sixthiterationlogs

Entry tags:

Bang Bang

WHO: Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: Near the Canyon
WHEN: July 11th - Later
OPEN TO: Jake Jensen
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Closed

After establishing a place in a house (one that isn't as alone as he'd expect, thanks to Veronica), Cougar heads out again. There are things he needs to do to feel comfortable in his surroundings and one of them is a weapon. If he can't buy one, then he'll have to make one. He's able to find a few tools in the kitchen of the house. He just needs a knife to start, though an axe would do the job, too. Skirting the canyon walls, Cougar follows the river to look for downed tree branches that are dry, long enough to make the longbow he intends to equip himself with.

Not a rifle, but then, where would he get more ammunition?

He thinks he's alone until he starts to hit closer to town and footsteps send him running into the trees, gracefully ascending a low-hanging one with enough cover to hide in. Because, the thing is, after spending years in close quarters and on missions, you start to understand people's habits and sounds. That sound? Those breaths, those footsteps, they're familiar.

Cougar isn't sure he wants to let himself be hopeful.

The last time he allowed that, twenty-five children boarded a plane to the sound of his promises and then never got to see another day. They are with God now and Cougar is here, waiting until his time is up and he goes to the pit. Hope, hope is on his breath and he waits to see who comes past the path and whether he is actually that lucky or whether his mind is beginning to play tricks on him during the day, too.

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"It's cute!" He gestures at the little green house with its thick white columns supporting the porch.

When Cougar gestures at the house next door, Jake hesitates for a second, but then ploughs ahead. The house is nice and all, but he doesn't want to go explore that one, he wants to see Cougar's. "Can I see yours?"

Cougar nods his assent, kicking the dirt off his boots as he ascends the few stairs of the porch to head inside, peering around to see if Veronica is still staying with him. He had assented when she'd asked, but he wonders how long before his night terrors and the screams will dive her away. Cougar gestures to the upstairs, giving Jake permission to look around while he settles his things in.

Jake mimics Cougar when it comes to kicking the mud off his shoes, then actually goes as far as to take them off. It's no fun walking around in wet shoes to begin with, but in a man's home?

On second thought, he takes his socks off, too. That way he won't be leaving wet footprints as he goes.

The whole house is furnished, but it's clearly old. Like, Downton Abbey old. He can spot some ancient light switches in the walls, but they don't look safe enough to test, so he leaves them be. There's a small, rinky-dink piano up against one wall, and plates hanging up like pictures, and all the furniture looks delicate and fragile. "...Wow."

He doesn't go upstairs, though, preferring to trail along behind Cougar instead.

Cougar heads to the kitchen to sort through the pieces of wood he had found, seeing which ones will be able to be used for a short bow, seeing as he couldn't find the pieces to make a long one. He doesn't see Veronica, which makes him frown, because he doesn't like to think what trouble she might be finding when everything is still so unmapped.

Glancing over his shoulder, he raises his brow at Jensen's remark, giving him a look that says he can have all this too, next door.

Jake busies himself peering at everything in the kitchen, from all the old-fashioned cooking implements to the crockery to the stove. He whistles, impressed despite himself, at the sheer size of the thing, and turns to gesture at it with his thumb.

Cougar doesn't seem too impressed, instead apparently giving him a look that says duh, they all look like this, even yours. Jake can't lie and say he's not curious about how next door looks, but he's honestly not that bothered with going and checking it out.

"So gimme all the gossip, bro. Who's here? Have you made any friends? Who should I avoid?"

Such a question requires plenty of talking and Jensen knows how he feels about that. He arches his brow as if to say how much he isn't going to give answers, but he thinks he owes him at least a little discussion, given his sudden arrival and how confused he probably is. "Girl, living with me. Veronica," he says. "Teenager."

Jake plops down into one of the chairs in the kitchen, staring dumbly at Cougar when he lets him know that there's a teenager living with him.

"Okay, two things. There're teenagers here? Why?" Not that he thinks Cougar will really have an answer to that, but he likes to ask questions out loud. "Also, you have a teenager living with you? You won't even let me see your apartment! This is unfair, bro."

He shrugs, but what the shrug is in reference to is up to Jensen to decide. Whether it's about him letting Jensen (or any of the team) see his apartment or the teenager part -- when really, it's just a cover-all shrug for both. "Fair," is all he says with a thinly hidden smirk, because driving Jensen to eleven is one of his favourite pastimes.

Maybe he's just curious how long it will take for Jensen to decide if a teenager gets to stay, then why not him as well?

"And people accuse me of taking in strays," he mutters, pouting about Cougar choosing some teenage girl over him, even though he knows that's illogical, as he wasn't here when Cougar arrived and maybe she needed lots of help? Maybe she was hurt. Cougar's the field medic out of all of them, maybe he felt like he needed to look after her because she was injured and pathetic and sad and his dormant paternal urges had come rising up to the fore and he'd made a snap decision without thinking about it.

That's why Cougar needs him around. Jake makes the snap decisions without thinking about it, and Cougar can shake his head at him and tell him he's being an idiot just by raising his eyebrows.

"Well. If you let some teenage runaway come live with you, then I think I qualify as well. I'm a teenage runaway too, you know."

"Demasiadas arrugas que ser joven," Cougar mutters with a slightly taunting lift of his brow, gesturing with his fingers to the lines on Jensen's forehead that anyone could see without any binocs at all. He thinks about Jensen's request and shrugs, like he's had time to think it over and now he's accepting (as if he hadn't already decided Jensen is living with him the minute he'd locked eyes on him; making Jensen's life easy isn't half as fun).

"Will be noisy, at night," he says, quieter, aware of what happens with both of them, after Bolivia.

"You leave my wrinkles out of this!" he exclaims, clapping a hand over his forehead and glaring. "They make me look distinguished."

Cougar's a dick. But he's his dick. Wait, that...is not the point. "Fine. I was a teenage runaway. I was sixteen when I enlisted, you know. I had to lie on my form and forge Julie's signature to do it, but I did. I'm pretty sure that qualifies me for teenage runaway status. So there." He sticks out his tongue for emphasis, because he's secretly five years old.

He's the one who's shrugging now, something softer and sad settling over his face at the change in Cougar's tone. "What's new?" Nightmares are something Jake is familiar with. "That's more a concern for your wayward charge, you know."

Cougar tips his head back and forth to say that no, Jensen's wrinkles make him look old. Then again, it's not like he has more than one. He raises his brow when Jensen keeps talking, the runaway story something he's heard before, but one that he never likes to hear. "She doesn't know," he says darkly. "Nights have been okay, so far." That, or he's been quiet enough by using a pillow to muffle the worst of it that Veronica hasn't figured it out.

He gestures for Jensen to follow him. "Come. See your room."

He whistles lowly under his breath when Cougar tells him that this Veronica girl doesn't know he has night terrors, looking skeptical. "Well, she's gonna know about them real fast," he points out, his eyebrows lifting. "Have you at least warned her about them?"

A few days of quiet nightmares or managing to sleep lightly enough not to have them isn't going last for much longer, and if this girl is going to live with them, she's going to have to know what she's getting into.

"Oh yeah? I get my own room? Sweet!"

He shakes his head, because he doesn't like to talk about things in the first place and telling a near-stranger that he has night terrors that send him screaming isn't something he wants to do. "She will figure it out," he says darkly, watching Jensen explore the upstairs.

"Here," he says, for the bedroom closest to Cougar's. "Use this."

"Bro." He shakes his head too, despairing. Does nobody in their unit know how to communicate but him? Well, yes. That's why he's so vital. Cougar is damn lucky Jake is around to translate for him. "If you don't tell her, I will."

The room is small, and sparsely furnished. There's a bed against one wall, a small desk up against the window, and a small dresser up against the other wall. One door leads into what he assumes is a closet, but he ignores it for now. It's plain, and old-fashioned, but he's had to bunk down in a leaky shack in the jungle for weeks at a time, so honestly, it might as well have been a palace. "S'cute!"

Cougar's aggravated face is a message that Jensen can do all the telling he likes, but the day that Cougar willingly talks about that is the day that the sky falls down. He leans his weight against the wall behind him as Jensen inspects it. Compared to what they're used to living in, it's practically a palace and it might be helping in keeping the night terrors at bay.

"I'm just there," he says, to the door and jutting his thumb to the right. "In the room with the fireplace."

Jake tests the mattress by flopping down on the bed, making a surprised and happy noise when it springs up beneath him, supporting his not inconsiderable weight with relative ease. It feels like there's actual springs in there, which has the potential for being very uncomfortable, but at the moment it's great. Way better than a bedroll on the hard, rocky ground.

"Of course you picked the room with the fireplace." He laughs, pushing himself up to his feet with a little hop, and goes to poke through the dresser. "Nobody listens to me when I say you're a secret hedonist, but you are. I can see right through you, Cougsy baby, I know you're a man who likes his creature comforts."

He shrugs again. Around Jensen, his shrugs are practically a whole other language, but lucky that Jensen has made himself fluent in it a good deal of time ago. He does like nice things. Chocolate, scarves, clothes, and rooms. He knows how to live without them, but he likes them when he has them.

"So?" is his challenge, curious what Jensen will do if poked like this.

"So why do you think I hang around you so much?" he asks, looking up from the drawer he's peering into and smirking. "Your scintillating conversation? Nah, brah, it's your chocolate."

That's a lie. He hangs around Cougar because Cougar is the coolest, and Jake's been half in love with him for nearly a decade. Cougar is his best friend, and Jake would raze this whole town if something happened to him.

"Soy un excelente conversador," he says with prideful dignity, sniffing at the insult. He also knows that Jensen hangs around him because Cougar saves his life on the regular with well-placed bullets when Jensen's plans and mouth run away from him. He taps Jensen's chest with a palm, right over his heart. "And you would be dead, if not for me."

Jake can't help himself, he laughs. "Sure you are, buddy," he chortles, abandoning the dresser to poke his head in the closet instead. Nothing of import there, but it was still a good idea to check out, as he found a few hangers, which might wind up being good for something. Hanging clothes, if nothing else.

When Cougar comes up to him and places his hand on Jake's chest, he lifts his own hand to cover it and press it more firmly against his chest. "I know," is his simple response, all the laughter gone, deadly serious in a way Jake hardly ever is. He doesn't ever want Cougar thinking he doesn't appreciate him or something. Jake is well aware he'd be dead a hundred times over without Cougar's eagle eye watching over him. "You're like my own personal guardian angel," he quips, his tone much lighter than before. "Always watching out for me."

"I have your six," is Cougar's response with a shrug, patting Jensen's chest one more time as he thinks of all the times he's covered the team and what that means for his own hands. The blood there, most recently, is the blood he can't forget. Because Roque is someone he went from protecting to killing and he still doesn't know how to reconcile that.

"You abuse it," he accuses. "Make stories. Fun."

"Well someone has to have fun around here," is Jake's justification for making up stories about Cougar. He likes to exaggerate and see how far he can push before either Cougar speaks up or someone else calls bullshit. Usually it takes a long time.

"So how long have you actually been here?"

He's been keeping track of the time, of course. "Two weeks, maybe a day," he says, which is longer than he likes to be without his team. He's done it before in bad situations, places where he couldn't be with them and had to be in a sniper's nest alone, but that's not a choice. It's the job.

"There is fun," he says darkly, giving Jensen a warning look. "Then there is stupid. "Experimento de gobierno?"

He whistles lowly, shaking his head and rehung out to clap Cougar on the shoulder in sympathy. "Damn." He'd probably go stir-crazy, not being able to see his team, his family, anything. Cougar has always been more patient than him, but that still must have been difficult.

"And hey! The government experiment thing worked great, okay, you totally backed me up there and it was hilarious."

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