I'm just a soul (whose intentions are good)

storm_petrel

Jensen has always been a little odd in the head, so it takes Cougar a few weeks to realize something is – off—about him. It’s hard to pin down, because Jensen’s baseline for weirdness is probably at *least* an order of magnitude above the rest of the team put together, but still. Something’s not right.

At first, Cougar thinks maybe it’s just stress. They’ve been active in the field for weeks without a proper stand-down, and everyone’s getting a bit raw. Clay’s jaw gets tight, and the lines around his eyes get a little deeper, Roque’s temper gets a bit closer to the surface as each day passes. Pooch’s fingers stray to his wedding band more and more often, and Jensen—

—well, the whole mess started with Jensen and his disrespect for personal boundaries.

***

Their command post on the Uzbekistan border hardly deserves the name, a cluster of rusted-out sheds that someone’s clearly been using to store livestock. Goats, by the smell of it, and it took Cougar four days to get bored enough to start identifying barnyard animals by smell. Snipers are patient by nature, having a job with an *extremely* high ratio of mindfuck-boredom to action.

So it’s been four days with nothing but the wind, the drone of the gasoline generator, and Jensen’s running commentary for company, and Cougar, sniper-patient or not, is starting to twitch under the skin.

Jensen is actually some kind of random conversation generating machine, that’s the only possible explanation. “Jesus, these sat feeds are dead. Nothing moving except a couple of trucks going back and forth and this random guy who keeps popping into the frame like the asshole cousin at a wedding—and look at this, lag time and one frame per minute? I paid my taxes last year, you think Uncle Sam could invest in some better surveillance technology for spying on the definitely-not-terrorists. I mean, Christ, their firewall’s for shit, those crates are probably full of bootleg Chinese porn, and if asshole in the frame here doesn’t start dancing for my goddamn entertainment pretty soon, I’m going to be seriously pissed off.”

Jensen grabs the two laptops, one in each arm and props them on his hips like a pair of babies as he crosses the room and drops down on the dirt floor of the doorway. Cougar shifts his body to make room as Jensen leans into the thin corrugated wall. He bends forward, and his breath puffs warm on the back of Cougar’s neck. Cougar ignores him, keeps his eye on the scope of the RPA Rangemaster, and sinks into that almost-blank state where nothing can touch him, where there’s only the green-lit world of the targeting scope, and the horizon is a cross-hair.

He has to zone back in because, abruptly, Jensen’s practically on top of him, still talking, and he’s close enough to smell four days in the desert on Jensen’s skin, close enough to see individual glints of stubble on Jensen’s jaw. Cougar has no idea what conversational tangents he’s missed in the meantime. “—and then we found out the smell was the goldfish, which was in the vacuum cleaner bag—which is why I wasn’t allowed to have pets anymore so computers were the next best—you hear that?”

Jensen, for all his ongoing monologue, has good ears. There’s a car, definitely not designed for desert mountain roads, speeding along the valley road below. Jensen drops down to his elbows, puts his lips to his ear, so close that Cougar almost flinches back. “Clay’s signalling. He says hold positions and wait.”

So they freeze, Jensen locked into place just behind his right shoulder as the car, not even slowing down, plows through the gates of the compound in a hail of machine-gun fire and hits the main building with an explosion so bright, Cougar has to duck away from the scope. When he looks up, it’s just in time to see the satellite feeds on Jensen’s laptops go from tranquil to inferno. Clay’s voice is crackling across the radio, *Report—the fuck was that?!* resonating through static, and Jensen grins, brushing his knuckles hard against Cougar’s shoulder. “Well, at least things are getting *interesting*.”

***

After the clusterfuck in Uzbekistan, Jensen’s suddenly *there* in a way he hadn’t been before, and Cougar is starting to feel his calm erode. His boots knock against Cougar’s under the table, their shoulders brush in the truck. Logic dictates that he should back up, get Jensen out of his *space*, but that feels too much like retreating, and besides, when Jensen’s within his bizarre new one-meter orbit of Cougar, he’s not out attracting trouble. Cougar had to shoot out the tires on the two guard trucks chasing Jensen’s motorcycle when he came blasting out of the compound. Granted, Jensen had just hacked their servers on-site and made off with a drive of heroin shipment manifests, but Cougar would really prefer to live in a world where he doesn’t have to perch over the edge of crumbling sandstone cliff and use his second-worst rifle to blast the tires of two speeding trucks, with Jensen weaving back and forth between them, small and fast and vulnerable.

Still, Jensen’s constant tactile presence is starting to get to him, makes him want—something. He wants Jensen out of his space. He wants to keep Jensen right where he is.

He wants to know what the hell game Jensen’s playing.

Clay corners him one day a month later, alone by a decades-old Twin Otter on the airstrip of some broken-down town 100 miles outside of Arkhangel’sk. “You want to fill me in on what’s happening between you and my tech support?”

There’s a lot of answers Cougar could give, ranging anywhere from a debilitating brain parasite affecting Jensen’s impulse control all the way to not being hugged enough as a child, and now he’s transferring those issues to Cougar, because Pooch is completely married and Roque would probably gut him after twenty minutes of exposure. He settles on the most honest answer he can. “Nothing.”

Clay snorts, gives him that look he gets when he could call you on your bullshit, but isn’t going to yet because he wants to see how big an asshole you’ll make of yourself. This look is most often levelled at Jensen; Cougar’s not used to seeing it pointed in his direction.

“Work it out,” is all Clay says, and then Jensen’s bounding across the tarmac, all smiles like they’re at fucking Six Flags instead of some overgrown tundra airstrip in the fuck-end of nowhere.

Cougar feels something tight turn over in his chest.

***

Clusterfucks don’t like to occur in isolation because they get lonely, and that’s how Cougar wakes up to find himself stripped naked and handcuffed to a pipe in a half-finished condo development on the outskirts of Rio. Stupid, *stupid* mission, cover blown and they took his hat. Someone is going to *pay*.

There’s a bit of stiff wire wrapped under his hair tie, but the angle’s awkward and it’s proving difficult to work loose. The pipe behind his head is making a racket, and it’s hard to focus. The water’s not connected yet, so the pipe shouldn’t be clanging so much. It takes him a moment to recognize the pattern, but he’s officially blaming that on the concussion.

*Clink clank clank clank, Clink clank clank clank, clink clank clink, clink clink clank--- thr, JJ, r u thr---*

Jensen. That tight spot in his chest clenches again. He lines up the cuff and start tapping back with one hand, the other gradually working the wire out of his hair. *CGR, 1 flr dwn immblzd. Cn u gt ot?*

*Ngtv. Immblzd. Men cmng.* There’s a pause, and then *CGR, lv-* Then a clang and a thump, like someone yanked Jensen away hard, and Cougar’s fingers are working frantically, un-looping the wire, pulling hair out with it—

There’s footsteps outside the door, and Cougar’s only got a moment, but he manages to palm the wire before the door opens and Jensen walks in. He got to keep his boxers. Life is not fair. Four heavily armed men follow behind and shove him to the corner, automatics trained on both of them.

Rodriguez, the shit-dealing hijo de puta that got them into this mess, smiles down at him. He’s wearing a thousand-dollar suit with a gold tiepin. He’s got Jensen’s glasses in one hand and he’s spinning Cougar’s hat in the other. Bastard bastard *bastard*. In the corner, on his knees, Jensen’s eyes are hot and tight, like he’s holding himself still through sheer force of will.

The closest heavy holsters his automatic and pulls a very thin, very sharp knife. Rodriguez smiles, and grinds the sharp heel of his loafer down on the toes of Cougar’s left foot, *hard*. Cougar hisses air through his teeth. Jensen, thank god, doesn’t make a sound. They can both see where this is going, and there isn’t a single way that it’s not going to end bloody.

Rodriguez, in a reasonably calm tone considering he’s just broken three of Cougar’s toes as an opening statement, turns to address Jensen. “Now, you’re going to tell me where your Colonel stashed the Uzbekistan manifests. You think my life is easy? Heroin just walks through customs with a smile? No, that route out of Afghanistan took too long to set up, cost too much goddamn money. So, you’re going to tell me where that information is, or I’m going to have Diego here cut pieces off your friend until you do.”

“Mámalo,” says Jensen, and his accent is awful but his voice is steady, and Cougar suddenly wants to wrap his arms around him and just hold him for a few hours or days. Given the situation that they’re in, that’s probably not going to happen, but a man can dream.

Incredibly, that tight knot in his chest unclenches for a moment. Cougar, holding on to his hard-won stillness, very gently eases the tip of the wire into the lock of the right cuff, directly behind his head.

Rodriguez doesn’t look happy with Jensen’s answer. He waves Diego forward, and that knife, Cougar tries not to think about the knife, and gently wiggles the wire back and forth. He tries not to think about the knife until he feels cold steel on his face and Diego grabs his left ear and pulls hard.

There’s a hot flood against the side of his face, and he has a moment to realize, albeit dizzily, that it’s cut to the inner cartilage, not severed, because Diego flinched at a crashing sound a floor or two away. Rodriguez spins in place, gestures two of the heavies out the door, and turns back, looking murderous. “His right eye, then the left, Mr. Diego, and try not to botch the job so badly this time.” Diego flips the knife in his hand, the grip slick with blood, and Cougar has a half-second to lock eyes with Jensen.

He winks.

The cuff lock pops open and Cougar surges forward, just as Jensen bellows and launches to his feet, plowing into the other guard, bringing him down with one arm across his throat and his gun hand smashing against the floor. Rodriguez, the fucking coward, backpedals out the door.

Then Cougar has to focus on Diego, the very large man who’s trying to stab him. He dodges two cuts, and god *damn* Diego is fast, so Cougar ducks in and jams the jagged edge of his wire pick *hard* at the man’s right eye.

Diego screams, and hits him *hard* on his bleeding ear, and holy mother of *god*, that hurts. He drops, and Diego follows him down, and stabs down hard. Cougar’s shoulder is burning fire, but he pins the knife in his own flesh with one fist, and strikes once, twice at Diego’s bloody eye. The man rears back, but it’s not enough, and he pulls the knife free.

And maybe that would be the end except Jensen’s got the guard’s gun and he fires once, twice and Diego goes down on top of Cougar, two bullets in his back.

There’s blood in his eyes and a corpse on top of him, but things could be worse. If he doesn’t bleed to death in the next ten minutes, Cougar will definitely chalk this one up as a win. Jensen’s there, suddenly, hauling the body away and pressing down *hard* on his bleeding shoulder. Everything goes white for a few moments and Cougar hears someone yelling on the other side and has the bad feeling that it’s him. When he blinks out of it, he can hear footsteps and Pooch’s voice in the hall, getting closer. Jensen is leaning over at him, some indefinably ferocious look in his eyes. “You fucking asshole, Cougar, if you die here I’m going to kick your ass *so hard*.”

And then Jensen kisses him.

***

He wakes up on a motel bed when the morphine wears off. His shoulder is a throbbing mass of pain, his left foot is swollen and the stitches in his ear itch like hell. There’s an impromptu IV line taped to his arm, and the fluid bag’s hanging off—a hat rack. Next time he’s holding out for a real hospital, with real doctors and real sanitation, and not Roque’s loopy-looking sutures. He manages to turn his head, and there’s Roque and Pooch, playing cards by the window. Pooch sees the movement, and he’s by the bed in a second.

“Cougar, man, good to see you.” He’s got a cup of ice chips, for which Cougar’s profoundly grateful. There’s a bandage taped to Pooch’s arm, and he raises an eyebrow. Pooch shrugs. “Rodriguez has eyes on all the decent hospitals and clinics, we’re just lucky we had the transfusion kit in the truck. You got 500 cc’s of Pooch-juice in you, you can buy me a drink later.”

Roque gives him another morphine shot, and he’s out before he can try talking. When he wakes up again, it’s night, and Clay’s sprawled in a chair, his boots propped on the bed by Cougar’s knee. Clay’s got wide shoulders and good upper-body strength and between the two of them, they manage to stagger to the john without ripping Cougar’s stitches.

Clay props him over the sink and splashes some water on his face and Cougar studies his reflection, shaky. Bloody, beat up and he’s going to have two new scars. And Jensen kissed him.

The morphine’s been keeping that thought at bay.

They stay at the motel for two more days while Cougar sleeps, mostly. The few times he’s awake, he only sees Jensen once, just for a moment, framed in the doorway, and then he’s gone. It’s the longest he’s been out of Cougar’s sight for months. It’s unnerving.

He wakes up one afternoon to find his hat sitting on the bedside table and his fingers warm, but the drugs are making him fuzzy, and he can’t remember if anyone was there.

The cas-evac flight shows up two days after it would actually be useful, but it lands in the Florida Keys a few hours later, so Cougar’s not inclined to pick a fight. He’s still mostly out of it, and when he wakes up properly, they’re in the old CIA safehouse in Key Largo, on a week-long stand-down.

It’s just as well they got dumped someplace warm, because Cougar’s foot is still too swollen to fit his boot. He can’t get a shirt on properly, so he sits on the back step of the house with his hat tipped over his eyes, letting the sun soak his injured shoulder while Roque and Pooch swim laps in the old concrete pool. Clay’s been on the phone all morning, filing their mission report, and Jensen—

-is nowhere in sight. Clearly this is going to require an ambush strategy.

He tips his hat to Roque. “Going inside to sleep.”

Roque shakes off water, grabs his towel. “You need watching?”

Cougar shakes his head, winces when the movement tugs at the stitches there. “No, it’s okay. Just going to sleep.” Roque shrugs, wanders over to where Clay’s still reporting, albeit tipped back in a lounge chair with the phone propped against his ear and a beer in his free hand.

The house is cool and dark after the sun in the yard, and Cougar weaves down the hall, passing the kitchen where Jensen is hunched over his laptop. He doesn’t look up, but Cougar deliberately scuffs his uninjured toes over the old linoleum, marking his passage. His room’s off the main hall at the foot of the stairs, and Cougar closes the door halfway, and settles back on the bed to wait.

It doesn’t take long. He’s got his eyes shut, his breathing deliberately slow when the door opens, very quietly, and someone slips inside.

The footsteps are too soft, and if Cougar hadn’t been hyperaware of every sound, every interrupted air current in the room that’s being blocked by someone’s body, he’d have missed when they stopped by the bed, and someone leans in.

And Cougar may have been stabbed this week but he’s still fucking *fast*, and he grabs Jensen’s wrist in midair.

“Jesus *Christ*!” Jensen is wide-eyed, every line of his body quivering taut like he’s poised to sprint, so Cougar hooks his leg around the back of Jensen’s knees and yanks him off-balance, down onto the bed. Jensen scrambles back, but Cougar pins him with a look.

“Now we talk.”

Jensen snorts, nervous. “That’d be a change of scene. Look, Cougar, I’m fucking sorry, okay? I just wanted to make sure you were okay, my sister would be pissed if you died, she said I need a keeper and you’re the best one to come along so far—”

Cougar turns Jensen’s hand over and brushes his knuckles along his palm, slowly, along Jensen’s lifeline. Jensen stops, swallows hard. He looks less like he’s about to bolt, though, so Cougar is reassured.

“Now,” he says, quietly, “Talk.”

Under the sunburn and bruises, Jensen is pale. “Fuck, I’m sorry, it doesn’t have to mean anything, I thought you were gonna die, I’ve been all kinds of fucked-up over this, and if you let me go I swear to god, Cougar, I swear I’ll never mention it again—”

If he leaves this conversation in Jensen’s hands, it’s going to run in circles for another hour, so Cougar decides it’s time to be proactive. He leans suddenly into Jensen’s space, and kisses him.

As technically-second kisses go, it’s not great. The angle is awkward, their stubble scratches, and Jensen’s mouth is *still* opening and closing like he’s trying to talk. Cougar pushes gently, follows Jensen down, and kisses him again. It’s strange, he’s never wanted anything like this before, never felt desire for another man, but Jensen feels *good* under his hands, his chest solid and strong under his thin t-shirt, and he’s breathing hard like he’s going to pitch Cougar off. Suddenly, though, he lifts his head and now they’re kissing properly, hot and smooth like they’re passing something unspoken back and forth between them.

This is good, it’s better than good, Jensen’s hands smoothing up and down his spine like he can’t stop touching Cougar’s skin. It feels *good*, and it’s been a long time since anyone touched Cougar and wasn’t trying to kill him. Jensen suddenly shifts, sits up and pushes Cougar down until he’s straddling his hips, and pulls his shirt over his head. Cougar kisses him again, then Jensen drops his head, puts his lips to the edge of the stitches in the hollow of Cougar’s collarbone, and breathes against his skin. “I’d never have told them, not a thing, I swear. But after you were dead, I swear to god I was going to take them apart.”

It might the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to him, which might say something sad about the state of Cougar’s love life, but he can’t bring himself to care because Jensen is a long line of heat against his body, and if he doesn’t move his left arm, he’s okay. He’s never done this before, fuck, but he’s not backing down now, so he drops one hand down and runs his knuckles lightly down the front of Jensen’s board shorts, where his dick is starting to strain against the thin fabric.

Clearly he really needs two functioning arms for this, because Jensen gasps and almost bucks him off. Cougar manages to catch himself, locks his arm around Jensen’s neck, and *grinds* down. Jensen makes an incoherent sound, and thrusts up, his eyes wide and his mouth panting.

“What do you want, hmm? Tell me what you want,” Cougar leans in and presses his lips to the hollow under Jensen’s ear, because he suddenly wants to feel Jensen’s skin under his mouth. He bites down, just because he can, and then rubs his face against the mark, his stubble scratching the soft skin there. Jensen moans, pushes him back.

Jensen swallows, and it looks like it takes an effort to get himself under control. His mouth is slick and swollen from kissing, and there’s a small red mark blooming below his ear. He looks *amazing*. Cougar wants to bite him again, wants to mark him all over his body. Then Jensen pushes him back slowly, and follows him down. “Lie down,” says Jensen, hi s voice low, “I want—oh god, I want—”

He never quite manages to get the words out, but then he’s on top of Cougar, one arm bracing his weight, and the other – clever, clever fingers—are opening Cougar’s jeans. Jensen palms him through his underwear, and Cougar curses, grabs at Jensen again.

“No, let me, just let me—” Jensen gives up on words again, kisses Cougar and pulls his jeans and his underwear down his thighs, pausing a moment to stroke his thumb over the leaking head of Cougar’s dick. And *god*, that’s good, and Cougar thinks for a moment about flipping them, grinding down on Jensen until he makes those incoherent noises again. But this is Jensen’s show, so he stays down and watches with hot, hooded eyes as Jensen straightens up and shimmies out of his shorts, those slim hips working back and forth, his dick long and sleek, a bead of precome welling at the slit. He’s got his hand to his mouth, one long wet lick against his palm and fingers. Cougar may never have done this before, but Jensen is giving him *ideas*. Jensen drops down, lines up their hips, and wraps his long fingers around both their dicks.

Cougar closes his eyes and breathes out hard, something dangerously close to a moan. Then he has to open his eyes, because Jensen’s right above him, his hand working both their dicks together. It’s hot and slick, and Jensen’s panting harshly, his own eyes squeezed shut.

And it should be strange, but it’s *Jensen*, Jensen’s hands on his body, Jensen who’s been orbiting for him for months, Jensen who he’d die for, Jensen who suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense. Cougar is close, so he gets his hand in that slick place between their bodies, twines his fingers with Jensen’s. “Look at me,” he says, a voice that almost shocks him, a low growl that’s half-feral, “Jensen, look at me.”

Jensen opens his eyes and that’s it for Cougar, he thrusts up into Jensen’s hand once, twice, and then he’s coming, hard and hot between them. It’s intense, makes his legs draw up around Jensen, a flare of pain from his bandaged toes that only drives him higher.

When he drops back, Jensen buries his face against his good shoulder, his hips working helplessly. “Cougar, Cougar, oh my god,” he says, and then comes all over their hands, his breath coming in harsh gasps against Cougar’s skin.

He’s still for a few moments, and Cougar brings up his good arm, strokes the short hair at the base of Jensen’s skull. Then Jensen makes a sound against him.

“You bastard, I chase after you for months and months, what were you doing, *saving* it for when you almost die? Because that is really fucked up, I gotta say, and you could have really saved me a lot of mental pain and anguish if you’d just jumped me in the goddamn goat shed three months ago.”

Well, things seem a hell of a lot more obvious in *retrospect*, for all the good that does him. He remembers every look, every unnoticed touch, Jensen’s last Morse message as they dragged him away, and he winces inwardly. Retrospect, right.

Meanwhile, Jensen’s still talking “—and Clay said he wasn’t asking as long as I never, ever, *ever* told him anything and that if I fucked things up for the unit, I wouldn’t have any balls *left* to cause trouble with, and Pooch’s been *laughing* for weeks, and Roque’s going to *sprain* something if he ignores it any harder—”

“I didn’t know,” he tells Jensen, as honest as he knows how to be. “I really didn’t. You never said.”

Jensen looks incredulous. “I never said? I’m sorry, have you *met* me? Mostly, I was kind of hoping you’d notice me *pining* for you, asshole!” Jensen retorts, but the heat is lost when his voice shakes just a little at the end.

Cougar kisses him. It’s a very effective way of shutting Jensen up. When they come up for air, Cougar shrugs with his good shoulder. “Never been with a man before. I never thought about it.” While Jensen’s still speechless, he gropes around for Jensen’s discarded shirt, and wipes the come off their skin, because it’s starting to dry and stick. Jensen makes a soft sound when he grazes his still-sensitive dick, and Cougar files it away with the all the others for a *thorough* examination later. He grabs the edge of the sheet, pulls it until it covers their hips. He pushes Jensen’s head down to his chest, rests his hand in the hollow at the back of Jensen’s skull. “Go to sleep,” Cougar says, then adds as an afterthought, “This is a bad idea.”

“Are you joking?” says Jensen, his voice a little muffled against Cougar’s skin. “This is a great idea. This is my life’s fucking work right here.”

“This is a bad idea and it’ll end in bloodshed.”

“Pot-ay-to, pot-ah-to,” says Jensen, and falls asleep almost immediately.

Bad idea, *bad idea*, and Cougar really can’t bring himself to care. He strokes the soft skin at the nape of Jensen’s neck and just drifts.