Let your mind go, let yourself be free (pt1)
It’s a cold day when they let him go.
Cold and a little windy, but it doesn’t matter - Jensen’s too glad to be out of that confining, too stuffy place with its gray walls and blue, blue, light blue and some blue in the corner.
He hates blue.
When he steps out, Jay’s there. Of course he is, Jensen never doubted that. The sun rises, the night is darker than the day, and Jared will be there.
What does make him falter a little is that while Jay is there, not so much is the Chevy.
“What kind of shit is this?” he asks when he climbs into the monstrosity that was clearly a police-cruiser from the Highway Police once upon its better days. Hell, it still has the paint-job!
“It’s from an auction! Super-bargain” Jared beams and Jensen has to suppress a smile. He’s supposed to be pissed here, not been sugar-talked into smiling. It’s just so damn hard to be mad at Jared. Always was, which is good, if Jensen was honest. His sad face and huge eyes always made the nuns reconsider the punishment and they scooted by far more often than not. It’s a shame he never mastered it for himself, or Jensen might not have gone to jail in the first place.
“Yeah, I really believe that it’s a bargain.” he growls instead when the car misfires and wobbles a little. “You didn’t think it inappropriate to come get me in a police-car?”
“Oh…” Jared falters and shrugs. “…didn’t think of it. It’s a great ride, has real power under the hood and got a big-ass trunk.” Of course Jay didn’t think of it. And if he’s honest, it doesn’t bother Jensen. What does bother him, though, is the missing Chevy.
“So, what happened to the Chevy?”
Now Jared grits his teeth and frowns, pretends to concentrate on the road. Which is ridiculous, there is nothing out here but some grass. Jensen lets him pretend, though. He’s tired and he knows him. He’ll tell him sooner or later.
“Had to sell it.” Sooner it is.
“Really? Why’d you do that?” Jensen sounds more pissed than he really is. He liked that car, but he’s pretty sure Jared had reasons. And it was his as much as Jensen’s.
“Because, asshole, somehow I had to pay for the fucking asshole-lawyer to get you out! You’d be still in there if I didn’t, so don’t fucking be mad at me for selling that piece of shit!”
Jensen looks over, tries to judge Jared through the sunglasses he’s wearing. His jaw is like a steel-trap, so ‘mad as hell’ is a good guess.
He sighs, leans back. Man, he missed his brother but he could really do without the drama. As if the kid doesn’t know him at all, after all those years…
“Sorry.” he mumbles before he drifts off to sleep. It’s a good bargain, after all. Who needs a Chevy in prison.
~*~*~*~
“Hey Bruce.” Jared beams, the pissy mood he was in already forgotten. Jensen knew it would be like this - the kid couldn’t hold a grudge against Lincoln’s murderer if he tried. “This here’s my brother. He’ll be living with me for a while. Just so you know.”
Bruce - a grumpy, ugly man who looks like he eats kitten for breakfast - and probably does - nods and scratches his crotch. His voice is phlegmy from smoke and something disgusting and he tells Jay something about a guy who … something. Jensen’s too tired to pay attention. Instead, he takes a look around at what Jared calls ‘home’.
‘Sad’ doesn’t even cover it. A group of junkies sit in a corner, playing a game of poker with a stack of joints, all twitchy and flinching every two minutes. Two … well, let’s call them ‘women’, though Jensen will use the term loosely, stand against a wall, one of the counting bills while the other looks over at him and squints her eye. Or maybe it’s a wink, but even though Jensen had no company except his right hand for quite a while, he wouldn’t touch her - or the other one - with a full body-suit. They both seem empty-eyed and broken, like this city chewed them up and spit them out in a wet, soggy glob. For a second, he thinks about Miriam, and that she’d probably look like that if she’d survived her pimp. She didn’t, so he doesn’t bother to remember more than her sad eyes, and no longer than for a split-second.
“Yeah, I’ll give him a call. Or Jensen will.” Jared says and Jensen just nods. Whatever they were talking about, he just wants a bed right now and nothing else. Certainly no phone-call.
They trudge up the rattling stairs with dust in the corners and so much sand and grit on the steps that it sounds like they’re at the beach. In front of a shabby-looking, flimsy door, Jared stops and wriggles his keys and the whole lock, it seems and they step in.
Or well… stand in. There is no fucking space to step. Jared grins, wide and pleased and proud, and dammit, Jensen’s now certain that there was some lasting damage when the kid fell from the tree. Fuck… the room is smaller than his prison-cell! At least there, he’d had one bunk for himself and actual room to take some steps.
But Jay is smiling and so happy that he can’t make himself mock it. “What’cha doin’?” he asks, though, when Jared turns on the camping-stove. He’s a bit afraid that Jared will burn down the small room, there’s certainly enough stuff closer to the flame than Jensen’s comfortable with.
“I’m starving. Toast - you want some?”
He can just about shake his head before the world crumbles, Armageddon strikes and a volcano blows up in the city. Or maybe it was the train that passed right in front of Jared’s window…
“Holy shit, Jay! How can you stand that?” Jensen growls once they put the things that were shaken around back to their original places. It’s suddenly quite clear why Jared has so much stuff glued to the walls or hanging from the ceiling.
“Huh? Oh, after a while you get used to it.” And isn’t that a scary thought? “It’s a little like a lullaby nowadays.”
“Yeah, from Godzilla. Man…” he wants to say how comes Jared is living here, in this shithole with the junkies and the whores, but after the last time he complained about the choices his friend made, he’s sure that something like ‘how else can you pay a lawyer’ will be the answer. And he really doesn’t want more guilt on his shoulders. So he stalls and diverts “…I’m beat!”
It’s not even a lie. Nights inside hadn’t been really relaxing, not after they put him in a cell with Scruffy-the-Monkey. Scruffy was nice enough, but he mumbled all night and had nightmares that were scary to witness. He also wet his bed, most nights, which added a really unpleasant odor in their accommodation, a mix between urine and bleach and soap.
With a heavy sigh, he falls back on the bed, which is big enough for two. It’s such a luxury that he can spread his limps for once that he doesn’t give a damn about Jay finding his space next to him. He’d just have to move him around.
With the next train wrecking the foundations of the ugly high-rise this… closet is in, he falls asleep, the tingle of burnt toast in his nose a welcome difference from Monkey-piss.
~*~*~*~
When he wakes, Jared isn’t in bed with him. Instead, the long-limbed wookie is curled in the only chair that the room provides, head hung uncomfortably backwards so it’s resting against a shelf. He’s snoring a little, but the traffic outside drowns it out.
Jensen takes the time to observe him.
Jared’s wearing - like he’s done yesterday when he picked him up and like he’s done nearly their whole lives together - loose black pants that fit comfortably and leave room to move, bend and stretch. On his feet are white running-shoes that look worn out and are yet, Jensen knows, the most expensive thing in his possession.
He knows because he’s wearing a slightly smaller pair of that himself. Less worn, too, since he hasn’t been able to wear them in prison.
Over the back of the chair hangs Jay’s suit-jacket, a different material than his pants, chosen for the color and not for design. Black, of course. He’s wearing a white, loose, cotton-shirt, perfect for every weather and not as expensive as this outdoor-functional-shit they’ve invented recently and put into every piece of fabric that wasn’t able to run away.
It’s such a familiar sight. They both have looked the same since … well, since forever, really. Maybe a shrink would frown and think it too co-dependent, the two of them dressing the same, behaving the same and doing the same all through their childhood and beyond. And maybe he’d be right with that, maybe it is unhealthy but it’s the way they are, the way they live and nobody will dictate that, not where it counts.
When he moves, the bed-springs creak and Jared shoots up, startled. Or well, he falls on his ass in between the door and the chair and has to unscramble his limbs as carefully as he can. Jensen would help him, but he can’t move.
He’s laughing too hard.
After Jared managed to sort himself out and reach upright-status, his hair is disheveled and his sunglasses are sitting crookedly on his nose. He pushes them up on his head and grins. “Yeah, laugh all you want. You’ll be the one to live with me moaning about my back all through the day. Did you sleep ok?”
“Yeah, like a baby,” Jensen chuckles in response “your snores are better than whale-songs for falling asleep.”
“I don’t snore!” Jared protests but his smile is belying his outraged tone. “Hungry? Let’s go get something to eat. Oh, and you have to talk to your parole-officer. Whickert or something.”
“Ugh. I hate those fuckers. And that name isn’t ominous at all. Coffee first, though.” he smacks his lips and frowns “You got a toothbrush? It feels like I ate a cat last night.”
“You smell like it, too. So better get a shower while you’re brushing your teeth. It’s the luxury-variety.” he smirks sardonically and wriggles his eyebrows “It has a lock.”
Jensen is laughing all the way across the dirty hallway to the bathroom, still snickering when he shoves the pimply kid out of the way when he reaches it and still snorting while he hears the kid moan about him being an ass and that he needs to pee so badly.
The shower is hot, dribble-y, there’s mold in the edges and it smells stale and like old men. Jensen is all on his own, locked in. It’s heaven.
~*~*~*~
“I’m hungry,” he proclaims the second he opens the door to Jared’s closet-room. He’s decided to skip the call to that whicker-man and get something to bite first. He’s not sure what they can get, though. Judging from Jay’s accommodation, the money is a bit tight. His own wealth is limited to the sixty cent he had with him when they booked him and the cigarettes he managed to scrounge and cheat and win from the other inmates have been left with someone who needed them more. It’s not like they were worth something outside. Neither he nor Jay smoke.
Jared’s happy to oblige. He’s the one who needs food more than Jensen anyway. He’s way too skinny and unlike him, he’s not been fed three times a day by the state these last two years.
They have to remedy that.
~*~*~*~
“So, what’cha got planned now?” Jared asks while chewing on the surprisingly good bagel that they bought at the “Yesterday”-bakery. The goods are only slightly stale and the salami and cheese and tomatoes that were over the expiration-date are still perfectly fine. Only the lettuce looks a bit sad, but compared to the sloppy food from prison, it’s nearly a feast. Jensen’s tired of not being allowed to chew his meals.
“Nothing, why?” He really doesn’t like the gleam in Jay’s eyes.
“Oh, well… I thought we go check on the Sisters? They said they wanted to see you when you got out - they really did all they could to help you.”
Yeah, Jensen really doubts that. Everyone kept saying he was the bad influence that turned poor, innocent Jared crooked. As if! The kid was a master-deceiver way before Jensen turned up in his life, only difference was that nobody believed in his own puppy-eyes like they did in Jay’s.
“Oh man…”
“Please?” Oh no. No no no no no! He won’t fall for those big, innocent manga-eyes. He won’t! “Puleeease, Jens…”
Fuck.
~*~*~*~
The Sisters of Her Devine Mercy opened the orphanage shortly after establishing their order. As the story goes, two infants had been thrown over the high fence one night and luckily landed on the compost-heap and therefore weren’t injured. The legend, of course, goes that the Holy Mother had caught the little ones and placed them safely on the ground.
Whichever is true, fact is that the orphanage is one of the oldest in the city. Same as the sisters, Jensen always thought.
Even though he didn’t care for their strict and straightforward upbringing, he can’t help the feeling of ‘home’ spreading in his guts when Jay steers the clunky old car into the neighborhood.
It’s set right on the outskirts of the city, once a proud, lonely building but now one of many in an area that’s being ‘developed’ more and more, destroying the open fields and turning them into huge-ass parking lots and high-rises for lawyers, bankers and other boring people. Most that have lived here in the time Jensen and Jay were kids have moved away a long time ago, only leaving the ones that are stubborn and old and that don’t have any use for the money they’d be paid if they left.
Much has changed since they have- since Jensen has - been here last, but there are some things he recognizes with fondness.
There, right over the fence, is the garden of Mrs. Petterson. She made the best apple-pie in the whole world, and usually left them to cool on the windowsill. Jay and he had stolen a fair share of them over the years and ever since he was told, it has rankled Jensen a little that their success was not, in fact, due to their stunning smartness and cunning plans, but because she liked them and left the pies outside as a gift.
Jay didn’t mind, though, and laughed about that smart old lady, who’d known that they wouldn’t take it if she’d just given them away. Corrections: Jensen wouldn’t have taken it and Jay would have gone along, out of friendship and whatever it was that made the two of them thick as thieves the moment they met.
And there is the orphanage itself. Big, sturdy, yellow bricks form the base of the iron-fence and make the building look like a set from a horror-flick. The Gothic gargoyles on the roof only amplify that appearance. Two large beeches outside darken the entrance and leave the front-lawn in a state that consists mainly of moss and some die-hard grasses, their shady canopy darkening the ground so much that nothing else can grow there. Hard to believe that this is a place where children play.
If you look closer, though, you see evidence of it. The windows are large and spacious in the main-house and if you know where to focus, you realize they’ve been placed there later than the original windows - the bricks show signs of having been taken out and replaced, so bigger frames would fit. There are old but still working toys at the side of the house and close to the chapel, and an old swing decorates one of the beeches.
The other one’s bark is scrubbed smooth all over the trunk and the lower branches, where generations of parent-less kids have climbed it. Even though Jay and he were hardly the only ones, or the first, to hide in the big tree, Jensen sees with pride that nobody has yet removed the toy-car they’ve hung in the branches up high. It might be wishful thinking but he’ll take it as evidence that nobody else ever climbed that far up.
Scoffing in amusement over his fond memories of their life-threatening tomfoolery, Jensen slows his walk. Man, it’s a wonder they are still breathing and have all limbs attached.
“Come on, man. Don’t dawdle!” Jay interrupts his thoughts. He’s already at the front steps and Jensen hurries to reach him. Long since first coming to this place, Jay has replaced the feeling of dread and loneliness that has made Jensen shiver when he first caught sight of the huge oak-doors with the scary Jesus carved into it. Still, he remembers standing at the bottom of the huge steps, eight years and all alone.
Now as then, Jay’s standing on top of the stairs, grinning down at him, and there’s nothing on or in this building that says ‘home’ like that smile does.
He grins back and takes two steps at a time, sticks his tongue out to Jesus and follows Jay inside into the gloomy hallway.
~*~
Next
Masterpost
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