Jared Gaines (![]() ![]() @ 2017-12-17 02:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | #september 2017, jared, jared x ty, ty |
Who: Jared & Ty
What: Busy and weird Friday night
Where: Around town
When: Late night, Friday 9/22
Status: Complete
Warning: Language
It was Friday again and while the rain had stopped, everything was a little heavier. Fin Haynes had tried to kill himself and Danny Valiant was missing. The latter weighed more heavily on Jared's mind as Danny was practically family and he'd come to Jared for help so it was only natural that he felt like he should have done more. He had told Grady about the incident and about how Danny now had a history of blackouts and hopefully that would help. Still. Danny had promised to get help, but had he? Should Jared have checked in on him again? Pushed him to go? Told Sadie. It all gnawed at him but there wasn't much he could do but hope Danny would wander into town, a little cold and confused but safe.
As if that wasn't enough to worry about the auction was drawing ever nearer and Jared was a little on edge about that too. He hadn't thought it would affect him at all, but apparently... Yeah. The damn auction was tomorrow and the timing couldn't be worse. He knew he'd be more nervous about it if he was actually still single but having a secret relationship would make it easier to deal with going on a date with some random person. It was something to cling to and he'd get to anticipate seeing Ty afterward. Also, he'd get to see his boyfriend wearing a suit so that was at least something to look forward to.
He was heading out again with Ty, enjoying the fact that although it was a little chilly, it wasn't raining for once. He let Ty drive tonight, stretching out comfortably in the passenger's seat and turning the radio on low. It probably wouldn't be a slow night, being a Friday and all, but maybe he could enjoy Ty's company for a little bit and imagine they were just out for a ride and there was nothing wrong. Maybe they'd find Danny by some fluke. Maybe, maybe, maybe. At least working would keep his mind occupied and he was doing it with his favorite person so that was going to help. Still he made a note of trying to visit Lucy the next day, make sure she was okay and check in with Sadie too.
It was late on a Friday night -- almost Saturday morning, now -- and if Ty had to be doing any kind of work, he was glad it was patrolling with Jared. It afforded them a bit of privacy, and got them out of the station, and that felt important tonight. He knew Jared was worried about Daniel Valiant. He was kind of family, after all, and what Jared had filled him in on was kind of worrisome. Ty wasn’t sure how to help except to keep a good lookout, like he would for anyone else. He couldn’t help but remember how few people they ever found who disappeared around here ... but there was always hope, right?
They were due to cruise through the cemetery -- still vacated of its living resident, Ty knew Grady was getting tired of those phone calls -- and then around the nicer neighborhoods, unless something else came up. He glanced over at Jared with a small furrow in his brow. “He’ll turn up,” he said quietly, but with confidence. Jared needed his support now, not for him to add to his worries, even unintentionally.
Jared nodded, even if he wasn't exactly convinced. "He promised me he'd see a doctor," he sighed and tried to remind himself that he couldn't be responsible for everyone. Danny was a grown man, it wasn't like Jared could have forced him to go to the hospital. He could have tried, of course, but it wouldn't have gone down well. Jared reached over and brushed his fingers over Ty's hand. "Are you okay?" he asked because while Fin and Ty hadn't exactly been close it had to be a little weird to have someone you slept with try and kill himself. Jared just hoped Ty didn't think any of that was on him.
It probably made him some kind of asshole that fretting about Jared being upset about Danny had kind of overshadowed anything he felt about hearing that Fin Haynes had tried to kill himself. Ty shifted his grip on the steering wheel so he could take Jared’s hand for a moment while he assessed if he was okay. “I mean ... yeah,” he said finally, giving a slight shrug. “I barely know the guy. It sucks and I’m glad he failed, but people got their issues, you know?” He knew, or thought he knew, that the attempt didn’t have anything to do with him. He hadn’t seen or heard from Fin since he’d made his apology. Sure, the man had seemed to have something heavy weighing on his mind then, but that had been none of Ty’s business.
"I'm glad he failed," Jared said with a little shake of his fist before smiling faintly. "Possibly the one time that's a nice thing to say." He gave Ty's hand a little squeeze. "I'm scared of Sadie falling apart," he muttered then. "I don't know how to comfort her anymore." Exes were weird, they'd moved into such an intimate territory for a while and when they left they could never go back into the neutral friend territory, forever stuck in some awkward limbo. "Kinda makes me want to not talk to her and that makes me feel like a shitty person." He sighed and shook his head. It felt good to say it out loud but at the same time it just made it all more real.
Ah yes, Sadie. She had crossed Ty’s mind quite a few times, even before Danny disappeared, and he found that he had no idea how to feel or think about Jared’s ex-wife. He’d never dated a bisexual guy before, much less one who was pretty freshly divorced. He knew they were civil, he’d even seen them talk a few times during the past year, but Ty didn’t have the first clue how to relate to her now, even peripherally. Or how to counsel Jared. He squeezed his hand back. “Well you’re not,” he murmured after a moment. “Just considering how to comfort her makes you not a shitty person, so. None of that. Just ... be there to listen, I guess. Assure her we’re working on it.” Part of him wanted to say that it wasn’t Jared’s job to do any of that for her anymore, but that was definitely not the way to handle it.
"Thanks," Jared murmured and it felt nice to be told he wasn't an asshole. He could have told himself that but something about hearing it from someone else was better, especially when Ty rationalized it. At least he cared, that made him at least a little less shitty. "We're doing all we can," he muttered, a typical phrase that so often didn't mean anything to the people they said it to because results were more tangible than promises. And were they? He had no idea where to search. If this was a child they'd comb the woods but Danny was a grown man, for all they knew he'd left town on his own accord.
Ty’s lips twisted a bit to one side at that, and he swallowed down a sigh. Jared knew their track record for finding people as well as he did, and it admittedly didn’t look great. But it hadn’t been too long for there to be some harmless explanation yet. As Ty understood it, there was a minor involved too, so that made harmless a bit less likely, but you could never know for sure. He brought Jared’s hand up to kiss the back of his fingers briefly, then slowed the cruiser down to take the turn toward the cemetery.
They were silent for a while but it was the comfortable kind of silence that was almost soothing, interrupted only by the radio on occasion as they drove. Jared was used to dealing with negative things on the job but right now it felt like there were too many of them ganging up on them and some of them were so far outside his understanding he didn't know what to do with that. He could only imagine how antsy and angry he'd be by now if he hadn't gotten close to Ty when he did. Having someone to distract him and make him feel good was invaluable, not to mention how getting laid on a regular basis tended to make everything a little easier to deal with.
"Seems quiet out here," he murmured, peering into the darkness. 'Seems' didn't mean much and maybe a small part of him was hoping to catch whoever the depraved vandal was in the act. That would put one case to rest at least and they needed a win.
They’d spent a lot of time together without much conversation throughout their time as partners, so Ty was comfortable with it too. He’d wondered as all this was starting up if that would turn awkward, if he would suddenly be overthinking and analyzing every tiny pause ... but so far the relationship felt more like an enhancement than anything else. They were still capable partners, good friends, and just a bit more on top of that. It did make the rest of the world feel a bit less intimidating, a bit less overwhelming. Like now Ty had somewhere reliable to catch his breath. So he held onto Jared’s hand while they did a slow drive through the cemetery, shining the light mounted on the car around as they went. There didn’t seem to be anything amiss, so he drove them on.
Aside from being its usual creepy, the cemetery didn't give them any clues or reasons to stick around. Jared thought they'd drive through once more before their shift was over though, he felt sorry for the groundskeeper and he wanted to help but it was hard without leads to follow. Going through town was pretty uneventful too for now, no fights to break up, no drunken assholes causing a scene. Sometimes that didn't come until after midnight so it wasn't too unusual.
They were doing a slow crawl past one of the local businesses when it happened. There were a few cars in the parking lot and one was parked close to the road. It suddenly demanded their attention as every single window seemed to explode all at once. It was as if the car was under a great deal of pressure except the metal wasn't affected, just the glass that suddenly shattered and sprayed out all around it.
"Jesus!" Jared hissed, grabbing Ty's arm as he lurched forward to see as Ty stepped on the brakes. He didn't need to ask if he'd seen it too but he did anyway in a dumbfounded reflex. "Did you see that!"
Ty had been thinking something along the same lines -- it was quiet now, but it probably wouldn’t stay that way -- when that distinctive sound crashed through his thoughts. He hit the brake pedal hard by instinct, thinking for a second that something had shattered one of their windows, it had been so loud. He’d only caught a glimpse of flying glass pieces, sparkling in the sodium lights of the parking lot, but that was enough for him to answer Jared’s question with a shocked, “yeah.”
Ty started at the car for a beat, then looked around them quickly, but there was nothing to see. Just the rest of the empty parking lot. He let of the brake and gave the car a sharp turn to head into the lot, flipping the roof lights on as he pulled up behind the car. “What the fuck,” he murmured rhetorically as he looked at how every pane of glass on the vehicle was blown out.
As soon as the car stopped Jared got out to examine the car. His first thought was some kind of a bomb but there were no signs of anything like that inside the car and nothing smelled even remotely singed. He got his flashlight off his belt and shone the beam into the car but there was nothing in there but normal car stuff and it certainly didn't look like anything had happened to it save for the broken glass that now surrounded it. He looked back at Ty with a frown. There was no way the windows had been shot out, not all at once but he still turned off the light and looked around to see if anything around them could have caused this. All he could think was 'what the fuck', over and over in his mind as nothing about this felt normal. "You should... call it in," he said as he strolled back toward the squad car, looking as bewildered as he felt. Could it have been some kind of heat difference causing pressure to build? Did that even happen to cars? The windows wouldn't have burst out like that then, would they? Maybe cracked, but outright exploded? Another 'what the fuck' went through his mind as he was at a loss for what else to think.
While Jared went to examine the car more closely, Ty pulled his own flashlight out and did a slow circle around the parking lot. There weren’t a lot of other vehicles there, but enough that someone could’ve ducked behind one to hide. But how in the hell had they pulled something like that off? While he was looking, something else caught his attention, the beam of light catching on some extra sparkles around the tires of another car. He heard Jared but barely registered the words as he started to walk away from the cruiser. “Come look at this,” he said. A couple of rows away and further back in the lot, another car’s back windows were blown out.
Jared followed him, frowning when he saw what Ty was looking at. It was yet another incident that made him feel stupid, like there had to be some scientific reason for it and he was too dumb to grasp it. "Well, damn," he said, glancing at Ty in hopes that he might think of some logical explanation and give it to Jared. Right about now would be good he thought and that familiar helpless feeling seemed to well up in his chest, the very feeling he'd been trying so hard to shove aside.
Ty’s own gears were turning in a helpless, useless sort of way. He was frowning and shining his flashlight at the other cars in the lot too. Had it been some projectile from somewhere? Somebody throwing ... lots of rocks at once? Gunmen shooting from multiple angles at once? But they were just empty cars. “This is fuckin’ weird,” he murmured, more to himself than Jared. “Some kinda ... weird temperature change?” he suggested, louder, looking over at his partner. Ty was thoroughly bewildered too. He put his head closer to the busted-out window and sniffed. “Doesn’t smell like anything ... explosive ...”
Jared shook his head and he wasn't sure if it was encouraging or not that Ty seemed to be thinking along the same lines as he was. All he knew was that he felt like the butt of somebody's joke and he really didn't like it. "Let's call it in, find the owners," he muttered since at least that was something he knew how to do. He reached for his radio but hesitated for a moment, frowning at Ty as he listened for anything suspicious in the neighborhood. There was nothing out of the ordinary, no stifled laughs or anything so he shook his head and contacted dispatch.
Once they’d called the incidents in and given dispatch the vehicle tag information so they could contact the people the cars were registered to, the two of them got back on the road. Ty drove them around the outer edge of the parking lot and around behind the building it belonged to, just to make sure they didn’t spot anything suspicious. They didn’t. Everything was quiet and seemingly buttoned up and fine.
As they really started back toward the other side of town, they turned down a street where there was a line of cars parked at the curb. Ty let off the gas and let the squad car cruise to a stop, staring ahead of them. In the sodium streetlights, he could see that several of them had the windows blown out, just like the other cars. “What the fuck is going on,” he whispered, more in awe than anything.
Jared felt something go tight in his chest, an overwhelming sense of wrongness, similar to what he'd felt when he heard the train. He wanted to go home now - more accurately he wanted to go to Ty's house, put on a movie and not think about what was going on for a while. They were here though, on duty and supposed to get to the bottom of this, Jared just didn't know how. He shook his head slowly as he stared at the cars up ahead. "Better call this in too," he said in a near whisper as his voice wouldn't work quite right. He cleared his throat and reached for the radio again.
Everything felt so surreal for a moment, Ty could feel it deep down in his gut. It was eerie, the quiet street, the cruiser idling in the middle of the road with no one behind them, the yellow lights, the dark empty holes that used to be windows. Like blind eyes or busted-out teeth. Jared’s voice was very quiet, but it still gave him a startled little twinge. “Yeah,” he said, though it almost didn’t feel like it came out of his own mouth. Ty let off the brake so they would coast forward far enough to read the license plate of the first car. He kind of didn’t want to get out again, everything felt too strange.
Jared read the license plates of the affected cars and there was small comfort in the routine. Not enough to really ease that feeling in his chest but it was a small normalcy to cling to. "I don't like this one bit," he muttered to Ty as they drove away, certain that they were about to find more cars just like these. It made no sense that none of the houses around seemed affected. Someone was sneakily breaking windows in cars only but who and how? He'd seen it happen the first time around and there hadn't been anyone near them, so how? It was going to drive him crazy and he knew it.
By the time they got to the end of the street and had told dispatch the plate numbers, Ty was thoroughly creeped out. Some of the cars were missing all the windows, some only one or two. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, and it was fucking creepy. He was paying attention to how far out the glass had sprayed out into the street, too. How could somebody do that from the outside? When people broke in windows, they broke in windows. These all looked blown out, like some powerful force had hit them from the inside. And how were the surviving windows not even cracked. None of this made any sense. He was about to agree with Jared’s assessment of it when the radio crackled to life again. Dispatch had gotten a call from someone in the Black Cove neighborhood, complaining of car vandalism. Busted windows. Ty picked up the microphone and told them they would check it out. He looked over at Jared as he hung the mic up again. “Bet that won’t be the only one,” he murmured.
"This is going to be a long night," Jared muttered and he was now looking even less forward to the auction the next day. With this much vandalism - he didn't know what else to call it - people might not be in a charitable mood and morale might be down. "You mind if I stay at your place tonight?" he asked as they headed toward Black Cove. He didn't want to sound timid about it but he couldn't help but sinking feeling that everything was somehow messed up and upside down in the world right now.
If this thing, this event, was as widespread as it seemed, they were definitely in for a long fucking night. With as on edge as Ty now felt, Jared’s question was a weird relief. They could get through this night together, and then go home together, and he wouldn’t have to be alone with this feeling like he was going crazy. “I’m gonna insist on it,” he said quietly, glancing over again. Ty suddenly empathized a lot more with how Jared had felt with his phantom train noise, but there was no way this was all in his head. Jared was seeing it too.
There were more calls as they drove to Black Cove and every time the radio crackled to life, Jared felt his mood get darker. He was fairly sure he'd be angry by now if not for Ty's presence and that was more that he didn't want to get angry around his boyfriend. Still his mood was heavy and he shook his head on the fourth or fifth call and let out a frustrated huff. There were a couple of calls from Overlook and he knew those would be treated as priority so Grady would probably go there himself. Poor guy. There really was nothing quite like dealing with angry rich people. "I'm kinda freaking out," he muttered as the car crawled to a stop near a very upset car owner waiting for them at the curb. "Don't tell anybody." He glanced at Ty with a small smile as if it was a joke but really... He was freaking out and the good citizen freaking out in front of them did not need to know that.
Ty looked at him, then reached over -- very subtly, under the line of sight of the windshield, he could’ve been reaching for anything, right? -- and gave Jared’s fingers a quick squeeze. “There’s an explanation,” he said, putting more firmness into the words than he could actually back up. He didn’t know if they would find a satisfying explanation, but there had to be one somewhere. Ty knew that Things Happened in this godforsaken town, but he also knew how that didn’t ever sit well with his partner, so he wanted to at least try to be reassuring. He picked up the metal clipboard with the report sheets on it, since they were actually going to be talking to someone, and glanced briefly at Jared’s face. “Want me to take this?”
Jared shook his head but it warmed him that Ty had asked. "Let's just get it done," he murmured and it was better if both of them went out. They could look the car over, take down notes and get out of there faster. Maybe this guy actually knew something or had seen something that might give them better insight into what was going on.
As it turned out, he didn't know anything so the two of them left knowing just as little as they had when they arrived. "It's just cars," Jared said with a slightly pained expression as the gears in his mind kept turning fruitlessly. "Why just cars? And from the inside, like something exploded. Some kind of explosives we haven't heard about? Planted randomly?" That sounded like a big city schtick, too elaborate to be a simple prank and not big enough to actually be terrorism, or was it? "Barrett's going to hate this."
It was a tiny bit grounding to talk to someone face to face who wasn’t the two of them, to kind of confirm that yes, this was happening, and yes it was fucking weird. Ty and Jared made quick enough work of the report, and assured the car owner that they would do everything they could to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. Like they always tried to do, with varying degrees of success.
Ty glanced over at Jared from behind the wheel as he drove them to the next call. “Can’t blame him, I hate it too,” he muttered. “Explosives are all I can think of, or some kinda ... concussive ... something. But the broken windows all seem random, the rest of them aren’t even touched, so that doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. And we searched that car, there was nothing in it.” He wasn’t sure they were going to figure it out just between them, but he understood Jared’s need to talk through it. “Some group of snipers with pellet guns or something?”
"That'd take some heavy duty organizing and manpower," Jared muttered and they hadn't seen anyone, heard anything, noticed anything. They weren't that bad at their job, the area around that first car had been clear, Jared was sure of it. "All them windows went out at the same time, from the inside out." He reenacted a little explosion with his hands as he tried to visualize it in his mind. "Even if it hadn't been inside out, that would have been a lot of pellets at once from that many directions." He shook his head because no, that wasn't it. He still appreciated that Ty was trying to make it all make sense.
Ty knew it was a theory full of holes, he just didn’t know what else it could’ve been. He was wracking his brain and coming up short. It made the skin between his shoulder blades feel crawly and weird. He didn’t like that feeling. And poor Jared seemed like he’d been having that feeling a lot lately. “I dunno man,” Ty murmured miserably. He wet his lips and ran a hand over his head, shifting in his seat with a bit of frustration. “I really just ... don’t fuckin’ know.”
"Me neither," Jared said and it made him feel deflated and more than a little useless. They were the guys people expected answers from, people called the police to be safe and get some closure and he had a feeling there wouldn't be much of any of that tonight. The radio crackled to life again but this time one of their reserve deputies picked up so they clearly had backup. There seemed to be a lot of cars and they weren't the only ones feeling uneasy. "Let's do another round at the cemetery," Jared muttered and it was a weird night when the cemetery felt like the less creepy option.
It was good to hear there were other guys out there too now. He could just imagine Grady making those phone calls. The Point Pleasant PD was fairly used to getting weird-ass calls in the middle of the night, but it usually wasn’t something this ... widespread. “Okay,” he agreed to Jared’s suggestion, having much the same thought. As he turned the squad car back toward the cemetery, Ty tossed up a hope -- the closest thing as he ever got to praying anymore -- that all would be quiet there and they wouldn’t interrupt some crazy asshole digging up a body or something. He wasn’t sure he could take much more bullshittery tonight and keep his cool.
Jared was hoping for the opposite. He wanted to catch their twisted jerk in the act and bring him in, it'd mean one less mystery and he'd have some good news for Rostislav. He peered out at the garden as they drove through, his body tense and ready to chase down a crook if he needed to but it was Ty's wish that came true and the garden was as peaceful as a cemetery could be. Jared sighed heavily as they drove away then reached over to steal Ty's hand to give it a little squeeze. "M'gonna end up camping out here to catch this guy," he grumbled.
Ty gave a soft huff as he squeezed Jared’s hand back. “You’re on your own with that one,” he muttered. He was not doing that unless Grady ordered them to do an overnight stakeout or something. That was his first impulse, anyway, and then he was asking himself if he would spend the night in a cemetery for Jared. And not just any cemetery, this one. He was actually inclined to think that he would, which was just another stupid sign that he was in over his head already.
Though it ended up being a long night, Ty was glad to be doing it beside Jared. They did a few more calls on broken windows themselves, and still didn’t come up with any good ideas about what had actually happened. Eventually things quieted back down, as everybody who was going to call that night had already called. There would surely be more in the morning as folks woke up and discovered what happened, but that would be the day shift’s problem. Ty drove the two of them back to the station, relieved beyond belief to turn into the parking lot.
Jared was done with this night before the night was done with him and he had been before it even started. He yawned at the mere thought of going home and crawling into bed with Ty, like his body was anticipating the rest already. Maybe they could have morning sex but he was pretty sure he was going to pass out before he so much as suggest sex to his boyfriend. At least he was winding down a little. Things were weird and unsettling but he was determined to leave that feeling on the job and not think about it on his time off. Sometimes compartmentalizing was the best thing a guy could do. He yawned again and hummed contently as they entered the parking lot but then he sat upright in a jolt, his face screwed up in annoyance. "No fucking way," he hissed as he spotted his own car, windows broken like in all those other cars they'd dealt with that night. "Oh fuck me," he snarled, hitting his fist on the dash before sitting back in the seat in a huff. "Fuck."
Ty instinctively hit the brakes when Jared sat up abruptly, his eyes widening a bit as he glanced around. It only took a second for him to see what Jared was seeing. Ty stopped the car completely. The punch against the dash didn’t faze him, he just glanced over at Jared with pained sympathy in his eyes. “That’s fucked up, man,” he murmured. Jared’s shitty little Kia was now missing nearly all of the glass in it, and Ty couldn’t blame him for being pissed. That was going to be a pain in the ass to fix. Guess I’m driving us both home tonight. He was so overtired and Sick Of This Shit, Ty nearly laughed at the thought, but he managed to restrain himself. He scraped his teeth over his bottom lip instead. “Wanna get out and look at it?” he asked, glancing at Jared again.
Jared glared at his car as if it was the car's fault all the windows were broken but really he was thinking about what was in the car that might need rescuing. "No let's just park and head on in," he decided glumly, resigned to this night being a neverending shitshow. "You're taking me to your place, Solomon," he mumbled in a failed effort to make something cute of it. "My car is... out of commission." He'd been tired when they arrived but now he felt a different kind of tired, the restless kind, his mood gone sour. He couldn't imagine what it would have felt like to bum a ride and go home alone after a night like this and it made him want to hug on Ty right there where anyone might see them.
“Never a problem, babe,” Ty murmured. He thought briefly about making a joke that he’d broken all the windows just to trick Jared into coming home with him, but Ty thought better of it. He wouldn’t want bad jokes if he was in Jared’s shoes. In fact, he made sure he would be able to drive them home, pulling the cruiser around to where he’d parked his own car first. His windows were intact. Ty was relieved about that, with a little bit of guilt mixed in. He pulled the squad car into its parking spot and turned it off, letting out a sigh as he opened his door to climb out. It had been a long fucking night and he was ready to be home already to strip down and crawl into bed with Jared.