Famous Last Words Chapter 2
Title: Famous Last Words
Fandom/ Pairing The Losers (comic 'verse), eventual Jensen/Cougar
Rating: R
A/N: Credit where credit is due: katrinbisiani gave me the idea to fix that which needed fixing.
Summary: The boys finally talk. And talk and talk and talk. :)
Prologue
Chapter 1
"No. No fucking way."
One minute there was nothing in the bathroom but Jensen and the fixtures, which, now that he thought of it, sounded like a great band name, but that wasn't the point.
Because the next moment, just five steps later, Cougar was standing in the middle of Jensen's room. Hat and all, he was looking at him with a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes, they were a little too wild.
And that was what sold him. Jensen didn't make a practice of imagining him hesitant, not at all.
"Cougar?"
"Sí, Jensen," a grimace, then, a raise of his eyebrow, and that was about all Jensen could take.
He stepped forward, reaching out. He'd barely registered the fact that his hand connected with Cougar's arm, before lurching into him, grabbing him fast, before he slipped away again, before Jensen's brain could catch up to the actual depth of his hallucination.
A second later, though, Cougar's hair was still caught in his stubble, and the hat was still lying on the floor where it had fallen.
Cougar was there, solid, taking a breath in to speak, and-
-and then he was fucking gone.
---
The hat was still there though. Lying on the floor no matter how many times Jensen blinked his eyes or tried to look away.
It took a good three minutes for the shaking to set in.
There wasn't any more getting around it. Jensen had lost his mind.
---
He still wasn't breathing right when he heard the knock at the door, the sound nearly setting him to panic, again.
It was cool. He could play it off. No reason for anyone to know how freakin' loonball he was. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and opened the door.
Cougar was standing on the other side, with no hat to hide the outright worry on his face.
"Lo siento," he said, waving his hand because apparently, even now, Jensen couldn't hallucinate him being verbose. Cougar nodded at the white-knuckled grip that held the door open. "Didn't want to surprise you."
Jensen shook his head and stepped back, at first to avoid his own insanity, and then, functionally, to let Cougar inside. The brush of air as he passed felt too fucking real.
"Ship's sailed on that one," he said, closing the door with a last glance at the hallway, scanning for an audience that thankfully wasn't there. Cougar reached down and picked up his hat, but it wasn't until he'd put it back on that Jensen tried again. Screw his failing mind, anyway. Jensen could roll with it. "So, ah. I'm insane now."
"No," Cougar said, his tone sympathetic. "Usted no está"
Cougar's hand on Jensen's arm was real. It felt real.
Roll with it.
"Then you'd better fucking explain."
---
Cougar had been rehearsing it for months, in his head, but now? It was too insane. He couldn't wrap his head around it. And there it was again, the sensation that he was about to fade out, again. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts, gather himself in.
He leaned against the dresser as Jensen sat on the edge of the bed, looking up at him with this expression that was just too burning to look at.
Cougar hadn't realized he'd be responsible for Jensen's sanity. It just made things worse.
"So." Jensen said, after a minute had gone by. "You were going to tell me-"
Cougar shrugged, shook his head. "Sí, pero. I don't know where to start."
"Okay," Jensen nodded, scowling and determined. "Start small, or. Well. Not. Whatever. So. Are you dead?"
"I have a pulse," Cougar shrugged, "when I actually have a body." Jensen's scowl deepened, but he didn't reply. "Sometimes I don't. Have a body."
"How's that work. I mean. You shouldn't, anyway, because last I saw, you were Mexican Swiss cheese, man, and that was before the nuke. Which brings me around to why aren't you dead?"
"No sé. I remember being in this dark place, not feeling anything. It went on forever. Thought I was dead, a ghost in limbo."
"Jury's still out on that one," Jensen muttered. "Though for the record, complete hallucination's the current leading theory."
Cougar shrugged. "Turns out I was in the ocean, but if I thought about it, I could reach the surface, so I did."
"You did.' Jensen was incredulous. Annoyed, too. "Okay. How?"
"It's hard to explain," Cougar said, but that wasn't entirely true. It wasn't hard, it was impossible, trying to find the words to describe what it felt like, having no body, not feeling anything at all, of being able to see all directions at once, or the heavy weight when he regained his shape. "I figured out that I could make myself solid, if I concentrated enough. I couldn't keep it up for long, though." He looked over at the middle of the room, where he'd disappeared, earlier. "It's still hard."
"You're still here," Jensen pointed out.
"Sí." Only because I'm trying. "I've been practicing," he offered, because he couldn't say more, not yet. Couldn't explain that how some sensations scattered him back into nothingness. That it was a reflex, like squeezing the trigger once he made his target, like backstepping away from a rattlesnake.
Because then he'd have to admit that he'd come in hopes that it would ground him, keep him in the world. Because he'd thought that wanting to be in a place was enough to hold him there.
And then he'd have to explain why, exactly, he'd chosen to come here, and have to think about why he'd scattered when Jensen's arms wrapped around his back.
---
Cougar finally shut the hell up- not that he'd said much of anything, really, but this, Jensen figured, was more a matter of content than word count- and gave Jensen a minute to take it all in.
One. Cougar was alive.
Hard crash. Reboot
Okay, so he was here, and may or may not have been a figment of Jensen's slowly shattering brain.
Jensen knew he was staring, saw Cougar staring right back at him.
Cougar may have disappeared, then, for just a second, but Jensen wasn't sure. And anyway, he never stopped staring back, his eyes were back on Jensen's a fraction of a second later.
Then again, Jensen probably wasn't the scariest thing Cougar'd ever stared down.
Fuck, he'd stared down a bomb.
"Hey, ah, Cougs?
"Yeah?"
"You hungry? Hang on. Do you eat?"
It was literally the stupidest question on the list, no doubt, he knew as much even as he was saying it, but he hadn't figured out how to even go about phrasing the important ones.
Plus? Liquid lunch. Fuck, that was probably what this was. Had to be, because Cougar? He fucking laughed, face splitting into a grin, the corner of his eyes crinkling, the whole nine yards.
He couldn't even remember if it sounded right. It hadn't just been a year, it had been years, ever since the Khyber Pass. Jensen kind of wanted to point it out. He didn't really know why he didn't.
It was a relief when Cougar handed him the room service menu, and said, "You're buying."
---
The menu had been a risk, because Jensen looked like he was about to jump out of his skin, or at least the window. Maybe getting out of the room, going out somewhere, would've been better. Given them both something else to look at. But it might've meant disappearing out in the middle of a crowded restaurant, so it wasn't really an option.
Jensen was studying the menu carefully, as if become some sort of aficionado over the course of the past year, and hell, maybe he had. Cougar had no way of knowing.
When Jensen eventually passed it back, Cougar gave it no more than a cursory glance before almost habitually choosing the fish. Barely noted what kind it was, to be honest, as long as it was cooked.
After the ocean, he was never eating sushi again.
He took up the menu again as Jensen dialed room service. Chose the pasta, instead.
---
Dinner was less of a meal, and more of a delay tactic, and it was likely that Cougar knew it too, but was playing along. Jensen, for his part, was barely aware that he was eating. He glanced down at his plate more than once to remind himself what he'd ordered.
He thought about turning the television on, just to have something to fill the room, but it felt a little transparent, and besides. He wasn't planning on tearing his eyes off Cougar for even the shortest moment any time in the near future.
"So." Cougar had already finished, and was opening two fresh beers, passing one to Jensen. "What've you been doing all this time?"
What do you think? Being a depressed, psychotic, paranoid asshole, was probably admitting too much, but he turned it around easily. "Oh no," Jensen shook his head, talking around the food in his mouth. "You're not done explaining. Not by half, man."
Cougar looked reluctant, so Jensen prodded him. "Just. I don't know. Start from the beginning. Or. You know. The end."
So Cougar did. Grimaced, sat back in his chair, and began, again, to speak.
---
For the most part, Cougar kept himself spread out over the waves, just waited forever. Once in a while, just to make sure he hadn't been imagining it, he pulled his body together, but it took effort and only resulted in having to fight to stay above the waves. He never lasted long, like that, and every attempt grew harder.
On the third day, he saw a shark. On the fifth, he saw eight of them, and they never had any idea he was there.
On the seventeenth, maybe it was the eighteenth, he saw a ship, coming up from the east and heading his way from the edge of the horizon, but by the time he'd managed to drift into it's path, he'd realized the size of it.
Too big to be there for a rescue mission. But also too big to be there to finish the job.
He waited, shifting carefully on the waves to put himself in its path, knowing how suicidal it was. If he timed it wrong, he'd be dragged under, or dashed against the side of the hull. Maybe it would cut right through him with less effort than it did the water.
And still, it was coming closer, fast, and the waters were rough enough even without it's wake that he was probably going to miss.
This was probably going to kill him.
The shadow from the bow had fallen over him, now, and the upswell of the water being sluiced to the side was wreaking havoc with the currents, shaking him from his place.
He had to draw himself in against the force of it all, just to hold himself together. He had to wait to hit the ship and-
-the merest brush of impact, and the near slicing of metal, and he was through, heavy in the air, and sinking, already, through what was the floor.
He forced himself back together, thought himself solid. Made it so, just to stay afloat.
It was easier than he expected, this time, without the water trying to wash him apart. But it had a downside, too.
He was hungry. Starving. Cold, too. He had to glance down at himself to see, but he was naked. To be honest, it didn't really register until he heard the startled shout, the voices coming from behind him, and by that point, he was again without a body.
"What is it, Graydon?"
"Ah. Nothing, man. Thought I saw something, is all."
"What did you see?"
"Ah, seriously? Some naked guy. Freakin' weird."
"You do realize that it's mermaids you're supposed to be seeing when you're out at sea this long, right? Or is there something that I'm not asking about?"
"Fuck off, Aiken. What're we supposed to be grabbing?" The lights turned on, and Cougar realized that he was in a cargo hold. He watched the two men perusing the stores.
"Flour, salt and oil," Aiken said, and the two men began perusing the crates, scanning the shelves, loading up the cart they'd brought with them.
A few minutes later, they were gone, and, more importantly, Cougar knew where the food was.
It was mostly rations, the usual slop, and he had no way to put it together, but just through another wall was another room, stocked with MREs.
He feasted.
Afterwards, it was easier to stay solid, keep his form, and even though it was fucking freezing down there, and he hadn't quite re-mastered the art of walking for any length of time, but it was worth it.
---
"So how long were you on the ship?" Jensen asked, mostly to give Cougar a chance to drink some more beer because it sounded like his voice needed it.
"Three days." Cougar smirked, shook his head. "I didn't notice the cameras on the ship. I didn't know they were coming. They opened the door and shot at me, and then I was in the ocean again. Fell right through the hull. By the time I'd put myself back together, the ship was already a mile away."
"No shit?"
"True story. It was really irritating."
"I bet." Jensen nodded and tried to think of what a normal, sane person would ask next, but he came up blank.
---
Cougar was getting tired of talking, but Jensen was still watching him. So he continued.
"After the ship, I didn't know where I was, or where I was going, so I just rode the currents. Swam, sometimes." Smirking, because he knew it would freak Jensen out, he added, "I learned how to catch fish and eat them without drowning."
As expected, Jensen's face was frozen in horror, but Cougar moved on before he'd have to explain the entrails it all had entailed.
"Eventually, I started seeing more boats, the water became warmer, shallower. Another day and I could see the shore, so I swam in. Landed in Madagascar. You ever been there?"
Jensen shook his head.
"It was a strange place. Much of the time, I stayed, ah. Invisible," he said, because maybe sometime, he'd get around to explaining the chaos he'd caused being caught out by an elderly woman, the shouts of angtara that had rung out all over the street, how it had taken hours to figure out that they'd known he was a ghost, or that then, he'd believed them.
Instead, he stared out the window, watching the waves washing up over the beach, and tried to explain what was relevant. "While I was there, I learned how to keep my molecules together enough so that friction could work, and I could walk without being seen."
Jensen nodded, still gamely playing along. "A halfway sort of thing."
Cougar nodded. "Sí. It's harder than being, ah. Bodiless, but less tiring than being solid." Sipping his beer, he finally identified the rest of the path through this entire conversation. "I did not like Madagascar. As soon as I figured out how to move, I did. It was easy to get on a plane."
"Yeah?" Jensen gave it some thought, and his tone sounded just the slightest bit jealous. "I suppose so, being invisible."
"I went through security scanners just to see what would happen. Nothing did. Stayed bodiless on the flight," Cougar said, not mentioning the slight bit that he gathered his molecules in, just to feel the redheaded stewardess pass through him, "and eventually made it to America."
Cougar sighed. He was done talking, for now, but thankfully Jensen didn't press. The color had returned to his face, but he still looked a little stunned. And the next part of the story? Would only make it worse.
"You mind if we take this up later?" Jensen said, apologetically, as if he'd interrupted. "It's just. I'm tired, and I need to think, you know?"
"Sure," Cougar said, standing, and Jensen followed suit, startled and quick.
"Where you going?"
"The ocean," Cougar said, unthinkingly. He hadn't noticed himself making the decision, but it was easier to exist out there, sometimes, and he was tired, not so much from keeping his body together, but from talking all night. It was draining,
"Oh," Jensen said, a little sadly, and Cougar grabbed his shoulder, squeezed as he stepped past.
"I'll be back tomorrow morning. Promise."
---
Jensen eventually gave up on sleep sometime around dawn, ordered up some coffee, and turned the television on.
It was a little startling to find that the world looked pretty much the same way it'd looked yesterday. Kind of surreal, to be watching the newscasters talking about the same shit they'd been talking about yesterday, and they day before that, when reality had fucking changed.
There was a knock on the door, and the guy delivering room service had probably seen worse than Jensen's boxers, but there was no reason for the glare as they traded coffee for last night's dirty dishes.
It was really amusing when the story about the mining accident switched to a new one, about a massive funding increase for science education in the universities. Geneticists, gravitational physicists, computer scientists and molecular chemists were already squabbling over what to do with the money. Cue the academic public face, talking about how this country needed to again take an interest in looking at the world, blah blah, discovering new frontiers, blah, evidence of life, blah blah, understanding the universe, blah.
Jensen giggled. He already had proof of life after death, he'd let it congeal into a solid mass on the table overnight, and now it was being sent down to the dishwashers.
Whistling to himself, he grabbed a quick shower and wondered how long he'd have to wait for Cougar. Had his fifty-seventh freakout as he was washing his hair, but by the time he was reaching for the towel, he'd talked himself out of it. He'll come back.
He wasn't wrong.
Cougar was, again, standing in the middle of his room when he returned, staring at the television, and Jensen was about to fill him in on the line of self-help seminars he wanted to start- you, too, can raise the dead with the power of positive thinking-when a hand shot up, silencing him.
"Mira."
"…essentially discovering a radiation signature, which identified the bomb as being created by Goliath Technologies, and the UN had reported the six megaton device as missing a year and a half ago from a known stockpile, but many questions remain. No comment, yet, from Goliath officials, but questions on this will be fielded at Goliath's press conference later this afternoon."
"Covering their asses once again, no doubt," Jensen muttered to himself as the news cut for commercials, rummaging through his bag for some clean clothes. Heading back into the bathroom, he shouted through the door. "So what, you want to watch it?"
"No," Cougar said, when Jensen came out, but his eyes strayed back to the television again.
Fuck it, Jensen could leave it on. If they caught it, they caught it. "There's coffee, if you want. You hungry, or did you catch something on the way in? That was an attempt at a fishing joke, by the way. In case you missed it."
"Uh-huh." Cougar shrugged. "I could eat."
Jensen dove over the bed to rummage underneath, coming up with one shoe and one sandal. After a moment's consideration, he went down to search some more, talking over his shoulder. "There's a good place at the other end of the block. Their waffles make the blind see, the old, young, the hungry, full. But their coffee might kill you, so just stick to juice. We'll feed up, come back here, or whatever, and catch up on the wackiness that is your existence, because, man. I still don't believe any of it."
Tying his shoes, he stood up. "Which reminds me. Just so we're clear, you're not a cyborg that was created by an enemy government, possibly our own, programmed to break my brain, are you? Because if you are, I'll have you know, you're not doing a very thorough job. I mean, it's pretty good, I didn't sleep all that much last night, but I haven't quite been reduced to gibbering in a corner while rolling in my own filth just yet."
Cougar quirked a brow. You sure about that?
"Shut up. Let's go."
---
When they reached the diner, as they were waiting to be seated, Cougar felt Jensen's eyes burning into his back. He shifted, kept his profile low, just enough to catch their reflections in the glass behind the counter, and watched.
He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but thought he might've had it when a waitress appeared and confirmed that they wanted a table for two.
Jensen's shoulders lost a little bit of their tension, then, or maybe it was just the motion of walking that was loosening them. By the time they made it to the table, Jensen's grin was back, wide and easy, carefully covering the relief he didn't think Cougar could see there.
Sí, Jensen. She saw me, too. I'm not imaginary. You're not crazy.
He would've said it out loud, but it wouldn't have helped anything. Besides. It had probably taken Cougar six months to believe that he wasn't actually a ghost. Jensen had known for less than a day.
The food was good, and Jensen's narrations were carefully unremarkable. Sightseeing he'd done. Carnival. Running into Pooch, and Stegler, too. Every once in a while, he'd pause, look over his mouthful of food, and it was clear that there was something he wasn't saying, wasn't asking, but he wasn't an idiot, and this diner was small.
---
It was a relief, mostly, to get back to the hotel.
"So how'd you find me?" Jensen asked, once the room had been checked for bugs. Some habits died harder than others, especially the ones that often kept them from, well, dying.
"I followed Pooch," Cougar said. It was mostly the truth, and it meant he could avoid mentioning the fact that he'd haunted Jensen's sister's house for over a month, hoping that Jensen would visit, write, even call. That when Jensen had shown up, a few days before Christmas, he'd watched them through the holidays, wanting to make contact and realizing exactly why he shouldn't.
Jensen's niece was never more than a few feet away, the entire time he was there.
And even at night, when Jensen retired to the basement guest room, he was a mess. He'd make a scene, and they wouldn't be alone for long. His sister would come, and things between her and Jensen were screwed up enough as it was.
He hadn't felt like an intruder, there, really, until Jensen had arrived. And he hadn't stopped caring about that until Jensen had been packing his bags, getting ready to leave.
He'd tried to make himself appear. Then Jensen had looked at him, and he hadn't been ready for it.
By the time Cougar had pulled himself together enough to do anything about it, the cab had been pulling away from the curb.
He'd tried catching up with him at the airport, but never found him.
---
"It was easy to find Pooch's family," Cougar said. "Jolene's sister still lives in Ohio, so I tracked Pooch from there."
"Did you- did you talk to him?"
"Tried to, once, after I saw him booking his flight here. Scared the hell out of him."
"Thought so. He told me about it. You know, for a sniper, your timing sucks. Did you really wake up Jolene?"
Cougar nodded, shrugging it off. "I thought it would be better if he thought he was dreaming. I didn't realize he'd woken up. Went to Mexico after that."
Juarez, first, it had been. But he found that his grandmother's heart was dangerously dodgy, and she'd always been superstitious by nature. Hector had become a father only days before, they'd named the baby after his dead uncle Cougar. The household had been tired enough with one Carlos making himself known in the middle of the night.
"I have a sobrino, now" Cougar said. "A nephew."
Jensen grinned, wide. "Your brother, right? Coolest thing in the world, ain't it?"
Cougar thought about it. Found that maybe, he agreed. Once this was all figured out, when he knew what was going on, he'd go back and introduce himself.
"So where'd you go then?"
"Ah." Y aquí se trata de. And here it is. Cougar found himself unable to meet Jensen's eyes. "Mazatlan." The entire year had been nothing but one big question after another, and he'd needed to think.
Jensen was nodding before recognition stole over his face. "Oh…the beach?" he asked, hopefully, but the blush was already coming up over his ears.
Cougar nodded, no use in denying that he knew why. He'd been in the ocean, drifting near the shore, when he'd thought he'd seen him, when he'd fought against his better instincts and tried to appear. When he'd failed, again, and had to search through every hotel and dive in the city for another glimpse of him.
He'd run as fast as his half-disembodied feet would carry him, and he'd found him, too. Stripped down, boxers draped around one of his ankles, getting himself off.
Feeling the urge to become a ghost once again, Cougar remembered the panic, when he'd realized he'd materialized without trying, when he'd known he'd been seen. When he'd felt the air of the room around him when he shouldn't have..
That time, when Jensen bolted, Cougar'd let him.
Now, though, Cougar smirked. "Forgot that I left my clothes on the beach before going swimming. Lo siento."
"From what I remember, I'm probably supposed to be apologizing, too, but I was having too much fun at the time," Jensen laughed. "But, I gotta ask. The clothes thing. Like. Showing up dressed. How's that work?"
"If I reach out as I'm fading, and wrap myself around something, surround it completely, I can bring it with me. It's tiring, so I don't do it all the time." Jensen wasn't looking at him, though. For all his bravado, he was still probably fairly mortified.
"After that, I figured you'd be here when Pooch arrived. I followed him from his house and made sure he wasn't being followed by anything other than me. The rest, you know."
---
Jensen didn't know what to say to that, because really? He was pretty sure that he didn't know jack over shit. But he was happy enough to play along.
"Were you there when Stegler showed up?"
"Yes. I followed him, once I knew where you were staying. He's gone, already. Flew to DC, traveling alone. Made a few calls on his phone, but didn't say anything about you or Pooch."
"Good," Jensen said, though he hadn't really thought Stegler would screw them like that. The man had nerve, yeah, but he wasn't the type for bullshit.
"So," Cougar said. "I'm tired of talking. It's your turn. What have you been doing all year?"
Oh, man. Jensen didn't know where to start. But fair was fair.
He started talking.
---
Jensen hadn't exactly mastered brevity. By the time his story was finished, the sky was dark, and they'd already moved from coffee to beer, hours ago.
Cougar looked drunk, his eyes were swimming, drowsing shut, and Jensen wondered what his tolerance was, these days.
The conversation wound down, then, and Cougar looked tired, staring at the television, still on low in the background. They were repeating highlights, apparently, from the Goliath press conference, but Jensen couldn't be bothered to pay attention.
"Okay," he announced. "I'm beat, you're beat, and this bed's a king size. Promise not to have any repeats of Mazatlan if you want to crash out here."
---
Cougar gave it some thought. Most of the time, when he grew tired, it was simpler to disperse himself, become a ghost, but once in a while…
He hadn't slept in a bed in nearly a week, now. His body needed rest.
Decision made, he kicked off his boots and lay back on the left side of the bed, closing his eyes and listening to Jensen get ready for sleep.
Pausing as he reached to turn out the light, Jensen turned to look at him. "I missed you man. It's embarrassing how much."
His eyes, though. They were almost too much, even as the lights went out. They'd burned right through him, in the way that would show him everything, rather than nothing.
Cougar couldn't feel his chest anymore. Wasn't sure it was still there.
But he wasn't a fucking coward, so he forced himself back into place. It was easier to think, to plan, when the stuff that comprised his brain were lined up next to each other.
He wanted to return this, to say that he'd missed Jensen, too, but there wasn't balance, there, and he knew it. Truth be told, he'd been fighting to hold himself together, literally, while Jensen had been doing so figuratively. He hadn't had the time, for the first few months, to be lonely. Sad. Anything at all resembling human.
And yeah, maybe Cougar'd fixated on him a bit. Called him a destination, and spent months homing in on him. He'd missed him. He'd missed all of them, he'd mourned them. But he hadn't mourned Jensen, not for a minute.
Because the possibility that Jensen could possibly be dead hadn't been an option. Never occurred to him.
But he hadn't known that Jensen was alive, either. Hadn't even questioned it. He'd just known it to be so, taken it for granted. Planned his life around it, for months.
Despite Jensen's usual lack of self-preservation.
Despite the fact that he'd expected to find everyone else dead.
Despite the fact that the explosion that caused all this very well could've started a war. That would have, if six or seven hadn't already been going on.
"Jensen?"
"Yeah?"
"Why didn't the world end? When the bomb went off?"
"What do you mean?" Jensen asked, but Cougar can see him, working it out. "Fuck. An explosion? There? Fuck, you're right. I mean. How many wars are going on out there?" He stood up, started pacing the narrow strip of carpet between the bed and the wall. "There was barely any escalation," he scrunched his forehead. "I don't think. Can't remember, to be sure" he said, apologetically. "Those first few months were kind of a blur."
Cougar nodded, watching Jensen's fingers twitch, catching every longing glance towards the laptop sitting on the desk. It only took a minute for him to give in, grimly determined. "I'll find out." He sat down, tapped a few keys, focused, and got to work.
And maybe, Cougar reasoned, maybe this was why he'd sought Jensen out, all along.
Cougar fell in love, then, and then he fell out of the room.
---
Chapter 3
Fandom/ Pairing The Losers (comic 'verse), eventual Jensen/Cougar
Rating: R
A/N: Credit where credit is due: katrinbisiani gave me the idea to fix that which needed fixing.
Summary: The boys finally talk. And talk and talk and talk. :)
Prologue
Chapter 1
"No. No fucking way."
One minute there was nothing in the bathroom but Jensen and the fixtures, which, now that he thought of it, sounded like a great band name, but that wasn't the point.
Because the next moment, just five steps later, Cougar was standing in the middle of Jensen's room. Hat and all, he was looking at him with a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes, they were a little too wild.
And that was what sold him. Jensen didn't make a practice of imagining him hesitant, not at all.
"Cougar?"
"Sí, Jensen," a grimace, then, a raise of his eyebrow, and that was about all Jensen could take.
He stepped forward, reaching out. He'd barely registered the fact that his hand connected with Cougar's arm, before lurching into him, grabbing him fast, before he slipped away again, before Jensen's brain could catch up to the actual depth of his hallucination.
A second later, though, Cougar's hair was still caught in his stubble, and the hat was still lying on the floor where it had fallen.
Cougar was there, solid, taking a breath in to speak, and-
-and then he was fucking gone.
---
The hat was still there though. Lying on the floor no matter how many times Jensen blinked his eyes or tried to look away.
It took a good three minutes for the shaking to set in.
There wasn't any more getting around it. Jensen had lost his mind.
---
He still wasn't breathing right when he heard the knock at the door, the sound nearly setting him to panic, again.
It was cool. He could play it off. No reason for anyone to know how freakin' loonball he was. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and opened the door.
Cougar was standing on the other side, with no hat to hide the outright worry on his face.
"Lo siento," he said, waving his hand because apparently, even now, Jensen couldn't hallucinate him being verbose. Cougar nodded at the white-knuckled grip that held the door open. "Didn't want to surprise you."
Jensen shook his head and stepped back, at first to avoid his own insanity, and then, functionally, to let Cougar inside. The brush of air as he passed felt too fucking real.
"Ship's sailed on that one," he said, closing the door with a last glance at the hallway, scanning for an audience that thankfully wasn't there. Cougar reached down and picked up his hat, but it wasn't until he'd put it back on that Jensen tried again. Screw his failing mind, anyway. Jensen could roll with it. "So, ah. I'm insane now."
"No," Cougar said, his tone sympathetic. "Usted no está"
Cougar's hand on Jensen's arm was real. It felt real.
Roll with it.
"Then you'd better fucking explain."
---
Cougar had been rehearsing it for months, in his head, but now? It was too insane. He couldn't wrap his head around it. And there it was again, the sensation that he was about to fade out, again. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts, gather himself in.
He leaned against the dresser as Jensen sat on the edge of the bed, looking up at him with this expression that was just too burning to look at.
Cougar hadn't realized he'd be responsible for Jensen's sanity. It just made things worse.
"So." Jensen said, after a minute had gone by. "You were going to tell me-"
Cougar shrugged, shook his head. "Sí, pero. I don't know where to start."
"Okay," Jensen nodded, scowling and determined. "Start small, or. Well. Not. Whatever. So. Are you dead?"
"I have a pulse," Cougar shrugged, "when I actually have a body." Jensen's scowl deepened, but he didn't reply. "Sometimes I don't. Have a body."
"How's that work. I mean. You shouldn't, anyway, because last I saw, you were Mexican Swiss cheese, man, and that was before the nuke. Which brings me around to why aren't you dead?"
"No sé. I remember being in this dark place, not feeling anything. It went on forever. Thought I was dead, a ghost in limbo."
"Jury's still out on that one," Jensen muttered. "Though for the record, complete hallucination's the current leading theory."
Cougar shrugged. "Turns out I was in the ocean, but if I thought about it, I could reach the surface, so I did."
"You did.' Jensen was incredulous. Annoyed, too. "Okay. How?"
"It's hard to explain," Cougar said, but that wasn't entirely true. It wasn't hard, it was impossible, trying to find the words to describe what it felt like, having no body, not feeling anything at all, of being able to see all directions at once, or the heavy weight when he regained his shape. "I figured out that I could make myself solid, if I concentrated enough. I couldn't keep it up for long, though." He looked over at the middle of the room, where he'd disappeared, earlier. "It's still hard."
"You're still here," Jensen pointed out.
"Sí." Only because I'm trying. "I've been practicing," he offered, because he couldn't say more, not yet. Couldn't explain that how some sensations scattered him back into nothingness. That it was a reflex, like squeezing the trigger once he made his target, like backstepping away from a rattlesnake.
Because then he'd have to admit that he'd come in hopes that it would ground him, keep him in the world. Because he'd thought that wanting to be in a place was enough to hold him there.
And then he'd have to explain why, exactly, he'd chosen to come here, and have to think about why he'd scattered when Jensen's arms wrapped around his back.
---
Cougar finally shut the hell up- not that he'd said much of anything, really, but this, Jensen figured, was more a matter of content than word count- and gave Jensen a minute to take it all in.
One. Cougar was alive.
Hard crash. Reboot
Okay, so he was here, and may or may not have been a figment of Jensen's slowly shattering brain.
Jensen knew he was staring, saw Cougar staring right back at him.
Cougar may have disappeared, then, for just a second, but Jensen wasn't sure. And anyway, he never stopped staring back, his eyes were back on Jensen's a fraction of a second later.
Then again, Jensen probably wasn't the scariest thing Cougar'd ever stared down.
Fuck, he'd stared down a bomb.
"Hey, ah, Cougs?
"Yeah?"
"You hungry? Hang on. Do you eat?"
It was literally the stupidest question on the list, no doubt, he knew as much even as he was saying it, but he hadn't figured out how to even go about phrasing the important ones.
Plus? Liquid lunch. Fuck, that was probably what this was. Had to be, because Cougar? He fucking laughed, face splitting into a grin, the corner of his eyes crinkling, the whole nine yards.
He couldn't even remember if it sounded right. It hadn't just been a year, it had been years, ever since the Khyber Pass. Jensen kind of wanted to point it out. He didn't really know why he didn't.
It was a relief when Cougar handed him the room service menu, and said, "You're buying."
---
The menu had been a risk, because Jensen looked like he was about to jump out of his skin, or at least the window. Maybe getting out of the room, going out somewhere, would've been better. Given them both something else to look at. But it might've meant disappearing out in the middle of a crowded restaurant, so it wasn't really an option.
Jensen was studying the menu carefully, as if become some sort of aficionado over the course of the past year, and hell, maybe he had. Cougar had no way of knowing.
When Jensen eventually passed it back, Cougar gave it no more than a cursory glance before almost habitually choosing the fish. Barely noted what kind it was, to be honest, as long as it was cooked.
After the ocean, he was never eating sushi again.
He took up the menu again as Jensen dialed room service. Chose the pasta, instead.
---
Dinner was less of a meal, and more of a delay tactic, and it was likely that Cougar knew it too, but was playing along. Jensen, for his part, was barely aware that he was eating. He glanced down at his plate more than once to remind himself what he'd ordered.
He thought about turning the television on, just to have something to fill the room, but it felt a little transparent, and besides. He wasn't planning on tearing his eyes off Cougar for even the shortest moment any time in the near future.
"So." Cougar had already finished, and was opening two fresh beers, passing one to Jensen. "What've you been doing all this time?"
What do you think? Being a depressed, psychotic, paranoid asshole, was probably admitting too much, but he turned it around easily. "Oh no," Jensen shook his head, talking around the food in his mouth. "You're not done explaining. Not by half, man."
Cougar looked reluctant, so Jensen prodded him. "Just. I don't know. Start from the beginning. Or. You know. The end."
So Cougar did. Grimaced, sat back in his chair, and began, again, to speak.
---
For the most part, Cougar kept himself spread out over the waves, just waited forever. Once in a while, just to make sure he hadn't been imagining it, he pulled his body together, but it took effort and only resulted in having to fight to stay above the waves. He never lasted long, like that, and every attempt grew harder.
On the third day, he saw a shark. On the fifth, he saw eight of them, and they never had any idea he was there.
On the seventeenth, maybe it was the eighteenth, he saw a ship, coming up from the east and heading his way from the edge of the horizon, but by the time he'd managed to drift into it's path, he'd realized the size of it.
Too big to be there for a rescue mission. But also too big to be there to finish the job.
He waited, shifting carefully on the waves to put himself in its path, knowing how suicidal it was. If he timed it wrong, he'd be dragged under, or dashed against the side of the hull. Maybe it would cut right through him with less effort than it did the water.
And still, it was coming closer, fast, and the waters were rough enough even without it's wake that he was probably going to miss.
This was probably going to kill him.
The shadow from the bow had fallen over him, now, and the upswell of the water being sluiced to the side was wreaking havoc with the currents, shaking him from his place.
He had to draw himself in against the force of it all, just to hold himself together. He had to wait to hit the ship and-
-the merest brush of impact, and the near slicing of metal, and he was through, heavy in the air, and sinking, already, through what was the floor.
He forced himself back together, thought himself solid. Made it so, just to stay afloat.
It was easier than he expected, this time, without the water trying to wash him apart. But it had a downside, too.
He was hungry. Starving. Cold, too. He had to glance down at himself to see, but he was naked. To be honest, it didn't really register until he heard the startled shout, the voices coming from behind him, and by that point, he was again without a body.
"What is it, Graydon?"
"Ah. Nothing, man. Thought I saw something, is all."
"What did you see?"
"Ah, seriously? Some naked guy. Freakin' weird."
"You do realize that it's mermaids you're supposed to be seeing when you're out at sea this long, right? Or is there something that I'm not asking about?"
"Fuck off, Aiken. What're we supposed to be grabbing?" The lights turned on, and Cougar realized that he was in a cargo hold. He watched the two men perusing the stores.
"Flour, salt and oil," Aiken said, and the two men began perusing the crates, scanning the shelves, loading up the cart they'd brought with them.
A few minutes later, they were gone, and, more importantly, Cougar knew where the food was.
It was mostly rations, the usual slop, and he had no way to put it together, but just through another wall was another room, stocked with MREs.
He feasted.
Afterwards, it was easier to stay solid, keep his form, and even though it was fucking freezing down there, and he hadn't quite re-mastered the art of walking for any length of time, but it was worth it.
---
"So how long were you on the ship?" Jensen asked, mostly to give Cougar a chance to drink some more beer because it sounded like his voice needed it.
"Three days." Cougar smirked, shook his head. "I didn't notice the cameras on the ship. I didn't know they were coming. They opened the door and shot at me, and then I was in the ocean again. Fell right through the hull. By the time I'd put myself back together, the ship was already a mile away."
"No shit?"
"True story. It was really irritating."
"I bet." Jensen nodded and tried to think of what a normal, sane person would ask next, but he came up blank.
---
Cougar was getting tired of talking, but Jensen was still watching him. So he continued.
"After the ship, I didn't know where I was, or where I was going, so I just rode the currents. Swam, sometimes." Smirking, because he knew it would freak Jensen out, he added, "I learned how to catch fish and eat them without drowning."
As expected, Jensen's face was frozen in horror, but Cougar moved on before he'd have to explain the entrails it all had entailed.
"Eventually, I started seeing more boats, the water became warmer, shallower. Another day and I could see the shore, so I swam in. Landed in Madagascar. You ever been there?"
Jensen shook his head.
"It was a strange place. Much of the time, I stayed, ah. Invisible," he said, because maybe sometime, he'd get around to explaining the chaos he'd caused being caught out by an elderly woman, the shouts of angtara that had rung out all over the street, how it had taken hours to figure out that they'd known he was a ghost, or that then, he'd believed them.
Instead, he stared out the window, watching the waves washing up over the beach, and tried to explain what was relevant. "While I was there, I learned how to keep my molecules together enough so that friction could work, and I could walk without being seen."
Jensen nodded, still gamely playing along. "A halfway sort of thing."
Cougar nodded. "Sí. It's harder than being, ah. Bodiless, but less tiring than being solid." Sipping his beer, he finally identified the rest of the path through this entire conversation. "I did not like Madagascar. As soon as I figured out how to move, I did. It was easy to get on a plane."
"Yeah?" Jensen gave it some thought, and his tone sounded just the slightest bit jealous. "I suppose so, being invisible."
"I went through security scanners just to see what would happen. Nothing did. Stayed bodiless on the flight," Cougar said, not mentioning the slight bit that he gathered his molecules in, just to feel the redheaded stewardess pass through him, "and eventually made it to America."
Cougar sighed. He was done talking, for now, but thankfully Jensen didn't press. The color had returned to his face, but he still looked a little stunned. And the next part of the story? Would only make it worse.
"You mind if we take this up later?" Jensen said, apologetically, as if he'd interrupted. "It's just. I'm tired, and I need to think, you know?"
"Sure," Cougar said, standing, and Jensen followed suit, startled and quick.
"Where you going?"
"The ocean," Cougar said, unthinkingly. He hadn't noticed himself making the decision, but it was easier to exist out there, sometimes, and he was tired, not so much from keeping his body together, but from talking all night. It was draining,
"Oh," Jensen said, a little sadly, and Cougar grabbed his shoulder, squeezed as he stepped past.
"I'll be back tomorrow morning. Promise."
---
Jensen eventually gave up on sleep sometime around dawn, ordered up some coffee, and turned the television on.
It was a little startling to find that the world looked pretty much the same way it'd looked yesterday. Kind of surreal, to be watching the newscasters talking about the same shit they'd been talking about yesterday, and they day before that, when reality had fucking changed.
There was a knock on the door, and the guy delivering room service had probably seen worse than Jensen's boxers, but there was no reason for the glare as they traded coffee for last night's dirty dishes.
It was really amusing when the story about the mining accident switched to a new one, about a massive funding increase for science education in the universities. Geneticists, gravitational physicists, computer scientists and molecular chemists were already squabbling over what to do with the money. Cue the academic public face, talking about how this country needed to again take an interest in looking at the world, blah blah, discovering new frontiers, blah, evidence of life, blah blah, understanding the universe, blah.
Jensen giggled. He already had proof of life after death, he'd let it congeal into a solid mass on the table overnight, and now it was being sent down to the dishwashers.
Whistling to himself, he grabbed a quick shower and wondered how long he'd have to wait for Cougar. Had his fifty-seventh freakout as he was washing his hair, but by the time he was reaching for the towel, he'd talked himself out of it. He'll come back.
He wasn't wrong.
Cougar was, again, standing in the middle of his room when he returned, staring at the television, and Jensen was about to fill him in on the line of self-help seminars he wanted to start- you, too, can raise the dead with the power of positive thinking-when a hand shot up, silencing him.
"Mira."
"…essentially discovering a radiation signature, which identified the bomb as being created by Goliath Technologies, and the UN had reported the six megaton device as missing a year and a half ago from a known stockpile, but many questions remain. No comment, yet, from Goliath officials, but questions on this will be fielded at Goliath's press conference later this afternoon."
"Covering their asses once again, no doubt," Jensen muttered to himself as the news cut for commercials, rummaging through his bag for some clean clothes. Heading back into the bathroom, he shouted through the door. "So what, you want to watch it?"
"No," Cougar said, when Jensen came out, but his eyes strayed back to the television again.
Fuck it, Jensen could leave it on. If they caught it, they caught it. "There's coffee, if you want. You hungry, or did you catch something on the way in? That was an attempt at a fishing joke, by the way. In case you missed it."
"Uh-huh." Cougar shrugged. "I could eat."
Jensen dove over the bed to rummage underneath, coming up with one shoe and one sandal. After a moment's consideration, he went down to search some more, talking over his shoulder. "There's a good place at the other end of the block. Their waffles make the blind see, the old, young, the hungry, full. But their coffee might kill you, so just stick to juice. We'll feed up, come back here, or whatever, and catch up on the wackiness that is your existence, because, man. I still don't believe any of it."
Tying his shoes, he stood up. "Which reminds me. Just so we're clear, you're not a cyborg that was created by an enemy government, possibly our own, programmed to break my brain, are you? Because if you are, I'll have you know, you're not doing a very thorough job. I mean, it's pretty good, I didn't sleep all that much last night, but I haven't quite been reduced to gibbering in a corner while rolling in my own filth just yet."
Cougar quirked a brow. You sure about that?
"Shut up. Let's go."
---
When they reached the diner, as they were waiting to be seated, Cougar felt Jensen's eyes burning into his back. He shifted, kept his profile low, just enough to catch their reflections in the glass behind the counter, and watched.
He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but thought he might've had it when a waitress appeared and confirmed that they wanted a table for two.
Jensen's shoulders lost a little bit of their tension, then, or maybe it was just the motion of walking that was loosening them. By the time they made it to the table, Jensen's grin was back, wide and easy, carefully covering the relief he didn't think Cougar could see there.
Sí, Jensen. She saw me, too. I'm not imaginary. You're not crazy.
He would've said it out loud, but it wouldn't have helped anything. Besides. It had probably taken Cougar six months to believe that he wasn't actually a ghost. Jensen had known for less than a day.
The food was good, and Jensen's narrations were carefully unremarkable. Sightseeing he'd done. Carnival. Running into Pooch, and Stegler, too. Every once in a while, he'd pause, look over his mouthful of food, and it was clear that there was something he wasn't saying, wasn't asking, but he wasn't an idiot, and this diner was small.
---
It was a relief, mostly, to get back to the hotel.
"So how'd you find me?" Jensen asked, once the room had been checked for bugs. Some habits died harder than others, especially the ones that often kept them from, well, dying.
"I followed Pooch," Cougar said. It was mostly the truth, and it meant he could avoid mentioning the fact that he'd haunted Jensen's sister's house for over a month, hoping that Jensen would visit, write, even call. That when Jensen had shown up, a few days before Christmas, he'd watched them through the holidays, wanting to make contact and realizing exactly why he shouldn't.
Jensen's niece was never more than a few feet away, the entire time he was there.
And even at night, when Jensen retired to the basement guest room, he was a mess. He'd make a scene, and they wouldn't be alone for long. His sister would come, and things between her and Jensen were screwed up enough as it was.
He hadn't felt like an intruder, there, really, until Jensen had arrived. And he hadn't stopped caring about that until Jensen had been packing his bags, getting ready to leave.
He'd tried to make himself appear. Then Jensen had looked at him, and he hadn't been ready for it.
By the time Cougar had pulled himself together enough to do anything about it, the cab had been pulling away from the curb.
He'd tried catching up with him at the airport, but never found him.
---
"It was easy to find Pooch's family," Cougar said. "Jolene's sister still lives in Ohio, so I tracked Pooch from there."
"Did you- did you talk to him?"
"Tried to, once, after I saw him booking his flight here. Scared the hell out of him."
"Thought so. He told me about it. You know, for a sniper, your timing sucks. Did you really wake up Jolene?"
Cougar nodded, shrugging it off. "I thought it would be better if he thought he was dreaming. I didn't realize he'd woken up. Went to Mexico after that."
Juarez, first, it had been. But he found that his grandmother's heart was dangerously dodgy, and she'd always been superstitious by nature. Hector had become a father only days before, they'd named the baby after his dead uncle Cougar. The household had been tired enough with one Carlos making himself known in the middle of the night.
"I have a sobrino, now" Cougar said. "A nephew."
Jensen grinned, wide. "Your brother, right? Coolest thing in the world, ain't it?"
Cougar thought about it. Found that maybe, he agreed. Once this was all figured out, when he knew what was going on, he'd go back and introduce himself.
"So where'd you go then?"
"Ah." Y aquí se trata de. And here it is. Cougar found himself unable to meet Jensen's eyes. "Mazatlan." The entire year had been nothing but one big question after another, and he'd needed to think.
Jensen was nodding before recognition stole over his face. "Oh…the beach?" he asked, hopefully, but the blush was already coming up over his ears.
Cougar nodded, no use in denying that he knew why. He'd been in the ocean, drifting near the shore, when he'd thought he'd seen him, when he'd fought against his better instincts and tried to appear. When he'd failed, again, and had to search through every hotel and dive in the city for another glimpse of him.
He'd run as fast as his half-disembodied feet would carry him, and he'd found him, too. Stripped down, boxers draped around one of his ankles, getting himself off.
Feeling the urge to become a ghost once again, Cougar remembered the panic, when he'd realized he'd materialized without trying, when he'd known he'd been seen. When he'd felt the air of the room around him when he shouldn't have..
That time, when Jensen bolted, Cougar'd let him.
Now, though, Cougar smirked. "Forgot that I left my clothes on the beach before going swimming. Lo siento."
"From what I remember, I'm probably supposed to be apologizing, too, but I was having too much fun at the time," Jensen laughed. "But, I gotta ask. The clothes thing. Like. Showing up dressed. How's that work?"
"If I reach out as I'm fading, and wrap myself around something, surround it completely, I can bring it with me. It's tiring, so I don't do it all the time." Jensen wasn't looking at him, though. For all his bravado, he was still probably fairly mortified.
"After that, I figured you'd be here when Pooch arrived. I followed him from his house and made sure he wasn't being followed by anything other than me. The rest, you know."
---
Jensen didn't know what to say to that, because really? He was pretty sure that he didn't know jack over shit. But he was happy enough to play along.
"Were you there when Stegler showed up?"
"Yes. I followed him, once I knew where you were staying. He's gone, already. Flew to DC, traveling alone. Made a few calls on his phone, but didn't say anything about you or Pooch."
"Good," Jensen said, though he hadn't really thought Stegler would screw them like that. The man had nerve, yeah, but he wasn't the type for bullshit.
"So," Cougar said. "I'm tired of talking. It's your turn. What have you been doing all year?"
Oh, man. Jensen didn't know where to start. But fair was fair.
He started talking.
---
Jensen hadn't exactly mastered brevity. By the time his story was finished, the sky was dark, and they'd already moved from coffee to beer, hours ago.
Cougar looked drunk, his eyes were swimming, drowsing shut, and Jensen wondered what his tolerance was, these days.
The conversation wound down, then, and Cougar looked tired, staring at the television, still on low in the background. They were repeating highlights, apparently, from the Goliath press conference, but Jensen couldn't be bothered to pay attention.
"Okay," he announced. "I'm beat, you're beat, and this bed's a king size. Promise not to have any repeats of Mazatlan if you want to crash out here."
---
Cougar gave it some thought. Most of the time, when he grew tired, it was simpler to disperse himself, become a ghost, but once in a while…
He hadn't slept in a bed in nearly a week, now. His body needed rest.
Decision made, he kicked off his boots and lay back on the left side of the bed, closing his eyes and listening to Jensen get ready for sleep.
Pausing as he reached to turn out the light, Jensen turned to look at him. "I missed you man. It's embarrassing how much."
His eyes, though. They were almost too much, even as the lights went out. They'd burned right through him, in the way that would show him everything, rather than nothing.
Cougar couldn't feel his chest anymore. Wasn't sure it was still there.
But he wasn't a fucking coward, so he forced himself back into place. It was easier to think, to plan, when the stuff that comprised his brain were lined up next to each other.
He wanted to return this, to say that he'd missed Jensen, too, but there wasn't balance, there, and he knew it. Truth be told, he'd been fighting to hold himself together, literally, while Jensen had been doing so figuratively. He hadn't had the time, for the first few months, to be lonely. Sad. Anything at all resembling human.
And yeah, maybe Cougar'd fixated on him a bit. Called him a destination, and spent months homing in on him. He'd missed him. He'd missed all of them, he'd mourned them. But he hadn't mourned Jensen, not for a minute.
Because the possibility that Jensen could possibly be dead hadn't been an option. Never occurred to him.
But he hadn't known that Jensen was alive, either. Hadn't even questioned it. He'd just known it to be so, taken it for granted. Planned his life around it, for months.
Despite Jensen's usual lack of self-preservation.
Despite the fact that he'd expected to find everyone else dead.
Despite the fact that the explosion that caused all this very well could've started a war. That would have, if six or seven hadn't already been going on.
"Jensen?"
"Yeah?"
"Why didn't the world end? When the bomb went off?"
"What do you mean?" Jensen asked, but Cougar can see him, working it out. "Fuck. An explosion? There? Fuck, you're right. I mean. How many wars are going on out there?" He stood up, started pacing the narrow strip of carpet between the bed and the wall. "There was barely any escalation," he scrunched his forehead. "I don't think. Can't remember, to be sure" he said, apologetically. "Those first few months were kind of a blur."
Cougar nodded, watching Jensen's fingers twitch, catching every longing glance towards the laptop sitting on the desk. It only took a minute for him to give in, grimly determined. "I'll find out." He sat down, tapped a few keys, focused, and got to work.
And maybe, Cougar reasoned, maybe this was why he'd sought Jensen out, all along.
Cougar fell in love, then, and then he fell out of the room.
---
Chapter 3