fufaraw | Headlong, J2 AU, PG

wolves, wolves, J2 AU, PG! This sort of helps explain a comment I left in roxymissrose's LJ recently. Also, I feel I should apologize for the utter lack of sex. So far.

title: Headlong
author: fufaraw
pairing: Jensen, Jared
rating: PG
genre: Gen, for now
word count: 3,750
warnings: Shifter AU
summary: Jared was just a kid, and Jensen was going to show him the ropes. Any time now.
Unbetaed, which never happens. I own nothing except my mistakes.

Headlong

He should have said something to the kid. He'd meant to, all along, but it was difficult enough getting him to relax, to accept Jensen as a friend. He hadn't wanted to drop this on him as well, not this soon. He'd thought there was time, that he could ease into it, explain things, handle any freakouts--because there were bound to be freakouts, weren't there? Well, there were, now. And by the expression on the kid's face and his posture, there wasn't any more time, none at all.

"I think..." the boy said, his shoulders hunching forward, caving in his midsection toward his backbone. Confusion mixed with pain in his expression, and the pain was rapidly overtaking everything else. His gaze turned inward, as though listening, trying to understand what was happening to his body. "What--?"

Jensen couldn't wait. The kid was going to think he was a pervert, but in a few minutes, that was going to pale beside the new information. He reached into that concave shape of the boy's body, unsnapping the button on his jeans and ripping down the zipper as he yanked pants and briefs down to his ankles in one stroke. He hooked his fingers on the heels of the untied sneakers, and as the shape of the feet changed, the kid toppled onto his side. Jensen grabbed his chance to tug off shoes, pants, and underwear, and toss them aside. Socks and t-shirt would just have to take their chances.

"Hey," he said, moving up beside the boy where he could look into his face. He laid a cautious hand on the kid's shoulder. "Listen to me."

There was no listening. Eyes tight shut and face a grimace of pain, the kid rolled up to his hands and knees. There was a shimmer in the air, and the kid was gone. Where he'd been was a young wolf, barely more than a cub. It wasn't hard to read the panic in his eyes, though, when he got all four feet under him and stumbled into a run, gaining balance and speed with every stride. Jensen doubted he had the foggiest idea where he was running to.

"Well, shit."

Jensen wasted no time kicking his own shoes off and stripping, his body changing before the clothes even hit dirt. In a single stride he was on the boy's trail, and gaining.

***

Three days ago, Irving Delahaute's old Ford truck rattled up to Jensen's cabin and the motor died on a note that sounded more like a death rattle. Jensen cocked an eyebrow at Irv as he climbed out of the truck. "I can help you with that, old man."

Both Delahaute's eyebrows went up. "With what?"

Traditional greeting concluded, Jensen walked closer to shake Irv's hand and was surprised to hear the passenger door creak open and a lanky, weedy teenager emerge, under a messy brown mop desperately in need of a haircut. The kid didn't quite meet Jensen's eyes, but his chin firmed up defiantly as he faced him.

"Jensen." He could hear the placating tone and knew the request for a favor was coming. He was already shaking his head in refusal when Irv went on. "This is Jared. He ran into a little trouble night before last. He got bit."

Jensen's head stilled, and he stared at Irving, the unspoken question really already answered. But he had to be sure. "Bit?"

Irv nodded. "By a big dog, he says. Maybe a coyote," Irv looked at the boy. "But bigger." The kid was staring, from one to the other of them as he followed the conversation. Now he nodded once, in confirmation.

Pretty hazel eyes seemed bigger in a face that was newly grown out of boyhood, the bones strong and not yet covered in enough flesh. He looked hungry. And uncertain, and new.

"Is that right, kid?" Jensen asked, and the boy nodded again. "Where'd he get you?" Jared pulled aside the neck of the too-big t-shirt, obviously a loaner from Irv. There was an indisputable bitemark there, all right, across the top of his shoulder, nearly healed. Damn.

"Do we know who..." Jensen asked Delahaute, "um, owns the dog? If it was a dog?"

"I've got some ideas," Irv told him. "I should get on with checking that out." He took a step toward the truck, and fixed the kid with a look that was not unkind, but which brooked no argument.

"You're going to be fine here with Jensen."

"What?" Jensen said.

At the same time, Jared squawked, "Wait!"

Both of them stared at Irving.

"Jensen, he won't be any trouble." Irv glared at Jared, "Will you?" The kid shook his head, throwing Jensen a quick glance before looking back to Irv. "And boy, he'll take good care of you. He can teach you a lot, trust me."

"Irv! I'm not prepared--" Jensen tried, but Irv was already in the truck, cranking the ignition. It didn't sound any better on the startup.

"You boys'll do fine," Delahaute said, grinding from reverse into drive and pulling out in a small cloud of dust.

Jensen didn't need the sock, discarded like a wrinkled little pelt, and the second one three strides ahead, to tell him he was on Jared's track. He could scent him, and he smelled like wolf, and like Jared. But even more surprising, Jensen recognized, nosing at the shredded remnant of t-shirt left several dozen yards further on, he smelled like pack.

***

He had put the boy to work in the boathouse. Jensen had been meaning to get into the shed that housed his two-man canoe, his kayak, and his little rowboat for months, now. The lake ice was all melted, and he'd been itching to get out on it. But he needed to tend to all the craft, general maintenance, do any repairs necessary. The building itself had to be cleared of old rags and buckets and broken gear. Inventory needed to be taken of paddles and fishing gear and spare parts, nothing too strenuous or taxing, but something to keep the boy busy and get him engaged. He took Jared inside and pointed to the windows that faced upslope from the lake and told him to open them up and dog them so they'd stay. A breeze through the building would clear out that overwinter closed-up fustiness in no time, and daylight wouldn't hurt their efforts to clear and clean the place out.

While the kid was working at that, Jensen went to the cabin and found a flannel shirt and a jacket that, while they might not fit, at least they'd be warmer than the single t-shirt that was all the kid was wearing. He took a minute to make a couple of thick peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrap them up in paper towels, and snagged a bottle of water from the fridge. Just as he reached the boatshed, something occurred to him.

"Hey," he called. The kid came out from behind the canoe where he'd been gathering up trash, wide-eyed, like he thought he might have done something wrong. "You're not allergic to peanuts, are you?"

Jared shook his head solemnly, and Jensen beckoned him closer, holding out the elbow over which he'd draped the flannel shirt and jacket. "Go on, take them. Put 'em on. It's too cold to be running around in just a t-shirt."

"Not if I'm busy," Jared said in a low voice, taking the clothes. "I don't seem to be as bothered by the cold as usual." Jensen nodded to himself. Yes, he'd bet Jared was running hotter than ordinary. The kid buttoned up the shirt and slipped on the jacket. Both fit him well enough through the shoulders, and were almost long enough in the arms, though they kind of billowed loose around his waist. No matter. He took a giant bite out of a sandwich, and his eyes rolled in appreciation. Then, chewing, he looked at Jensen guiltily. Juggling the second sandwich, he unscrewed the cap off the water bottle and drank enough to ease the bite down.

"M’sorry, my manners suck," he said, when he had swallowed. "Thank you. For the clothes, and the food."

Jensen slapped him on the shoulder. "Got to keep my work force in good shape. Finish that up, and show me what you've found so far."

They spent the afternoon piling paddles and extra oarlocks and coils of rope and cans of varnish and paint and Jensen's little experimental mast and boom and the sails and rigging he'd been playing with for the rowboat on a clean-swept area of the floor to sort later. The last of the sun winked through the window as he closed one and Jared the other, dogging them against opportunistic raccoons and opposums scavenging for nest materials, or just for playthings to tear up. They swung the doors shut and latched them, and Jared followed him inside and went to wash up. Jensen preheated the oven while he opened a container of homemade stew from the fridge and set it to heat on the stovetop. He mixed up a pan of cornbread and slid it into the oven.

When the kid came out of the bathroom, Jensen handed him the longhandled wooden spoon. "Stir that stew every once in a while, so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan. The cornbread won't be ready before I'm back."

Jared accepted the spoon and sniffed the air. "Cornbread?" He smiled a little when Jensen nodded.

Every bit of the food was consumed, Jensen watching as the kid ate, making sure the lion's share went to him. Growing boy, after all. And his metabolism was speeding up. He needed the fuel. When the dishes were done, dried, and put away, Jensen retrieved the air mattress from the attic and set the kid to pumping it up while he fetched sheets, blankets, and a pillow.

"I thought you could sleep in here, if that's okay with you?"

Jared nodded.

"Kid, you got anywhere you need to be? Anybody missing you? Gonna come looking for you?"

Jared shook his head in the negative. "My parents died years ago. I've been in foster homes."

"What about your foster parents? Won't they be missing you?"

He didn't hide the sneer well enough that Jensen didn't see it. "Nobody's looking for me." He looked up then, clear-eyed, vulnerable. "I promise."

Jensen nodded, and after a minute, he sat on the edge of the couch cushion, bringing him down to near Jared's level where he had been putting sheets on the mattress. "I tell you what."

Jared looked up and met his gaze, waiting.

"People bring me stuff to fix. And I make stuff. My workshop's in the building behind the house," Jensen pointed the direction with his chin. "You can take a look inside there tomorrow, if you want to. I could use some help, sometimes, we could find you stuff to keep you busy, if you wanted to stay. You'd earn your keep."

Jared studied his knuckles where his hands lay in his lap. After a minute he looked up to meet Jensen's eyes, and nodded. "I'd like to stay, I think. If I could be a help."

Jensen nodded once, emphatically. "Okay, good." There would be school, and getting Jared registered, but that would come later, once he was ready, once he'd gotten past all these new changes, and had a chance to adjust and settle in, some.

Jensen sat back on the couch, picked up the remote, and clicked on the tv in the corner. "We got satellite tv, and we got dvds. What do you feel like watching?"

The next day, the two climbed up to the attic and looked around. "It's not finished off," Jensen said. "But we could go through all this and throw out stuff I'll never use, move the rest to one end, and you could have the other. It's warm, the heat from downstairs rises, and it's pretty comfortable up here. The ceiling's kind of low," he grinned at the kid, bent forward to avoid bumping his head on a rafter. "You're not going to be dancing up here, or jumping on the bed, but it would be your place. Do it up a little, maybe. What do you think?"

He could read in Jared's features that the kid really wanted it. But he turned to Jensen and asked, "Why are you doing this? You don't even know me."

That would have been the time, Jensen, he told himself, loping after Jared now. That would have been an excellent time to sit him down and tell him about how that bite had changed him, and what his life was going to be from now on. But no, he had chickened out, had said something stupid about somebody having helped him once and he was paying it forward, and now he had a wigged out, new, panicky werewolf to catch, to try and convince that his world hadn't come crashing to an end.

***

He had thought there would be more time. New weres often didn't turn, when they were bitten this close to full moon, their bodies adjusting to the change over a complete moon cycle before their first shift. Jared being so young, Jensen had just assumed.... Yeah, and look where that had gotten them. He'd started noticing the signs yesterday, and started to worry, a little. But true full moon wasn't until tomorrow. They should have had more time. But they'd been distracted and busy.

It was hard work, but with the two of them it was actually kind of fun, going through decades of old keepsakes that didn't even belong to Jensen or his family. He'd bought the place from a farmer's widow, and it was her family's heirlooms collecting dust in his attic. They discovered a rolled-up rug and hauled it outside and draped it over the porch railing to air and have decades of dust beaten out of it before they brought it back inside to cover the floor of Jared's "room," and vacuumed it thoroughly before the air mattress went down on top of it.

They salvaged a few picture frames, one pretty good oil painting, and a watercolor sketch of the lake, which Jensen kept. He he knew the perfect spot to hang it, downstairs. There was a small three-drawer chest, and a couple of lamps worth keeping. There was more, but nothing immediately useful, so they loaded the discards in the back of Jensen's SUV. The antiques dealer in town would take them, cull what she could sell, and take care of discarding the rest.

They stacked the leftovers at the far end of the attic, swept the floor and walls, even where they met in a peak overhead. They set up Jared's room with the rug, the bed made up with sheets and blankets and pillows, the little chest with his clothes in the drawers as a nightstand, and the two lamps. Jensen screwed a couple of clothes hooks into the rafters in case Jared had something he wanted to hang up, and they stood back and took a look.

"We'll get you a real mattress," Jensen offered. But Jared shook his head.

"You've done enough. I can't thank you."

Jensen saw the glimmer of tears, and swatted the kid's shoulder. "No point having you spring a leak," he grinned. "We'll get you a real mattress. Now, food. I'm starving. You need to learn to cook." He backed down the narrow staircase.

"I know how to cook," the boy said, indignantly, his ability impugned, as he followed Jensen into the kitchen.

"Oh yeah? What's your specialty?"