Work Text:
Despite how methodical and calculated he is, Aguiar is still, unfortunately, just a man. And at some point, every man will make a mistake. It just so happens that tonight’s mistake is armed with a gun.
The bullet tears through the meat of Aguiar’s shoulder, leaving a spray of blood and pain in its wake. Aguiar growls and digs his boot deeper into the throat of the victim pinned beneath him. Dark eyes bulge satisfyingly. Aguiar switches his axe to his other hand, swings it to the side to knock the little toy from the victim’s grasp, then rears back and brings his axe down into the victim’s forehead with all his strength.
CRUNCH. The blade cracks clean through the victim’s skull and makes paste of his brain. Aguiar tugs his axe out and watches the victim’s head loll to the side: eyes frozen in a snapshot of wide, mortal terror, blood and grey matter spilling out of his face.
Aguiar reaches down and clicks his stopwatch. The ticking halts. Another hunt over, another filth wiped off the Earth. In the morning, the Sun will shine upon a world that is a little cleaner than it was before. Gratification and adrenaline glide like liquid ambrosia through his veins. Aguiar lifts the face of his stopwatch to the feeble moonlight.
The result makes him hum. “Seventeen seconds,” he mutters to the stain beneath him. “I pinned you as twelve at most.”
And this little worm would have been, if Aguiar had noticed the pocket pistol tucked into his belt. How could he have missed such a detail? He watched this wretch like a hawk all night—saw his sinful hands creep up the ladies’ skirts and bring glass after glass of whiskey to his wrinkled lips; made note of his waning muscles and smoker’s cough and dark, lazy eyes. If Aguiar knew his victim had a gun, the very first thing he would have done was rip that damn thing out of his belt and chuck it into the woods.
Aguiar brings a hand to his shoulder. He hisses at the burst of pain his careful palm brings, and when he takes it away, his hand is coated in his own blood.
He closes his fist with a growl. “Sloppy.”
Aguiar isn’t concerned about the sound of the gunshot. He’s down the road from a ramshackle bar on the wrong side of town, the nearest neighbors being a forest, a roaring highway, and a den of addicts. No one here gives a fuck. That’s why Aguiar made this place tonight’s hunting grounds. What he is concerned about is doing the clean-up when he has a hole in his shoulder.
And he is right to be concerned. Dealing with the body turns out to be a bitch and a half. Even with shoving some gauze in the wound and pinning it in place with a quick, tight wind of bandages, his clothes are soaked through with blood by the time he’s got the body burning down in the old quarry. The pain badgers him like an impatient child the whole way through, whining for his attention. It’s annoying.
Blood loss hasn’t hit the same since Aguiar’s first Transcendence, but he’s still sweaty, dizzy, and in a shit-awful mood once all is said and done. He gets back in his car, sitting on black trash bags in an attempt to avoid staining his seats again, and drives his miserable ass home. All he wants to do now is get inside, lick his wounds in peace, and go to bed.
It’s late. In all likelihood, Jasper is asleep. If one thing can go right tonight, let it be that Jasper is asleep.
Aguiar comes in through the back to avoid crossing the house and making too much noise. He knows that kid is a light sleeper; Aguiar usually catches him stirring under his blankets whenever he comes home late, whether it be from work, the bar, or a hunt.
He usually doesn’t care if Jasper catches him coming home after a hunt because he is usually a lot cleaner. The hole in his shoulder is making that awfully difficult tonight.
So Aguiar goes in through the back. Passing through the yard, two of his girls come loping up from the doghouse to whine and lick at his bloodied hand. Sweethearts. He relieves their concern with some scratches behind their floppy ears and sends them back to bed.
Aguiar climbs the porch stairs as quietly as he can manage. Every step is cushioned with years of experience hunting the most dangerous prey. His keys hardly make a clink as he unlocks the back door and slips inside.
The back door puts him at the foot of the stairs. His office is to his left, and the hall opens up into the living room to his right. Craning his neck, he peers into the living room.
There, on the folded-out sofa bed, is Jasper. He is, in fact, starting to stir as Aguiar’s shifting weight creaks on the wooden boards, but the kid is still bundled up tight under his blankets. Only the tufts of his black-dyed hair peek out.
Jasper settles some seconds later, releasing a quiet sigh, and that’s all. Aguiar climbs the stairs. When he gets to the bathroom at the top, he shuts the door.
The blood rushes to Aguiar’s head when he straightens from retrieving the first aid kit under the sink. He blinks the dark splotches out of his vision. Right. Still just a man. Once the spinning has stopped, he puts the kit on the narrow counter and pops it open. He makes quick use of the surgical scissors to cut open his ruined shirt. He balls it up in his fist and chucks it into the tub—
—and knocks his hip against the kit in the process. Aguiar hisses at the horribly loud clattering of all his supplies spilling everywhere, “Shhhhit,” and stoops down on a knee to collect it all.
The bathroom door is closed. Jasper is asleep. It’s fine. Aguiar gathers everything and curbs his anger just enough to keep himself from slamming the traitorous kit on the counter again.
He’s usually in much better spirits after a hunt. Needless to say, Aguiar is sorely missing that euphoria of satisfaction right about now. What a stupid mistake, not noticing the gun. At least the job got done. Aguiar yawns against the cottony feeling in his ears as he goes about cutting away the messy bandage.
The bullet cut clean through the meat of his shoulder, thankfully only scraping the bone. It’s why he’s here and not driving himself to a clinic with some excuse about being a cop. The Paranormal knit into his being will ensure that he bounces back well enough.
Still, a little, irritating tremor persists in Aguiar’s hand as he piles fresh gauze onto the wound. Overexertion. His body is tired. He tries to make quick work of it, holding one end of the bandage with his teeth as he uses his free hand to pass the bandage roll around and around his shoulder. He growls, swearing through his jaw. The angle is awkward, but he can—
“A-Aguiar?”
He freezes. Stares at the shut door through the mirror he is facing.
“Jasper,” he tries, but the door is already opening, and Aguiar does not have enough hands available to stop it.
Jasper stands in the threshold of the bathroom. The kid blinks against the light, hair a wild mess and baggy shirt awkwardly caught in the waistband of his sweats. The momentary blindness passes swiftly, though, and now Jasper is regarding Aguiar (shirtless, bloody to hell and back, bandage in his teeth and around his ruined shoulder) with widening eyes and mounting alarm.
Oh great, great. Aguiar’s foggy mind clicks on, trying to remember the explanations he came up with in the car. He told Jasper he was going out for a drink tonight, and Jasper knows he’s a cop, and because of his rank he sometimes gets called in for emergencies even though Aguiar technically isn’t on call tonight and Jasper technically knows that and what the fuck is he thinking. The kid needs to leave.
Aguiar sighs. He’s too tired for this. “The hell do you—”
“Do you need help?”
Aguiar is about to tell Jasper to piss off and go back to bed. However, something in Jasper’s posture… It gives him pause.
Jasper is skittish—has been since the night Aguiar found him. The kid cut a pretty pathetic image, shivering out in the rain with an empty gun in his hands, tears and blood running down his face. His voice was so choked from fear and abuse that he could barely squeak out a word. He’d been a scrawny thing. At the time, it was impossible to believe Jasper was seventeen. If he wanted to, Aguiar could have taken the kid out in six seconds flat, no stopwatch needed.
Jasper has put on weight over the last couple months, though. Muscle too; the yard work has been doing its job. He stands before Aguiar now with his appearance all rumpled by sleep and his shoulders drawn up in his usual anxiety, but still, he stands. Feet planted firm. Clearly determined about something, one way or another.
It’s…odd. It’s not something he would expect from Jasper, which makes Aguiar consider the question that has been floating around in his mind as of late: What exactly is Jasper capable of?
…And the bandages are kind of a pain in the ass. Okay. Aguiar will bite. He motions Jasper forward.
The kid scrambles to follow.
After a brief deliberation, Aguiar decides to sit himself down on the edge of the tub to give Jasper easier access to his shoulder. Then, he passes off the ends of the bandage to him.
Jasper takes them. He adjusts them in his hands. He starts to wind the roll around, over a place Aguiar already laid down some bandage. He adjusts them again. He resumes winding, passing the roll around Aguiar’s shoulder a few more times, and the bandages are far too loose. Aguiar could probably slide his whole hand under them if he tried.
Needless to say, Jasper is shit at this. So Aguiar tells him as much. “You’re shit at this.”
“I’ve never done this before,” Jasper admits around a nervous tremor.
“You’ve never—?” Aguiar sighs, long and loud. Then why the fuck would you offer? Aguiar wants to spit, but he just doesn’t have the energy to get into it right now. He’s getting a headache. It’s been a long night. “Right. Okay. Listen up.”
So Aguiar starts to walk him through it. He tells him how to wind the bandage, then pull it tight, tighter, there you go, keep going, tuck it under, now grab one of those pins and secure it. Jasper is, thankfully, a fairly quick study, though Aguiar doubts he saved any time by having Jasper do it instead of struggling through it himself.
Still, Jasper gets it done. Soon enough, they’re taking turns washing their hands in the sink. Afterwards, Aguiar packs up his first aid kit as Jasper watches, quiet.
Very quiet. In fact, Jasper hasn’t said a word since he came up here unless it was to ask something about the bandages. No questions about why Aguiar was hurt, or what hurt him, or any comments otherwise. Just…silent obedience.
Aguiar puts the kit away. And then it’s just the two of them. At three in the morning. Looking at each other. Standing in the bathroom. With an elephant so big it’s using up all the damn oxygen.
Alright, Aguiar has had enough of this. He can make his excuses in the morning, if Jasper decides to be curious. He turns to leave. “I’m going to bed. Goodni—”
“I know you’re not always going out for a drink. When you say you are.”
It comes out in a blurt. Aguiar pauses. So he knows. Slowly, he turns back around to face the kid with all of his steely calmness. Aguiar says to the boy, in all manners but spoken, Choose your next words very carefully.
Under his gaze, Jasper shrinks.
But he doesn’t flee.
“I-I don’t know exactly what you do,” Jasper stammers, desperate. “And I don’t care. Just. Please be careful? And. Wash your hands better. Your, uh, your fingernails.”
Aguiar stares. Did this kid just tell him to wash his hands better? Frankly baffled, Aguiar lifts his hands and surveys his fingernails.
He doesn’t know what Jasper is talking about at first. Then, upon closer inspection, he sees it: A dark residue packed deep under his nails and lining his cuticles, so thin that Aguiar wouldn’t think to look for it. But it’s there.
Jasper carries on: “Mom and Dad’s hands looked like that after they would, um.” He coughs around an audible tightness in his throat. Swallows. “Yeah. Anyway. Good— Goodnight.”
Despite how methodical and calculated he is, Aguiar is still, unfortunately, just a man. And at some point, every man will make a mistake. But it’s not every day that someone will be sharp enough to see those mistakes when he makes them.
Clearly, this kid is smarter than Aguiar thought. More capable than he thought. Has more of a spine than he thought. Originally, Aguiar saved Jasper that rainy night purely out of pity’s sake—the system would’ve eaten him up, and the remainder of his parents’ cult would’ve come for his head. But now, Aguiar can see that there is something here, in Jasper, that he can…work with.
Aguiar lowers his hands. He considers the kid in front of him, one more time.
“...Goodnight, Jasper,” Aguiar says.
He leaves. As he goes, he hears Jasper wilt back against the sink.