Losers fic: Field of Stone 3/3
Jun. 8th, 2012 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyjanellyTitle: Field of Stone
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, 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)
Feedback: Will be adored in any form, from squee to con-crit, to your lovely thinky-thoughts
Better takes another day, before the pain and cramps and shitting himself finally eases. Good isn’t for almost a week, not until he’s built his strength back up, until he’s adjusted to operating without the constant minute interference of the reward in his system. A dulling of his perception that he never noticed is acutely obvious in its absence.
He feels clear when it’s over. The world is suddenly crisp, sharp. They go on their first mission since they cleaned him of the drugs and he feels like a thing of magic, strong and fast and uninhibited. The gato listens to him without fight now, “go here” he tells it and it climbs, carries the rifle, protects Clay, allows Jensen’s touch. He can see further, smell more delicate scents, hear sounds he knows he would have missed a month ago. Sounds like Roque masturbating in the shower or Clay talking low and sexy to some woman on his cell phone in his office.
He tries to ignore his own body’s awakening. He has vague memories of sticky sheets and sweaty nights, but it was so long ago. He rubs against his mattress that night, after a day of running and fighting and killing and he all but whines with need and frustration.
The army has moved them to a different base, to a dorm-style barracks, pairs of two bedrooms linked by a shared bath and a large common area for eating and socializing. It was designed for pairs of soldiers to share the rooms, but they’re so few that they each have their own. Cougar hates it, hates the distance between his team, how quiet it is at night without them all breathing the same air. His body shivers, too awake with the latest mission only hours ago finished. Restless and itching he peels off his clothes, and when he can’t stand it anymore he crosses the shared bathroom and checks the other door, Jensen’s door.
The knob turns, unlocked.
“Jensen,” he whispers as he opens the door. The tech is as much a soldier as any of them and Cougar knows better than to startle him awake.
“Cougs?” Jensen’s voice is muffled, half-asleep. He shifts around, rolls over and sits up, probably blind in the darkness as he gropes around on the bedside table. He taps his phone and the faint light fills the room. “Cougar, are you naked?”
“Si.”
Jensen is quiet for a moment and then asks, “Whatcha need?”
It wouldn’t be the first night he crawled into Jensen’s bed, to feel those talented fingers carding gentle through his hair, to luxuriate in a touch that isn’t meant to hurt, to fall asleep to another’s heartbeat, slow and steady. That isn’t what Cougar needs this night.
Cougar can smell him, the warm soft scent of his sweat, deodorant and toothpaste. Jensen fumbles for his glasses as Cougar steps towards the bed, wracked by the strength of his need. He gets to the foot of the bed and crawls up Jensen’s body before he can find his glasses, hears him squeak a startled “Cougar? What?” but he doesn’t try to escape and Cougar covers him, leans down and nips him on the side of his jaw, hard enough to sting.
Jensen makes a muffled yelp and twitches under him, hands dancing to the sides like he’s not sure at all where to put them.
“Please,” Cougar whispers, low and rough, because he needs, so bad, and Jensen had said once that he would, and if Jensen turns him away now he thinks the need might burn the man out of him, leave only the gato, hungry and wild.
Jensen gulps under him and then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” and Cougar can smell the desire rising in him. He pulls back enough to flip Jensen over onto his stomach, to drag the boxers down his ass. He spreads Jensen’s legs open, keeps them that way with his knees pressed between. He takes himself in hand, drawing back the foreskin and rubbing some spit on the head with the other.
Jensen wriggles under him, trying to look back and see. “Wait. Cougs, wait.”
It’s hard, but Cougar does, stops when he just wants to push inside, to be closer to Jensen than he’s ever been.
Jensen tries to scramble to the bedside table but Cougar can’t bear to let him go, reaches and pulls the whole drawer out instead, dumping it on the mattress beside them. There isn’t much there in this borrowed room, a box of tissues, a tube of something, a dog-eared magazine with glossy pictures of oil-slick skin. Jensen hands him the tube, “Here. Use this,” and Cougar pops it open, clear gel squirting over Jensen’s back and he hisses at the cold of it. Cougar scoops a gob of it from the dip of Jensen’s spine and slicks it against his hole, hears Jensen moan at the feel of his fingers there.
Jensen’s phone goes dark and leaves Jensen blind again.
Cougar can’t hold himself back anymore, can’t make himself wait or go slow. He lines his dick up against Jensen and pushes into the hot and slick. Tighter than he could have imagined, surrounding him, clenching tight as Jensen makes a high whimper and his fingers grab onto the sheets. Cougar pulls back, grabs Jensen by his hips and lifts him into a better position and thrusts in again, slamming hard, his body pressed tight against Jensen’s ass. The collar thumps against Cougar’s collar bone as the force rocks them both forward.
It doesn’t take long. Half a dozen deep thrusts and then he’s biting down on Jensen’s shoulder as the orgasm washes over him, a wave of relief and sensation that leaves him limp and panting on Jensen’s back, slick with sweat.
It takes longer to come down than it did to get there, and Cougar’s in no mood to hurry, just feeling Jensen breathing under him.
“Fuck,” Jensen groans at last and Cougar reluctantly pulls out of him. Jensen flinches and his breath catches in his throat and he lays face-down on his sheet like he’s trying to catch his breath. Cougar frowns and scents the air. There is no release but his own, and Jensen is hiding from him and he remembers all too clear the nights when it was him pushed face-down on a bed or over a table, him trying to curl up afterward.
“No,” he whispers and goes around the bed to Jensen’s side, combs his fingers through the short spiky hair and tries to gently turn Jensen’s head so Cougar can see him.
Jensen opens his eyes, gives Cougar a tight smile. “We gotta work on some finesse next time, man. That…little too fast, you know?”
“I hurt you,” Cougar says, stating the obvious.
Jensen swallows and shrugs, lets Cougar roll him over onto his side. “First time?”
Cougar nods.
“Everybody’s first time is pretty shitty in some way. We’ll work on it.”
Cougar presses his face against Jensen’s shoulder and doesn’t know if they will, if he will ever trust himself to touch Jensen like this again.
“It’s okay,” Jensen says like he can read Cougar’s mind. “Come on, let's get cleaned up; can you grab me a wash-cloth?”
Cougar goes to the bathroom to get it, leaves the light on so Jensen can see. He washes himself quick in the sink and brings back a warm, wet cloth for Jensen. He climbs back on the bed and Jensen holds out a hand for the cloth but Cougar pushes him away. He needs to do this, to see that he hasn’t hurt Jensen too badly. Guilt knots his guts in a way he’s not used to. He spreads Jensen’s legs again, gentle this time, and wipes at his hole, light delicate touches. And slowly, slowly, Jensen relaxes under his hands.
“I really am okay, Cougs.” Jensen sounds better too. Drowsy. Cougar leans down, sniffing for the scent of blood under the lube and sex smells. He flicks out his tongue and licks. Jensen’s taste under his own. Faint coppery tang but not like an open wound. Jensen moans, a sound that’s not pain and Cougar does it again. Reaches around and feels Jensen’s dick, still soft but stirring, thickening under his touch. He strokes his fingertips along the underside, a feather-light touch that makes Jensen squirm.
“Cougs, you don’t…” his words break off as Cougar laves the flat of his tongue against his hole at the same time his hand grips and slides down Jensen’s dick, a single firm stroke.
“Shit!” Jensen gasps and squirms, trapped between the sensations. Cougar rolls him onto his back and puts his tongue to work on his dick, long licks before he takes him fully into his mouth, swallows him so deep his eyes water. Shallow bobs of his head and then deep ones. Lips tight over his teeth and Jensen’s fingers in his hair. The smell of him in Cougar’s nose, on his skin and he’s hard again against the sheets. Hungry sounds and Cougar isn’t sure which of them is making them. His own harsh gasps for breath as he pulls back just enough to catch some air before devouring Jensen again.
“Cougs,” Jensen says through clenched teeth. “Cougs, I’m gonna…” he pushes at Cougar’s shoulder and Cougar grabs his wrist, pins it to the bed. Shoves Jensen’s dick as far back in his throat as he can, feels the pulse of it along his tongue and swallows as he comes, choking on it, eyes stinging and wet.
Jensen is still and quiet and Cougar humps at the mattress, ineffectual, frustrating more than anything. “C’mere,” Jensen says and draws him up, guides Cougar to straddle his hips, takes Cougar’s aching cock in his hand and strokes it. “Come for me,” Jensen pleads and Cougar does, stuttering spurts across Jensen’s muscular abs.
He collapses down, half-covering Jensen’s body and they breathe together. Jensen chuckles in the semi-darkness and then turns to face Cougar, going quiet again as he wipes Cougar’s cheek with the heel of his hand.
“Fuck, are you…did I?”
Cougar shakes his head. Words have never been his strength but he needs to tell Jensen. Needs him to understand. “I thought it would only hurt you if I tried to hurt you.”
Jensen sighs and reaches over and grabs a corner of the sheet, tries to pull it over them. Cougar shifts around a little to help. Lets Jensen buy the time to form an answer if he needs it.
“Cougs. If you want… This, with me. If you want it, we can work on it. I can show you how to fuck me so I don’t get hurt. And if you want, we can try it the other way around. See if I can make it good for you. Let me show you how it’s supposed to be.”
Cougar can’t answer that, can’t face the trust and affection in Jensen’s offer. He presses tighter and hides his face and Jensen strokes his hair until they fall asleep together.
==============
The jangle of Jensen’s phone ringing wakes them both to the pale rays of dawn sunlight creeping through the room’s standard-issue curtains. Cougar closes his eyes again, presses in against Jensen’s warmth. If it concerns him, Jensen will tell him soon enough.
“Kara?” Jensen answers the phone, and Cougar wakes up enough to listen. He’s close enough to the phone that he can hear a woman’s voice, tight with stress and tears.
“They took her! Jake, they took her, oh God,” she cries and Jensen sits up, his body tense, as Cougar falls away from him, his scent going acrid as adrenaline hits his system.
“What? Kara, slow down, took who?” Desperation in his voice, begging without words to not hear the name he’s dreading.
“Elaina, Jake, the hounds, they took her out of school.”
Jake sits up and wraps himself in a sheet, goes into the bathroom and locks the door behind him, leaving Cougar to hear only one side of the conversation, Jake’s voice asking:
“What happened?”
“When? Okay, okay.”
“What did she…fuck. Oh, fuck.”
Jake makes a pained sound, a scream caught between his teeth and behind his hand. A quiet suffering that Cougar wishes he was trusted to share, to offer what comfort he can.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Already Jake’s starting to pull himself together, to plan, to figure out how to fix a situation that’s gone to hell on him.
“Kara. I’ll…I’ll do something. I’ll fix this.”
“I have no idea.” His laugh is only a little hysterical.
“I’ll call you. I’ll need you sober and strong. You hear me?”
Cougar pulls the blanket over his lap and wishes his clothes weren’t two doors away. He waits for Jensen, hears him sniff and wash up in the sink. He meets Cougar’s eye as he steps out of the bathroom, sighs “Fuck” at him and then goes to get his laptop out of its bag. Cougar isn’t sure if that’s a dismissal or not, but he goes, back to his own room to get dressed and then out, out of the barracks, out to the open air. He doesn’t go far, keeps the building in sight, but the long loops he runs on the surrounding roads add up to miles before he comes in again.
He looks for Jensen, but his door is still closed, the sporadic tapping of his keyboard the only sound from within.
=============
Clay isn’t stupid. Looking back on it, he can see after their first mission with Cougar, after that night in the barn, that things were building between Jensen and Cougar. He’s seen how close they are, sharing a desk and bumping shoulders as Jensen types and Cougar cleans his weapon. He’s seen Cougar sleeping in Jensen’s bunk, laying head-to-foot so the width of their shoulders doesn’t shove them off of the narrow bed and empty cots on either side of them. He’s seen the way they look at each other, track each other, watch each other’s back.
He expected he’d have to have a conversation or two at some point, much as he’d like to put it off forever.
What he didn’t expect was that it would be Jensen walking stiff and sore still in the afternoon, hiding in his room half the day and only coming out when he must be starving, eyes red and throat scratchy. He didn’t expect Cougar to be the one looking guilty and wary, running laps around the barracks to burn off nervous energy.
“Jensen,” he says after the kid has his coffee cup filled and in hand. “My office.”
Jensen follows him with shuffling steps, eases himself down into the guest chair by Clay’s borrowed desk.
Clay sighs.
“You don’t look so hot, soldier,” seems like a good opening gambit.
Jensen shrugs in return. “Catching a cold maybe.”
And that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?
Clay lets the silence stretch. Jensen sips at his coffee.
“Look,” Clay says at last, “You’re a grown man, and who you fuck is your own business.” He had really planned to give this speech to Cougar. “But if you need help. If you’re being pressured into something, if he’s using guilt or…”
The tips of Jensen’s ears turn pink and Clay has never ever seen the man blush before. It’s fucking disturbing.
“Jake.”
The kid looks up and Clay knows something is wrong. Wants to shoot or punch or sic Roque onto the problem, whatever it is. But he can’t, not unless he knows what the enemy is.
“We got your back,” he finishes lamely. “Talk to me. Anytime.”
Jensen nods. “Am I dismissed?”
Clay has seen Jensen at sixty hours without sleep, has held him bleeding in his arms, walked twenty miles together with the kid concussed and babbling and he’s never heard that dead voice before.
“Dismissed,” Clay sighs. Tomorrow he’ll talk to Cougar. See if he can figure out what the hell has happened to his team.
========
Jensen rubs his hand over his face. Eighteen hours at the keyboard, except for the brief sojourn to get coffee and share an awkward talk with Clay, have left him feeling stiff and stupid. Planning was never his strong suit, and this…so many balls in the air, so many variables.
Kara is already on the move, bought a by-owner used car off of Craigslist with cash, no paperwork to track since she won’t file the change of title forms. Heading north, to Canada, where Jake will meet her with Elaina or die trying. He studies the transport route again, just grateful that Elaina’s powers make her low-risk, mid-value, batched up with a couple others to be driven to the federal training facility in Michigan instead of flown there.
He checks the manifests again, the vehicle allocation forms. The agent work schedules and medical personnel rosters. He can’t…there are too many. Too many boots on the ground (or riding around in big black vans, but whatever).
He sighs and stands. He crosses the bathroom and taps on Cougar’s door. He’s not even sure what time it is. 0-dark-30.
“Si,” Cougar answers immediately.
Jensen opens the door, and Cougar is sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed. He looks calm and composed, but his eyes betray his anxiety, and Jensen feels bad, for the false sense of security he’s given the man, for the request he’s about to make.
“They took…they took my niece,” Jensen says, and the words catch in his throat. “She. There was an accident, at school. She was on the slide with a younger kid and they fell. Or something. The boy broke his arm and she stopped the pain. He never even cried.”
Cougar is still watching him, silently waiting.
“I’m gonna get her back. Try, at least. I just. There’s so many of them, three vans, four ‘patients’ , three security and one nurse in each one.” He rubs at his eyes again. “I can’t…God, this would be so easy with the team, but I can’t ask them this. Pooch has Jolene, Clay and Roque, they have their careers.”
He looks up and Cougar is already nodding. Jensen holds up his hand. He can’t accept Cougar’s help, not yet, not without him knowing what’s at stake.
“If we pull it off, we’re going to Canada, and from there to Singapore. We’re never coming back. You’ll never see your family again.”
Cougar nods, solemn but sure. God, he doesn’t deserve this, Cougar’s trust, Cougar’s help. He wants to believe he’s offering the man a hope for a better life but he knows it won’t be, that they’re facing years of struggle and fear, trying to build a life in a foreign land (but at least one where mutants aren’t burned at the stake, aren’t requisitioned by the government). But a free life, and Jensen has to think that counts for something.
Jensen takes a deep breath. “We’ll have to get the collar off. Or they’ll track us by it and it’ll all be over before we hit the state line. I might. I might blow us both up. I have a plan but no idea if it’ll work.” He clenches his jaw to keep from losing it. “I’m no bomb squad guy, you know?”
“I trust you,” Cougar says and Jensen nods. He just wants to fold himself small in Cougar’s arms and never come out, but there’s so much to do, so little time.
“We need a rifle and a vehicle; I’ll get the collar off of you and we’ll go.”
============
Cougar is trained in the art of holding perfectly still, breathing slow and even, heart rate steady in the face of danger. Lying on Jensen’s desk while the tech drills tiny careful holes in the explosive device attached to his neck is the single most difficult challenge to that professional calm he’s ever had. Jensen’s constant babble while he does so has to be a close second.
“Seriously, whoever came up with these has seen too much damn Star Trek, Cougs. Freaky 60’s fetishists. I’d rather fight three aliens and a chick with green hair than be here with your life in my hands, I’m not gonna lie.”
Cougar takes a careful breath as Jensen rocks back a little, surveying his handiwork. He brings in a tiny light on a bendable neck and shines it into one hole. Very carefully he inserts some sort of metallic probe, sighing in relief when neither of them dies. “One more.” And he repeats the action on the other side. “Okay.”
If Cougar thought his babble was distracting before, the utter lack of it is even worse, Jensen’s expression tight and intense as he picks up the Dremel tool, slides a piece of cardboard between the collar and Cougar’s neck, and starts to cut. The spinning disk hums to life, whining as it hits the collar. Tiny bits of melted plastic and heated flecks of metal singe into Cougar’s exposed neck where they miss the guard. He clenches his hands and does not move. This will be worth the pain, to be able to go with Jensen, to not be left alone. He thinks even if Jensen’s plan fails (and really, it is a shitty plan and the two of them not enough manpower to pull it off without a miracle), it will be worth it.
He’s never dared even dream of this. The collar coming off. He stares up into the blue of Jensen’s eyes. Grateful as hell that Jensen needs him, but that’s nothing at all to do with why he wants to lean up and brush their lips together, to flick his tongue out and taste.
The collar falls open, an anti-climatic click as it lands on the desk. “Easy,” Jensen warns and carefully eases the wires over Cougar’s head. They both breathe freer when it’s done, when Jensen gives him a hand up, Jensen’s fingers trembling now, now that it’s over. “Fuck,” he laughs, and draws Cougar against his chest for a shaky hug. He feels naked, the fall of his t-shirt like air over his collar bone.
“Okay,” Jensen says when they pull apart. “I’ve got my stuff packed. Go ahead and get yours together. I’m gonna check out your rifle for target practice and get a vehicle. I’ll meet you here, half an hour or less. The guys should still be asleep. We’ll hide you in the back until we’re past security.”
Jensen tucks the collar and the controller into a desk drawer and tapes it shut with a note that says “DANGER! EXPLOSIVES!” on it—not visible from the door, but they’ll see it before they jostle it. Cougar is glad because he isn’t willing to have these men who have been so fair to him maimed any more than Jensen is.
“Okay,” Jensen says again, psyching himself up. They’re already committed; Cougar will be taken from the Losers if they’re caught, re-indoctrinated, re-addicted.
Jensen takes a deep breath and then he’s in Cougar’s space, lips crashing together with desperate urgency. Cougar lets him, as unsure as any other time that a man has kissed him. He parts his lips and allows Jensen to deepen the kiss.
Jensen breaks away just as suddenly as he had rushed in, puts on his cocky smile like a mask and turns to go.
Getting off of base is just as easy as Jensen planned. In the dark of the trunk, Cougar feels over the rifle cases, pops the catches and traces the weapons with his fingers. SR-25 in one, the big 50 cal. in the other.
Jensen stops the car behind a grocery store to let him out. They head for the airport, park the Army’s sedan in long-term parking and steal a car that Jensen says looks fast. They head north, five miles over the speed limit, Cougar driving as Jensen sleeps against the window, long legs tucked uncomfortably against the dash.
==============
Jensen pulls over and Cougar slips out of the car. A ten yard sprint puts him into the tree-line by the interstate. From there he moves through the brush, up to the top of a hill that was sliced in half when the road went in, a rough and sharply sloping rock face in front of him. It will be impossible for anyone to climb up it to get to him; they’ll have to come through the trees, hopefully slowing them and forcing them to make enough noise that he’ll be able to finish his mission before letting the gato free. He’ll use the gato’s strength and grace to go down that impossible slope, to join Jensen in the getaway car, and pray they can displace fast enough to ditch it for less conspicuous wheels before they pick up aerial pursuit.
He sets up the 50 cal first, in case the convoy is earlier than they expect, the SR-25 next to it, faster fire and quieter, harder for men on the ground to spot him, better for taking down personnel. When it’s done, he sights down the scope to where Jensen stands beside the car, hood up, pretending to talk on his phone.
“How’s it going, Cougs?” he asks over their stolen communications unit. Cougar sees him turn to look up the road, the sidelong glance up at Cougar’s position. He knows Jensen isn’t questioning his preparedness, just talking to fill the time, the silence.
“Done,” Cougar answers and Jensen paces.
From his position he can see the state trooper’s car before Jensen can, and he drops his respiration, lowers his heart rate. Sights the trooper’s head in as the man gets out of the car. At this range he cannot miss. Their fast car has been missing for long enough that it has possibly been reported stolen. Jensen has two guns on him. They are officially AWOL by now, Cougar considered a dangerous fugitive.
“Problem, son?” he hears the officer ask, muffled over the comms.
Cougar decides that the officer touching Jensen will be his signal, the point at which Jensen cannot possibly talk his way out of it. Shooting the man reduces their chances of success even further, but Jensen getting searched would make the mission impossible.
“Hey,” Jensen answers, a grin in his voice. “The thing just died on me. Timing belt looks loose, probably broken. I don’t want to try turning her over, just waiting for Triple -A to get here and give me a tow.”
The officer peers in the windows, but there is nothing suspicious to see. He walks back to the police car and sits in the driver’s seat. Cougar keeps the rifle pointed at him. If he checks the license plate. If it’s reported stolen. Cougar wonders if he should take the shot now. If the hole in the windshield would be small enough that nobody would notice the man behind it was dead.
He hesitates too long though, and the man stands up again, walks to Jensen and hands him a card.
“Here. If Triple-A doesn’t come and get you soon, you call Singer and he’ll come pick you up.”
Jensen takes the card and beams at the trooper. “Awesome, thanks.” He holds out his hand to shake. “I really appreciate it.” The officer goes back to his car and pulls away.
“Oh fuck me,” Jensen huffs into the comm. “I just about pissed myself.”
Cougar has just a second to be relieved he didn’t kill an innocent man for nothing and then he sees the black vans coming up on them and there’s no more time.
“Here they come,” he says and Jensen steps behind the cover of the car, pulls his pistol and holds it down at his side, hidden from the view of oncoming traffic.
==============
Jensen hears Cougar swear over the comm. “Mierda! Jensen, there are four.”
Four vans. At least three more armed guards. More space between the first and last vehicle. A fourth vehicle to breach and search. The state trooper on his way back as soon as shots are fired and someone calls it in. The world slides into a strangely sharp vision. This cannot be done. Not with two men.
“Cougar,” he says with utter calm. “Blow the engines, take down what men you can, but when they come up the slope at you, you shift and run. Keep going and don’t stop. Get to the rendezvous with Kara. Tell her what happened. Tell her I tried. Keep her safe.”
“No!” Cougar shouts at him. “Damn it. Come away. We’ll try again, somewhere else.”
But Jensen is already stepping towards the road, pistol swinging up, sighting in on the face of the first van’s driver. His finger squeezes the trigger until the safety glass shatters, the van fish-tailing wildly and he dodges to the side to avoid being hit.
"Carlos…” he starts to say, but bites down hard on the three words that would follow, a selfish declaration that could bring Cougar no comfort, no strength.
He hears the crack of the 50 cal from the hill, and the second van skids to a stop, a bullet through its engine block. He gives himself over to the plan then, to the trust he has in Cougar to do his job and watch Jensen’s back. He shoots out the side window of the first van, kills the passenger-side guard before the man can arm himself. He reaches through the glass and pops the door open. The third guard is there, struggling to get his seat belt off, his gun free of the holster. Too close for Jensen to shoot without the bullet going through, back into the passengers, the screaming kids locked into their seats.
He swings the pistol instead, awkward in the crowded space. Hits the man in the temple with the side of the gun, five pounds of metal, again and three times and the fight is out of him, he lies limp in his seat, bloodied and slack-jawed, eyes staring into nothing.
Jensen points his gun at the nurse then, a plain woman in pale blue scrubs. “Don’t move. Don’t…” but his attention isn’t on her, and he searches the faces of the terrified children, the youngest maybe six, the oldest in his mid-teens.
“Elaina?” he calls but she’s not here, and there’s no time, and he hadn’t thought of this part, what to do with the ones that weren’t her.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he has no way to save them, no way to take them.
He leaves the first van. There are two dead guards on the highway, heads bloodied and limbs splayed like puppets with their strings cut, discarded playthings. He sees the fourth van go off of the road, straight to the tree line and disgorge its passengers there.
“They’re in the trees,” he tells Cougar, knows there’s only three minutes at most that Cougar can continue to cover him before he’ll have to fight or run. A shot pings out, one of the guys from van four and Jensen has to cross behind the second van to hide from the shooter that Cougar can’t get in his line of sight.
A hand with a pistol reaches out of the driver’s side of the second van and Jensen shoots, hears a man scream as a finger comes off and the gun is ripped from his hand. Jensen turns the corner and fires into his face, a clean double-tap and then he’s opening the door, dodging the falling body.
The second guard is already dead and the third fires from the back row, the bullet catching Jensen just above his left hip, so clean that it feels like fire through his side, so fast it doesn’t even punch him back. He’s got the angle on this one though, so he shoots, blows out the man’s throat and blood sprays everywhere.
He slaps his left hand down over his wound and presses. “Keep going, keep going,” he tells himself because there’s nothing else to do. He’s losing blood, knows this is not good.
“Elaina!” he calls and hears back “Jake! Uncle Jake!”
The nurse cowers back as Jensen tries to shove the guard’s body over enough to get to his niece, to cut her out of the straps holding her down. The kid beside her is crying, the one behind staring like she’s in shock. He gets to Elaina and puts his gun down, God she looks so scared. He draws his knife and then there’s the cold hard muzzle of a pistol under his right ear. The nurse no longer looks frightened, just calm and professional.
Jensen’s half-deaf from firing inside a vehicle, but he hears the low thrum of a chopper, coming closer, the shrill sound of a police siren.
“Drop the knife and turn around,” the ‘nurse’ says and nudges him in the direction she wants him to go. “Step down, nice and slow, call your sniper buddy down off of that hill.”
And he’s so damn close. He had Elaina inches away from him. He just needs a tiny slip-up and he’ll take this woman down, isn’t ready to throw himself on her bullets yet. He looks up the hill even though he knows the woman is using Jensen’s body as a shield, that Cougar can’t possibly get a bead on her, even if he was still at the rifles. Her gun digs into the base of his skull and her other hand has a hold of the back of his belt.
“Cougs!” he yells, because Cougar has probably already lost his comm, is probably already running around on four paws. “Cougar, run!” God, he hopes Cougar is already in the wind.
“Son of a bitch,” the woman swears. In the van, Elaina is calling for Jake and he’s just standing there bleeding. There’s gunfire but he’s not sure who is shooting at whom.
He jerks to the side and the woman’s pistol fires, a line of fire across his scalp that makes the world twist and buck under his feet, hearing and equilibrium shot to shit and even though she’s smaller he’s having a hard time moving, much less fighting her. She aims at his face and it’s all he can do to twist the barrel away. His stomach twists and he’s utterly desperate.
He can feel pressure rising behind his eyes, an alien feeling, slick force throwing itself against an invisible wall. He wonders if he’s bleeding into his brain. Then it’s like the force finds a crack in the wall, the smallest seam gives way and then a rushing torrent tears the wall apart. The woman chokes, and her right eye swells, like a balloon being inflated. Him, he’s doing this, pouring energy into her body. Her gun fires one last time as her finger fills the trigger-guard. She gurgles and goes still and Jensen pushes her off. Tumors, there are tumors all over her, misshapen lumps, some bigger than his fists. If he wasn’t already in shock, he thinks the sight of it might make him puke.
It’s quiet then, or he’s completely deaf, he’s not sure which. He scrambles lop-sided back into the van, cuts Elaina free and pulls her against his chest, loses himself for a moment in the jackrabbit patter of her heartbeat against him, her body so tiny and fragile in his arms. The knife he drops to the floor. The grip of his 9mm is slick with sweat and blood and his left hand is shaking so hard he can barely hold it. He feels rattled, dizzy and weak, but nothing hurts, the pain drifting away from him, Elaina’s power siphoning off the agony.
He climbs down from the van and there’s a man out there still on his feet. “Jensen,” says a voice he’d know in his sleep. It’s coming from in front of him and over the comm too. He raises his head and his firearm and Clay is in front of him, assault rifle in hand. Jensen feels himself shaking, the power building in his head again, ready to reach out, to tear into Clay’s flesh, to warp it beyond function until the man dies choking. His CO. His friend, his brother.
“Clay,” he says, voice broken and distant. “Don’t…don’t stop me. Please.” The car is right behind Clay, shimmering bright glossy red in the afternoon sun like a mirage. He doesn’t want to kill Clay. Doesn’t want Clay to shoot him either. He tries to put Elaina down, because he won’t use her as a shield, but her little arms and legs are locked tight around him and she won’t allow it.
There’s movement behind Clay: Roque and Cougar stepping out of the tree-line at the base of the hill, Cougar stumbling, Roque half-carrying him. And fuck, he never wanted this. He thinks, just for a second, of tipping the 9mm up, shoving it up under his chin and pulling the trigger. He’s a mutant now, and he’s had twenty years to think of what that would mean for him. He can’t do it though. Can’t let that be Elaina’s last memory of him.
“Damn it, Jensen!” Clay swears and Jensen realizes he’s missed something. “We’re not here to stop you, we’re here to get you out.”
The thrum of the chopper is pounding into his chest like the drums at a parade, and the downdraft sends sand and debris flying into his eyes. He wants to believe. Wants to think he’s safe, that his team has his back. Clay slings his rifle and holds out his hand, ducking as the chopper sinks down in the space in front of the first van.
“Move, soldier!” Clay orders. Cougar and Roque are already running. Jensen takes a step. Stumbles. Drops his gun and wraps both arms around Elaina, and he runs. Clay catches him six steps in, arm around his shoulders as he takes some of Jensen’s weight.
The aircraft is small, not a military bird at all. Crop-duster or traffic-copter, all naked structure, dragonfly-light. One pilot’s seat and two passenger. Clay shoves Jensen up into a seat, and he sees Roque do the same with Cougar on the other side. Jensen buckles in on instinct, putting the straps over Elaina too, locking them together. Clay steps up onto the runner and wraps a wrist into Jensen’s harness and Pooch takes off. The rotors strain and the ground falls away and the last thing Jensen sees before he passes out is the plastic dog on the dashboard nodding yes yes yes.
==========
Roque bodily lifts Cougar into the helicopter, presses him back into the seat with one hand while he yanks the straps around Cougar’s body with the other, buckles him in and grabs on. Cougar’s fingers still twitch with the after-effects of the tasers the guards had used on him as he’d laid there with the rifles, trying to clear Jensen’s way at the cost of his own escape. He remembers the sting of the barbs shooting into him, the body-twisting jolts of electricity shooting down the wires. And then Roque had been there, stepping through the trees in the other direction, bullets spraying and the guards jerking and falling.
The smell of Jensen’s blood is thick in the air but it fades as the chopper takes off. The tech’s eyes are closed, a little girl fastened in against him in the seat. Pooch banks the helicopter a hard right and Jensen’s head rolls limply around on his neck, the gunshot wound on the back of his head oozing steadily down his neck and into the fabric of his shirt. Cougar rips a strip off of his t-shirt and balls it up, leans over and presses it hard against the wound, feeling Jensen’s heartbeat under his fingers.
They fly. Sickeningly low to the treetops, below the radar.
Cougar holds on to Jensen until they’re landing. Clay unbuckles Jensen and Roque unbuckles Cougar. His legs hold steady when he climbs down from the helicopter. Pooch takes a minute with Jensen, prying the girl off of him for long enough to slap a trauma patch on the entry and exit wounds on his side and tie Cougar’s makeshift bandage to his head to hold it on tight. Jensen moans when the girl is forced away and quiets when she’s back at his side.
Roque torches the helicopter and Clay pulls up in a maroon mini-van. They all load in, Elaina, Jensen and Cougar in the very back, Roque in the middle seat, Clay riding shotgun and Pooch driving.
They drive. It feels like hours, slow speeds down back roads, two-lane ribbons of asphalt between walls of trees. Cougar holds Jensen against his chest, the child against Jensen’s other side. Nobody talks.
When the van stops, it’s dark and there’s a fence in front of them. Clay and Roque get out, bolt cutters and hacksaws in hand.
“We’ve got some time,” Pooch says and climbs back with the medical kit and a bright light. He checks Jensen over, and Dios, Cougar hadn’t realized there was so much blood in a person. It soaks Jensen’s side and the back of his shirt, Cougar’s clothing is sticky and heavy with it and the girl even worse. Pooch doesn’t seem to find anything more urgent than the obvious wounds so he threads a needle and Cougar holds the light and the girl holds Jensen’s head, a look of concentration on her little face.
“Hey, sweetie, don’t look,” Pooch says as he stitches the back of Jensen’s head, but she does anyway. They roll Jensen on his side and he gets the front of Jensen’s hip stitched, entry and exit wounds close enough together that the bullet can’t have gone deeper than skin and muscle. Pooch ties off and re-threads the needle to go after the exit wound. Jensen groans and takes a ragged breath.
“Get ready to hold him,” Pooch tells Cougar, and Cougar gets a grip on blood-slick skin, ready to keep Jensen down.
“Cougs?” Jensen asks, trying to lift his head.
“Be still,” Cougar tells him. Jensen’s eyes roll around as he attempts to take in his surroundings. He seems confused but not in pain, and Cougar remembers what Jensen told him about his neice and the boy with the broken arm.
“Where are we?”
“The border. Canada. Clay and Roque are cutting us a hole in the fence.”
Jensen relaxes and smiles. “Shit.” Pooch pushes the needle in and pulls it through with the needle-nose pliers. Jensen doesn’t flinch, but he looks back at Pooch.
“Pooch? What’re you doing here?”
Pooch rolls his eyes. “Saving your ass, idiot. What were you going to do, outrun the cops and the handlers all the way to Canada?”
Jensen huffs a laugh. Pooch grabs his hip to hold him still. “That was the plan, yeah. With Cougar shooting to clear us a path.”
“Your plan was crap,” Pooch says and finishes the stitches. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us, Jensen? Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Jensen goes quiet, his jaw clenches. “Jolene. Your lives, your careers.”
“God-damn it, Jensen,” Pooch sighs. “You’re like family, you and Cougar both. You think I could have lived with you two going out in a blaze of glory in some B-movie suicide run? You think any of us could? And yeah, Jolene is pissed, but not at you. She’s meeting us as soon as we have a location for her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jensen whispers, and Pooch snorts.
“For what? Going after your niece? That had to be done, man. No way around it. Us coming after you? Just as certain. If anybody is to blame it’s the system taking her in the first place.”
“How’d you know?” Jensen asks, “That I hadn’t just eloped with Cougar. How did you find us?”
“The brass called Clay to tell him to break the news to you that your niece had had a ‘change of status’ and your sister was missing. When you were gone, Clay raised hell to get us assigned to bringing you two back. Just for the record? I don’t think he was kidding at all about the ass-kicking he wants to give you. The man was pissed. I think you hurt his feelings.”
Jensen winces. Cougar squeezes his arm. Nobody is beating Jensen while he’s still breathing.
“So anyway,” Pooch says as he tapes new gauze over the bullet holes. “We took the next flight up to Detroit, ditched the vehicles we’d been assigned, stole a car and a chopper and came looking for the traffic jam.”
The side door opens and Clay pops his head in. “Fence is down, time to move again. We’re not safe yet.”
Pooch gives Jensen’s arm one last squeeze and climbs back into the driver’s seat. Clay and Roque pile in and they drive.
============
Cougar dries his hair and steps out of the shower. Jensen calls the hotel a “fleabag,” but it’s nicer than most of the safe-houses they’ve crashed at during missions, and Cougar isn’t sure what standards Jensen is holding it to. Maybe it’s just that his sister and niece have been in places like this for ten days now, as the Losers and their civilian women make their way across Canada, by bus, train and sometimes airplane. Never in a straight line and never all of them traveling together, although they manage to regroup almost every night. Jensen’s original plan for getting out of the country was easier, but losing everything that had been in the trunk of the getaway car (clothes, Jensen’s spare glasses, tickets, fake IDs and two laptops) had hurt them, all of it taking time to replace.
Cougar is okay with slow going. Jensen is healing; Pooch has pulled the stitches and declared him fit for light duty but Cougar still catches him wincing if he moves too fast or lifts something too heavy.
He opens the bathroom door and steps out, towel around his hips and his damp hair curling against his neck. Jensen is in the bed, their bed, glasses perched on his nose, laptop on a folded sheet on his stomach. Bare shoulders and beautiful skin, he’s the only man Cougar has ever wanted to touch, wanted to touch him. He smiles, slow and crooked, and Jensen looks up, eyes wide like he still can’t believe that Cougar would want him.
The towel falls and Jensen snaps the laptop closed and shoves it onto the bedside table.
“Cougs…” he starts, but Cougar is on him, crawling up his body and pinning his wrists to the bed, dripping cold water from the tips of his hair onto Jensen’s face before he leans down to nip at Jensen’s neck.
“Fuck,” Jensen moans and turns his head, angling for a kiss, and Cougar gives it to him, nuzzling and licking and gently biting. He feels strong with Jensen, in control. He loves that he can take the man apart with a touch.
“Cougar, Cougar, wait…” Cougar freezes, searches Jensen’s face for signs of pain. Jensen licks his lips, and Cougar can see the indecision on his face. Something is wrong. He’s done something wrong. He releases Jensen’s wrists and pulls back, his pulse thudding in his ears.
“Hey.” Jensen sits up and catches him before he can go completely off of the bed. “I just—I just need to talk to you for a second, okay?”
Cougar nods but he doesn’t feel any better; words have never been his friends.
“I need to be sure,” Jensen says, looking down like he can’t meet Cougar’s eyes. “When we started this, you were in the collar and just coming out of a lifelong addiction and I need to know that you want this. Me. That I’m not taking advantage.”
Cougar glares at Jensen, for thinking so little of him, even though he can acknowledge the concern might be fair.
“Carlos,” Jensen says and he does look up then. “I’m yours, man. For as long as you want me. I love you and I never want you to leave. But if you don’t feel the same, now or later or whenever, just tell me, and I won’t expect…this. Us. I’ll still have your back.” That is a firm promise. “I’ll do whatever I possibly can to get you what you need. Freedom, money, papers, anything. Anything.”
“Jensen,” Cougar sighs and pulls him in, pulls their foreheads together. “I don’t want freedom. I want you.” He has no idea what freedom would even look like or what he’d do with it.
“Oh thank god,” Jensen laughs and then he’s kissing Cougar. They fall together and this, this was worth everything .
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, 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)
Feedback: Will be adored in any form, from squee to con-crit, to your lovely thinky-thoughts
Better takes another day, before the pain and cramps and shitting himself finally eases. Good isn’t for almost a week, not until he’s built his strength back up, until he’s adjusted to operating without the constant minute interference of the reward in his system. A dulling of his perception that he never noticed is acutely obvious in its absence.
He feels clear when it’s over. The world is suddenly crisp, sharp. They go on their first mission since they cleaned him of the drugs and he feels like a thing of magic, strong and fast and uninhibited. The gato listens to him without fight now, “go here” he tells it and it climbs, carries the rifle, protects Clay, allows Jensen’s touch. He can see further, smell more delicate scents, hear sounds he knows he would have missed a month ago. Sounds like Roque masturbating in the shower or Clay talking low and sexy to some woman on his cell phone in his office.
He tries to ignore his own body’s awakening. He has vague memories of sticky sheets and sweaty nights, but it was so long ago. He rubs against his mattress that night, after a day of running and fighting and killing and he all but whines with need and frustration.
The army has moved them to a different base, to a dorm-style barracks, pairs of two bedrooms linked by a shared bath and a large common area for eating and socializing. It was designed for pairs of soldiers to share the rooms, but they’re so few that they each have their own. Cougar hates it, hates the distance between his team, how quiet it is at night without them all breathing the same air. His body shivers, too awake with the latest mission only hours ago finished. Restless and itching he peels off his clothes, and when he can’t stand it anymore he crosses the shared bathroom and checks the other door, Jensen’s door.
The knob turns, unlocked.
“Jensen,” he whispers as he opens the door. The tech is as much a soldier as any of them and Cougar knows better than to startle him awake.
“Cougs?” Jensen’s voice is muffled, half-asleep. He shifts around, rolls over and sits up, probably blind in the darkness as he gropes around on the bedside table. He taps his phone and the faint light fills the room. “Cougar, are you naked?”
“Si.”
Jensen is quiet for a moment and then asks, “Whatcha need?”
It wouldn’t be the first night he crawled into Jensen’s bed, to feel those talented fingers carding gentle through his hair, to luxuriate in a touch that isn’t meant to hurt, to fall asleep to another’s heartbeat, slow and steady. That isn’t what Cougar needs this night.
Cougar can smell him, the warm soft scent of his sweat, deodorant and toothpaste. Jensen fumbles for his glasses as Cougar steps towards the bed, wracked by the strength of his need. He gets to the foot of the bed and crawls up Jensen’s body before he can find his glasses, hears him squeak a startled “Cougar? What?” but he doesn’t try to escape and Cougar covers him, leans down and nips him on the side of his jaw, hard enough to sting.
Jensen makes a muffled yelp and twitches under him, hands dancing to the sides like he’s not sure at all where to put them.
“Please,” Cougar whispers, low and rough, because he needs, so bad, and Jensen had said once that he would, and if Jensen turns him away now he thinks the need might burn the man out of him, leave only the gato, hungry and wild.
Jensen gulps under him and then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” and Cougar can smell the desire rising in him. He pulls back enough to flip Jensen over onto his stomach, to drag the boxers down his ass. He spreads Jensen’s legs open, keeps them that way with his knees pressed between. He takes himself in hand, drawing back the foreskin and rubbing some spit on the head with the other.
Jensen wriggles under him, trying to look back and see. “Wait. Cougs, wait.”
It’s hard, but Cougar does, stops when he just wants to push inside, to be closer to Jensen than he’s ever been.
Jensen tries to scramble to the bedside table but Cougar can’t bear to let him go, reaches and pulls the whole drawer out instead, dumping it on the mattress beside them. There isn’t much there in this borrowed room, a box of tissues, a tube of something, a dog-eared magazine with glossy pictures of oil-slick skin. Jensen hands him the tube, “Here. Use this,” and Cougar pops it open, clear gel squirting over Jensen’s back and he hisses at the cold of it. Cougar scoops a gob of it from the dip of Jensen’s spine and slicks it against his hole, hears Jensen moan at the feel of his fingers there.
Jensen’s phone goes dark and leaves Jensen blind again.
Cougar can’t hold himself back anymore, can’t make himself wait or go slow. He lines his dick up against Jensen and pushes into the hot and slick. Tighter than he could have imagined, surrounding him, clenching tight as Jensen makes a high whimper and his fingers grab onto the sheets. Cougar pulls back, grabs Jensen by his hips and lifts him into a better position and thrusts in again, slamming hard, his body pressed tight against Jensen’s ass. The collar thumps against Cougar’s collar bone as the force rocks them both forward.
It doesn’t take long. Half a dozen deep thrusts and then he’s biting down on Jensen’s shoulder as the orgasm washes over him, a wave of relief and sensation that leaves him limp and panting on Jensen’s back, slick with sweat.
It takes longer to come down than it did to get there, and Cougar’s in no mood to hurry, just feeling Jensen breathing under him.
“Fuck,” Jensen groans at last and Cougar reluctantly pulls out of him. Jensen flinches and his breath catches in his throat and he lays face-down on his sheet like he’s trying to catch his breath. Cougar frowns and scents the air. There is no release but his own, and Jensen is hiding from him and he remembers all too clear the nights when it was him pushed face-down on a bed or over a table, him trying to curl up afterward.
“No,” he whispers and goes around the bed to Jensen’s side, combs his fingers through the short spiky hair and tries to gently turn Jensen’s head so Cougar can see him.
Jensen opens his eyes, gives Cougar a tight smile. “We gotta work on some finesse next time, man. That…little too fast, you know?”
“I hurt you,” Cougar says, stating the obvious.
Jensen swallows and shrugs, lets Cougar roll him over onto his side. “First time?”
Cougar nods.
“Everybody’s first time is pretty shitty in some way. We’ll work on it.”
Cougar presses his face against Jensen’s shoulder and doesn’t know if they will, if he will ever trust himself to touch Jensen like this again.
“It’s okay,” Jensen says like he can read Cougar’s mind. “Come on, let's get cleaned up; can you grab me a wash-cloth?”
Cougar goes to the bathroom to get it, leaves the light on so Jensen can see. He washes himself quick in the sink and brings back a warm, wet cloth for Jensen. He climbs back on the bed and Jensen holds out a hand for the cloth but Cougar pushes him away. He needs to do this, to see that he hasn’t hurt Jensen too badly. Guilt knots his guts in a way he’s not used to. He spreads Jensen’s legs again, gentle this time, and wipes at his hole, light delicate touches. And slowly, slowly, Jensen relaxes under his hands.
“I really am okay, Cougs.” Jensen sounds better too. Drowsy. Cougar leans down, sniffing for the scent of blood under the lube and sex smells. He flicks out his tongue and licks. Jensen’s taste under his own. Faint coppery tang but not like an open wound. Jensen moans, a sound that’s not pain and Cougar does it again. Reaches around and feels Jensen’s dick, still soft but stirring, thickening under his touch. He strokes his fingertips along the underside, a feather-light touch that makes Jensen squirm.
“Cougs, you don’t…” his words break off as Cougar laves the flat of his tongue against his hole at the same time his hand grips and slides down Jensen’s dick, a single firm stroke.
“Shit!” Jensen gasps and squirms, trapped between the sensations. Cougar rolls him onto his back and puts his tongue to work on his dick, long licks before he takes him fully into his mouth, swallows him so deep his eyes water. Shallow bobs of his head and then deep ones. Lips tight over his teeth and Jensen’s fingers in his hair. The smell of him in Cougar’s nose, on his skin and he’s hard again against the sheets. Hungry sounds and Cougar isn’t sure which of them is making them. His own harsh gasps for breath as he pulls back just enough to catch some air before devouring Jensen again.
“Cougs,” Jensen says through clenched teeth. “Cougs, I’m gonna…” he pushes at Cougar’s shoulder and Cougar grabs his wrist, pins it to the bed. Shoves Jensen’s dick as far back in his throat as he can, feels the pulse of it along his tongue and swallows as he comes, choking on it, eyes stinging and wet.
Jensen is still and quiet and Cougar humps at the mattress, ineffectual, frustrating more than anything. “C’mere,” Jensen says and draws him up, guides Cougar to straddle his hips, takes Cougar’s aching cock in his hand and strokes it. “Come for me,” Jensen pleads and Cougar does, stuttering spurts across Jensen’s muscular abs.
He collapses down, half-covering Jensen’s body and they breathe together. Jensen chuckles in the semi-darkness and then turns to face Cougar, going quiet again as he wipes Cougar’s cheek with the heel of his hand.
“Fuck, are you…did I?”
Cougar shakes his head. Words have never been his strength but he needs to tell Jensen. Needs him to understand. “I thought it would only hurt you if I tried to hurt you.”
Jensen sighs and reaches over and grabs a corner of the sheet, tries to pull it over them. Cougar shifts around a little to help. Lets Jensen buy the time to form an answer if he needs it.
“Cougs. If you want… This, with me. If you want it, we can work on it. I can show you how to fuck me so I don’t get hurt. And if you want, we can try it the other way around. See if I can make it good for you. Let me show you how it’s supposed to be.”
Cougar can’t answer that, can’t face the trust and affection in Jensen’s offer. He presses tighter and hides his face and Jensen strokes his hair until they fall asleep together.
==============
The jangle of Jensen’s phone ringing wakes them both to the pale rays of dawn sunlight creeping through the room’s standard-issue curtains. Cougar closes his eyes again, presses in against Jensen’s warmth. If it concerns him, Jensen will tell him soon enough.
“Kara?” Jensen answers the phone, and Cougar wakes up enough to listen. He’s close enough to the phone that he can hear a woman’s voice, tight with stress and tears.
“They took her! Jake, they took her, oh God,” she cries and Jensen sits up, his body tense, as Cougar falls away from him, his scent going acrid as adrenaline hits his system.
“What? Kara, slow down, took who?” Desperation in his voice, begging without words to not hear the name he’s dreading.
“Elaina, Jake, the hounds, they took her out of school.”
Jake sits up and wraps himself in a sheet, goes into the bathroom and locks the door behind him, leaving Cougar to hear only one side of the conversation, Jake’s voice asking:
“What happened?”
“When? Okay, okay.”
“What did she…fuck. Oh, fuck.”
Jake makes a pained sound, a scream caught between his teeth and behind his hand. A quiet suffering that Cougar wishes he was trusted to share, to offer what comfort he can.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Already Jake’s starting to pull himself together, to plan, to figure out how to fix a situation that’s gone to hell on him.
“Kara. I’ll…I’ll do something. I’ll fix this.”
“I have no idea.” His laugh is only a little hysterical.
“I’ll call you. I’ll need you sober and strong. You hear me?”
Cougar pulls the blanket over his lap and wishes his clothes weren’t two doors away. He waits for Jensen, hears him sniff and wash up in the sink. He meets Cougar’s eye as he steps out of the bathroom, sighs “Fuck” at him and then goes to get his laptop out of its bag. Cougar isn’t sure if that’s a dismissal or not, but he goes, back to his own room to get dressed and then out, out of the barracks, out to the open air. He doesn’t go far, keeps the building in sight, but the long loops he runs on the surrounding roads add up to miles before he comes in again.
He looks for Jensen, but his door is still closed, the sporadic tapping of his keyboard the only sound from within.
=============
Clay isn’t stupid. Looking back on it, he can see after their first mission with Cougar, after that night in the barn, that things were building between Jensen and Cougar. He’s seen how close they are, sharing a desk and bumping shoulders as Jensen types and Cougar cleans his weapon. He’s seen Cougar sleeping in Jensen’s bunk, laying head-to-foot so the width of their shoulders doesn’t shove them off of the narrow bed and empty cots on either side of them. He’s seen the way they look at each other, track each other, watch each other’s back.
He expected he’d have to have a conversation or two at some point, much as he’d like to put it off forever.
What he didn’t expect was that it would be Jensen walking stiff and sore still in the afternoon, hiding in his room half the day and only coming out when he must be starving, eyes red and throat scratchy. He didn’t expect Cougar to be the one looking guilty and wary, running laps around the barracks to burn off nervous energy.
“Jensen,” he says after the kid has his coffee cup filled and in hand. “My office.”
Jensen follows him with shuffling steps, eases himself down into the guest chair by Clay’s borrowed desk.
Clay sighs.
“You don’t look so hot, soldier,” seems like a good opening gambit.
Jensen shrugs in return. “Catching a cold maybe.”
And that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?
Clay lets the silence stretch. Jensen sips at his coffee.
“Look,” Clay says at last, “You’re a grown man, and who you fuck is your own business.” He had really planned to give this speech to Cougar. “But if you need help. If you’re being pressured into something, if he’s using guilt or…”
The tips of Jensen’s ears turn pink and Clay has never ever seen the man blush before. It’s fucking disturbing.
“Jake.”
The kid looks up and Clay knows something is wrong. Wants to shoot or punch or sic Roque onto the problem, whatever it is. But he can’t, not unless he knows what the enemy is.
“We got your back,” he finishes lamely. “Talk to me. Anytime.”
Jensen nods. “Am I dismissed?”
Clay has seen Jensen at sixty hours without sleep, has held him bleeding in his arms, walked twenty miles together with the kid concussed and babbling and he’s never heard that dead voice before.
“Dismissed,” Clay sighs. Tomorrow he’ll talk to Cougar. See if he can figure out what the hell has happened to his team.
========
Jensen rubs his hand over his face. Eighteen hours at the keyboard, except for the brief sojourn to get coffee and share an awkward talk with Clay, have left him feeling stiff and stupid. Planning was never his strong suit, and this…so many balls in the air, so many variables.
Kara is already on the move, bought a by-owner used car off of Craigslist with cash, no paperwork to track since she won’t file the change of title forms. Heading north, to Canada, where Jake will meet her with Elaina or die trying. He studies the transport route again, just grateful that Elaina’s powers make her low-risk, mid-value, batched up with a couple others to be driven to the federal training facility in Michigan instead of flown there.
He checks the manifests again, the vehicle allocation forms. The agent work schedules and medical personnel rosters. He can’t…there are too many. Too many boots on the ground (or riding around in big black vans, but whatever).
He sighs and stands. He crosses the bathroom and taps on Cougar’s door. He’s not even sure what time it is. 0-dark-30.
“Si,” Cougar answers immediately.
Jensen opens the door, and Cougar is sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed. He looks calm and composed, but his eyes betray his anxiety, and Jensen feels bad, for the false sense of security he’s given the man, for the request he’s about to make.
“They took…they took my niece,” Jensen says, and the words catch in his throat. “She. There was an accident, at school. She was on the slide with a younger kid and they fell. Or something. The boy broke his arm and she stopped the pain. He never even cried.”
Cougar is still watching him, silently waiting.
“I’m gonna get her back. Try, at least. I just. There’s so many of them, three vans, four ‘patients’ , three security and one nurse in each one.” He rubs at his eyes again. “I can’t…God, this would be so easy with the team, but I can’t ask them this. Pooch has Jolene, Clay and Roque, they have their careers.”
He looks up and Cougar is already nodding. Jensen holds up his hand. He can’t accept Cougar’s help, not yet, not without him knowing what’s at stake.
“If we pull it off, we’re going to Canada, and from there to Singapore. We’re never coming back. You’ll never see your family again.”
Cougar nods, solemn but sure. God, he doesn’t deserve this, Cougar’s trust, Cougar’s help. He wants to believe he’s offering the man a hope for a better life but he knows it won’t be, that they’re facing years of struggle and fear, trying to build a life in a foreign land (but at least one where mutants aren’t burned at the stake, aren’t requisitioned by the government). But a free life, and Jensen has to think that counts for something.
Jensen takes a deep breath. “We’ll have to get the collar off. Or they’ll track us by it and it’ll all be over before we hit the state line. I might. I might blow us both up. I have a plan but no idea if it’ll work.” He clenches his jaw to keep from losing it. “I’m no bomb squad guy, you know?”
“I trust you,” Cougar says and Jensen nods. He just wants to fold himself small in Cougar’s arms and never come out, but there’s so much to do, so little time.
“We need a rifle and a vehicle; I’ll get the collar off of you and we’ll go.”
============
Cougar is trained in the art of holding perfectly still, breathing slow and even, heart rate steady in the face of danger. Lying on Jensen’s desk while the tech drills tiny careful holes in the explosive device attached to his neck is the single most difficult challenge to that professional calm he’s ever had. Jensen’s constant babble while he does so has to be a close second.
“Seriously, whoever came up with these has seen too much damn Star Trek, Cougs. Freaky 60’s fetishists. I’d rather fight three aliens and a chick with green hair than be here with your life in my hands, I’m not gonna lie.”
Cougar takes a careful breath as Jensen rocks back a little, surveying his handiwork. He brings in a tiny light on a bendable neck and shines it into one hole. Very carefully he inserts some sort of metallic probe, sighing in relief when neither of them dies. “One more.” And he repeats the action on the other side. “Okay.”
If Cougar thought his babble was distracting before, the utter lack of it is even worse, Jensen’s expression tight and intense as he picks up the Dremel tool, slides a piece of cardboard between the collar and Cougar’s neck, and starts to cut. The spinning disk hums to life, whining as it hits the collar. Tiny bits of melted plastic and heated flecks of metal singe into Cougar’s exposed neck where they miss the guard. He clenches his hands and does not move. This will be worth the pain, to be able to go with Jensen, to not be left alone. He thinks even if Jensen’s plan fails (and really, it is a shitty plan and the two of them not enough manpower to pull it off without a miracle), it will be worth it.
He’s never dared even dream of this. The collar coming off. He stares up into the blue of Jensen’s eyes. Grateful as hell that Jensen needs him, but that’s nothing at all to do with why he wants to lean up and brush their lips together, to flick his tongue out and taste.
The collar falls open, an anti-climatic click as it lands on the desk. “Easy,” Jensen warns and carefully eases the wires over Cougar’s head. They both breathe freer when it’s done, when Jensen gives him a hand up, Jensen’s fingers trembling now, now that it’s over. “Fuck,” he laughs, and draws Cougar against his chest for a shaky hug. He feels naked, the fall of his t-shirt like air over his collar bone.
“Okay,” Jensen says when they pull apart. “I’ve got my stuff packed. Go ahead and get yours together. I’m gonna check out your rifle for target practice and get a vehicle. I’ll meet you here, half an hour or less. The guys should still be asleep. We’ll hide you in the back until we’re past security.”
Jensen tucks the collar and the controller into a desk drawer and tapes it shut with a note that says “DANGER! EXPLOSIVES!” on it—not visible from the door, but they’ll see it before they jostle it. Cougar is glad because he isn’t willing to have these men who have been so fair to him maimed any more than Jensen is.
“Okay,” Jensen says again, psyching himself up. They’re already committed; Cougar will be taken from the Losers if they’re caught, re-indoctrinated, re-addicted.
Jensen takes a deep breath and then he’s in Cougar’s space, lips crashing together with desperate urgency. Cougar lets him, as unsure as any other time that a man has kissed him. He parts his lips and allows Jensen to deepen the kiss.
Jensen breaks away just as suddenly as he had rushed in, puts on his cocky smile like a mask and turns to go.
Getting off of base is just as easy as Jensen planned. In the dark of the trunk, Cougar feels over the rifle cases, pops the catches and traces the weapons with his fingers. SR-25 in one, the big 50 cal. in the other.
Jensen stops the car behind a grocery store to let him out. They head for the airport, park the Army’s sedan in long-term parking and steal a car that Jensen says looks fast. They head north, five miles over the speed limit, Cougar driving as Jensen sleeps against the window, long legs tucked uncomfortably against the dash.
==============
Jensen pulls over and Cougar slips out of the car. A ten yard sprint puts him into the tree-line by the interstate. From there he moves through the brush, up to the top of a hill that was sliced in half when the road went in, a rough and sharply sloping rock face in front of him. It will be impossible for anyone to climb up it to get to him; they’ll have to come through the trees, hopefully slowing them and forcing them to make enough noise that he’ll be able to finish his mission before letting the gato free. He’ll use the gato’s strength and grace to go down that impossible slope, to join Jensen in the getaway car, and pray they can displace fast enough to ditch it for less conspicuous wheels before they pick up aerial pursuit.
He sets up the 50 cal first, in case the convoy is earlier than they expect, the SR-25 next to it, faster fire and quieter, harder for men on the ground to spot him, better for taking down personnel. When it’s done, he sights down the scope to where Jensen stands beside the car, hood up, pretending to talk on his phone.
“How’s it going, Cougs?” he asks over their stolen communications unit. Cougar sees him turn to look up the road, the sidelong glance up at Cougar’s position. He knows Jensen isn’t questioning his preparedness, just talking to fill the time, the silence.
“Done,” Cougar answers and Jensen paces.
From his position he can see the state trooper’s car before Jensen can, and he drops his respiration, lowers his heart rate. Sights the trooper’s head in as the man gets out of the car. At this range he cannot miss. Their fast car has been missing for long enough that it has possibly been reported stolen. Jensen has two guns on him. They are officially AWOL by now, Cougar considered a dangerous fugitive.
“Problem, son?” he hears the officer ask, muffled over the comms.
Cougar decides that the officer touching Jensen will be his signal, the point at which Jensen cannot possibly talk his way out of it. Shooting the man reduces their chances of success even further, but Jensen getting searched would make the mission impossible.
“Hey,” Jensen answers, a grin in his voice. “The thing just died on me. Timing belt looks loose, probably broken. I don’t want to try turning her over, just waiting for Triple -A to get here and give me a tow.”
The officer peers in the windows, but there is nothing suspicious to see. He walks back to the police car and sits in the driver’s seat. Cougar keeps the rifle pointed at him. If he checks the license plate. If it’s reported stolen. Cougar wonders if he should take the shot now. If the hole in the windshield would be small enough that nobody would notice the man behind it was dead.
He hesitates too long though, and the man stands up again, walks to Jensen and hands him a card.
“Here. If Triple-A doesn’t come and get you soon, you call Singer and he’ll come pick you up.”
Jensen takes the card and beams at the trooper. “Awesome, thanks.” He holds out his hand to shake. “I really appreciate it.” The officer goes back to his car and pulls away.
“Oh fuck me,” Jensen huffs into the comm. “I just about pissed myself.”
Cougar has just a second to be relieved he didn’t kill an innocent man for nothing and then he sees the black vans coming up on them and there’s no more time.
“Here they come,” he says and Jensen steps behind the cover of the car, pulls his pistol and holds it down at his side, hidden from the view of oncoming traffic.
==============
Jensen hears Cougar swear over the comm. “Mierda! Jensen, there are four.”
Four vans. At least three more armed guards. More space between the first and last vehicle. A fourth vehicle to breach and search. The state trooper on his way back as soon as shots are fired and someone calls it in. The world slides into a strangely sharp vision. This cannot be done. Not with two men.
“Cougar,” he says with utter calm. “Blow the engines, take down what men you can, but when they come up the slope at you, you shift and run. Keep going and don’t stop. Get to the rendezvous with Kara. Tell her what happened. Tell her I tried. Keep her safe.”
“No!” Cougar shouts at him. “Damn it. Come away. We’ll try again, somewhere else.”
But Jensen is already stepping towards the road, pistol swinging up, sighting in on the face of the first van’s driver. His finger squeezes the trigger until the safety glass shatters, the van fish-tailing wildly and he dodges to the side to avoid being hit.
"Carlos…” he starts to say, but bites down hard on the three words that would follow, a selfish declaration that could bring Cougar no comfort, no strength.
He hears the crack of the 50 cal from the hill, and the second van skids to a stop, a bullet through its engine block. He gives himself over to the plan then, to the trust he has in Cougar to do his job and watch Jensen’s back. He shoots out the side window of the first van, kills the passenger-side guard before the man can arm himself. He reaches through the glass and pops the door open. The third guard is there, struggling to get his seat belt off, his gun free of the holster. Too close for Jensen to shoot without the bullet going through, back into the passengers, the screaming kids locked into their seats.
He swings the pistol instead, awkward in the crowded space. Hits the man in the temple with the side of the gun, five pounds of metal, again and three times and the fight is out of him, he lies limp in his seat, bloodied and slack-jawed, eyes staring into nothing.
Jensen points his gun at the nurse then, a plain woman in pale blue scrubs. “Don’t move. Don’t…” but his attention isn’t on her, and he searches the faces of the terrified children, the youngest maybe six, the oldest in his mid-teens.
“Elaina?” he calls but she’s not here, and there’s no time, and he hadn’t thought of this part, what to do with the ones that weren’t her.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he has no way to save them, no way to take them.
He leaves the first van. There are two dead guards on the highway, heads bloodied and limbs splayed like puppets with their strings cut, discarded playthings. He sees the fourth van go off of the road, straight to the tree line and disgorge its passengers there.
“They’re in the trees,” he tells Cougar, knows there’s only three minutes at most that Cougar can continue to cover him before he’ll have to fight or run. A shot pings out, one of the guys from van four and Jensen has to cross behind the second van to hide from the shooter that Cougar can’t get in his line of sight.
A hand with a pistol reaches out of the driver’s side of the second van and Jensen shoots, hears a man scream as a finger comes off and the gun is ripped from his hand. Jensen turns the corner and fires into his face, a clean double-tap and then he’s opening the door, dodging the falling body.
The second guard is already dead and the third fires from the back row, the bullet catching Jensen just above his left hip, so clean that it feels like fire through his side, so fast it doesn’t even punch him back. He’s got the angle on this one though, so he shoots, blows out the man’s throat and blood sprays everywhere.
He slaps his left hand down over his wound and presses. “Keep going, keep going,” he tells himself because there’s nothing else to do. He’s losing blood, knows this is not good.
“Elaina!” he calls and hears back “Jake! Uncle Jake!”
The nurse cowers back as Jensen tries to shove the guard’s body over enough to get to his niece, to cut her out of the straps holding her down. The kid beside her is crying, the one behind staring like she’s in shock. He gets to Elaina and puts his gun down, God she looks so scared. He draws his knife and then there’s the cold hard muzzle of a pistol under his right ear. The nurse no longer looks frightened, just calm and professional.
Jensen’s half-deaf from firing inside a vehicle, but he hears the low thrum of a chopper, coming closer, the shrill sound of a police siren.
“Drop the knife and turn around,” the ‘nurse’ says and nudges him in the direction she wants him to go. “Step down, nice and slow, call your sniper buddy down off of that hill.”
And he’s so damn close. He had Elaina inches away from him. He just needs a tiny slip-up and he’ll take this woman down, isn’t ready to throw himself on her bullets yet. He looks up the hill even though he knows the woman is using Jensen’s body as a shield, that Cougar can’t possibly get a bead on her, even if he was still at the rifles. Her gun digs into the base of his skull and her other hand has a hold of the back of his belt.
“Cougs!” he yells, because Cougar has probably already lost his comm, is probably already running around on four paws. “Cougar, run!” God, he hopes Cougar is already in the wind.
“Son of a bitch,” the woman swears. In the van, Elaina is calling for Jake and he’s just standing there bleeding. There’s gunfire but he’s not sure who is shooting at whom.
He jerks to the side and the woman’s pistol fires, a line of fire across his scalp that makes the world twist and buck under his feet, hearing and equilibrium shot to shit and even though she’s smaller he’s having a hard time moving, much less fighting her. She aims at his face and it’s all he can do to twist the barrel away. His stomach twists and he’s utterly desperate.
He can feel pressure rising behind his eyes, an alien feeling, slick force throwing itself against an invisible wall. He wonders if he’s bleeding into his brain. Then it’s like the force finds a crack in the wall, the smallest seam gives way and then a rushing torrent tears the wall apart. The woman chokes, and her right eye swells, like a balloon being inflated. Him, he’s doing this, pouring energy into her body. Her gun fires one last time as her finger fills the trigger-guard. She gurgles and goes still and Jensen pushes her off. Tumors, there are tumors all over her, misshapen lumps, some bigger than his fists. If he wasn’t already in shock, he thinks the sight of it might make him puke.
It’s quiet then, or he’s completely deaf, he’s not sure which. He scrambles lop-sided back into the van, cuts Elaina free and pulls her against his chest, loses himself for a moment in the jackrabbit patter of her heartbeat against him, her body so tiny and fragile in his arms. The knife he drops to the floor. The grip of his 9mm is slick with sweat and blood and his left hand is shaking so hard he can barely hold it. He feels rattled, dizzy and weak, but nothing hurts, the pain drifting away from him, Elaina’s power siphoning off the agony.
He climbs down from the van and there’s a man out there still on his feet. “Jensen,” says a voice he’d know in his sleep. It’s coming from in front of him and over the comm too. He raises his head and his firearm and Clay is in front of him, assault rifle in hand. Jensen feels himself shaking, the power building in his head again, ready to reach out, to tear into Clay’s flesh, to warp it beyond function until the man dies choking. His CO. His friend, his brother.
“Clay,” he says, voice broken and distant. “Don’t…don’t stop me. Please.” The car is right behind Clay, shimmering bright glossy red in the afternoon sun like a mirage. He doesn’t want to kill Clay. Doesn’t want Clay to shoot him either. He tries to put Elaina down, because he won’t use her as a shield, but her little arms and legs are locked tight around him and she won’t allow it.
There’s movement behind Clay: Roque and Cougar stepping out of the tree-line at the base of the hill, Cougar stumbling, Roque half-carrying him. And fuck, he never wanted this. He thinks, just for a second, of tipping the 9mm up, shoving it up under his chin and pulling the trigger. He’s a mutant now, and he’s had twenty years to think of what that would mean for him. He can’t do it though. Can’t let that be Elaina’s last memory of him.
“Damn it, Jensen!” Clay swears and Jensen realizes he’s missed something. “We’re not here to stop you, we’re here to get you out.”
The thrum of the chopper is pounding into his chest like the drums at a parade, and the downdraft sends sand and debris flying into his eyes. He wants to believe. Wants to think he’s safe, that his team has his back. Clay slings his rifle and holds out his hand, ducking as the chopper sinks down in the space in front of the first van.
“Move, soldier!” Clay orders. Cougar and Roque are already running. Jensen takes a step. Stumbles. Drops his gun and wraps both arms around Elaina, and he runs. Clay catches him six steps in, arm around his shoulders as he takes some of Jensen’s weight.
The aircraft is small, not a military bird at all. Crop-duster or traffic-copter, all naked structure, dragonfly-light. One pilot’s seat and two passenger. Clay shoves Jensen up into a seat, and he sees Roque do the same with Cougar on the other side. Jensen buckles in on instinct, putting the straps over Elaina too, locking them together. Clay steps up onto the runner and wraps a wrist into Jensen’s harness and Pooch takes off. The rotors strain and the ground falls away and the last thing Jensen sees before he passes out is the plastic dog on the dashboard nodding yes yes yes.
==========
Roque bodily lifts Cougar into the helicopter, presses him back into the seat with one hand while he yanks the straps around Cougar’s body with the other, buckles him in and grabs on. Cougar’s fingers still twitch with the after-effects of the tasers the guards had used on him as he’d laid there with the rifles, trying to clear Jensen’s way at the cost of his own escape. He remembers the sting of the barbs shooting into him, the body-twisting jolts of electricity shooting down the wires. And then Roque had been there, stepping through the trees in the other direction, bullets spraying and the guards jerking and falling.
The smell of Jensen’s blood is thick in the air but it fades as the chopper takes off. The tech’s eyes are closed, a little girl fastened in against him in the seat. Pooch banks the helicopter a hard right and Jensen’s head rolls limply around on his neck, the gunshot wound on the back of his head oozing steadily down his neck and into the fabric of his shirt. Cougar rips a strip off of his t-shirt and balls it up, leans over and presses it hard against the wound, feeling Jensen’s heartbeat under his fingers.
They fly. Sickeningly low to the treetops, below the radar.
Cougar holds on to Jensen until they’re landing. Clay unbuckles Jensen and Roque unbuckles Cougar. His legs hold steady when he climbs down from the helicopter. Pooch takes a minute with Jensen, prying the girl off of him for long enough to slap a trauma patch on the entry and exit wounds on his side and tie Cougar’s makeshift bandage to his head to hold it on tight. Jensen moans when the girl is forced away and quiets when she’s back at his side.
Roque torches the helicopter and Clay pulls up in a maroon mini-van. They all load in, Elaina, Jensen and Cougar in the very back, Roque in the middle seat, Clay riding shotgun and Pooch driving.
They drive. It feels like hours, slow speeds down back roads, two-lane ribbons of asphalt between walls of trees. Cougar holds Jensen against his chest, the child against Jensen’s other side. Nobody talks.
When the van stops, it’s dark and there’s a fence in front of them. Clay and Roque get out, bolt cutters and hacksaws in hand.
“We’ve got some time,” Pooch says and climbs back with the medical kit and a bright light. He checks Jensen over, and Dios, Cougar hadn’t realized there was so much blood in a person. It soaks Jensen’s side and the back of his shirt, Cougar’s clothing is sticky and heavy with it and the girl even worse. Pooch doesn’t seem to find anything more urgent than the obvious wounds so he threads a needle and Cougar holds the light and the girl holds Jensen’s head, a look of concentration on her little face.
“Hey, sweetie, don’t look,” Pooch says as he stitches the back of Jensen’s head, but she does anyway. They roll Jensen on his side and he gets the front of Jensen’s hip stitched, entry and exit wounds close enough together that the bullet can’t have gone deeper than skin and muscle. Pooch ties off and re-threads the needle to go after the exit wound. Jensen groans and takes a ragged breath.
“Get ready to hold him,” Pooch tells Cougar, and Cougar gets a grip on blood-slick skin, ready to keep Jensen down.
“Cougs?” Jensen asks, trying to lift his head.
“Be still,” Cougar tells him. Jensen’s eyes roll around as he attempts to take in his surroundings. He seems confused but not in pain, and Cougar remembers what Jensen told him about his neice and the boy with the broken arm.
“Where are we?”
“The border. Canada. Clay and Roque are cutting us a hole in the fence.”
Jensen relaxes and smiles. “Shit.” Pooch pushes the needle in and pulls it through with the needle-nose pliers. Jensen doesn’t flinch, but he looks back at Pooch.
“Pooch? What’re you doing here?”
Pooch rolls his eyes. “Saving your ass, idiot. What were you going to do, outrun the cops and the handlers all the way to Canada?”
Jensen huffs a laugh. Pooch grabs his hip to hold him still. “That was the plan, yeah. With Cougar shooting to clear us a path.”
“Your plan was crap,” Pooch says and finishes the stitches. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us, Jensen? Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Jensen goes quiet, his jaw clenches. “Jolene. Your lives, your careers.”
“God-damn it, Jensen,” Pooch sighs. “You’re like family, you and Cougar both. You think I could have lived with you two going out in a blaze of glory in some B-movie suicide run? You think any of us could? And yeah, Jolene is pissed, but not at you. She’s meeting us as soon as we have a location for her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jensen whispers, and Pooch snorts.
“For what? Going after your niece? That had to be done, man. No way around it. Us coming after you? Just as certain. If anybody is to blame it’s the system taking her in the first place.”
“How’d you know?” Jensen asks, “That I hadn’t just eloped with Cougar. How did you find us?”
“The brass called Clay to tell him to break the news to you that your niece had had a ‘change of status’ and your sister was missing. When you were gone, Clay raised hell to get us assigned to bringing you two back. Just for the record? I don’t think he was kidding at all about the ass-kicking he wants to give you. The man was pissed. I think you hurt his feelings.”
Jensen winces. Cougar squeezes his arm. Nobody is beating Jensen while he’s still breathing.
“So anyway,” Pooch says as he tapes new gauze over the bullet holes. “We took the next flight up to Detroit, ditched the vehicles we’d been assigned, stole a car and a chopper and came looking for the traffic jam.”
The side door opens and Clay pops his head in. “Fence is down, time to move again. We’re not safe yet.”
Pooch gives Jensen’s arm one last squeeze and climbs back into the driver’s seat. Clay and Roque pile in and they drive.
============
Cougar dries his hair and steps out of the shower. Jensen calls the hotel a “fleabag,” but it’s nicer than most of the safe-houses they’ve crashed at during missions, and Cougar isn’t sure what standards Jensen is holding it to. Maybe it’s just that his sister and niece have been in places like this for ten days now, as the Losers and their civilian women make their way across Canada, by bus, train and sometimes airplane. Never in a straight line and never all of them traveling together, although they manage to regroup almost every night. Jensen’s original plan for getting out of the country was easier, but losing everything that had been in the trunk of the getaway car (clothes, Jensen’s spare glasses, tickets, fake IDs and two laptops) had hurt them, all of it taking time to replace.
Cougar is okay with slow going. Jensen is healing; Pooch has pulled the stitches and declared him fit for light duty but Cougar still catches him wincing if he moves too fast or lifts something too heavy.
He opens the bathroom door and steps out, towel around his hips and his damp hair curling against his neck. Jensen is in the bed, their bed, glasses perched on his nose, laptop on a folded sheet on his stomach. Bare shoulders and beautiful skin, he’s the only man Cougar has ever wanted to touch, wanted to touch him. He smiles, slow and crooked, and Jensen looks up, eyes wide like he still can’t believe that Cougar would want him.
The towel falls and Jensen snaps the laptop closed and shoves it onto the bedside table.
“Cougs…” he starts, but Cougar is on him, crawling up his body and pinning his wrists to the bed, dripping cold water from the tips of his hair onto Jensen’s face before he leans down to nip at Jensen’s neck.
“Fuck,” Jensen moans and turns his head, angling for a kiss, and Cougar gives it to him, nuzzling and licking and gently biting. He feels strong with Jensen, in control. He loves that he can take the man apart with a touch.
“Cougar, Cougar, wait…” Cougar freezes, searches Jensen’s face for signs of pain. Jensen licks his lips, and Cougar can see the indecision on his face. Something is wrong. He’s done something wrong. He releases Jensen’s wrists and pulls back, his pulse thudding in his ears.
“Hey.” Jensen sits up and catches him before he can go completely off of the bed. “I just—I just need to talk to you for a second, okay?”
Cougar nods but he doesn’t feel any better; words have never been his friends.
“I need to be sure,” Jensen says, looking down like he can’t meet Cougar’s eyes. “When we started this, you were in the collar and just coming out of a lifelong addiction and I need to know that you want this. Me. That I’m not taking advantage.”
Cougar glares at Jensen, for thinking so little of him, even though he can acknowledge the concern might be fair.
“Carlos,” Jensen says and he does look up then. “I’m yours, man. For as long as you want me. I love you and I never want you to leave. But if you don’t feel the same, now or later or whenever, just tell me, and I won’t expect…this. Us. I’ll still have your back.” That is a firm promise. “I’ll do whatever I possibly can to get you what you need. Freedom, money, papers, anything. Anything.”
“Jensen,” Cougar sighs and pulls him in, pulls their foreheads together. “I don’t want freedom. I want you.” He has no idea what freedom would even look like or what he’d do with it.
“Oh thank god,” Jensen laughs and then he’s kissing Cougar. They fall together and this, this was worth everything .
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Date: 2012-06-08 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-09 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-09 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 04:42 am (UTC)*bounces*
*makes with the gimme hands*
I CAN HAZ MOAR FIC, PLZ?
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Date: 2012-06-09 03:23 pm (UTC)Leaving those kids is gonna tear Jensen up for a long time. I think once his own family is safe, he'll have to think about coming back again.
It really was fun, playing with the canon idea of kids in danger and shifting it around some. I just didn't want to introduce half a dozen OCs at the very very end of the fic.
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Date: 2012-06-09 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 02:09 am (UTC)Thank you so much for your thinky-thoughts. I love seeing the fics that I write through the readers' eyes. I really appreciate the time you guys take to share back with me. :)
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Date: 2012-06-09 08:43 am (UTC)<3 >^-^<
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Date: 2012-06-09 03:29 pm (UTC)As for going back for a couple van-loads of kids, that could be hilarious. I can see Roque playing momma-bear to a dozen mutie youngsters. :)
I don't think there will be a sequel to this one. I think I told all the story that I wanted to in it. However, I'm 30,000 words into the next Losers AU, if that helps at all. :)
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Date: 2012-06-10 12:03 am (UTC)as for the kids, yeah that would be funny but the logistics would just not work.
as for the next story. YAY! Looking forward to it and thank you for this one. As I said before it was marvelous! :)
hugs
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Date: 2012-06-15 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-17 02:42 pm (UTC)Thanks for the kind words. So glad you enjoyed it.