Roll the Dice - Chapter 5 (6/9)

[mangacat201]

Chapter Four

Jared.

Jensen walked down the corridor in a haze. He’d set his patient up with a drip with fluid and a light sedative and made sure that the tac team was ushered outside and would remain that way until further notice. After that, he brushed off everyone, even Chris, telling them absent-mindedly that he was fine, he just needed some space, now, before he had all but fled the scene.

Jared.

However, he hadn’t counted on Traci waiting for him in his rooms, medi-bag and a perpetual scowl on her face that told him exactly what she thought of his behaviour towards his own health. He was in half a mind to comment that such a sour expression would accelerate the development of wrinkles, but he couldn’t find it in him to get the words out, hoping that if he submitted to her treatment silently, she would pay him the same courtesy. Jensen shrugged out of his coat, absently noting the little flecks of dried blood on the front. Then he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt although his arms heavily protested the movement. The adrenaline was finally draining out of his system completely, leaving him dizzy and shaking. It was only seconds before Traci batted his hands away and made quick work of his shirt, her movements brisk and efficient.

Jared.

She looked up at him with barely veiled disapproval, but her eyes widened and slid from anger to concern in a heartbeat when she saw the bruises forming on his throat and layering his chest. He knew well enough that a couple of those ribs were no longer bruised, but cracked, and as much as he needed to be back in the game asap, he knew that this would definitely slow him down for a few days.

After she was done, Traci put a bottle of pills on his nightstand and ordered “Take them” before she packed up her things and left the room. Jensen sat down on the bed gingerly, his legs suddenly feeling like jelly, and stared at the door while the seconds ticked away, one by one.

Jared.

He cradled his face in his hands, only then noticing the wetness on his cheeks and buried his fingers in his hair.

“What have I done? What have I done. What the flying fuck have I done.”

Jared woke to a slow and steady beep and dimmed fluorescent lights shining down from a concrete ceiling. He stared straight up, letting event of the past minutes – wait, hours… days? – float back into his mind, waiting for his heart to speed up. The rhythm of the sound around him didn’t change. He could feel eyes on him, knew there was another person in the room, and their exact location, because even though they didn’t speak, they were certainly not silent. He debated with himself whether to face the doctor or outwait him, until he decided to break the silence. It would be one of the few things Jared felt like he could still control, unlike his body, a conscious decision to make this as hard as he possibly could. But the longer he listened, the clearer became the sounds that made up the human body, even though most people never bothered to actually hear them. The continuous thuds of a beating heart, pushing blood through veins and sucking it back in, muscle working, fluttering faster on every second or third beat, anticipatory. Fingers twitching, tapping an arbitrary rhythm against a flat surface, a hungry gurgle, the soft swoosh of breath. In and out, air filling lungs and leaving it, used and diminished, but there was something off, something wrong, something…

Jared turned his head to take in the sight of the doctor, reclining silently in a chair next to his bed. He also noted the due distance, and the fact that the calm and collected – cold – demeanour of the man would never betray to the outside that he was inconvenienced, much less hurt. Jared let his eyes travel upward slowly, still daring the doctor to initiate the conversation that he was clearly burning to have. He flicked over the bruises barely concealed under the black turtleneck and up to his face, over those lips chapped, but soft and pliant - not going there! - to the taped cut at his eyebrow, raised flesh knitted together by dry scabs, and finally settled on those eyes. They had been very expressive when they’d last met, now they were empty, closed off.

Then Jared went back for a second and re-examined his thoughts.

“Jeez, what kinda shit have you got me on?”

Jensen felt the beginnings of a smile tug at his mouth, but he tamped it down with an effort before answering:

“Only a light sedative, more for the benefit of my team than me to be honest. As you might imagine, they were kind of concerned about our last encounter and insisted, so that you ‘would quit using you as his personal punching bag, Doctor Ackles,’ if you allow me to quote our resident physician.”

He watched the same whisper of a smile tug at the edge of Jared’s mouth, even though it vanished just as fast, leaving him with a gaze as cold and hard as flint.

“There is also the matter of explaining to you the current state of affairs in a more in depth manner for which your remaining calm and letting me finish for once will be beneficial.”

“So you want to go into detail with me about what kind of fucked up freak you made me? That’s terribly self-absorbed, don’t you think?”

At that moment, Jared saw the first glimmer of real emotion spark in the doctor’s posture, an impotent rage that flooded his body with tension. Jared suddenly found a depraved kind of pleasure in riling the man up.

“We do not make freaks here. We help people who are beyond saving by ordinary medical means, with a very complicated and advanced technology, to get their control back over life and limb.”

“Oh, but it was different for me, wasn’t it? They were ordered to have me terminated, because I was out of control. Then why wouldn’t you let me die?”

That made the good doctor actually surge forward and get into his face.

“Because I have to accept too many of my patients are going to die anyway, and you didn’t, why can… why can’t you just…”

“What? Why can’t I what? Be grateful for your inhuman efforts to feed that little god complex you got going there?”

He followed the doctor’s sudden movements warily when the man got up and started to pace, physical pain and mental exhaustion still evident in his face.

“No, damnit, that’s not what I… you’re… what you did… look, all the systems that we successfully integrated in your body are self-sufficient in the way that they repair and regenerate like real organs would, but they still need to be controlled by a central operating system. Now, for most, it just takes an adjustment period with fine-tuning recalibration during rehab to work their systems flawlessly in tune with their bodies, so that they can rely on those body parts just as confidently as on the rest. But you… I mean, we obviously hoped that something like that might possible in the future, which is why the central systems are designed to such a capacity…” The doctor stopped his pacing to look at Jared with the feverish enthusiasm of an explorer. “… but you, it’s like your brain just plugged in and wired the control unit right into the rest of your nervous system, tapping into all the information that’s being processed, not only the amount of data one would need for a normal sensory and motor functionality. We’ve never seen anything like it, which is why we certainly weren’t prepared for the state you woke up in, but we will be from now on.”

Jared waited for a couple of beats and let the doctor hang on with his hopeful and certainly dramatic sales pitch. But he wasn’t fooled.

“So let me get this straight. Basically you found out that I am a really special kind of super freak, and, on top of that, you have no idea what makes me tick?”

It was almost comical to watch the doctor’s face scrunch up to a not so beautiful grimace, while he looked like he was seconds away from stamping his foot like a five-year-old in a tantrum.

“No, that’s entirely not what I…”

“So, let’s say, if I were to cooperate, jump through your hoops, be a good boy and give you your top secret Nobel prize material or whatever, would that get me out of here?”

That made the good doctor stop dead in his tracks with a hint of uncertainty coloring his features as he stepped closer to the bed again.

“I… I suppose so, if we’ve gathered sufficient data and concluded our research, I don’t see why you shouldn’t return to being a valuable asset to the armed forces once more. I… have no reason to believe that you wouldn’t be able leave this facility like all my other patients before you, to be reassigned wherever they see fit to send you. Or leave once you’ve served your time, should that be what you want.”

Jared almost wanted to laugh at how naïve this doctor seemed to be in some matters, despite being clearly the most intelligent person in the whole bunker. But he would take what he could get and cut his losses as soon as he saw a chance.

“Then that’s the deal. I’ll put up with your poking and prodding – within reason – and refrain from making… a spectacle out of ourselves like the other day, and you will get me out of here as soon as you have some bullshit to feed your superiors.”

The doctor gaped at him for a few seconds, but he obviously had at least a bit of sense in him, because he shut his mouth and nodded in agreement. Jared couldn’t stop himself from grabbing the man’s wrist in a brusque move, purposefully keeping the grip light, because he suspected that he could grind those delicate bones under his fingers to powder.

“But if you overstep your boundaries like that one more time,” he let his eyes purposefully glide over those lips once more. “I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

Jared wasn’t quite sure what kind of action was attached to the business end of this threat, but from the wide and terrified look he got in return, he would not be tempted to find out anytime soon.

Chris found Jensen in Research and Development, standing in front of the five foot, silicate plasma screens that could show you anything about the research conducted in this facility, but he was not at all surprised that Jensen faced a multi-dimensional schematic of a brain in the midst of a flurry of activity. Jensen always went into the miniscule details when he needed to calm down. He was staring intently at the scans they’d made while their patient was out for the count, and he was recuperating while Chris had handled the fall-out over the Amber alert report. Which is why he felt entitled to rip Jensen from his thoughtful moment.

“I see you have no new bruises or broken bones, I count that as a win.”

Jensen tried to ignore him by frowning even more intently at the images, while tension radiated from his shoulders and crossed arms. But he had tried that before, and Chris knew exactly how much longer he needed to hold on to outwait him.

“I explained his situation, and we came to an understanding. His behaviour is not going to be a problem from now on.”

“And yet you look positively unhappy about what might prove to be the scientific breakthrough of the century.”

Jensen actually scowled, which took Chris aback. Of all the storms they’d had to weather, doubt in the progressive necessity of his work had never once been on the table.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for; this is what the design was supposed to achieve, accidentally or not. So what is it, that’s got your… oh… not really, this can’t seriously be about your crush, can it?”

His only answer was a huff, and Jensen hunching over his tablet to type in some recalculations that arranged into a different perspective on the screen. 

“No, it’s not.”

“You don’t sound so sure about that.”

Finally Jensen rounded on him, eyes blazing with barely contained fury that mingled a hint of fear.

“No, it’s not, damn it! It was unprofessional and stupid, and a product of being cooped up here for so long with nothing but sand and rocks, and more fucking sand all around, and fifty miles until you reach the fence, only to hit more fucking New Mexican desert. It’s done, all right?”

The outburst caught Chris half by surprise, but before he could throw up his hands and back off, Jensen turned to the screen and pointed at a certain area of the image.

“This is what’s bothering me. Do you see that?”

Jensen watched intently as Chris studied the screen, and he was thoroughly satisfied when he saw the penny drop.

“That… that activity level is way too low, even for a sedated state. And that’s definitely scar tissue, but that shouldn’t be…”

“You’re right, there shouldn’t be, but there definitely is. I guess there was some damage from the initial blast trauma, and the in-transport complications can’t have helped in that regard.”

“So what do you think happened?”

“My best guess? When his brain went online again, it circumvented the damaged
hard-drive and went for the external processing space. For all intents and purposes, the central control unit acts in perfect sync with his neuronal matrix.”

Chris looked at his best friend, who was anxiously worrying the nail of his thumb. As a rule, Jensen Ackles did not guess.

“So we’ve got absolutely no idea how far he can take it, what he can do.”

“No. We’re flying blind on this one.”

It certainly wasn’t the first time they had encountered an unexpected side-effect they’d had to deal with. That was, after all, how groundbreaking scientific observations were made. But it was the first time that Jensen looked genuinely unsure about whether he’d be able to handle it.

Jared felt his skin prickle as the last of the sedative filtered out of his system. It hadn’t really clouded his senses or kept him from moving for the past couple of hours, but, all the same, he had no desire to open his eyes and face the world. Flimsy vestiges of another dream were clinging to him, but he didn’t try to hold onto them. They were bleak, full of red dirt and agony. Jared burrowed deeper into the pillow and resisted the urge to curl up and hide himself from the world. It would not make a difference because everything that was wrong with him was inside. Muscles bunching and quivering in his legs, nerves firing away at him to get rid of his inactivity when he shouldn’t even have been able to stand upright. Blood pumping slow and steady, no matter how much he wanted to think himself into a hysterical panic over the feel of the crisp sheets under his fingers where there should only have been a phantom ache. In a way the emptiness was still there, even though it was less physical and more… the feeling of being pieced together with spare parts that had once made up a complete person, and now someone had put the screws on wrong.

And down, deep, deep down, the shame and guilt for wanting it. Wanting to live, wanting to be whole.

Jared pressed his fingers into his eyes, shutting the world out, a futile attempt to shut down that otherness by not acknowledging it.

But his traitorous body wouldn’t leave it alone, and as if to compensate for his shunning of the sense of sight, suddenly the whisper of a sound burned loudly in his ears. It faded in and out, the pockets of sound sending shockwaves through his head, and he couldn’t contain it, couldn’t bear it, couldn’t… he needed to focus… on… some…

“… central control unit … in perfect
style='font-size:9.0pt;'>sync with his
neuronal matrix.”

“So we have absolutely
no idea how far he can take it, what he can
style='font-size:8.0pt;'> do?”

“No. We’re flying blind on this one.”

Jared turned and threw his hands against his ears, trying to drown out that sound, that voice, that he wanted, wanted. His eyes flew open, and he stared intently at the blank and seamless ceiling until the sounds grew mute, and the familiar burning started behind his eyes. Then he blinked rapidly and suddenly everything fell back into normality, no blue tinge, no bugs crawling the walls, perfect stillness. Jared slowly lifted his hands from his ears and let out a little breath of relief when nothing extraordinary happened for once. He sat up gingerly, but apart from some of the instruments whirring hurriedly, there were no unexpected surprises this time. Figured that at the very moment he found out that he was apparently so extra-freaky as to even puzzle the resident super-brain, his overdrive senses would choose to finally leave him alone for a precious minute.

Actually, when he bothered to look around, he found the room much less crowded by medical equipment and more embellished with simple furniture, looking much more like a normal human dwelling as well. And on the chair next to his bed, he even found a change of clothes, just shorts, sweatpants and t-shirt, but certainly a little more substantial than the paper-thin hospital pyjamas he was wearing right now. He was still itching to get on his feet, though, and he figured now was as good a time as any to get dressed and explore a little bit. Find out more about the restrictions and boundaries he would face as long as he remained in here. Wherever here actually was.

When Jared stepped up to the transparent, sliding doors they opened without so much a swoosh or a single complaint. He decided to take that as permission to step outside into the empty corridor beyond. At least they hadn’t seen fit to post a guard at his door, which he took for a good sign. His legs felt half like steel and yet half like jelly, as likely to buckle under him any second as not. His presence might get the silent alarm going again, but he had to take the risk to get a handle on his surroundings. If he didn’t get to know the layout of the building there was no way he was getting out of here on his own terms. He silently walked by a couple of closed doors and then an open one with merry chatter drifting out, but its occupants completely unaware of his presence. Jared took a couple of left turns to avoid both people and losing his orientation in these identical looking corridors, but with the third turn his luck ran out. A slender, doe-eyed woman stepped through a door and turned right, just the moment he came around the corner, almost colliding with him. She looked at his chest for a second, then up, and her mouth dropped open. Jared had automatically frozen but decided to go with the wait-and-see approach as she picked her jaw off the floor and pointed an imperious finger at him.

“You. Stay right there.”

Before he could decide what do next, she had reached into the pocket of her lab coat and produced a tablet much like the one he had seen with the doctor before and tapped away on the smooth surface with quick fingers.

“Jensen, you better come up to the Infirmary. Your latest project is wandering the halls.”

Jared scowled at the impersonal epithet, but the indignant squack that answered them over the intercom made a grin tug at the edges of his mouth. The woman in front of him looked up again, eyes racking over his frame with quick, efficient movements, clearly a medical professional taking stock. She stopped at his face and met his eyes head on with a disapproving stare.

“So you’re the hulk who’s gotten into the habit of roughing up my charges?”

Jared bristled and crossed his arms in front of his chest, which he knew made his stature all the more imposing.

“Excuse me if waking up in ‘Universal Soldier,’ after being blasted halfway to hell by a missile made me just a tad bit erratic.”

“Oh trust me, been there, done that. You’re not the first one to flail around a little bit when they wake up and knock stuff over. What I’m talking about is that little spectacle you made the other day which almost got you both killed. You broke one of his ribs and cracked a few more just for good measure.”

“What, I…”, Jared taken aback by that sudden attack, being chewed out by a woman that was about half his weight. “I didn’t know that.”

She huffed impatiently.

“Of course you didn’t, you’ve done nothing but sulk and throw accusations around, threatening the people who saved your life. He’s just trying to help, you know? I know it’s tough to deal with a trauma like yours, but the least you could do is show a little gratitude to the man who ran himself ragged for 36 hours just to save your ass.”

Jared stared at her helplessly as she stabbed her finger into the air in front of his face for emphasis.

He hadn’t really considered… really wanted to consider… hadn’t thought about how badly hurt the doctor might have been.

“I … I couldn’t…”

“Traci! What have you…? Oh, there you are, you shouldn’t really… are you alright?”

For the first time Jared looked at the doctor, and he really looked. He saw the hesitantly outstretched hand, the open face, the tightness around the wide green eyes for what it was. Genuine concern for his welfare and the honest desire to help. It kind of took his breath away to realize how unjustified some of his actions might have been, understandable as though they were. Jared fumbled for words in the wake of his realization, and the only thing he could manage was, “Uhm, yeah, I’m fine.”

An awkward pause settled onto them standing there in the corridor as if no one really knew what came next. Jensen didn’t dare touch Jared or tell him that he had to go back to his room, and he wasn’t quite sure how the man would react to being asked… Either way it was not like he could move him against his will. Jared on the other hand seemed genuinely unsure of what he wanted to do next, and Jensen could see that Traci must have said something that had rattled the forceful soldier out of some of his confidence. Just when the silence between them seemed to stretch into infinity, a gurgling growl spoke of an empty stomach demanding to be filled. Jensen tried to suppress the grin that wanted to spread over his face with all he had in him, not quite managing all the way. He was just about as successful in dealing with the heat that pooled in his belly from the blush that rose on Jared’s cheeks, but Jensen knew how to use an out when it presented itself, and he had other things to worry about beside his capricious libido right now.

They ended up in a small sitting area, the doctor fixing himself a big mug of coffee while he arranged for some kind of light broth to be brought for Jared. Jared lowered himself carefully onto one of the comfortable couches, gripping his knees hard to hide just how much his legs were shaking from the effort of walking the few yards down the corridor. He needn’t have bothered, since the doctor was quite busy turning his back to the rest of the room, but still he couldn’t quell the instinctive reaction to hide weakness. What he could see consciously for the first time was the stiff and careful way the doctor held himself, and how hesitantly he lowered himself into the seat on the opposite side to Jared. He wasn’t the only one unwilling to admit to weakness after all, but the evidence of his rash actions didn’t really do much to quell Jared’s slow-burning anger. It just added an acrid taste of guilt to it. Jared closed his eyes gratefully, concentrating on taking little sips from his own mug for the moment. He hadn’t eaten anything under his own power for however many weeks, so there was no way he would be keeping anything more substantial down, but he was glad to have a task to focus on that didn’t require addressing the increasingly muddled shades of grey his world had turned into.

“How are you feeling?”

Jensen cringed at the poor choice of words right after they left his mouth, even before the other man could look up and shrug helplessly.

“Listen, I…

“What would…”

They stopped to look at each other for a moment after starting to speak at the same time until Jensen motioned for Jared to continue.

“I… I’m sorry for what I… I mean…”

“No, don’t be, it was as much my fault to begin with. We didn’t… anticipate your unique situation, so there were no contingencies in place for how to handle it properly, even though there should have been. I should have seen this coming, it is after all a possibility I had in mind when I designed the system, even though it seemed almost too outlandish to consider.”

“You mean what with that central control unit being in perfect sync with my neuronal matrix and all that?”

Jensen felt the blood drain from his face in an instant.

“How do you know that?”

“I didn’t, well not for sure until just now. I heard you, you know? Or at least I assume I did and considering other possibilities makes me squeamish, so…”

Jensen stared into his coffee as if it was likely to talk back at him at any moment, spewing solutions out of the blue. Of course it didn’t, but it gave his brain the much needed reprieve to go into overdrive and start running calculations and system specifics against each other and…

“We’re going to have to be very creative to figure out how far you can go.”

Jared looked back at him, wary, but resigned.

“I was afraid you might say that.”

“Look, we…”

“No, it’s alright, I get it. I’m stuck here, until I get a handle on it and won’t accidentally squash someone to death trying to give them a hug or something. I still don’t like it, but I understand now how it’s necessary.”

Jensen had nothing much to answer to that that wasn’t clear as a day anyway. He looked in Jared’s face, taking in the very different kinds of emotions that were reflected there. Helpless anger and hurt, wary resignation, but also a sliver of acceptance. He would have to take what the man could give, even if it was just an uneasy truce, but their conversation gave him hope that he might be able to persuade Jared to view this more as a gift than a curse, given some time.

Chapter Six

Comments

[deanshot1]

They really need to have sex so at least some of the tension between them is gone.
This story is just captivating and has me so intrigued waiting to see what happens next.
Looking forward to more already.
*hugs*

[mangacat201.livejournal.com]

Well, you're in luck then. I opened the last chapters just this second. Read right on.

[insane-songbird.livejournal.com]

Jared... Jared... Jared...
Oh, Jensen. Now you know how all the samgirls out there feel all the time! :P