Not Going to Bed
Title: Not Going To Bed
Rating: PG-13
Fandom/Pairing: The Losers Jensen/Cougar
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Genre: Ficlet written for hc_bingo for prompt " asphyxiation "
A/N: This started off fairly melodramatic, but then the itunes shuffled me over to Andrew W.K., and I'm pretty sure he's the ANTIANGST.
Fucking. Hell.
Admittedly, it wasn't all that unusual for Jensen to not notice how fucked a situation he'd gotten himself into until it was too late to do anything about it.
Case in freakin' point.
Waking up in a coffin was about as fun as you'd think it would be. Darkness, confusion, not knowing how much time you've been there. Not knowing how much time you had left.
Wade's guys were pussies, then. Apparently too pansy-ass to just shoot him in the back of his unconscious head, but they were smart. They'd taken his phone, his radio.
Fucking hell, Jensen thought again, flipping his shirt up over his mouth in case this actually fucking worked. He braced his arm against the roof and kicked, hard.
Damn it, they'd taken his boots, too.
---
"I know, Pooch, I know. But do we have visual?" Clay ground out, tracking the helicopter's progress. Aisha shoved him back down, tightening the knot on his splint, scanning the valley as she did so.
"I don't- too much junk down here," Pooch said, muttering to himself as he brought the chopper around for a second pass. "We can't see shit. Hang on… Okay. Yeah. Cougar's got it. South of the hangar, other side of the trash pile. Disturbed soil, four guys on it."
Two cracks came from the chopper.
"I mean, two," Pooch corrected
Another shot.
"One. Cougar don't want us havin' any fun. I'm putting us down."
---
After an initial encouraging crack, which may have been the sound of cheap wood splintering, but probably was the sound of his foot breaking, he gave it another go, and another.
An embarrassingly short time later, though, he couldn't really fool himself any more.
He'd already patted his pocket three or four times for a radio that wasn't there, for a phone, anything that would let him explain that yeah, he got it. He'd been stupid, not bailing the moment Cougar's voice had shouted over the radio. He'd been cocky. Another twenty seconds and the files would've been transferred, no problem. But another ten and they'd been on him.
He told himself he was out of breath because of the exertion, because maybe even now, he still had room to fool himself, just a little bit.
---
The shovel was dull. At least the soil was sandy, relatively loose. Pooch dug straight down, no time to clear anything but an airway.
Cougar shoved him out of the way, taking over after three feet.
---
The trash dump blocked Aisha's view. "What's going on?"
"Got visual on his feet, he's not- Coug, move- not responding," Pooch's voice was strained. "Digging back enough so we can get to him. I think he's just unconscious."
"We're on our way," she decided, glancing back through the trees towards the road they'd come in on. Hopefully the splint held long enough to make it back to the truck.
Clay was already halfway there.
---
Jensen was falling asleep, which was weird. He'd been pretty sure, though, that he'd gone out fighting, cause it was dark, there was nothing, no light at the end of some calm peaceful tunnel, and his feet were burning.
Wasn't like he'd expected not to go to hell, but still.
---
Cougar didn't turn when they pulled up. All his attention was down in the hole, where presumably, Pooch was working on getting Jensen breathing again.
Clay's eyes darted to meet Aisha's as she helped him out of the truck. If he, too, was hearing the muttered prayers, he wasn't saying so.
Twenty painfully slow steps later, they could see what Cougar saw, Pooch, counting out the beats and trying again, Jensen dead still beneath him.
They'd barely had time to process what they were seeing when suddenly, Jensen's arm splayed up to the side. Nobody startled, but it was a close thing. Even from here, she could hear the first breath tearing into his lungs. She wanted to see his face, but there were too many eyes on him already, not enough watching for incoming threats.
But from here, though, Aisha was the only one who could probably hear the catches in Cougar's breath. His eyes were staring down like he was about to dive into the pit, but his peripheral vision never failed him. As soon as he noticed her looking, he flinched his face away, slightly.
Just not enough.
Aisha picked up the shovel, handed it to Clay to steady himself, before moving over to her right a few inches. Just close enough to catch Cougar's hand.
She had to force herself not to attack, when his fingers gripped hers, crushing tight. Concentrated on listening to what Pooch was saying instead.
"Okay, Jensen, you're fine. Good. Just breathe. You had us scared there, for a minute. You okay?"
"Me?" Pooch shifted out of the way a little, and Aisha could see Jensen's eyes squinting tightly shut.
"And spare us the macho bullshit," Clay interjected. "We don't have the time."
"In that case, I don't know what's going to kill me first, my head or my feet. Give me many drugs." Jensen opened his eyes, finally looking up at all of them. "Hey guys," he raised a few fingers in a half-wave.
And if Aisha noticed it, there was no way Cougar hadn't seen Jensen's glance catching on their clasped hands. And it wasn't like it mattered, not with all this other insanity going on, but it was suddenly awkward, and she really wanted to let go.
She was getting better at this sort of thing, though. She could give it another minute. And by then, anyway, it was time to get Jensen back to the truck.
---
He fucking hurt, all over. Being able to breathe just really wasn't worth it.
---
They couldn't afford the attention of going to the same hospital, so Pooch had driven Clay and Aisha to the other side of town, and Cougar was left waiting alone in the crowded waiting room.
It was a little bit better, this way. Forced him to calm down. There were civilians here. Children. Low profile. Blend in.
Cougar looked at the clock again and find that it hadn't moved. There were still too many minutes in between now and when he'd be able to get Jensen alone. And another minute on top of that to kill the idiot.
Maldita sea.
He knew it was good that they'd cracked through the lid of the coffin and found Jensen's bleeding foot. It meant that he hadn't accidentally put a shovel through his face, meant that Jensen was still able to bleed, but.
It would've been really nice to confirm that he'd was even been fucking breathing, then. Because the ten minutes it had taken to clear away enough dirt to get the lid off?
It was the stuff bad dreams were made of, and they weren't waiting for Cougar to sleep. It was so damned stupid, to be worrying about it now.
Jensen was fine. It had been close, not final.
He pulled another splinter out of his hand, worried some more at the one he couldn’t quite reach under his fingernail. Looked up at the clock again. Pooch would've had Clay at the hospital by now for sure.
A text message confirmed it a moment later. Almost perfect timing, but he couldn't spare it a grin. It didn't make up for the thousand ways time had screwed with them today.
---
Now that the adrenaline of not being dead had worn off, Jensen was bored out of his freakin' skull.
Seriously, how many different ways could a doctor tell him that his foot was broken? Had to be up to eight or nine, with fill freakin' visual aids and pauses for questions that Jensen couldn't be bothered to ask.
At least the painkillers were working.
He was tired, though. And too anxious to sleep, of course.
Done that once today all ready. No need for reruns.
Besides. It didn't take a genius- well, yeah, he was one, but he was high and maybe it didn't count and that wasn't the point in the first place, the point was- oh yeah. Any idiot who fell down a hole could figure out that Cougar was probably waiting outside.
Nobody on the face of the planet, living or dead or in a light coma, could guess what he was thinking right now.
It might've been making Jensen nervous. Just a little bit. The nurse was talking again.
Ooh, crutches. My favorite. Thank you ever so much!
---
Cougar was going to kill him, Jensen was sure, as they left the hospital.
He was just waiting to get away from potential witnesses.
---
He managed to stub his toe clambering into the hotel bed. That was about the time the drugs wore off.
Cougar rolled his eyes at him, checked his watch for the third time in as many minutes.
"Another hour, you can have some more."
And this, it turns out, was the nurse's revenge. He knew he should've pretended to be more interested when she'd been talking. Maybe then she wouldn't have put Cougar in charge of, well, everything.
Jensen lay back down, shut his eyes. Damn it anyway.
---
Cougar had a thousand different silences. Right now, he was using all of them at once, and they were loud enough to wake the dead. They'd worked on Jensen, at least, and he'd probably been close enough to count.
"Hey, man," he pushed himself up, riding the pounding wave of dizziness, and shot a glare over to the table where Cougar was already rising to his feet, bottle in hand.
"Thanks," Jensen said, not wanting to meet his eyes. Cougar was the type who, when shot, dumped whatever alcohol was close to hand over it, slapped a bandage on, and went back to the mission. Jensen?
Jensen was the type who got cocky, buried alive, and then managed to break his foot. Oh yeah, and there was that teeny tiny chance of later complications from the entire nearly-suffocating-to-death thing. Like possible brain damage.
Jensen wondered if that claim could be applied retroactively. An excuse would've been nice, right about now.
---
"Estás bien?" Cougar asked, after three or four more glances at his watch, which…yeah. If he kept that up, Jensen might have to say something about it. But at least he'd toned the silence down, some. Didn't look like he'd explode at any minute.
"Fine. Just. Tired." Jensen lay down again. "Think I'm gonna get some sleep."
One side of Cougar's mouth quirked pulled to the side, just briefly. Not a grin, and not a great sign.
"What?"
Cougar shrugged again, and really, if he was going to tear Jensen a new asshole, the least he could do is get it out of the fucking way.
"I don't think I like watching you sleep anymore."
Huh? Oh. Wait. Huh?
"So hang on. There was a point when you liked watching me sleep? I knew you were a romantic at heart, Cougs. Just-"
"Callate." Cougar rested one knee on the side of the bed, leaning over Jensen.
"I know," Jensen grinned, reaching up to tug, lightly, at Cougar's vest. "You should sleep with me. Then you wouldn't have to watch. And if you don't feel like sleeping, I'm sure we could- ow!"
Cougar raised one eyebrow, promising that he'd do it again, but he relented, after a minute, and crawled over Jensen's body to the other side of the bed. There was no way that the kick to the shin Jensen received was accidental, but it wasn't like Jensen minded, really.
"Good night, sleep well, you'll most likely kill me in the morning, right?"
"Sí," he said, but he was grinning, pulling off his boots and tossing them onto the floor, and then he was insinuating himself carefully around Jensen's body, and as impending deaths went, this one was pretty cool.
---
Cougar's phone rang five minutes later, but Jensen was closer. It was Clay.
"What the hell did you do to him?" Jensen asked, in lieu of greeting. "He's exhausted!"
Cougar was awake, slapping him in the arm and wriggling his fingers for the phone.
"Me, Oh, I'm fine," Clay said. "Apparently, I'll even walk again."
"You on crutches?"
"Yeah."
"Me too. But they should really make them with swords inside, like those canes-" Cougar grabbed the phone away, so he had to yell. "Damn it, Clay, you've made Cougar all cranky!"
"Sí?" Cougar listened for a minute, then repeated himself a few times, in varying tones before eventually hanging up.
"What's the good word?"
"I am to make sure you don't do anything stupid, but am only supposed to aim for the leg if I have to shoot you."
"Oh." Jensen scratched at his chin, pretending not to be wounded. "Thought you were in here because you were all worried for my well being."
"I was." Cougar leaned up on his elbow, resting a hand on Jensen's chest. "Then you began to talk, so I know that there is no need for concern."
To prove his point, he leaned in, his hair brushing across Jensen's throat like so much silk.
Even before their lips touched, Jensen was pretty sure that coming back from the dead had been totally worth it, just for this, never mind the rest of the world. And he didn't really feel like sleeping, anyway.