Pants, swagger, and other things to bring to a gunfight

storm_petrel

1. His CO

To be fair, the first time wasn't really Jensen's fault.

Okay, that's sort of a lie. But it was only one CO and it was Clay, anyway. The man's seen weirder things.

It's March of '06, and Jensen is cooling his heels at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. Some of the old buildings are a wildfire waiting to happen, but the Company uses it as a convenient spot to stash its favourite operatives when they don't want the Army taking them back, because Jensen figures the Army and the CIA never made it past that day in kindergarten where everyone learned to share their toys.

And it's possible he's not paying as much attention as he should be when he shoulders, bare-ass naked, into the almost-empty barracks, throws his wet towel in the direction of the person-shaped blur by the bunk and bellows, "You mouth-breathing motherfucker, where are my goddamn glasses?"

He's been sharing barracks with one Corporal Kevin Lewis, who has the annoying habit of relocating Jensen's boots, clothes, laptops and Nintendo DS whenever they stray over whatever fucked-up Demilitarized Zone only the little shit can see. That's fucking fine, but you don't take a man's eyewear when he's showering and vulnerable. That's just a fucking dick move.

And okay, it's also possible that Jensen's been cooped up off-mission too long, and maybe he's not his usual happy singsong self. He grabs his glasses from the Lewis-shaped blur of colour by the bed, and he's about to say something really awesomely obscene about Lewis's parentage when the Lewis-shaped blur of colour says, "Your glasses were next to your gun, Corporal Jensen."

Jensen stops, very carefully. He puts on his glasses and turns around, very carefully. The Lewis-shaped blur has resolved into a Lieutenant-Colonel, with Jensen's wet towel hanging, dripping, off his shoulder.

We're fucked! says the oh-so-helpful voice in Jensen's head, but panic isn't going to get them out of this one, so Jensen comes to attention as best he can, water still dripping and pooling around his bare feet. "Yes, sir," he says. "Just demonstrating my keen ability to navigate blind to a relocated mission objective. Sir."

And Jensen thinks this is it, he and his naked white ass are actually officially screwed forever, and then his new CO almost, almost cracks a smile.

2. Captain Roque

They're in Bogotá, and Jensen hates Bogotá about as much as he hates any place on Earth — with the possible exception of Newark Airport during the Thanksgiving Day weekend or Fort Chaffee (to be fair, that was more the enforced downtime and sharing space with Corporal Fucking Lewis than Fort Chaffee) — so when someone kicks down their safe house door and starts shooting up the kitchen, Jensen has time to go for either his sidearm or his pants, and his pants don't stand a chance.

Cougar's sleeping in the room off the kitchen. He picked up shingles somewhere on this mission, god knows how, and he's currently knocked out on every premium painkiller they were carrying. Jensen makes it down the stairs and into the kitchen in about six seconds. He doesn't even remember it.

As it happens, it's all a mistake that Jensen's sure will be hilarious in retrospect, because one of the cartel hitters obviously can't read a goddamn address and broke into their house instead of the actual target— two blocks down, a distributor who's been skimming the take. Apparently, the cartel hitter was not expecting a six-foot naked Spec Ops tech, and Jensen thanks god, the devil and Uncle Sam for the element of surprise and puts two bullets in the hitman's chest before the guy can get him in his sights. It's textbook. And no one saw it.

Roque's about four seconds behind him, because Jensen had the closer bedroom, and of course Roque brought pants to this particular gunfight. Jensen's life is not fair.

When it becomes clear no more idiot gunmen are about to assault their kitchen table and their ugly-ass vinyl chairs, Roque gives Jensen a long look that makes his balls want to crawl up inside his body and maybe keep his lungs company, but all Roque says is, "Good shot."

In the five months Jensen's been on this team, it's probably actually the nicest thing Captain Roque's ever said to him.

Cougar sleeps through the whole thing.

3. Pooch and Jolene

This one Jensen didn't really know about until later, and it technically didn't count anyway. They're in Kuala Lumpur, and it's so hot that Jensen honestly thinks he's going to die. The humidity's so thick he can hardly breathe. Outside, the sunlight is hazy and the pollution's so bad today he can hardly see one block down the street. There's a group of office workers standing on the corner wearing blue surgical masks.

But they're on mission and he's got a job to do, so Jensen strips down to his boxers, finds the patch of floor with maximum exposure to the oscillating fan and opens his laptop.

Pooch is on the bed, stripped down to his shorts and undershirt, talking to Jolene. Jensen's tapped into a proper satellite linkup for him because the wireless out here is dodgy enough that Skype crashes more often than it runs.

Pooch has his earpiece in, so Jensen can't hear what Jolene's saying. Then Pooch says, "Jensen's here, too. Coding and getting his nerd on, I guess. What?" He laughs. "Yeah, okay."

Jensen's not really paying attention, he's too absorbed in the scrolling lines of code and each brief moment of relief when the fan's path sweeps across him, so he doesn't notice the web cam in Pooch's hand for a moment or two. When he sees it, Jensen types one-handed long enough to swat the camera away. Without looking back again, he says, "Pooch, if you upload that, I will push your ass out that window and then I will have this sweet, sweet fan all to myself."

Pooch just laughs.

Years later—and it is years later— after the whole clusterfuck with Max, he's at Pooch’s and Jolene's house and discovers, under layers of happy toddler finger paintings, an old photo, the cheap printer ink half-faded away. It takes him a moment to realize it's him.

It's funny how memory works, because he remembers the ugly carpet first, the long shadow cast by the electric fan. The light streaming through the tall window of the hotel room in Kuala Lumpur is almost pure white, even though Jensen remembers it being heavy with humidity and smog.

Really, it's not a very good photo. Pooch isn't exactly Ansel Adams. Jensen's sitting in the middle of the floor, not even looking at the camera, three-quarters turned away. But the light from the window's hitting him just right, illuminating the long bare curve of his spine. His shoulders are curled inwards, and Jensen can see just enough of his own profile to see the intense, narrow-eyed look of concentration. His glasses are sliding down his nose.

Jolene comes in and sees the photo. She laughs a little, and deftly picks it out of his hands.

"Shit," says Jensen, a little embarrassed, though he's not sure why. "I told Pooch not to upload those pictures. Why the hell did you keep that thing?"

Jolene smiles. "Because it was beautiful.” Then she swats his shoulder until he stops blocking the fridge.

4. Cougar

Jensen staggers into the big hospital bathroom about as ungracefully as a man can move, and he wouldn't even be able to manage that if Roque wasn't half-carrying him. Cougar's bloody clothes are piled on the floor and the shower's pounding, steam already thick in the air.

Roque holds Jensen’s weight until he can get an arm on the sink and collapse there instead. "Hey," says Roque. "You all right now? I have to go talk to Clay." He doesn't say I have to prop you up here and fucking pray you can keep your shit together while I go check on Clay and make sure he's not about to do something that will get us all court-martialled and shot, but Jensen is actually pretty good at hearing the things Roque doesn't say. He waves, a little vaguely, and Roque huffs a breath. He digs his knuckles hard into Jensen’s shoulders before he leaves. Affection, or the Roque equivalent, at least.

Jensen turns on the tap, takes a careful sip of water, and then throws up in the sink.

He leans his head against the slick porcelain, and tries to blink away the images—Pooch on the ground with a red stain spreading across his chest, Clay yelling, the recruit who'd shot him grey-faced and wheezing on the ground. Jensen sees himself in the mirror, and there's blood all over his shirt and tac vest. There's blood in dark grimy crescents under his fingernails—Pooch's blood—and Jensen leans over the sink fast and throws up again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. It was a tactical exercise, not even live ammo, and if Pooch dies because some eighteen-year old brain-dead hick can't fucking clear his rifle and shot a man with a blank fucking cartridge, Jensen doesn't know what he's going to do.

The shower curtain rings shriek against the rusted metal bar. "Hey," Cougar says, a little hoarsely, but at least he's talking. He's leaning out of the shower, one arm braced against the tiles like he'll fall over otherwise. His hair's soaked, hanging in a thick dripping mass over his shoulders, blood still rinsing away in pinkish rivulets. His eyes are fucking desolate. "Just—" he says, and gestures a little, dropping his arm suddenly like he doesn't know what he's doing.

Jensen doesn't need to be asked twice. He yanks off his vest, his thermal shirt, and his stomach heaves again when dried blood crackles against his bare skin. He drops his pants and kicks them away, and climbs into the shower with Cougar.

The stall's small, and it's crowded, and Jensen has to shift in tight before he figures out a way for both of them to fit. He tucks up close behind Cougar under the scalding spray and buries his face in Cougar's wet hair. Cougar gets an arm up against the wall to brace their weight. A little tension seems to shiver out of him.

And it's pathetic, kind of, both of them practically holding each other up, but Jensen feels microscopically better, so that's something. He wraps one arm around Cougar's chest and pulls him in, as close as he can get.

5. Cougar, again.

He wakes up early, which is weird, because Jensen can usually sleep anywhere, and through anything — steaming jungle airfield with a pack under his head, speeding Jeep on the Yakutsk highway in Siberia, the occasional mortar attack — so the gentle rocking of the 50-foot fiberglass speedboat shouldn't bother him. He's been running on caffeine and adrenaline for the past few weeks, though, so maybe it's understandable.

On his way out, he has to carefully step over Clay and Roque, crashed out on the floor of the little galley. Clay cracks one bleary eye and then evidently decides whatever shit Jensen can possibly cause right now, it's not worth waking up for. Or maybe he's just tired. They're all tired.

Out on deck, the sun's just edging up over the horizon, the dark water of the Mediterranean starting to brighten into molten gold. The wind's barely rippling the surface, and at 04:56 local, it's already starting to heat up. By midmorning, Jensen's going to have to retreat below decks, because he burns like a motherfucker, and while this normally wouldn't be a problem, they had to cut and run in Cyprus when things started blowing up. All their clothes and gear, including Jensen's completely manly 60-SPF coconut sunscreen, are somewhere in the crater where the CIA safe house used to be, and since neither the CIA or the heroin kingpin they took down are too happy with them right now, they're taking the long way home — Cyprus to Crete, then to the Cyclades, on to Athens, flight to Frankfurt, transatlantic red-eye to New York, Greyhound bus to Hanover, New Hampshire. The scenic route, or something like it.

Because he's only got one change of clothes, Jensen strips and carefully sets his glasses in his right boot. One good habit he's picked up during their extended adventures through combat zones — he always knows where his glasses are now. He suddenly remembers the look on Clay's face in Fort Chaffee, years back, and that thing with the towel and the glasses, and he snickers quietly. Then he dives into the water.

It's still cold, even in July, and Jensen's lungs reflexively seize up until he very consciously relaxes. He rolls underwater and stares up into the smear of surface brightness, watching his dog tags drift above his face until he can't hold his breath any more. Two minutes, forty-four seconds by his count, not bad, could be better. Jensen surfaces, breathes deep, and settles into a comfortable front crawl.

On his twentieth lap around the boat, the sun's crept high enough that it's almost blinding when he comes up for air. By the fortieth lap, Jensen can feel new freckles spontaneously generating on his shoulders and back, so he cuts a sharp line back towards the white blur of the boat hull until he feels rough fiberglass under his palm.

When he breaks the surface, gasping, someone reaches down and hands him his glasses. Jensen treads water while he blinks, and suddenly the person-shaped blur leaning over the gunwale is Cougar.

It's pretty high, but Jensen plants his forearms and tries pulling himself up. And maybe if he'd had something to push off of instead of the currently-bottomless Mediterranean, he wouldn't have gotten stuck partway up, hanging with most of his body dangling in the air with no leverage to finish the climb.

Cougar's grinning, the asshole, but Jensen knows he's a sucker for a wide-eyed, entreating look, and Jensen is fucking awesome at that look, thank you very much. So Cougar gets a hand around his wrist, and Jensen braces one foot against the boat's curved hull and pushes up hard.

Cougar lets go before he can get all the way up, though, so Jensen's left hovering, balancing all his weight on his hands, with his legs still hanging in the water. With the height difference, though, it still leaves them almost eye to eye. Cougar's abandoned his shirt somewhere below deck, and he's wearing just his shorts and his hat, the brim tipped forward to keep the sun out of his eyes. He flicks it back now.

"Heard something splashing around," he says, quietly, because everyone else is probably sleeping the sleep of the mostly-morally sound. One corner of his mouth tugs upward. "Thought I saw Ahab's white whale. Just your pale ass, though." And oh, Cougar only acts like the quiet one. He's a rat bastard to the core. Literary, though.

"Fuck you," says Jensen, seriously, because some things cannot stand. "I am graceful like the fucking dolphin, and you're just jealous because you swim like you have cartoon anvils for feet."

And Cougar, possibly because he knows Jensen's going to win this argument and wants to save himself the embarrassment or possibly because he feels like it or for any one of a hundred possible Cougar-inscrutable reasons, leans forward and kisses him.

Jensen's actually taken aback, but only for a moment, because really, this doesn't feel weird or fucked-up in any way. And honestly, it feels like it's been a long time coming. And it's Cougar. He's known Jensen for years and seen him through every fuckup known to mankind, and if he hasn't run screaming yet, he's probably not going to. Any argument feels sort of irrelevant, at this point, so he kisses Cougar with the sun coming up over the Mediterranean behind him, nothing but open sea around them, and it's ridiculously Hollywood, but Jensen doesn't give a shit.

When Cougar pulls back to breathe, he looks almost surprised, like he maybe can't believe he actually did that. Jensen grins. "Good morning," he says, and it is, actually, a pretty damn good morning. And then, because Jensen 's never met an impulse decision he didn't like, he hooks his arms around Cougar's neck, and falls backwards into the water, taking Cougar with him.

Cougar surfaces with water dripping from the rim of his hat. It's okay, though. The hat's mostly indestructible. Treading water, he cuffs Jensen in the
back of the head. Then he smiles, that broad grin that Jensen doesn't get to see nearly often enough.

"Good morning," Cougar says, and kisses him again.