Work Text:
Jenko used to have this nightmare about being shot. It wasn’t a fear of guns, okay, that’d be stupid—he owns a gun and it’s as near and dear to Jenko as his own dick. Blood and pain, yeah, Jenko can handle it. He played football in high school. He knows about pain.
But he’d have this nightmare, all right, about how every police officer in the line of duty got shot and they stood back up, kept going, just like those guys in the movies—the real badasses like Stallone, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis—arms pumping, blood slathering their shirts, not giving a fuck about the pain. Focusing on the perp, tackling the perp. Saving the day. Jazzy 80s soundtrack in the background, the sunset, the victory, that fucking beautiful sunset, and then in the dream Jenko was shot and he couldn’t get the fuck up, he couldn’t even move. He was the only officer who didn’t do the right thing. He couldn’t get back up. And there had been some tiny, freaked out corner of his brain that knew he was dreaming, but that shit becomes real when you bolt up in bed, gasping, searching your chest for the entry wound. And that’s something Jenko carries with him past the exams: an awful yawning hole in his stomach that knows he is the guy who can’t hack it.
All that build up and when Jenko does finally get shot, it’s pretty okay. Like, “pretty okay” as in “hurts like a bitch but I’m only sprawled out on the street ‘cause I want to be, not ‘cause I can’t get up.”
That’s okay, because Schmidt takes care of shit. He cuffs the perp. He sits Molly on a curb. That’s what Schmidt is good at, Jenko thinks as he bleeds out against the limo, that whole taking care of people thing. Doing up bow-ties. Stocking Jenko’s fridge with gross low-fat yogurt and fresh fruit. Explaining what a felony is.
He closes his eyes and leans harder on the limo. His mouth still tastes like bile from the hotel corridor. Can’t believe you threw up, you pussy, he thinks to himself.
Later, the EMTs strip the tuxedo off of Jenko with pinched mouths—he flinches, he doesn’t mean to—and wrap him up tight and tell him he’s got to go to the hospital. There’s no hurry, Jenko assures them. He’s cool. He can handle this. Did you see his partner? That badass motherfucker just blew that perp’s dick off. Owned. Also, Jenko knows how to make a bomb.
It’s probably stupid, but Jenko is kind of (sort of) totally proud about that. He can make a bomb. That bomb can blow up a limo. The slow-burn pleasure of doing something right settles low in his chest and he realizes, with a weird uneasiness, that it’s been too long since he’s had that feeling. Jenko hasn’t got a lot of success on his track record. He thinks about Schmidt making fun of him with the popular kids. He thinks about Schmidt’s face under the street light, its earnestness, the sweat on his pale neck, the words: And I fucking cherish you. Those words dig under his skin and fuck with him, they really do. It doesn’t make sense to Jenko that Schmidt can be such a douchemonger one second and the next, he can see through Jenko like he’s a fucking sheet of plastic, and that’s scary shit, okay, that somebody can take one look at you and reach out and dig around in the parts of you that hurt. No one should have that ability. It upsets Jenko because he knows, okay, he knows he’s not good like Schmidt—not smart, not clever, not “cool” by today’s standards, an embarrassment, a kid with a badge—but he wants to believe the guy. He wants to feel cherished.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Today, Schmidt is Jenko’s best friend and they are awesome.
(Later, at the hospital, Schmidt insists on feeding Jenko nasty-ass cafeteria Jell-O from a plastic cup. “You’ll mess up your arm,” he says. Jenko is going to say no, he really is. But his body kind of hurts now and the painkillers make him fuzzy. He rests his head back against the pillow and opens his mouth. The Jell-O is blue raspberry. His favorite. This feeling, it’s a good feeling.)