'm sick of you making me hungry."
Jared chuckled and bumped his own hand against the side of Jensen's head. "This is a good look for you," he said, indicating Jensen's hair that was slicked down with a fire retardant gel. He stepped away, letting Jensen enter the tank. Jared hefted a mirror that would bounce sunlight from a hole they'd made in the roof in through the access hatch. His and Jensen's eyes locked for a moment before Jensen nodded.
"Do it."
000
Jensen burned three times, demanded after the first and second that they go again when his heart refused to start and his eyes remained gold. The third time, something kicked in his chest and he felt like he'd been punched, closing the blanket around himself and collapsing to the floor as he heard the whoosh of the fire being dragged up and out. He gasped as the pressure in his chest increased. He heard the access hatch opening, Jared having to slam it shut every time he hit Jensen with sunlight and then there was arms hauling him up and out.
Jensen gasped as he hit the floor outside, grabbing at the blanket as it was yanked away, thinking he would burn again. "It's okay, you're okay. Jesus!" he heard Jared try to reassure, his voice shaky. Jensen blinked open his eyes and Jared's worried face swam into focus. Jared's eyes widened as he looked down at Jensen. "Green," he blurted.
"What?" Jensen managed to get out through a throat that felt like it had been scraped raw.
"Your eyes," Jared said, now sounding full of wonder. "They're green."
000
Jensen stood in the driveway of the winery, arms out, palms facing the sky. The light from the day was dying but he could feel its warmth all the same, feel the cold creeping in, turning the skin on his arms to goose flesh. Jensen felt a hand grip one of his and looked sideways, smiled at Jared who was more beautiful in the sunlight than Jensen could have imagined. Jensen breathed deeply, filling his lungs with air that smelled of the cloying sweetness of dying grass and flowers. He grasped Jared's hand, bringing it up to his chest, against his heartbeat.
"When people were being turned, when whole families, friends, everyone was being turned, I said I would rather die than end up like that."
Jared turned to Jensen, tightening his fingers in Jensen's own. "What happened?"
"My kid brother was turned first and he came after me. Probably thought he was doing the right thing by me or he didn't want to let me go, I don't know. I was an easy target, I wouldn't fight him...not him."
"Do you regret doing this?" Jared asked, sounding hesitant. "You can't ever go back."
"I couldn't anyway," Jensen said, turning. With his and Jared's hands still linked, still pressed between their bodies his movement drew Jared closer. He smiled. "Plus, it's nice to be able to do this and know I won't hurt you," Jensen added, pressing forward and biting at Jared's lips until he opened under Jensen's insistent press. Jensen could feel Jared's grin against his mouth and it made him smile too.
"Definite benefit," Jared agreed.
000
Jensen ran his hand down Jared's flank and then back up again, coming to rest against his chest with the steady thrum of Jared's heartbeat under his fingers.
He was never going to get tired of that feeling.
"You do realize you're totally screwed, right?" Jared asked. They were curled together on one of the single cots, not enough room for one grown man let alone two but they were making it work. The other survivors had been giving the space a wide berth but for a completely different reason than because Jensen was a predator.
Jensen grinned to himself. "Yeah, but I was before anyway, probably from the moment I ran you off the road," Jensen agreed amiably. His grin dimmed however and he turned so he could see Jared's face, careful not to jostle Jared off the cot. "There's something I've got to do though and you're not going to like it."
"Your brother?" Jared asked, knowing exactly where Jensen's thought lay.
"He wouldn't leave me behind and now..." Jensen huffed a sigh. "I'm not sure what's going to happen but I can't -"
"Jensen, it's okay," Jared said, burying a small in Jensen's shoulder. "It's weird how you're the most human person I've met in a long time, you know, considering."
"You think we'll find a way to fix people?" Jared asked, tone turned serious.
"I really don't know," Jensen said. "Plus, there will be people who won't want to be fixed. We'll just have to play it by ear."
"Okay," Jared said. "I can do that."