Losers fic: Field of Stone 1/3
Jun. 4th, 2012 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyjanellyTitle: Field of Stone 1/3
Author: LadyJanelly
Fandom: The Losers
Charcters/Pairing: Jensen/Cougar, Clay, Roque, Pooch
Word Count: ~23,500
Summary: AU world, where mutants are enslaved, and The Losers just got assigned a new sniper
Influences: X-men, Push, Star Trek TOS, Dark Angel
Warnings: brief suicidal thoughts, Mentions of past non-con, attempted non-con, dub-con, violence, Stockholm syndrome, involuntary drug addiction, withdrawal, rimming, child peril, violence, no major character death
Notes: Enormous thanks to Peaceful_sands and trishabooms for the cheerleading and support, and to Peaceful_sands for her beta skills. All remaining errors are mine, probably added at the last minute. Fic is completed, to be posted in 3 parts as final edits are done.
Title from this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1onW7xe4SE (The Johnny Cash cover makes it seem a little more appropriate for these tough boys)
They’re in the motor pool when Hotchkis from requisitions brings their new sniper. Pooch fine-tuning their ride, Jensen handing him tools and Clay coming out to check the work while he procrastinates the mountain of paperwork sitting on his desk.
“The hell is this?” Clay barks and Jensen looks up. Sees Hotchkis first and then the other man and it’s not hard to tell why Clay is pissed. The guy looks like shit, shuffling along in heavy manacles with a short chain between them, hands bound in front of him. Dark, chin-length hair curls around his face and hides his eyes. He’s too thin, all bony shoulders through the mustard-yellow jump-suit they’ve put him in. The matte black collar looks obscenely heavy around his slim throat, a red LED blinking ominously on the front of it.
“Take him back,” Clay orders, like that’s the end of it, before it’s even started. “We need a sniper, not a mutie.”
The man in question doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to notice he’s being talked about.
Hotchkis shrugs. “This is what they sent you. File says this is what you get, take it or leave it, but the brass wants you to have a sniper who won’t request a transfer out of your team in three days. If you don’t wanna work with a freak, you can do without.”
“I’ve got no problem with mutants.” Clay’s glare would melt glass and Jensen’s a little awed that this pencil-pusher seems immune. “What I’ve got a problem with is putting the lives of my men in the hands of a slave who never volunteered for this shit.”
The sniper sways on his feet, just a little, but Jensen sees, wonders just how drugged up he is.
“Look,” Hotchkis says, “The thing is tame. Broken to collar years ago. Give him clear orders and things to kill and you’ll have no complaints. Just keep him drugged or busy on your downtime. Here.” He pulled a wrist-mounted control box off of his arm and went to pass it to Clay. “It’s wired into his bloodstream and nervous system. You’ve got your pain and reward here, sedative and stimulant here, and flip that cover up and that button blows his head off. Wouldn’t do that if I were you because the paperwork is a bitch.”
“Just give it a try,” Hotchkis wheedles as he hands Clay a second controller. Clay absently passes it back to Jensen. The box is heavy in Jensen’s hand, weighed down with the responsibility for a helpless person’s life. He takes another step forward, putting himself between the bureaucrat and his charge.
Hotchkis is still babbling. “Run it through some exercises. Use the collar and give it limits. Positive and negative reinforcement. Nobody has ever complained about its performance in the field and you should see its stats.”
“One week,” Clay finally agrees. “And if I don’t trust him, back he goes.”
Hotchkis grins and passes Clay a clipboard to sign then a file folder to keep. “Oh, and Colonel? I’d use the chains if you want to fuck it. That critter is feisty.”
Clay grimaces and Hotchkis beats a hasty retreat , and all three Losers gather around their new “piece of equipment.” Pooch has a penlight out and is the one to brush the hair back from the man’s face and shine it in his eyes. Clay flips through the folder, scanning for the most pertinent details and Jensen examines the controller.
“This boy’s high as a kite,” Pooch announces.
Jensen looks over and is struck by how fragile the guy looks. Not exceptionally young, probably older than Jensen is, but vulnerable. All sharp cheekbones and narrow chin, dark eyes and long lashes.
“I’ve got to take this apart, but on the outside it’s a five-button remote control. Simpler than for a TV on the outside at least. Not sure of the frequency.”
“Shape-shifter,” Clay summarizes from the paperwork. “They’re calling him Cat. Imaginative. Enhanced senses, sound , smell and especially sight. Claws and teeth when he shifts, but less controllable so it’s better to keep him out of close-quarters combat than risk him tearing into friendlies.” He flips through some more papers. “Looks like drugged and chained is SOP for transferring all muties, until they can get used to a new commander pushing their buttons. Let’s get him back to quarters and sobered up and see what we’re working with.”
The walk across the base has never felt so long. Even after Clay takes the manacles off of their new sniper, his steps are still slow and shuffling, even though Jensen can see how hard he works at putting one foot in front of the other, grimly determined to follow even the simple order of “Follow me,” that Clay gives him.
They’re crashing in a small spare barrack, the three of them rattling around in a room made for twelve, while Clay has the whole officer’s suite to himself. Jensen sits Cat down on the bunk next to his own and pulls his shoes off when it looks he’ll fall over if he does it for himself.
“What the hell did they give you?” Jensen asks as he gets him a bottle of water and a pair of Ibuprofen.
“Sedative three, sir.” His voice is quiet and rough. “It’ll wear off soon, sir. A few hours at most. Sir.”
Jensen smiles and shakes his head. “We’re not all that formal, when it’s just us. I’m Jensen. Jake Jensen.” He leaves a conspicuous pause, and even drugged up, the other man gets it.
“Carlos. Alvarez.” The name whispered, like it’s forbidden to use it. Maybe it is.
“Get some sleep, Carlos,” Jensen urges, and watches as he lies down, slow and careful. Not just drugged but hurt maybe, Jensen thinks. He watches for a while even after Carlos is asleep, but it looks like he’s comfortable enough, and the only mark Jensen can find without touching him is a fading green bruise along his cheekbone.
================
Cat wakes to Corporal Jensen’s voice, freezes for a second and realizes it’s not him the tech is talking to when he says “Yeah, yeah, I’m in. Get me the uh, red curry with beef, couple of spring rolls, extra rice.” He glances over and grins when he sees Cat’s eyes open. “You hungry?” he asks as he puts his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. Cat shakes his head. He’ll find something in the mess or get an MRE if he has to.
“Something for later then?” Jensen asks and annoyance prickles under Cat’s skin and he frowns. Jensen has to know he has no money. “Roque’s out in town, he’s bringing us back Thai.”
Cat shakes his head again and Jensen rolls his eyes, says to the phone: “Add on a pad Thai, one star, Tom Ka Gai, two stars, a couple more spring rolls, and two orders of the stuffed turkey wings. What? Yeah, I’m good for it.”
He hangs up the phone and turns the spark of his attention back to Cat. “How’d you sleep? You were pretty out of it. Clay went down and raised some hell, got you kitted out at least.” He gestures to the pile of gear on the trunk by Cat’s feet.
He’s starting to get the feeling that Jensen spews out so many words he doesn’t really expect anybody to keep up with replying to them all, and it’s a relief not to have to figure out what to say to his half-questions.
The pile of gear seems like an invitation, so Cat stands (careful until he’s sure the sedatives have worn off) and starts to sort through it. There’s nothing there that he hasn’t used or been assigned before, just usually not all at once. Jensen settles nearby on a laptop but Cat can feel his eyes on his back.
He saves the gun for last, easing it out of the lightweight storage bag. It’s an M-24. Serviceable, Cat decides, if not his first choice. The bag is heavy even without the gun, and he looks in to see boxes of ammo and a cleaning kit. “Can I…?” he gestures with the gun towards the bed and Jensen looks up at him.
“Yeah, sure. Just don’t load it until the range tomorrow, okay?”
Cat takes the rifle apart, down to the last screw and moving part. The smell of gun oil is almost a comfort. Something he understands, something predictable. Almost a meditation as he reassembles the pieces one by one.
“Dinner’s still about twenty minutes out,” Jensen tells him as he’s running his final checks on the rifle. “You wanna grab a shower, maybe change clothes? I mean the pajama-chic thing is working for you and all, but it’s not really dinner attire.”
Jensen nods towards a door that’s probably showers and toilet, and Cat would like to, can feel the itch of too many days in the same clothes on him. Something in him balks though, at the thought of being naked around a new team, of slippery floors and close quarters. He tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter. That if they want that, they’ll take it whether he’s the one to take his own clothes off or not.
“Hey,” Jensen’s voice is quieter, less hyper. Like maybe Cat’s thoughts showed on his face. “Go ahead, I’ll watch the door for you.”
It shouldn’t make him feel any better, but it does, and he pulls a black t-shirt and dull green BDU pants from the stack of gear, and he goes. Jensen’s already on his feet, laptop in hand, and he settles on the floor by the door as Cat goes in.
The room is made for a team to go through in a hurry. Communal showers at the back, sinks lined up on one side, toilets on the other. Cat chooses a shower in the corner and steps into the spray. The water’s nice. Warm and powerful, but the privacy is even better. Feeling alone and unwatched for the first time in ages, Cat soaps up and scrubs down, washing away the flop-sweat of being over-drugged and helpless.
He dries off and pulls on his new clothes, feeling more a man for it. Comes out of the bathroom to the sound of angry voices, a large black man in Jensen’s face saying “What the hell do you mean, Corporal, I can’t take a piss?”
Jensen glances over his shoulder at Cat and splits into a grin. “What?” he asks the other guy who, out of uniform or not, carries himself like a superior officer. “I didn’t say that. Why would I say that? That’s crazy talk,” a nd he grabs Cat by the upper arm and steers him deftly around the conflict and over to where brown bags have spewed white styrofoam boxes all over the table.
The others join them as Jensen’s opening the dishes and sorting them out. Three end up in front of Cat and he’s hoping the guy doesn’t get pissed when he can’t eat that much food. “Colonel Clay and Pooch you’ve met before,” Jensen tells him, but Cat doesn’t begrudge him the redundancy because he was pretty drugged up when it happened. “Captain Roque, meet our new Gato.”
The look Roque gives him is appraising, and Cat straightens in his seat, staring back at him. The big man glares at him for a long moment and then nods. “Yeah, he might work out.” And after that they all eat, like some hardcore version of the Brady Bunch, the guys recapping their day and Clay letting them know he’s gotten them a full week to get used to the new guy.
He turns in when the rest do. Tired without sedation, his stomach full, a mattress under him, a rifle at his feet. “’Night, Carlos,” Jensen whispers from the next bunk over, and Cat sleeps.
=====================
He is six years old.
At night, he sleeps in the big bed in their little house. Him and his mami and papi, his little sister Ofelia and the new baby Maria. In the day, he helps his papi plant the corn in their garden, or herds the goats to new places to graze while Papi goes to the village to find work. The sky is his roof and the rocky wall of the valley behind their home is his playground.
He is a good boy. He obeys his parents and says his prayers. He tries, so very hard, to pay attention to the goats when he’s alone with them, to make sure they don’t wander off or get into the patch of weeds that make them sick.
A blue butterfly flutters past his nose, bright as the stained glass in their church, like a jewel in the air and he has to follow it, to see where it goes. Along the clumps of thistle, he follows, wanting to touch but knowing his fingers would destroy it. Then it turns, going up the valley wall, where the rocks are huge and smooth, where a little boy cannot find a place for his fingers to grab or his toes to push.
He needs to leap, to claw, to climb, so he does, four feet better than two, sharp claws finding the smallest cracks in the stone. He hears the goats bleat behind him but he is so close now, close enough to see the tiny rainbows on the butterfly’s wings where the boy could only see blue.
The butterfly flutters over a gap and the gato follows, muscles springing, claws catching.
“Carlito!” he hears his father calling, fear in his voice.
He realizes he’s far from where he should be, that the goats have run off home. He is so very high up now, and the gaps seem so very wide. He cries his distress but it comes out a forlorn yowl. He sees his father coming and he needs his papi to come get him down. Climbing is not fun anymore and he wants to go home.
Papi runs towards where Carlos was watching the goats, his ancient rifle in his hands.
“Papi,” Carlos tries to call but this voice is not made for words.
“Mother of God,” Papi swears and raises the rifle and fires. The bullet chips off of the stone just feet from Carlos’ paws and startles him so badly that he falls from the rock, twisting in the air and rolling over and landing on two feet and two hands and he’s all scraped up, he’s bleeding and it hurts.
“Carlito?” his father gasps and then he’s dropping the gun and stumbling to Carlos’ side, a prayer to the Virgin on his lips.
“My son, my son, I almost killed you,” he says and he hugs Carlos so hard it hurts even more. “Oh my boy, what are we going to do?”
=================
Cat wakes to the sound of rapid-fire typing, opens his eyes to see Corporal Jensen sitting at the little table near their bunks at his laptop. The controller is beside the computer, wires hooking the two together. A frown line creases the skin between his eyebrows but disappears as Cat’s slight shift diverts his attention.
“Hey, you’re up. How’d you sleep?”
Cat makes an “Eh” gesture and shrugs. No worse than he expected to.
“Clay wants you to hit the range. Get comfortable with your new rifle. The rest of the guys are tied up today so it’s just you and me until dinner, thought I’d let you catch up on some sleep. I was just checking out this thing while I waited, hope I didn’t wake you up typing. Sorry if I did, so hey, breakfast?”
Cat gets dressed and they head to the mess to eat. It’s between the main rushes of breakfast and lunch. The place isn’t deserted, but quiet enough they can find a table alone off to the side. Cat can feel the stares of the other soldiers, hostile or merely curious, but Jensen’s chatter is a good distraction.
After the meal they go back to the barracks for his rifle and ammo, and then they make the long hike out to the sniper range. “You just do your sniper thing,” Jensen tells him with a vague gesture as he sits down beside Cat’s station and pops open the laptop again. “I’m gonna get some stuff done.” He pulls on goggles and ear protection, does a quick sound-check to make sure Cat can hear him through his, and turns his full attention to the computer.
So Cat gets to work, checks over the rifle again, sights on his target, fires a few rounds. It takes less than three shots to suspect the rifle is a piece of shit, three more to confirm it. A stripped screw that holds the scope in place moves with each recoil. He tries tightening it after each shot, but a half a degree on a scope is yards by the time a bullet hits a target half a mile away. He aims at the corners of the target, sighting in on where the outer red circle comes closest to the point of the corner. Old instinct to hide his skill, to improve himself without sharing that knowledge with whatever unit owns him this week.
He catches Jensen watching a few times, binoculars in hand and a frown on his face.
He’s just about to give up, to resign himself to informing his superiors that he cannot do the job they’re asking with the weapon he’s been given, risking being thought of as incompetent or a trouble-maker, when a shadow crosses over him and Jensen both. He slides one side of the ear protection off and tightens that damn screw one more time.
“Your sniper’s for shit but at least he’s got a sweet ass. You Losers share?” The voice is mocking and lascivious, and isn’t one he knows.
Cat keeps his breath steady, tries not to show the tightening in his shoulders. Turns to look past Jensen and sees another Corporal standing there looking over them.
“Nah,” Jensen drawls. “We’re possessive fuckers, haven’t you heard?” Then he pauses, thoughtful. “You that hard up, Willis? I’ll make a bet with you.”
Cat’s stomach turns. He’d thought Jensen was better than this. That he at least valued him as an asset if not a person.
Jensen climbs to his feet as Willis looks wary.
“I’ve heard about gambling with you assholes.”
“Hey,” Jensen says with mock offense. “That’s Roque, not me. Look, simple terms, nothing slippery. Your next ten shots against his. He wins, you two trade rifles.” Cat’s never seen the man shoot, but he hates Jensen a little less for gambling for a prize that’s more to Cat’s benefit than his own.
“And if I win?” Willis asks, and he’s looking over Cat with undisguised attraction.
Jensen shrugs. “You win, you get to fuck me.”
And that gets their attention, Willis and Cat both.
“Come on, you know you want this,” Jensen says and does a ridiculous little shimmy with his hips, turns and bounces his butt and no, no. Cat can’t shoot for those stakes, can’t let someone else suffer if he fucks up, especially since he’s so uncertain of his equipment. He catches Jensen’s eye and shakes his head but the idiot just grins back at him.
“You’re on,” Willis says and moves his gear over to the station next to Cat’s.
“You got this,” Jensen whispers to Cat as the other shooter gets situated.
They take their first couple shots, and Cat knows he’d have no chance if Willis was any sort of a shot, but he’s about as bad with a good rifle as Cat is with this crappy one, and even though he’s compensating for the bad sight, the spread in their scores is never insurmountable, always within a few bands on the target of tied again.
They get down to the last shot, half a dozen guys gathered around to watch, and Willis hits it in the first white band. Nothing but a bullseye will make it a win and Cat wants to call it off. To offer himself instead because he can’t do this to someone else, can’t fail his new teammate this way.
“I trust you,” Jensen’s voice comes over his headset. “I trust you, man, you’ve got this guy. You take your shot, just let it happen, just let it go there.” And the babble calms him when it should be a distraction, centers him when it should grate on his nerves. He takes his time, aligning the sight and target. Checks the wind and compensates. Three quick breaths and then a big one in and holds it. Slow squeeze on the trigger.
The puff of dust rises from the center of the target before the sound of the impact bounces back to them and then Jensen is screaming incoherent joy into the mic, dragging Cat to his feet and then lifting him from them in a jubilant, crushing hug. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, that’s my boy! Cat my ass, you are a Cougar, my friend, you are a Cougar!”
He sets Cat on the ground again and grabs the defective rifle, tossing it at Willis and then hands Willis’ rifle to Cat. “Come on, Cougs, let’s pack up and go, I got some stuff to work on back at the barracks.”
It’s a strange thing to have one’s name taken, stolen, changed. This is something else. Like Jensen has discovered the secret behind the lie, like he’s seen something nobody else ever has. Cougar. It fits. It feels good. Right.
Cougar stuffs his gear into his bag and follows as Jensen makes a hasty retreat from the irate Willis and his grumbling teammates.
“I can’t wait to tell the guys about this, you were epic, man.”
Cougar tries not to let his enthusiasm affect him, tries to keep his hopes down, but it feels good to be seen, to be trusted, to be valued. Yeah. This might just work out.
=========================
Clay’s in the process of climbing Mt. Paperwork when he hears the boys come back to barracks, Jensen whooping and excited, Pooch’s tone sort of awed and Roque grumbling over the noise. There’s no sound of their sniper, but he’s struck Clay as the quiet type and so Clay doesn’t worry.
It’s an hour later that he gives up on the stack of forms and reports. He feels like he’s gotten the most important of it, requisitioning a few more items for their next job, some computer parts Jensen “needs” but doesn’t expect to get. He stands and stretches and walks out to the common area of the barracks they’re crashing in between jobs. He’s just deciding that yeah, pizza sounds better than whatever they’re serving in the mess for lunch when the door opens and the MPs come in.
“Is there a problem, officers?” he asks, even though it’s probably more accurate to ask what the hell Jensen’s done this time.
“There’s been a report of a theft,” the one on the left answers and points over to the rifle at the foot of the sniper’s bunk. “Corporal Willis has accused the mutie and Corporal Jensen of taking his weapon.”
“What?” Jensen’s voice is sharp and startled. “That can’t be right. That rifle was assigned to this unit. Is Willis crazy?”
“I’m sure we can sort this out,” Clay says. Jensen might be too creative with the rules for his own good, but he never does something like this without a reason and Clay is willing to let him take it as far as he can without stepping in.
“Look,” Jensen says and he pops open his laptop. “C’mere, I’ll show you. Cougs, bring the rifle, let these nice men check the serial.” He turns the computer so everyone can see what he’s doing, clicking through screens to show the team’s equipment lists. “Here.”
So the MPs check the numbers, check the screen. Shrug to each other. “Looks like everything is in order.”
“Damn skippy it is,” Jensen snaps back. “You might want to talk to Willis. Maybe a drug test. The stress of being so incompetent might be getting to him.”
Clay cuts him a shut-the-hell-up glare just as Roque steps up and thumps a heavy hand down on his shoulder.
“Thank you officers,” Clay tells them, “If there’s anything else we can help you with, please let us know.” And he shows them the door before Jensen can talk himself into a hole he didn’t need to be in.
When they’re gone, Clay sighs. “Corporal Jensen, my office, now.” He thinks about it for half a second and then points at their resident mutant. “You too.”
When he’s got them in his office, standing at attention while he sprawls in his chair, he lets them stew for a full minute before asking, “Okay, what the hell was with the weapon, and why didn’t I know the details before we had MPs at our door?”
“That was Willis trying to take back a bet, sir,” Jensen answers. “And I was going to tell you as soon as you came out.”
Clay sighs. “Why were you gambling with Willis?”
Jensen’s off like a shot, mile a minute, “So the M-24 they assigned us was shit. Something wrong with the sight, I dunno. And Willis comes up, running his mouth. So I thought ‘Hey, this sniper-wanna-be doesn’t really need a rifle like that, and our boy Cougs does, and there’s not much chance of a hobbyist like Willis winning, even with the difference in weapons,’ it was like he was offering it up to the cause.”
“What, exactly, is a Cougs?” Clay asks and it’s half stalling to give him a chance to figure out what part of Jensen’s fucked up side-mission to question first and half not liking it when the kid makes up new terminology on him.
Jensen grins. Points to the still-silent sniper. “Cougs. Cougar. ‘Cause a housecat don’t shoot like that.”
Clay has his next point of attack then, “So what were the terms that you put an untried sniper with a shitty rifle up against Willis’ weapon? What if ‘Cougar’ had lost?”
Jensen shrugs and looks shifty. “Nothing we couldn’t stand to lose.”
Clay turns to the sniper then, curious to see if he’ll carry Jensen’s bullshit or roll over to authority. “What were the terms of the bet?”
Only a slight flare of nostrils betrays his nerves. “The rifle against a humiliation. Possibly a painful one.”
Clay’s eyes narrow. “And who’d bear the brunt of this humiliation?”
The mutant’s eyes flick over to Jensen. “Him, sir.”
“It was no big deal,” Jensen protests. Clay waves at him to shut the hell up.
“Let me get this straight. You engaged in illegal gambling with another soldier, that you had to hack our inventory to cover up, with a personal injury to yourself if your sniper had either been not good enough to out-shoot Willis, or had just wanted to see you hurt because you’re the guy with his life in your hands? And if you screwed up with the MPs, our sniper would be out in the courtyard getting the skin whipped off his back right now for stealing?”
Only the last makes Jensen pale, but then he flushes in anger. “I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t keep pissing off the guys who assign our gear. Jesus, Clay, you couldn’t make nice just once?”
“You’re out of line!” Clay roars at him but Jensen doesn’t back down.
He points at ‘Cougar,’ “I gave him no reason to fuck me over. And yeah it was close, but you should have seen the shot, Clay. And I didn’t have to hack to cover it up, I just photoshopped a series of click-through images with the numbers changed.”
Clay feels the last shreds of his self-control tearing apart. “You’ve known this man two days, Corporal, he doesn’t have to have a reason to fuck you, you don’t know anything about him! He’s not your damn mother!”
Jensen snarls back and Clay half-expects him to come over the desk at him. “That’s none of your fucking business, that’s a sealed file.”
Clay snorts out a sad laugh. “You think you’re the only one with secret ways to get to the bottom of things?” It’s just too much, this conversation has gotten too far off track.
“Three miles PT for gambling, in full pack for insubordination. Gear up and go.”
Jensen storms out and the sniper looks likely to follow him. “Not you,” Clay says and calms himself. “It wasn’t your job or within your authority to keep him out of trouble. I’m just sorry he risked your hide in his wild scheme. Go get some lunch with the guys.”
He doesn’t expect Cougar to hesitate still. “Is that an order?” he asks even though Clay’s pretty damn sure it sounded like one. “To not take the PT with Corporal Jensen?”
Clay just watches him for a long moment. Evaluating their new member. Stoic, strong, loyal. Clay is not fool enough to stomp on budding camaraderie like that so he gestures at the door. “Go. Eat when you get back.”
===================
Jensen grabs his gear while Clay is still questioning Cougar. Pooch looks up as he’s pulling his pack on like he’s going to ask a question but Jensen just shakes his head. “PT.” It explains it all, at least to Pooch and Roque, who know how often Jensen’s mouth gets him into trouble. They let him walk out without comment.
In front of their barracks, Jensen takes a moment to tighten his bootlaces and adjust the straps on his pack. He’s more annoyed than pissed, that Clay didn’t get what he’d been trying to do, how little he’d thought the risk to benefit ratio was. Clay should trust him more, because Jensen might get in more trouble than all the others put together, but he has real contributions to make to the team. People skills the others just don’t have or don’t bother to bring to bear. He thinks Clay’s out of line bringing up Jensen’s mom too, because it’s one thing to get in a man’s closed file but another to throw that sort of stuff in his face.
He works really hard at not thinking about that last thing Clay had pointed out, that Cougar could have been the one to suffer if Jensen had fucked up the cover-up. That he’d have been taken from Jensen and hurt and nothing Jensen could have done would get him out of a public whipping.
He’s surprised when Cougar comes out of the barracks, half-glances Jensen’s way and then starts a short series of runner’s stretches. The smoldering anger in Jensen’s chest flares bright and hot again, fucking Clay, sending Cougar out for this like he’d had any damn choice in what Jensen had done.
He waits until Cougar looks done with his stretches and nods his head towards the track. Jensen starts a good steady pace and Cougar falls in smoothly at his side. Unencumbered, Jensen is glad to see, at least Clay had only given him the miles for gambling, not the pack for insubordination.
They’re half a mile into their punishment before Jensen gets near to being able to speak without dumping even more of this shit on Cougar, and his “Sorry, man,” sounds a little bitter even still.
“For what?” Cougar asks, and Jensen doesn’t even know where to start, so they jog a little further before he picks one.
“I didn’t think about them taking it out on you if I fucked up,” Jensen answers at last. “And the shit with Clay. I didn’t think he’d give you PT.”
“He didn’t,” Cougar answers and if Jensen had been a little less skilled at multi-tasking he’d have tripped in surprise.
“Then what are you doing out here?” he asks and Cougar shrugs.
“For the rifle,” he answers, and then, “To see if I had angered you.”
Jensen shakes his head, his anger starting to fade. “None of this is your fault. You made that shot and that’s all I could ask for.”
“When the Colonel asked…” but Jensen cuts him off.
“You were fine. Clay. Okay, maybe we piss each other off, and sometimes I don’t always tell him the whole truth, because I don’t want him to worry, but I don’t lie to my team, and I didn’t want you to either.”
They run on for a while, and Jensen’s not sure if Cougar is processing that or if he just has nothing to add.
Jensen’s never been good with silence, even one as companionable as this. Words just have a way of falling out of his mouth when things are too quiet. “So, my mom,” he says, and surprises himself by going there, but by then it’s too late to take them back without Cougar thinking he’s a dick.
“I never got sick when I was a kid,” Jensen says, choosing his place to start this story. He’s never laid it out like this. Everybody in his life has either known or had no reason to know, before Clay went and told Cougar just enough to make him wonder, and keeping half a secret from someone just seems damn rude. “My sister either. Never thought anything of it, really. I mean I was eight, and I’d never had a cold, never had a scraped knee or bumped head last longer than it took for mom to kiss it well.”
Cougar is quiet, and it feels right to share this here, on the road, where Jensen doesn’t have to look at him.
“When I was eight, we were in a grocery store, and a hound team came through. Lined everyone up along the dairy aisle and they had this—this little girl on a leash, and they had her sniffing everyone as they went up the line. Just about everybody was sort of blasé about it, but my mom, she was shaking, and she tried to stand between me and that little girl, and then the girl pointed at her and they dragged her away.”
Jensen takes a moment to just breathe, wondering why he’s so damn winded from less than two miles, why his chest is so tight.
“My sister and I, we ended up in this special foster care thing. Cultivating our talents and watching us in case one of us came up with powers. Saw mom once a year for a while, but then the visits stopped.” He can’t stop his traitorous brain from reminding him why that was, the secret nobody at the home would tell him, the secret he had to dig out of the government computers on his own. That she’d been assigned to a hospital, using her gifts to heal the sick and important, to give accident victims the slim edge of healing that gave surgeons time to save lives. That everyone she touched started having problems sooner or later, tumors where she’d healed them, everyone but her blood relations. That the body count had risen and they’d pulled her from her job. That she’d pieced together strips of her sheet and hung herself in her rooms.
“So yeah,” Jensen continues on, trying to remember quite why he started this conversation, what he had intended to say. “I don’t think you’re my mom. I just. I think I’m assuming you’re the man that I hope I would have been if I was the mutant.” He almost loses himself with that bit of convoluted dialog. “I wouldn’t fuck someone over without a reason .”
“Don’t give me a reason,” Cougar says as they make the last turn, and Jensen figures that’s fair enough.
======================
They get back to barracks and the others are already gone. They eat lunch that the guys left for them and then Jensen gets back to his computer. He seems lighter, less wound up, and Cougar figures the run helped him, and the talking too. Things are easier between them, Jensen singing to himself as he types and Cougar field striping the SR25 to make sure it’s as good as he thought. Won’t know until the next time he gets to go to the range, but it looks clean at least, tight.
He’s starting to feel the first twinges of the cramps as he’s putting the rifle back together. Gets himself a drink of water. He should tell Jensen, he knows. It’s the other man’s responsibility to take care of him in this, and he trusts Jensen enough to know he’s not neglecting him on purpose.
Cougar just can’t bring himself to speak up, to shame himself with his dependence. He knows he’s been made purposefully weak, but his pride urges him to fight and instead of telling Jensen what he needs, he retires to his bunk, closes his eyes against the burgeoning headache and tries to ignore it. Jensen’s quiet typing falls into white noise like rain and he sleeps.
He wakes to the rest of the team coming back, pizza tonight and Jensen calling over “Hey Cougs, you eatin’?”
“No,” he replies and curls a little more on the bunk. Jensen lets that go and nobody else speaks up. They eat and catch up on their day, teasing the colonel for spending half his day in meetings, getting Jensen’s report on whatever vaguely worded project he was doing on the computer.
After they eat someone breaks out the cards and Jensen calls over again, “You in, Cougar?” and Roque smacks him on the back of the head, “What the fuck is he gonna gamble with, asshole?”
Cougar closes his eyes and listens to their banter, to Pooch bidding his wife’s cookies in the next hand, to Roque flirting with his own knife, to Jensen bragging on some Petunias thing to do with his niece.
The colonel is the first to retire, back to his office. Pooch is next, gonna send his wife an e-mail, look at the sonogram pictures again before he turns in.
Roque heads back towards his bunk and Jensen heads to Cougar. “Hey, Cougs? You okay man? It was only three miles…” and he puts his hand on Cougar’s forehead like a mother checking her offspring for a fever.
“Jesus, are you sick? You’re all clammy. Shit, should I go tell Clay?”
And that’s close enough to a direct question that he cannot put it off any more. “The collar,” he says, “It’s been thirty hours since the last Reward.”
“Oh. Oh! Got it. Sorry, Jesus, they should make these things clearer. Seriously.” Jensen fumbles with the controller and finally pushes the right buttons.
Cougar’s body tenses with the first sharp bite of it along his nervous system, and he bites his lip to not sigh out in pleasure. His eyes close at the relief of it and his tense shoulders sag.
“God damn it,” Jensen growls and Cougar forces himself to look up. Jensen’s blue eyes are dark with sorrow and anger but there’s nothing Cougar can do about this, nothing he can do to be anything other than what he is. He wonders if Jensen is seeing his mother or himself in this, if he’ll pass the controller on to a different team mate to avoid the pain of it.
“Lo siento,” Cougar whispers, but Jensen just shakes his head, fingers twitching like he wants to touch.
“Not your fault. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow. Don’t let it get so bad next time, okay? Just…just tell me.”
Cougar nods and Jensen backs off to let him have the small amount of privacy he can. Still frowning, Jensen plugs the controller back into his computer and starts another round of furious typing.
======================
Carlos curls up on the bed, his tiny baby sister in his arms, Ofelia huddled against his back. In the other room they can hear their parents, the fear in their voices as they discuss what Carlos has done, this thing he has become.
“If we bring him to church, the gato may show,” Mami says, “And if we stop going, the priest will come here to find why, with the Inquisition close behind.”
“I know,” Papi says, and his voice is sad. “He cannot stay here. I will not see my son burn. We will send you and the girls to stay with your sister. I will take Carlos north, across the border, find a job and send you money when we can. It will be easier there, to hide a strange child, where nobody knows us and there are so very many people.”
“If he’s caught…” Mami says, but Papi interrupts her.
“If he’s caught there, he will not burn. That is what matters most.”
Mami cries and Papi’s voice drops soft and low. Angelina holds so tight to Carlos’ side that she’s pinching him but he doesn’t complain. His fault, all his fault.
He prays, all night and all day, for this to all go away, but it doesn’t. Mami and the girls leave a few days later, with the goats and dishes and all of Mami’s pretty things packed in the back of a truck that his uncle borrowed. The few things that are left, Papi folds into careful packs for the both of them, and they go to meet the coyote who will guide them across the border.
===========================
Clay goes with Jensen and “Cougar” to the sniper range the next day. To see what they got for the taxpayer’s dollar, to see if he’s really the advantage the brass claims or a liability in a collar.
Jensen had told him, about the kid hitting the DTs at thirty-some hours in. He’s gotta see if their mutie shoots like a junkie. Personally, he thinks having drug-addicted conscripted soldiers is a bad idea, but the higher ups are treating it like an asset management problem and his fault if the sniper can’t get the job done.
He watches the kid put twenty rounds into the target and knows that he has to call the whole thing off. Not a single shot is anywhere near the bull’s-eye and Clay has no idea how Jensen didn’t end up paying whatever default Willis had had in mind. He gets up to go, catches Jensen’s eye as he stands.
Jensen holds up a finger to stall him, and he looks nervous, like he knows Clay is on his way to return their sniper. Jensen does something with the comms and when he talks next, Clay knows that Cougar can’t hear what he’s saying.
“Clay, wait. Watch. Look at his face.”
And so Clay does. Cougar has a hell of a poker-face, but there’s this little flicker of satisfaction when the shots hit. Clay checks down-range with the binoculars. The holes are far from the center, but the groupings make tight little spatters on the target; most are smaller than a hand’s breadth apart. He glances to Jensen, to say that he sees what Jensen was talking about, but the man’s lips are moving and Clay is chagrined to realize he’s the one who’s been cut out of the loop this time.
Cougar looks up at Jensen, just the briefest of glances followed by the smallest of nods, and then he puts five rounds in the dead center of the target, as pretty a grouping as a commander could ask for.
“I’ll leave you boys to it, then,” he tells them.
He walks away and wonders if he’s handling this right. If they’re keeping the sniper, he needs Jensen close to Cougar so he can figure out the collar—what it does and who it reports to. They seem to have clicked, and it’s better that Cougar have some sort of attachment within the team, someone he’s invested in. He wonders if Jensen’s getting too close though, too tied up in this guy. If he should give the controller to Roque or Pooch for a couple days. In the end, he leaves well enough alone and lets it ride for a while longer.
=======================
The night before Cougar’s first mission with the Losers, the guys all head out for drinks and pool to let off steam. Jensen protests that Cougar should come with them, but Roque calls him an asshole, tells him taking Cougar off base without a mission is like taking a rocket-launcher. Not to be done without a good reason, previous clearance and a shit-ton of paperwork.
“I’ll bring you back a souvenir,” Jensen promises, and he still looks reluctant to go. He sets up a laptop for Cougar to use before he leaves, shows him how to find tv shows and music stations on it and Cougar is actually looking forward to having a few hours alone, to relax and just be for a while.
The team is gone for less than half an hour when the door opens again. Cougar looks over and flips to his feet. Fuck. Willis and his cronies slip in like a pack of jackals.
“Take my weapon? Make me look like the idiot? Gonna fuck you with that rifle, y’ god-damn mutie.”
The gato in him bristles under his skin, twists around and wants to come out. And he’s afraid, so damn much to lose. Visits with his family that can be taken away, the conditional residency his parents were given because of what he is and his obedient service. If he shifts, there will be no stopping. The gato will have them. Will kill them all and purr as it licks its claws clean.
They fan out around him, and the one on his far left strikes first, a wild punch that Cougar ducks under. And then it’s on, trying to dance around them, getting his own jabs in where he can. Knowing that unless he lets the beast free, they’re going to win eventually, going to take him down and cripple him, maybe kill him.
A lucky strike catches him on the mouth. Blood spills down his chin. A boot kicks the side of his knee and he stumbles to his knees. He’s fighting himself more than them now, trying to keep the gato inside, trying to remember why it was so important, arms wrapped around himself like he can physically hold it in.
“What the fuck is going on here?” The booming voice cuts through the violence and the room goes still. Cougar looks up through his hair and sees Roque in the doorway with a thunderstorm of anger on his face. “We leave you for one minute and you have a wild party, Cougar?” he asks, but he’s looking at Willis’ men.
Roque strides over, looks Willis in the eye and then punches him straight in his face. There’s a crunch of cartilage and he goes down screaming. He kicks another and smashes the third into the wall. The other two run for the door and he slings the half-conscious man into them, knocking them to the ground. “Pick this shit up!” he orders, pointing at the guys that are down, and the least-injured of them are quick to drag them out of the building. “Anybody asks, you fell, assholes! You do not want my side of the story on your record.”
“Motherfucker,” Roque grumbles when they’re gone. “You need a medic?”
Cougar shakes his head. Pulls himself together. So close, Jesus, he was so close to losing all he holds dear.
Roque offers him a hand and pulls Cougar to his feet, then turns and strides over to his bunk, digs out his cell phone (Cougar thinks that’s what brought him back unexpectedly soon) and dials.
“Clay. I’m stayin’ in. You guys have fun without me.”
Cougar goes to the sinks to wash up. Wishes Jensen was there so he could shower. Roque is cleaning his weapons when he comes out again, a long line of knives and guns spread out on a towel on his bed. Cougar curls up on his own bunk and debates asking permission to shift, needing the comfort of claws and fur, but he knows Roque the least of any of them and can’t afford to show any weakness.
“Shit ain’t right,” Roque finally mutters. “I’m not having it in our own damn barracks. Those guys ever fuck with you again, you tell me, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Cougar replies.
Roque stares at him for a painfully long time.
“Sure you don’t need a medic?”
“I am sure.”
“Fucking with a team right before a mission,” Roque grumbles to himself and Cougar still isn’t sure if his anger is that a person was going to be hurt, or just the team’s efficiency.
Hours later the rest of the team stumbles in, Pooch mostly sober, Clay grinning and weaving, Jensen bouncing with energy, a cowboy hat swinging from his finger.
“Cougs!” he hollers and frisbees the hat the last few feet to Cougar’s bunk. Cougar plucks it out of the air.
“Told you I’d get you a souvenir,” he beams. Cougar looks the gift over. Worn and well-loved, it smells like another man and faintly of Jensen, like he’d worn it on the ride home. “Won it for you playin’ pool. You like it?” Jensen grins, stinking of alcohol, as Cougar slips the hat on his head. It feels good, won’t fall off and it’ll hold his hair back, keep the sun out of his eyes. It’s perfect.
“Si,” he answers and Jensen blinks, his smile fading.
“Cougar? What happened to your face?” He reaches out like he’s going to touch the bruise around Cougar’s left eye, brush the split in his lip. “Roque? What the hell happened to our Cougar?”
“Willis and his boys,” Roque answers without looking up.
“When we get back,” Jensen promises, “They are officially fucked with.”
Clay shambles over, taking Cougar’s chin in a surprisingly gentle hand and tips his face so he can see the damage better. “That gonna fuck with your shooting?” he asks and Cougar shakes his head, as much as he can with Clay still touching him. The man looks angry.
“Soon as we get back, Jensen, fuck away.”
Author: LadyJanelly
Fandom: The Losers
Charcters/Pairing: Jensen/Cougar, Clay, Roque, Pooch
Word Count: ~23,500
Summary: AU world, where mutants are enslaved, and The Losers just got assigned a new sniper
Influences: X-men, Push, Star Trek TOS, Dark Angel
Warnings: brief suicidal thoughts, Mentions of past non-con, attempted non-con, dub-con, violence, Stockholm syndrome, involuntary drug addiction, withdrawal, rimming, child peril, violence, no major character death
Notes: Enormous thanks to Peaceful_sands and trishabooms for the cheerleading and support, and to Peaceful_sands for her beta skills. All remaining errors are mine, probably added at the last minute. Fic is completed, to be posted in 3 parts as final edits are done.
Title from this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1onW7xe4SE (The Johnny Cash cover makes it seem a little more appropriate for these tough boys)
They’re in the motor pool when Hotchkis from requisitions brings their new sniper. Pooch fine-tuning their ride, Jensen handing him tools and Clay coming out to check the work while he procrastinates the mountain of paperwork sitting on his desk.
“The hell is this?” Clay barks and Jensen looks up. Sees Hotchkis first and then the other man and it’s not hard to tell why Clay is pissed. The guy looks like shit, shuffling along in heavy manacles with a short chain between them, hands bound in front of him. Dark, chin-length hair curls around his face and hides his eyes. He’s too thin, all bony shoulders through the mustard-yellow jump-suit they’ve put him in. The matte black collar looks obscenely heavy around his slim throat, a red LED blinking ominously on the front of it.
“Take him back,” Clay orders, like that’s the end of it, before it’s even started. “We need a sniper, not a mutie.”
The man in question doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to notice he’s being talked about.
Hotchkis shrugs. “This is what they sent you. File says this is what you get, take it or leave it, but the brass wants you to have a sniper who won’t request a transfer out of your team in three days. If you don’t wanna work with a freak, you can do without.”
“I’ve got no problem with mutants.” Clay’s glare would melt glass and Jensen’s a little awed that this pencil-pusher seems immune. “What I’ve got a problem with is putting the lives of my men in the hands of a slave who never volunteered for this shit.”
The sniper sways on his feet, just a little, but Jensen sees, wonders just how drugged up he is.
“Look,” Hotchkis says, “The thing is tame. Broken to collar years ago. Give him clear orders and things to kill and you’ll have no complaints. Just keep him drugged or busy on your downtime. Here.” He pulled a wrist-mounted control box off of his arm and went to pass it to Clay. “It’s wired into his bloodstream and nervous system. You’ve got your pain and reward here, sedative and stimulant here, and flip that cover up and that button blows his head off. Wouldn’t do that if I were you because the paperwork is a bitch.”
“Just give it a try,” Hotchkis wheedles as he hands Clay a second controller. Clay absently passes it back to Jensen. The box is heavy in Jensen’s hand, weighed down with the responsibility for a helpless person’s life. He takes another step forward, putting himself between the bureaucrat and his charge.
Hotchkis is still babbling. “Run it through some exercises. Use the collar and give it limits. Positive and negative reinforcement. Nobody has ever complained about its performance in the field and you should see its stats.”
“One week,” Clay finally agrees. “And if I don’t trust him, back he goes.”
Hotchkis grins and passes Clay a clipboard to sign then a file folder to keep. “Oh, and Colonel? I’d use the chains if you want to fuck it. That critter is feisty.”
Clay grimaces and Hotchkis beats a hasty retreat , and all three Losers gather around their new “piece of equipment.” Pooch has a penlight out and is the one to brush the hair back from the man’s face and shine it in his eyes. Clay flips through the folder, scanning for the most pertinent details and Jensen examines the controller.
“This boy’s high as a kite,” Pooch announces.
Jensen looks over and is struck by how fragile the guy looks. Not exceptionally young, probably older than Jensen is, but vulnerable. All sharp cheekbones and narrow chin, dark eyes and long lashes.
“I’ve got to take this apart, but on the outside it’s a five-button remote control. Simpler than for a TV on the outside at least. Not sure of the frequency.”
“Shape-shifter,” Clay summarizes from the paperwork. “They’re calling him Cat. Imaginative. Enhanced senses, sound , smell and especially sight. Claws and teeth when he shifts, but less controllable so it’s better to keep him out of close-quarters combat than risk him tearing into friendlies.” He flips through some more papers. “Looks like drugged and chained is SOP for transferring all muties, until they can get used to a new commander pushing their buttons. Let’s get him back to quarters and sobered up and see what we’re working with.”
The walk across the base has never felt so long. Even after Clay takes the manacles off of their new sniper, his steps are still slow and shuffling, even though Jensen can see how hard he works at putting one foot in front of the other, grimly determined to follow even the simple order of “Follow me,” that Clay gives him.
They’re crashing in a small spare barrack, the three of them rattling around in a room made for twelve, while Clay has the whole officer’s suite to himself. Jensen sits Cat down on the bunk next to his own and pulls his shoes off when it looks he’ll fall over if he does it for himself.
“What the hell did they give you?” Jensen asks as he gets him a bottle of water and a pair of Ibuprofen.
“Sedative three, sir.” His voice is quiet and rough. “It’ll wear off soon, sir. A few hours at most. Sir.”
Jensen smiles and shakes his head. “We’re not all that formal, when it’s just us. I’m Jensen. Jake Jensen.” He leaves a conspicuous pause, and even drugged up, the other man gets it.
“Carlos. Alvarez.” The name whispered, like it’s forbidden to use it. Maybe it is.
“Get some sleep, Carlos,” Jensen urges, and watches as he lies down, slow and careful. Not just drugged but hurt maybe, Jensen thinks. He watches for a while even after Carlos is asleep, but it looks like he’s comfortable enough, and the only mark Jensen can find without touching him is a fading green bruise along his cheekbone.
================
Cat wakes to Corporal Jensen’s voice, freezes for a second and realizes it’s not him the tech is talking to when he says “Yeah, yeah, I’m in. Get me the uh, red curry with beef, couple of spring rolls, extra rice.” He glances over and grins when he sees Cat’s eyes open. “You hungry?” he asks as he puts his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. Cat shakes his head. He’ll find something in the mess or get an MRE if he has to.
“Something for later then?” Jensen asks and annoyance prickles under Cat’s skin and he frowns. Jensen has to know he has no money. “Roque’s out in town, he’s bringing us back Thai.”
Cat shakes his head again and Jensen rolls his eyes, says to the phone: “Add on a pad Thai, one star, Tom Ka Gai, two stars, a couple more spring rolls, and two orders of the stuffed turkey wings. What? Yeah, I’m good for it.”
He hangs up the phone and turns the spark of his attention back to Cat. “How’d you sleep? You were pretty out of it. Clay went down and raised some hell, got you kitted out at least.” He gestures to the pile of gear on the trunk by Cat’s feet.
He’s starting to get the feeling that Jensen spews out so many words he doesn’t really expect anybody to keep up with replying to them all, and it’s a relief not to have to figure out what to say to his half-questions.
The pile of gear seems like an invitation, so Cat stands (careful until he’s sure the sedatives have worn off) and starts to sort through it. There’s nothing there that he hasn’t used or been assigned before, just usually not all at once. Jensen settles nearby on a laptop but Cat can feel his eyes on his back.
He saves the gun for last, easing it out of the lightweight storage bag. It’s an M-24. Serviceable, Cat decides, if not his first choice. The bag is heavy even without the gun, and he looks in to see boxes of ammo and a cleaning kit. “Can I…?” he gestures with the gun towards the bed and Jensen looks up at him.
“Yeah, sure. Just don’t load it until the range tomorrow, okay?”
Cat takes the rifle apart, down to the last screw and moving part. The smell of gun oil is almost a comfort. Something he understands, something predictable. Almost a meditation as he reassembles the pieces one by one.
“Dinner’s still about twenty minutes out,” Jensen tells him as he’s running his final checks on the rifle. “You wanna grab a shower, maybe change clothes? I mean the pajama-chic thing is working for you and all, but it’s not really dinner attire.”
Jensen nods towards a door that’s probably showers and toilet, and Cat would like to, can feel the itch of too many days in the same clothes on him. Something in him balks though, at the thought of being naked around a new team, of slippery floors and close quarters. He tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter. That if they want that, they’ll take it whether he’s the one to take his own clothes off or not.
“Hey,” Jensen’s voice is quieter, less hyper. Like maybe Cat’s thoughts showed on his face. “Go ahead, I’ll watch the door for you.”
It shouldn’t make him feel any better, but it does, and he pulls a black t-shirt and dull green BDU pants from the stack of gear, and he goes. Jensen’s already on his feet, laptop in hand, and he settles on the floor by the door as Cat goes in.
The room is made for a team to go through in a hurry. Communal showers at the back, sinks lined up on one side, toilets on the other. Cat chooses a shower in the corner and steps into the spray. The water’s nice. Warm and powerful, but the privacy is even better. Feeling alone and unwatched for the first time in ages, Cat soaps up and scrubs down, washing away the flop-sweat of being over-drugged and helpless.
He dries off and pulls on his new clothes, feeling more a man for it. Comes out of the bathroom to the sound of angry voices, a large black man in Jensen’s face saying “What the hell do you mean, Corporal, I can’t take a piss?”
Jensen glances over his shoulder at Cat and splits into a grin. “What?” he asks the other guy who, out of uniform or not, carries himself like a superior officer. “I didn’t say that. Why would I say that? That’s crazy talk,” a nd he grabs Cat by the upper arm and steers him deftly around the conflict and over to where brown bags have spewed white styrofoam boxes all over the table.
The others join them as Jensen’s opening the dishes and sorting them out. Three end up in front of Cat and he’s hoping the guy doesn’t get pissed when he can’t eat that much food. “Colonel Clay and Pooch you’ve met before,” Jensen tells him, but Cat doesn’t begrudge him the redundancy because he was pretty drugged up when it happened. “Captain Roque, meet our new Gato.”
The look Roque gives him is appraising, and Cat straightens in his seat, staring back at him. The big man glares at him for a long moment and then nods. “Yeah, he might work out.” And after that they all eat, like some hardcore version of the Brady Bunch, the guys recapping their day and Clay letting them know he’s gotten them a full week to get used to the new guy.
He turns in when the rest do. Tired without sedation, his stomach full, a mattress under him, a rifle at his feet. “’Night, Carlos,” Jensen whispers from the next bunk over, and Cat sleeps.
=====================
He is six years old.
At night, he sleeps in the big bed in their little house. Him and his mami and papi, his little sister Ofelia and the new baby Maria. In the day, he helps his papi plant the corn in their garden, or herds the goats to new places to graze while Papi goes to the village to find work. The sky is his roof and the rocky wall of the valley behind their home is his playground.
He is a good boy. He obeys his parents and says his prayers. He tries, so very hard, to pay attention to the goats when he’s alone with them, to make sure they don’t wander off or get into the patch of weeds that make them sick.
A blue butterfly flutters past his nose, bright as the stained glass in their church, like a jewel in the air and he has to follow it, to see where it goes. Along the clumps of thistle, he follows, wanting to touch but knowing his fingers would destroy it. Then it turns, going up the valley wall, where the rocks are huge and smooth, where a little boy cannot find a place for his fingers to grab or his toes to push.
He needs to leap, to claw, to climb, so he does, four feet better than two, sharp claws finding the smallest cracks in the stone. He hears the goats bleat behind him but he is so close now, close enough to see the tiny rainbows on the butterfly’s wings where the boy could only see blue.
The butterfly flutters over a gap and the gato follows, muscles springing, claws catching.
“Carlito!” he hears his father calling, fear in his voice.
He realizes he’s far from where he should be, that the goats have run off home. He is so very high up now, and the gaps seem so very wide. He cries his distress but it comes out a forlorn yowl. He sees his father coming and he needs his papi to come get him down. Climbing is not fun anymore and he wants to go home.
Papi runs towards where Carlos was watching the goats, his ancient rifle in his hands.
“Papi,” Carlos tries to call but this voice is not made for words.
“Mother of God,” Papi swears and raises the rifle and fires. The bullet chips off of the stone just feet from Carlos’ paws and startles him so badly that he falls from the rock, twisting in the air and rolling over and landing on two feet and two hands and he’s all scraped up, he’s bleeding and it hurts.
“Carlito?” his father gasps and then he’s dropping the gun and stumbling to Carlos’ side, a prayer to the Virgin on his lips.
“My son, my son, I almost killed you,” he says and he hugs Carlos so hard it hurts even more. “Oh my boy, what are we going to do?”
=================
Cat wakes to the sound of rapid-fire typing, opens his eyes to see Corporal Jensen sitting at the little table near their bunks at his laptop. The controller is beside the computer, wires hooking the two together. A frown line creases the skin between his eyebrows but disappears as Cat’s slight shift diverts his attention.
“Hey, you’re up. How’d you sleep?”
Cat makes an “Eh” gesture and shrugs. No worse than he expected to.
“Clay wants you to hit the range. Get comfortable with your new rifle. The rest of the guys are tied up today so it’s just you and me until dinner, thought I’d let you catch up on some sleep. I was just checking out this thing while I waited, hope I didn’t wake you up typing. Sorry if I did, so hey, breakfast?”
Cat gets dressed and they head to the mess to eat. It’s between the main rushes of breakfast and lunch. The place isn’t deserted, but quiet enough they can find a table alone off to the side. Cat can feel the stares of the other soldiers, hostile or merely curious, but Jensen’s chatter is a good distraction.
After the meal they go back to the barracks for his rifle and ammo, and then they make the long hike out to the sniper range. “You just do your sniper thing,” Jensen tells him with a vague gesture as he sits down beside Cat’s station and pops open the laptop again. “I’m gonna get some stuff done.” He pulls on goggles and ear protection, does a quick sound-check to make sure Cat can hear him through his, and turns his full attention to the computer.
So Cat gets to work, checks over the rifle again, sights on his target, fires a few rounds. It takes less than three shots to suspect the rifle is a piece of shit, three more to confirm it. A stripped screw that holds the scope in place moves with each recoil. He tries tightening it after each shot, but a half a degree on a scope is yards by the time a bullet hits a target half a mile away. He aims at the corners of the target, sighting in on where the outer red circle comes closest to the point of the corner. Old instinct to hide his skill, to improve himself without sharing that knowledge with whatever unit owns him this week.
He catches Jensen watching a few times, binoculars in hand and a frown on his face.
He’s just about to give up, to resign himself to informing his superiors that he cannot do the job they’re asking with the weapon he’s been given, risking being thought of as incompetent or a trouble-maker, when a shadow crosses over him and Jensen both. He slides one side of the ear protection off and tightens that damn screw one more time.
“Your sniper’s for shit but at least he’s got a sweet ass. You Losers share?” The voice is mocking and lascivious, and isn’t one he knows.
Cat keeps his breath steady, tries not to show the tightening in his shoulders. Turns to look past Jensen and sees another Corporal standing there looking over them.
“Nah,” Jensen drawls. “We’re possessive fuckers, haven’t you heard?” Then he pauses, thoughtful. “You that hard up, Willis? I’ll make a bet with you.”
Cat’s stomach turns. He’d thought Jensen was better than this. That he at least valued him as an asset if not a person.
Jensen climbs to his feet as Willis looks wary.
“I’ve heard about gambling with you assholes.”
“Hey,” Jensen says with mock offense. “That’s Roque, not me. Look, simple terms, nothing slippery. Your next ten shots against his. He wins, you two trade rifles.” Cat’s never seen the man shoot, but he hates Jensen a little less for gambling for a prize that’s more to Cat’s benefit than his own.
“And if I win?” Willis asks, and he’s looking over Cat with undisguised attraction.
Jensen shrugs. “You win, you get to fuck me.”
And that gets their attention, Willis and Cat both.
“Come on, you know you want this,” Jensen says and does a ridiculous little shimmy with his hips, turns and bounces his butt and no, no. Cat can’t shoot for those stakes, can’t let someone else suffer if he fucks up, especially since he’s so uncertain of his equipment. He catches Jensen’s eye and shakes his head but the idiot just grins back at him.
“You’re on,” Willis says and moves his gear over to the station next to Cat’s.
“You got this,” Jensen whispers to Cat as the other shooter gets situated.
They take their first couple shots, and Cat knows he’d have no chance if Willis was any sort of a shot, but he’s about as bad with a good rifle as Cat is with this crappy one, and even though he’s compensating for the bad sight, the spread in their scores is never insurmountable, always within a few bands on the target of tied again.
They get down to the last shot, half a dozen guys gathered around to watch, and Willis hits it in the first white band. Nothing but a bullseye will make it a win and Cat wants to call it off. To offer himself instead because he can’t do this to someone else, can’t fail his new teammate this way.
“I trust you,” Jensen’s voice comes over his headset. “I trust you, man, you’ve got this guy. You take your shot, just let it happen, just let it go there.” And the babble calms him when it should be a distraction, centers him when it should grate on his nerves. He takes his time, aligning the sight and target. Checks the wind and compensates. Three quick breaths and then a big one in and holds it. Slow squeeze on the trigger.
The puff of dust rises from the center of the target before the sound of the impact bounces back to them and then Jensen is screaming incoherent joy into the mic, dragging Cat to his feet and then lifting him from them in a jubilant, crushing hug. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, that’s my boy! Cat my ass, you are a Cougar, my friend, you are a Cougar!”
He sets Cat on the ground again and grabs the defective rifle, tossing it at Willis and then hands Willis’ rifle to Cat. “Come on, Cougs, let’s pack up and go, I got some stuff to work on back at the barracks.”
It’s a strange thing to have one’s name taken, stolen, changed. This is something else. Like Jensen has discovered the secret behind the lie, like he’s seen something nobody else ever has. Cougar. It fits. It feels good. Right.
Cougar stuffs his gear into his bag and follows as Jensen makes a hasty retreat from the irate Willis and his grumbling teammates.
“I can’t wait to tell the guys about this, you were epic, man.”
Cougar tries not to let his enthusiasm affect him, tries to keep his hopes down, but it feels good to be seen, to be trusted, to be valued. Yeah. This might just work out.
=========================
Clay’s in the process of climbing Mt. Paperwork when he hears the boys come back to barracks, Jensen whooping and excited, Pooch’s tone sort of awed and Roque grumbling over the noise. There’s no sound of their sniper, but he’s struck Clay as the quiet type and so Clay doesn’t worry.
It’s an hour later that he gives up on the stack of forms and reports. He feels like he’s gotten the most important of it, requisitioning a few more items for their next job, some computer parts Jensen “needs” but doesn’t expect to get. He stands and stretches and walks out to the common area of the barracks they’re crashing in between jobs. He’s just deciding that yeah, pizza sounds better than whatever they’re serving in the mess for lunch when the door opens and the MPs come in.
“Is there a problem, officers?” he asks, even though it’s probably more accurate to ask what the hell Jensen’s done this time.
“There’s been a report of a theft,” the one on the left answers and points over to the rifle at the foot of the sniper’s bunk. “Corporal Willis has accused the mutie and Corporal Jensen of taking his weapon.”
“What?” Jensen’s voice is sharp and startled. “That can’t be right. That rifle was assigned to this unit. Is Willis crazy?”
“I’m sure we can sort this out,” Clay says. Jensen might be too creative with the rules for his own good, but he never does something like this without a reason and Clay is willing to let him take it as far as he can without stepping in.
“Look,” Jensen says and he pops open his laptop. “C’mere, I’ll show you. Cougs, bring the rifle, let these nice men check the serial.” He turns the computer so everyone can see what he’s doing, clicking through screens to show the team’s equipment lists. “Here.”
So the MPs check the numbers, check the screen. Shrug to each other. “Looks like everything is in order.”
“Damn skippy it is,” Jensen snaps back. “You might want to talk to Willis. Maybe a drug test. The stress of being so incompetent might be getting to him.”
Clay cuts him a shut-the-hell-up glare just as Roque steps up and thumps a heavy hand down on his shoulder.
“Thank you officers,” Clay tells them, “If there’s anything else we can help you with, please let us know.” And he shows them the door before Jensen can talk himself into a hole he didn’t need to be in.
When they’re gone, Clay sighs. “Corporal Jensen, my office, now.” He thinks about it for half a second and then points at their resident mutant. “You too.”
When he’s got them in his office, standing at attention while he sprawls in his chair, he lets them stew for a full minute before asking, “Okay, what the hell was with the weapon, and why didn’t I know the details before we had MPs at our door?”
“That was Willis trying to take back a bet, sir,” Jensen answers. “And I was going to tell you as soon as you came out.”
Clay sighs. “Why were you gambling with Willis?”
Jensen’s off like a shot, mile a minute, “So the M-24 they assigned us was shit. Something wrong with the sight, I dunno. And Willis comes up, running his mouth. So I thought ‘Hey, this sniper-wanna-be doesn’t really need a rifle like that, and our boy Cougs does, and there’s not much chance of a hobbyist like Willis winning, even with the difference in weapons,’ it was like he was offering it up to the cause.”
“What, exactly, is a Cougs?” Clay asks and it’s half stalling to give him a chance to figure out what part of Jensen’s fucked up side-mission to question first and half not liking it when the kid makes up new terminology on him.
Jensen grins. Points to the still-silent sniper. “Cougs. Cougar. ‘Cause a housecat don’t shoot like that.”
Clay has his next point of attack then, “So what were the terms that you put an untried sniper with a shitty rifle up against Willis’ weapon? What if ‘Cougar’ had lost?”
Jensen shrugs and looks shifty. “Nothing we couldn’t stand to lose.”
Clay turns to the sniper then, curious to see if he’ll carry Jensen’s bullshit or roll over to authority. “What were the terms of the bet?”
Only a slight flare of nostrils betrays his nerves. “The rifle against a humiliation. Possibly a painful one.”
Clay’s eyes narrow. “And who’d bear the brunt of this humiliation?”
The mutant’s eyes flick over to Jensen. “Him, sir.”
“It was no big deal,” Jensen protests. Clay waves at him to shut the hell up.
“Let me get this straight. You engaged in illegal gambling with another soldier, that you had to hack our inventory to cover up, with a personal injury to yourself if your sniper had either been not good enough to out-shoot Willis, or had just wanted to see you hurt because you’re the guy with his life in your hands? And if you screwed up with the MPs, our sniper would be out in the courtyard getting the skin whipped off his back right now for stealing?”
Only the last makes Jensen pale, but then he flushes in anger. “I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t keep pissing off the guys who assign our gear. Jesus, Clay, you couldn’t make nice just once?”
“You’re out of line!” Clay roars at him but Jensen doesn’t back down.
He points at ‘Cougar,’ “I gave him no reason to fuck me over. And yeah it was close, but you should have seen the shot, Clay. And I didn’t have to hack to cover it up, I just photoshopped a series of click-through images with the numbers changed.”
Clay feels the last shreds of his self-control tearing apart. “You’ve known this man two days, Corporal, he doesn’t have to have a reason to fuck you, you don’t know anything about him! He’s not your damn mother!”
Jensen snarls back and Clay half-expects him to come over the desk at him. “That’s none of your fucking business, that’s a sealed file.”
Clay snorts out a sad laugh. “You think you’re the only one with secret ways to get to the bottom of things?” It’s just too much, this conversation has gotten too far off track.
“Three miles PT for gambling, in full pack for insubordination. Gear up and go.”
Jensen storms out and the sniper looks likely to follow him. “Not you,” Clay says and calms himself. “It wasn’t your job or within your authority to keep him out of trouble. I’m just sorry he risked your hide in his wild scheme. Go get some lunch with the guys.”
He doesn’t expect Cougar to hesitate still. “Is that an order?” he asks even though Clay’s pretty damn sure it sounded like one. “To not take the PT with Corporal Jensen?”
Clay just watches him for a long moment. Evaluating their new member. Stoic, strong, loyal. Clay is not fool enough to stomp on budding camaraderie like that so he gestures at the door. “Go. Eat when you get back.”
===================
Jensen grabs his gear while Clay is still questioning Cougar. Pooch looks up as he’s pulling his pack on like he’s going to ask a question but Jensen just shakes his head. “PT.” It explains it all, at least to Pooch and Roque, who know how often Jensen’s mouth gets him into trouble. They let him walk out without comment.
In front of their barracks, Jensen takes a moment to tighten his bootlaces and adjust the straps on his pack. He’s more annoyed than pissed, that Clay didn’t get what he’d been trying to do, how little he’d thought the risk to benefit ratio was. Clay should trust him more, because Jensen might get in more trouble than all the others put together, but he has real contributions to make to the team. People skills the others just don’t have or don’t bother to bring to bear. He thinks Clay’s out of line bringing up Jensen’s mom too, because it’s one thing to get in a man’s closed file but another to throw that sort of stuff in his face.
He works really hard at not thinking about that last thing Clay had pointed out, that Cougar could have been the one to suffer if Jensen had fucked up the cover-up. That he’d have been taken from Jensen and hurt and nothing Jensen could have done would get him out of a public whipping.
He’s surprised when Cougar comes out of the barracks, half-glances Jensen’s way and then starts a short series of runner’s stretches. The smoldering anger in Jensen’s chest flares bright and hot again, fucking Clay, sending Cougar out for this like he’d had any damn choice in what Jensen had done.
He waits until Cougar looks done with his stretches and nods his head towards the track. Jensen starts a good steady pace and Cougar falls in smoothly at his side. Unencumbered, Jensen is glad to see, at least Clay had only given him the miles for gambling, not the pack for insubordination.
They’re half a mile into their punishment before Jensen gets near to being able to speak without dumping even more of this shit on Cougar, and his “Sorry, man,” sounds a little bitter even still.
“For what?” Cougar asks, and Jensen doesn’t even know where to start, so they jog a little further before he picks one.
“I didn’t think about them taking it out on you if I fucked up,” Jensen answers at last. “And the shit with Clay. I didn’t think he’d give you PT.”
“He didn’t,” Cougar answers and if Jensen had been a little less skilled at multi-tasking he’d have tripped in surprise.
“Then what are you doing out here?” he asks and Cougar shrugs.
“For the rifle,” he answers, and then, “To see if I had angered you.”
Jensen shakes his head, his anger starting to fade. “None of this is your fault. You made that shot and that’s all I could ask for.”
“When the Colonel asked…” but Jensen cuts him off.
“You were fine. Clay. Okay, maybe we piss each other off, and sometimes I don’t always tell him the whole truth, because I don’t want him to worry, but I don’t lie to my team, and I didn’t want you to either.”
They run on for a while, and Jensen’s not sure if Cougar is processing that or if he just has nothing to add.
Jensen’s never been good with silence, even one as companionable as this. Words just have a way of falling out of his mouth when things are too quiet. “So, my mom,” he says, and surprises himself by going there, but by then it’s too late to take them back without Cougar thinking he’s a dick.
“I never got sick when I was a kid,” Jensen says, choosing his place to start this story. He’s never laid it out like this. Everybody in his life has either known or had no reason to know, before Clay went and told Cougar just enough to make him wonder, and keeping half a secret from someone just seems damn rude. “My sister either. Never thought anything of it, really. I mean I was eight, and I’d never had a cold, never had a scraped knee or bumped head last longer than it took for mom to kiss it well.”
Cougar is quiet, and it feels right to share this here, on the road, where Jensen doesn’t have to look at him.
“When I was eight, we were in a grocery store, and a hound team came through. Lined everyone up along the dairy aisle and they had this—this little girl on a leash, and they had her sniffing everyone as they went up the line. Just about everybody was sort of blasé about it, but my mom, she was shaking, and she tried to stand between me and that little girl, and then the girl pointed at her and they dragged her away.”
Jensen takes a moment to just breathe, wondering why he’s so damn winded from less than two miles, why his chest is so tight.
“My sister and I, we ended up in this special foster care thing. Cultivating our talents and watching us in case one of us came up with powers. Saw mom once a year for a while, but then the visits stopped.” He can’t stop his traitorous brain from reminding him why that was, the secret nobody at the home would tell him, the secret he had to dig out of the government computers on his own. That she’d been assigned to a hospital, using her gifts to heal the sick and important, to give accident victims the slim edge of healing that gave surgeons time to save lives. That everyone she touched started having problems sooner or later, tumors where she’d healed them, everyone but her blood relations. That the body count had risen and they’d pulled her from her job. That she’d pieced together strips of her sheet and hung herself in her rooms.
“So yeah,” Jensen continues on, trying to remember quite why he started this conversation, what he had intended to say. “I don’t think you’re my mom. I just. I think I’m assuming you’re the man that I hope I would have been if I was the mutant.” He almost loses himself with that bit of convoluted dialog. “I wouldn’t fuck someone over without a reason .”
“Don’t give me a reason,” Cougar says as they make the last turn, and Jensen figures that’s fair enough.
======================
They get back to barracks and the others are already gone. They eat lunch that the guys left for them and then Jensen gets back to his computer. He seems lighter, less wound up, and Cougar figures the run helped him, and the talking too. Things are easier between them, Jensen singing to himself as he types and Cougar field striping the SR25 to make sure it’s as good as he thought. Won’t know until the next time he gets to go to the range, but it looks clean at least, tight.
He’s starting to feel the first twinges of the cramps as he’s putting the rifle back together. Gets himself a drink of water. He should tell Jensen, he knows. It’s the other man’s responsibility to take care of him in this, and he trusts Jensen enough to know he’s not neglecting him on purpose.
Cougar just can’t bring himself to speak up, to shame himself with his dependence. He knows he’s been made purposefully weak, but his pride urges him to fight and instead of telling Jensen what he needs, he retires to his bunk, closes his eyes against the burgeoning headache and tries to ignore it. Jensen’s quiet typing falls into white noise like rain and he sleeps.
He wakes to the rest of the team coming back, pizza tonight and Jensen calling over “Hey Cougs, you eatin’?”
“No,” he replies and curls a little more on the bunk. Jensen lets that go and nobody else speaks up. They eat and catch up on their day, teasing the colonel for spending half his day in meetings, getting Jensen’s report on whatever vaguely worded project he was doing on the computer.
After they eat someone breaks out the cards and Jensen calls over again, “You in, Cougar?” and Roque smacks him on the back of the head, “What the fuck is he gonna gamble with, asshole?”
Cougar closes his eyes and listens to their banter, to Pooch bidding his wife’s cookies in the next hand, to Roque flirting with his own knife, to Jensen bragging on some Petunias thing to do with his niece.
The colonel is the first to retire, back to his office. Pooch is next, gonna send his wife an e-mail, look at the sonogram pictures again before he turns in.
Roque heads back towards his bunk and Jensen heads to Cougar. “Hey, Cougs? You okay man? It was only three miles…” and he puts his hand on Cougar’s forehead like a mother checking her offspring for a fever.
“Jesus, are you sick? You’re all clammy. Shit, should I go tell Clay?”
And that’s close enough to a direct question that he cannot put it off any more. “The collar,” he says, “It’s been thirty hours since the last Reward.”
“Oh. Oh! Got it. Sorry, Jesus, they should make these things clearer. Seriously.” Jensen fumbles with the controller and finally pushes the right buttons.
Cougar’s body tenses with the first sharp bite of it along his nervous system, and he bites his lip to not sigh out in pleasure. His eyes close at the relief of it and his tense shoulders sag.
“God damn it,” Jensen growls and Cougar forces himself to look up. Jensen’s blue eyes are dark with sorrow and anger but there’s nothing Cougar can do about this, nothing he can do to be anything other than what he is. He wonders if Jensen is seeing his mother or himself in this, if he’ll pass the controller on to a different team mate to avoid the pain of it.
“Lo siento,” Cougar whispers, but Jensen just shakes his head, fingers twitching like he wants to touch.
“Not your fault. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow. Don’t let it get so bad next time, okay? Just…just tell me.”
Cougar nods and Jensen backs off to let him have the small amount of privacy he can. Still frowning, Jensen plugs the controller back into his computer and starts another round of furious typing.
======================
Carlos curls up on the bed, his tiny baby sister in his arms, Ofelia huddled against his back. In the other room they can hear their parents, the fear in their voices as they discuss what Carlos has done, this thing he has become.
“If we bring him to church, the gato may show,” Mami says, “And if we stop going, the priest will come here to find why, with the Inquisition close behind.”
“I know,” Papi says, and his voice is sad. “He cannot stay here. I will not see my son burn. We will send you and the girls to stay with your sister. I will take Carlos north, across the border, find a job and send you money when we can. It will be easier there, to hide a strange child, where nobody knows us and there are so very many people.”
“If he’s caught…” Mami says, but Papi interrupts her.
“If he’s caught there, he will not burn. That is what matters most.”
Mami cries and Papi’s voice drops soft and low. Angelina holds so tight to Carlos’ side that she’s pinching him but he doesn’t complain. His fault, all his fault.
He prays, all night and all day, for this to all go away, but it doesn’t. Mami and the girls leave a few days later, with the goats and dishes and all of Mami’s pretty things packed in the back of a truck that his uncle borrowed. The few things that are left, Papi folds into careful packs for the both of them, and they go to meet the coyote who will guide them across the border.
===========================
Clay goes with Jensen and “Cougar” to the sniper range the next day. To see what they got for the taxpayer’s dollar, to see if he’s really the advantage the brass claims or a liability in a collar.
Jensen had told him, about the kid hitting the DTs at thirty-some hours in. He’s gotta see if their mutie shoots like a junkie. Personally, he thinks having drug-addicted conscripted soldiers is a bad idea, but the higher ups are treating it like an asset management problem and his fault if the sniper can’t get the job done.
He watches the kid put twenty rounds into the target and knows that he has to call the whole thing off. Not a single shot is anywhere near the bull’s-eye and Clay has no idea how Jensen didn’t end up paying whatever default Willis had had in mind. He gets up to go, catches Jensen’s eye as he stands.
Jensen holds up a finger to stall him, and he looks nervous, like he knows Clay is on his way to return their sniper. Jensen does something with the comms and when he talks next, Clay knows that Cougar can’t hear what he’s saying.
“Clay, wait. Watch. Look at his face.”
And so Clay does. Cougar has a hell of a poker-face, but there’s this little flicker of satisfaction when the shots hit. Clay checks down-range with the binoculars. The holes are far from the center, but the groupings make tight little spatters on the target; most are smaller than a hand’s breadth apart. He glances to Jensen, to say that he sees what Jensen was talking about, but the man’s lips are moving and Clay is chagrined to realize he’s the one who’s been cut out of the loop this time.
Cougar looks up at Jensen, just the briefest of glances followed by the smallest of nods, and then he puts five rounds in the dead center of the target, as pretty a grouping as a commander could ask for.
“I’ll leave you boys to it, then,” he tells them.
He walks away and wonders if he’s handling this right. If they’re keeping the sniper, he needs Jensen close to Cougar so he can figure out the collar—what it does and who it reports to. They seem to have clicked, and it’s better that Cougar have some sort of attachment within the team, someone he’s invested in. He wonders if Jensen’s getting too close though, too tied up in this guy. If he should give the controller to Roque or Pooch for a couple days. In the end, he leaves well enough alone and lets it ride for a while longer.
=======================
The night before Cougar’s first mission with the Losers, the guys all head out for drinks and pool to let off steam. Jensen protests that Cougar should come with them, but Roque calls him an asshole, tells him taking Cougar off base without a mission is like taking a rocket-launcher. Not to be done without a good reason, previous clearance and a shit-ton of paperwork.
“I’ll bring you back a souvenir,” Jensen promises, and he still looks reluctant to go. He sets up a laptop for Cougar to use before he leaves, shows him how to find tv shows and music stations on it and Cougar is actually looking forward to having a few hours alone, to relax and just be for a while.
The team is gone for less than half an hour when the door opens again. Cougar looks over and flips to his feet. Fuck. Willis and his cronies slip in like a pack of jackals.
“Take my weapon? Make me look like the idiot? Gonna fuck you with that rifle, y’ god-damn mutie.”
The gato in him bristles under his skin, twists around and wants to come out. And he’s afraid, so damn much to lose. Visits with his family that can be taken away, the conditional residency his parents were given because of what he is and his obedient service. If he shifts, there will be no stopping. The gato will have them. Will kill them all and purr as it licks its claws clean.
They fan out around him, and the one on his far left strikes first, a wild punch that Cougar ducks under. And then it’s on, trying to dance around them, getting his own jabs in where he can. Knowing that unless he lets the beast free, they’re going to win eventually, going to take him down and cripple him, maybe kill him.
A lucky strike catches him on the mouth. Blood spills down his chin. A boot kicks the side of his knee and he stumbles to his knees. He’s fighting himself more than them now, trying to keep the gato inside, trying to remember why it was so important, arms wrapped around himself like he can physically hold it in.
“What the fuck is going on here?” The booming voice cuts through the violence and the room goes still. Cougar looks up through his hair and sees Roque in the doorway with a thunderstorm of anger on his face. “We leave you for one minute and you have a wild party, Cougar?” he asks, but he’s looking at Willis’ men.
Roque strides over, looks Willis in the eye and then punches him straight in his face. There’s a crunch of cartilage and he goes down screaming. He kicks another and smashes the third into the wall. The other two run for the door and he slings the half-conscious man into them, knocking them to the ground. “Pick this shit up!” he orders, pointing at the guys that are down, and the least-injured of them are quick to drag them out of the building. “Anybody asks, you fell, assholes! You do not want my side of the story on your record.”
“Motherfucker,” Roque grumbles when they’re gone. “You need a medic?”
Cougar shakes his head. Pulls himself together. So close, Jesus, he was so close to losing all he holds dear.
Roque offers him a hand and pulls Cougar to his feet, then turns and strides over to his bunk, digs out his cell phone (Cougar thinks that’s what brought him back unexpectedly soon) and dials.
“Clay. I’m stayin’ in. You guys have fun without me.”
Cougar goes to the sinks to wash up. Wishes Jensen was there so he could shower. Roque is cleaning his weapons when he comes out again, a long line of knives and guns spread out on a towel on his bed. Cougar curls up on his own bunk and debates asking permission to shift, needing the comfort of claws and fur, but he knows Roque the least of any of them and can’t afford to show any weakness.
“Shit ain’t right,” Roque finally mutters. “I’m not having it in our own damn barracks. Those guys ever fuck with you again, you tell me, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Cougar replies.
Roque stares at him for a painfully long time.
“Sure you don’t need a medic?”
“I am sure.”
“Fucking with a team right before a mission,” Roque grumbles to himself and Cougar still isn’t sure if his anger is that a person was going to be hurt, or just the team’s efficiency.
Hours later the rest of the team stumbles in, Pooch mostly sober, Clay grinning and weaving, Jensen bouncing with energy, a cowboy hat swinging from his finger.
“Cougs!” he hollers and frisbees the hat the last few feet to Cougar’s bunk. Cougar plucks it out of the air.
“Told you I’d get you a souvenir,” he beams. Cougar looks the gift over. Worn and well-loved, it smells like another man and faintly of Jensen, like he’d worn it on the ride home. “Won it for you playin’ pool. You like it?” Jensen grins, stinking of alcohol, as Cougar slips the hat on his head. It feels good, won’t fall off and it’ll hold his hair back, keep the sun out of his eyes. It’s perfect.
“Si,” he answers and Jensen blinks, his smile fading.
“Cougar? What happened to your face?” He reaches out like he’s going to touch the bruise around Cougar’s left eye, brush the split in his lip. “Roque? What the hell happened to our Cougar?”
“Willis and his boys,” Roque answers without looking up.
“When we get back,” Jensen promises, “They are officially fucked with.”
Clay shambles over, taking Cougar’s chin in a surprisingly gentle hand and tips his face so he can see the damage better. “That gonna fuck with your shooting?” he asks and Cougar shakes his head, as much as he can with Clay still touching him. The man looks angry.
“Soon as we get back, Jensen, fuck away.”
no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-05 11:11 am (UTC)hugs and smishes
CC
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Date: 2012-06-06 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 04:49 am (UTC)CC
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Date: 2012-06-05 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 05:41 am (UTC)*bounces*
MOAR, PLZ! ;-)
Seriously, I heart, heart, heartchoo for writing some good Cougar whump, and creating a believable world as you do so. The backstory with his parents is awesome, and you make him very believable, too. And the Losers as BadAss! Hearts of Gold are my favorites. Looking forward more, hopefully soon!
no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 03:45 pm (UTC)This was my first fic writing the dynamics of a team, so I'm thrilled that people are liking that aspect of it.
I really do like Cougar whump, so it was fun to write it. I like when the tough-guy is also the hurt-guy, with tasty anger issues and a prickly outer shell.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 12:11 am (UTC)