[FIC] Gazes Into You - 6/27
Jul. 27th, 2015 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexisjane<<<<< Chapter Five / Masterpost
When Jensen showed up at the ICU the next day, a different nurse was on duty. As soon as he walked in, she smiled up at him. "You must be Mr Padalecki's cousin."
Jensen smiled, embarrassed at going along with the lie that Chris has started. But if it got him through the door, he wasn't going to start denying now. "What gave it away?"
The nurse blushed a little herself, when she said, "I think Karen's exact words were 'smoking hot, with green eyes to die for.'" Jensen took a step back and laughed. The nurse shrugged. "We don't get a lot of that around here, so..."
Jensen nervously rubbed his brow. It wasn't the first time someone had commented on the way he looked, but he had never really known how to respond when sinking to his knees wasn't the end game. "Well...okay then." He smiled sheepishly at her. "Is it okay if I sit with him for a bit?"
The nurse nodded apologetically and went to check on one of the patients. Jensen headed back to Jared's room, went in and closed the door behind him.
Jared looked exactly as Jensen had left him the previous day. Jensen was hit by a flurry of emotions, spearheaded by a crushing sense of guilt. Guilt at being there under false pretenses, guilt at the way he'd found his way there, but mostly guilt about lying in bed the previous night, one hand on his cock, fingers in his ass, his face buried in Jared's t-shirt, sweating and shaking and grunting out Jared's name as his orgasm exploded out of him.
Before, when Jared was a nameless picture on a screen, guilt was never an issue. It wasn't personal. Jensen was happy with what he had and Jared didn't really even enter into it. But now. Now it was all kinds of personal. Jared wasn't just a picture on a screen anymore.
He was real-live flesh that was warm to the touch. He was a reader. Couldn't, or at least didn't cook. He liked first-person shooters and Chinese food. He had things and furniture and a life. He smelt musky and sweet, and the thought of him, not just the idea of him, but actually Jared, himself, touching Jensen, breathing the same air as him, sharing the same bed; Jensen was afraid of what it was doing to him, and horrible guilty that he was doing it all while Jared was unconscious and helpless in a hospital bed.
Jensen pulled the plastic chair over from where it had been stowed in the corner and set it next to the bed. He reached down and gently took hold of Jared's wrist. "Hey," he said softly, "I told you I'd be back. I brought you..." Jensen lifted up the book, but then realized what a redundant gesture is was. He sighed. "Well, I brought you the book you were reading. I thought..."
Jensen sat down heavily and leaning his elbows on the bed, put his head in his hands. What was he thinking? What the hell was he even doing there? It made no sense. He should be going home, calling Brian, telling him he was feeling better and coming back to work, not sitting here pretending to nurse a man he was pretending to know. The whole thing was utterly fucked up.
He sat there, listening to the clunk-shush of the ventilator, the sound lulling him. As the swirl in his mind started to quiet, his eyes were drawn to where the paperback had fallen. Some of its pages had gotten bent up and Jensen unhooked them from where they had caught. He sat back in the chair and turned the book over in his hands. It was well used, probably from a secondhand store. There was a price scribbled on the flyleaf in pencil when he opened it, which was a fraction of the retail sticker on the back.
When he'd seen it on the nightstand, it had been open, face down, as if Jared had put it there before going to sleep. He had barely started. The paperback fell open easily to that page and Jensen read the last words that Jared had done. Then he thumbed back to the beginning, muttering, "I need to start at the beginning or it'll make no sense." He cleared his throat and sat upright, settling into the chair and flexed the book open. He sighed, smiling at his own stupidity and began. "Call me Ishmael."
When he woke up, Chris was smirking at him from the doorway. As he sat up, the book that had been lying on his chest, started to slip and he jolted awake far too fast in his scramble to get it. His neck screamed in protest.
Chris chuckled. "Thought I might find you here. You want me to see if they can rustle you up a bed?" Jensen wiped the drying drool from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and flipped him off. Chris tilted his head to the book in Jensen's lap. "What you reading?"
Jensen coughed and looked a little embarrassed. "Moby Dick." Chris raised his eyebrows, so Jensen said, "It's about..."
"Fuck you. I know what it's about. I went to college." Chris interrupted, face full of indignation.
Jensen huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, but you never read it, just watched the movie. I remember you telling me." Chris acquiesced and nodded. He was smiling but Jensen could see he had something on his mind. "So, do you have news?"
Chris nodded. "Let's not talk about it here." Jensen felt his mouth go dry, and hoped to God he'd covered his tracks at the apartment. He groaned at little at his stiff bones when he got up, and Chris laughed at him. "Come on old man, let's get some caffeine in you."
There was a coffee cart in the parking lot. Somehow being out in the sunlight, made Jensen feel less apprehensive. Maybe it was the knowledge that even now, Jensen could still outrun Chris, at least for a while. They settled on to a low wall with their paper cups. Chris reached under his shades to rub the bridge of his nose. "So, I swung by Jared's apartment this morning..." He paused as if waiting for Jensen to confess. Jensen just nodded and hmm'd, sipping at his shitty cappuccino, so Chris went on. "Had to get the Super to let me in. The place looks untouched, nothing alarming. I was all ready to call in CSU but then the Super told me something interesting..." He didn't look at Jensen, but Jensen could feel himself withering under Chris's scrutiny all the same. Here it comes. "Apparently, a friend of Jared's had come by and brought Jared's bike up from the street yesterday." Jensen closed his eyes and let his head fall back. "The Super's son saw him bringing it in." Jensen nodded. Chris took a sip of his drink and said, "So. I just thought I'd ask, purely hypothetically, of course, should I hold off on calling forensics or...?"
Jensen shook his head, "No. No, don't do that. I'm sure, hypothetically, that any friend would have wiped his prints down."
Chris shook his head. "Well, then the friend is a fucking idiot. Tampering with a crime scene! What if there was evidence there that he just wiped away! Jesus Jensen! You told me you didn't break in!"
Jensen span around, and keeping his voice low, growled out. "I didn't! I told you I didn't because...hypothetically...maybe when the friend tried the door the first time he went there, it was open."
Chris took off his glasses and stared at Jensen in surprise. "Open?"
Jensen shrugged. "Open. Everything exactly as it was, except for the keys that Jared had left on the kitchen counter. Whatever happened, Chris, it didn't happen at the apartment. He left it as if he only meant to be gone for a minute..."
"But then ended up being shoved off a bridge halfway to Nassau County." Chris shook his head. "This is fucked up, Jen." Jensen nodded wishing he had more to say. "Did you take anything?" Chris asked like it was an after thought and couldn't care less either way.
Jensen took a sip of coffee, holding the liquid in his mouth to try to stave off having to answer for as long as he could. Finally, he swallowed and sighed out, "Books. From the nightstand. Three books." He wasn't going to admit to taking the t-shirt, he could barely admit that to himself.
Chris nodded. "Well, if a piece of paper falls out of one of these books with a suspects name and motive written on it, you will let me know, right?"
Jensen nodded, feeling a strange mixture of relief and embarrassment. Mainly that Chris knew him so well as to ask if he’d taken anything. Chris went and threw his paper cup in the trash. He pulled on his waistband, straightening his pants when something occurred to Jensen. "Why did you tell the nurse I was Jared's cousin?"
Chris ran a hand through his hair and laughed. It wasn't a happy sound, more like resignation. "Moby Dick." Jensen looked confused. Chris sighed and smiled at him affectionately. "When something gets under your skin, you can't let it go. It's what made you a good cop, Jen. A pain-in-the-ass friend, but a damn good cop. This..." He gestured towards the building. "This is under your skin and I know damn well you're not going to let go until we find out what happened." He slapped Jensen on the shoulder. "I knew you'd be back. Plus, I figured that if someone really wanted to kill the kid, it might be safer to have someone around when they find out he's not dead."
Jensen nodded and looked up, squinting into the bright sunlight. "So you're using me as a human shield?"
Chris laughed. "If you like."
Jensen smiled but only slightly. "You know I can't be here all the time, Chris. It’s not like having a protection detail."
Chris nodded. "I know. But you're a good guy, Jen. Perverted, maybe but still...you care. It just makes me feel better knowing that you'll be around."
Jensen nodded and looked at his feet. It wasn't exactly a compliment but it was the truth and he'd take it. Chris looked like he was ready to leave and Jensen stood, planning to go back inside.
"Oh, I spoke to your new friend, by the way." Chris was smirking but Jensen wasn't sure what he was talking about. "The girl? From the bar? "
Jensen's brain finally caught up with him. "Adrienne! Yes, sorry. Did you tell her? That he's here?"
Chris shook his head. "I told her that we had located him and that it was up to him to get in touch." He paused, then asked, "What did you think of her?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. She just seemed...off." Jensen folded his arms and waited for Chris to go on. Chris shrugged. "I don't know, man. She just...What was she like when you spoke to her?"
Jensen smiled. "A hot mess. Hysterical, crying, the whole bit. What?" Jensen was shocked at the look at disbelief on Chris's face.
"Well, the woman I spoke to was stone cold. Business-like. May be nothing but she almost sounded..."
"Scared." Jensen kicked himself for not realizing earlier. He had been too caught up with finally having a voice to put to Jared's face to think about her reaction. If he hadn't had been so distracted maybe he would have realized that the concern in her voice wasn't just for Jared. She was afraid.
Chris nodded. "I'll ask around. Maybe speak to Organized Crime, see if the establishment is on their radar." He looked for a moment like he was about to say something else but then just smiled. He turned as if to walk away but added, as he left, "No more doing anything stupid, Jen."
Jensen huffed out an embarrassed laugh. "You're always the first to know when I do, Chris."
When he made it back up to the ward, the neurologist was standing at Jared's bedside, poker-faced, waving a pen light in Jared's eyes. When he saw Jensen, he smiled. "I think it's about time we woke Mr Padalecki up, don't you?"
Chapter Six
When Jensen showed up at the ICU the next day, a different nurse was on duty. As soon as he walked in, she smiled up at him. "You must be Mr Padalecki's cousin."
Jensen smiled, embarrassed at going along with the lie that Chris has started. But if it got him through the door, he wasn't going to start denying now. "What gave it away?"
The nurse blushed a little herself, when she said, "I think Karen's exact words were 'smoking hot, with green eyes to die for.'" Jensen took a step back and laughed. The nurse shrugged. "We don't get a lot of that around here, so..."
Jensen nervously rubbed his brow. It wasn't the first time someone had commented on the way he looked, but he had never really known how to respond when sinking to his knees wasn't the end game. "Well...okay then." He smiled sheepishly at her. "Is it okay if I sit with him for a bit?"
The nurse nodded apologetically and went to check on one of the patients. Jensen headed back to Jared's room, went in and closed the door behind him.
Jared looked exactly as Jensen had left him the previous day. Jensen was hit by a flurry of emotions, spearheaded by a crushing sense of guilt. Guilt at being there under false pretenses, guilt at the way he'd found his way there, but mostly guilt about lying in bed the previous night, one hand on his cock, fingers in his ass, his face buried in Jared's t-shirt, sweating and shaking and grunting out Jared's name as his orgasm exploded out of him.
Before, when Jared was a nameless picture on a screen, guilt was never an issue. It wasn't personal. Jensen was happy with what he had and Jared didn't really even enter into it. But now. Now it was all kinds of personal. Jared wasn't just a picture on a screen anymore.
He was real-live flesh that was warm to the touch. He was a reader. Couldn't, or at least didn't cook. He liked first-person shooters and Chinese food. He had things and furniture and a life. He smelt musky and sweet, and the thought of him, not just the idea of him, but actually Jared, himself, touching Jensen, breathing the same air as him, sharing the same bed; Jensen was afraid of what it was doing to him, and horrible guilty that he was doing it all while Jared was unconscious and helpless in a hospital bed.
Jensen pulled the plastic chair over from where it had been stowed in the corner and set it next to the bed. He reached down and gently took hold of Jared's wrist. "Hey," he said softly, "I told you I'd be back. I brought you..." Jensen lifted up the book, but then realized what a redundant gesture is was. He sighed. "Well, I brought you the book you were reading. I thought..."
Jensen sat down heavily and leaning his elbows on the bed, put his head in his hands. What was he thinking? What the hell was he even doing there? It made no sense. He should be going home, calling Brian, telling him he was feeling better and coming back to work, not sitting here pretending to nurse a man he was pretending to know. The whole thing was utterly fucked up.
He sat there, listening to the clunk-shush of the ventilator, the sound lulling him. As the swirl in his mind started to quiet, his eyes were drawn to where the paperback had fallen. Some of its pages had gotten bent up and Jensen unhooked them from where they had caught. He sat back in the chair and turned the book over in his hands. It was well used, probably from a secondhand store. There was a price scribbled on the flyleaf in pencil when he opened it, which was a fraction of the retail sticker on the back.
When he'd seen it on the nightstand, it had been open, face down, as if Jared had put it there before going to sleep. He had barely started. The paperback fell open easily to that page and Jensen read the last words that Jared had done. Then he thumbed back to the beginning, muttering, "I need to start at the beginning or it'll make no sense." He cleared his throat and sat upright, settling into the chair and flexed the book open. He sighed, smiling at his own stupidity and began. "Call me Ishmael."
When he woke up, Chris was smirking at him from the doorway. As he sat up, the book that had been lying on his chest, started to slip and he jolted awake far too fast in his scramble to get it. His neck screamed in protest.
Chris chuckled. "Thought I might find you here. You want me to see if they can rustle you up a bed?" Jensen wiped the drying drool from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, and flipped him off. Chris tilted his head to the book in Jensen's lap. "What you reading?"
Jensen coughed and looked a little embarrassed. "Moby Dick." Chris raised his eyebrows, so Jensen said, "It's about..."
"Fuck you. I know what it's about. I went to college." Chris interrupted, face full of indignation.
Jensen huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, but you never read it, just watched the movie. I remember you telling me." Chris acquiesced and nodded. He was smiling but Jensen could see he had something on his mind. "So, do you have news?"
Chris nodded. "Let's not talk about it here." Jensen felt his mouth go dry, and hoped to God he'd covered his tracks at the apartment. He groaned at little at his stiff bones when he got up, and Chris laughed at him. "Come on old man, let's get some caffeine in you."
There was a coffee cart in the parking lot. Somehow being out in the sunlight, made Jensen feel less apprehensive. Maybe it was the knowledge that even now, Jensen could still outrun Chris, at least for a while. They settled on to a low wall with their paper cups. Chris reached under his shades to rub the bridge of his nose. "So, I swung by Jared's apartment this morning..." He paused as if waiting for Jensen to confess. Jensen just nodded and hmm'd, sipping at his shitty cappuccino, so Chris went on. "Had to get the Super to let me in. The place looks untouched, nothing alarming. I was all ready to call in CSU but then the Super told me something interesting..." He didn't look at Jensen, but Jensen could feel himself withering under Chris's scrutiny all the same. Here it comes. "Apparently, a friend of Jared's had come by and brought Jared's bike up from the street yesterday." Jensen closed his eyes and let his head fall back. "The Super's son saw him bringing it in." Jensen nodded. Chris took a sip of his drink and said, "So. I just thought I'd ask, purely hypothetically, of course, should I hold off on calling forensics or...?"
Jensen shook his head, "No. No, don't do that. I'm sure, hypothetically, that any friend would have wiped his prints down."
Chris shook his head. "Well, then the friend is a fucking idiot. Tampering with a crime scene! What if there was evidence there that he just wiped away! Jesus Jensen! You told me you didn't break in!"
Jensen span around, and keeping his voice low, growled out. "I didn't! I told you I didn't because...hypothetically...maybe when the friend tried the door the first time he went there, it was open."
Chris took off his glasses and stared at Jensen in surprise. "Open?"
Jensen shrugged. "Open. Everything exactly as it was, except for the keys that Jared had left on the kitchen counter. Whatever happened, Chris, it didn't happen at the apartment. He left it as if he only meant to be gone for a minute..."
"But then ended up being shoved off a bridge halfway to Nassau County." Chris shook his head. "This is fucked up, Jen." Jensen nodded wishing he had more to say. "Did you take anything?" Chris asked like it was an after thought and couldn't care less either way.
Jensen took a sip of coffee, holding the liquid in his mouth to try to stave off having to answer for as long as he could. Finally, he swallowed and sighed out, "Books. From the nightstand. Three books." He wasn't going to admit to taking the t-shirt, he could barely admit that to himself.
Chris nodded. "Well, if a piece of paper falls out of one of these books with a suspects name and motive written on it, you will let me know, right?"
Jensen nodded, feeling a strange mixture of relief and embarrassment. Mainly that Chris knew him so well as to ask if he’d taken anything. Chris went and threw his paper cup in the trash. He pulled on his waistband, straightening his pants when something occurred to Jensen. "Why did you tell the nurse I was Jared's cousin?"
Chris ran a hand through his hair and laughed. It wasn't a happy sound, more like resignation. "Moby Dick." Jensen looked confused. Chris sighed and smiled at him affectionately. "When something gets under your skin, you can't let it go. It's what made you a good cop, Jen. A pain-in-the-ass friend, but a damn good cop. This..." He gestured towards the building. "This is under your skin and I know damn well you're not going to let go until we find out what happened." He slapped Jensen on the shoulder. "I knew you'd be back. Plus, I figured that if someone really wanted to kill the kid, it might be safer to have someone around when they find out he's not dead."
Jensen nodded and looked up, squinting into the bright sunlight. "So you're using me as a human shield?"
Chris laughed. "If you like."
Jensen smiled but only slightly. "You know I can't be here all the time, Chris. It’s not like having a protection detail."
Chris nodded. "I know. But you're a good guy, Jen. Perverted, maybe but still...you care. It just makes me feel better knowing that you'll be around."
Jensen nodded and looked at his feet. It wasn't exactly a compliment but it was the truth and he'd take it. Chris looked like he was ready to leave and Jensen stood, planning to go back inside.
"Oh, I spoke to your new friend, by the way." Chris was smirking but Jensen wasn't sure what he was talking about. "The girl? From the bar? "
Jensen's brain finally caught up with him. "Adrienne! Yes, sorry. Did you tell her? That he's here?"
Chris shook his head. "I told her that we had located him and that it was up to him to get in touch." He paused, then asked, "What did you think of her?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. She just seemed...off." Jensen folded his arms and waited for Chris to go on. Chris shrugged. "I don't know, man. She just...What was she like when you spoke to her?"
Jensen smiled. "A hot mess. Hysterical, crying, the whole bit. What?" Jensen was shocked at the look at disbelief on Chris's face.
"Well, the woman I spoke to was stone cold. Business-like. May be nothing but she almost sounded..."
"Scared." Jensen kicked himself for not realizing earlier. He had been too caught up with finally having a voice to put to Jared's face to think about her reaction. If he hadn't had been so distracted maybe he would have realized that the concern in her voice wasn't just for Jared. She was afraid.
Chris nodded. "I'll ask around. Maybe speak to Organized Crime, see if the establishment is on their radar." He looked for a moment like he was about to say something else but then just smiled. He turned as if to walk away but added, as he left, "No more doing anything stupid, Jen."
Jensen huffed out an embarrassed laugh. "You're always the first to know when I do, Chris."
When he made it back up to the ward, the neurologist was standing at Jared's bedside, poker-faced, waving a pen light in Jared's eyes. When he saw Jensen, he smiled. "I think it's about time we woke Mr Padalecki up, don't you?"
