one little snap and it all falls, falls, falls down

[thecatinahat]

WHO: Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: Bungalow #22
WHEN: 1AM, July 25
OPEN TO: Jake Jensen, Veronica Sawyer
WARNINGS: Violence, mentions of death
STATUS: Closed

---

It's a miracle Cougar's lasted this long.

He's been sleeping like the dead, when he does sleep. There have been long days of insomnia that keep him awake and then when he does find sleep, it's without dreams. It's a blessing from God in a place that seems scant on blessings. It's taken this long for him to find respite in sleep and when he does, it's thanks to Jensen's presence and the knowledge that someone else has his back.

It starts like it always does. Cougar thrashes in the bed, tossing and turning as he dreams. As always, it's green. The smell of the jungle is around them and he hears birds. The laughter of children echoes in his ears, rapid-fire, happy Spanish being shared and plans for the future. He hears them from all around him, as if in stereo, but just like always, the dream shifts.

The fires start, claiming the trees around them, and then the bullets. One by one, the children fall, consumed by bullets and fire, but they don't stay dead. They come back to haunt him, aglow and afire with hatred and anger in their eyes.

"You," they chorus, staring at him, "it's your fault."

He can never move, in this dream. Stuck, paralyzed, Cougar can't get away as they crumble to dust, one by one. His little angelitos are slowly dying because he put them on a helicopter and told them everything was going to be fine. He lied to them and now they're dead, twenty-five little angels on his soul.

"No," he murmurs. "No, no, no!" It builds faster and faster, until Cougar is thrashing in his bed, the covers tangled with his body as he starts to scream, the fires of hell opening their gates for him in the dream, beckoning him in for what he did. Sweaty, panicked, and as scared as ever, he flails in the bed as hoarse bellows fill the bungalow and he tries for the knife to defend himself against this waking nightmare.

Comments

[igotacrossbow]

Cougar having night terrors is one of the constants in Jake's world. He had them when they first met, when Jake first joined the Losers not long after Cougar came back from Afghanistan, but they'd slowly died away in the intervening years. After Bolivia...

Well. They came back with a vengeance.

Honestly, it's surprising that it's been so many nights without Cougar's hoarse screams jolting him out of a dead sleep. It's not that Jake doesn't have nightmares of his own, but his are generally quieter, more easily hidden, a childhood spent living in group homes ingraining the habit of sleeping as silently as possible overriding any urge he might have to thrash and scream.

For a moment, when he first wakes, he doesn't realize why. He doesn't know where he is, he can't figure out what's happening, and he's left completely disoriented until he hears the screaming again.

Launching himself out of bed, hopping to avoid getting tangled in his sheets, Jake goes hurtling down the L-shaped corridor that separates his room from Cougar's, narrowly avoiding slamming into Veronica's door as he goes. If she managed to sleep through Cougar's screaming, she doesn't deserve to be awoken by Jake sending her door rattling in the frame.

"Cougar," he hisses, reaching out carefully to touch Cougar's ankle, his knee, ready to dodge any fists that come flying towards him. "Carlos. It's just a dream."

[thecatinahat]

Someone is touching him. One of the fire-demons that wears a child's mask is touching him, trying to drag him into hell. He lashes out, kicking (and landing a knee right where Jake's balls are) and manages to fumble wildly before latching his grip onto the knife, twisting until he's straddling the intruder, sharp knife to their throat.

"No hoy, demonio," he growls. "Go back to hell," he adds, pressure harder on the knife against skin.

[igotacrossbow]

Leaving his glasses behind was a stupid fucking move, but Jake hadn't been thinking. Obvious. He never thinks when it comes to Cougar.

Cougar is a slippery bastard at the worst of times, and right now is no different. Before Jake can rear back, he's been grabbed and Cougar's knee gets slammed right into his balls. He's too shocked to do much more than flail and squeak, torn between defending himself and not hitting his friend.

His indecision winds up with him flat on his back, Cougar's weight pinning him down, a sharp knife pressed to his neck.

"Cougs," he wheezes pitifully, fighting the urge to curl up in a ball and protect his soft, dangly bits. He can't curl up, Cougar's got him pinned to the mattress. "Cougs," he repeats, his hand curled around Cougar's wrist. "It's just me. Jake. No demons, okay? Just me."

[thecatinahat]

Cougs filters through. At first, it comes from the mouth of the little demon girl, but eventually, the haze clears and he hears it the second time through the echo. His eyes widen in panicked fear and Cougar recoils, the knife scattering to the ground as he lets go of it, vaulting off Jake and crossing himself, murmuring a frantic Hail Mary to repent for this sudden sin.

"What are you doing here?" he snaps at him. "I could have killed you."

[igotacrossbow]

The moment Cougar springs off him, Jake lets himself curl up with a pained little whimper, pain rolling over him in horrible, red-hot waves as he breathes doggedly through clenched teeth. He's been kicked in the nuts before, he knows all he has to do is breathe and the pain will dissipate soon enough.

"You were screaming," is his only justification.

[thecatinahat]

That doesn't answers Cougar's question. He finishes his prayer with a touch of his palm to his sacred heart tattoo, bared since he only sleeps in his boxers. He arches a brow at Jensen's pain, but he does feel guilty because he definitely is the cause of it. "Lo siento," he murmurs evenly, for the part where he'd both kneed Jensen and nearly sliced off his head.

"But you shouldn't have been so stupid," he snaps.

[igotacrossbow]

Jake had been teammates with Roque for years, he's used to the relationship between his head and shoulders being threatened regularly. Maybe not quite so seriously, but this isn't the first time he's had a knife whipped out at him.

"Yell at me later," he wheezes, blinking myopically up at Cougar in the near-dark. He's functionally blind at the best of times without his glasses, but in the middle of the night? He's lucky he didn't slam his shin into the bedframe and add to his collection of injuries. "Shut up now before you wake Veronica." If he hasn't already.

[thecatinahat]

Cougar glares at Jake when he accuses him of waking up Veronica. Now that the dream is clearing, he can also see that Jake doesn't have his glasses. Cougar leans forward and smacks the back of his head, cursing at him, before creeping out stealthily and silently to find Jake's glasses in the dark, back in his bedroom.

He slides them on Jake's face, leaning over to light one of the lamps so he can get a good look at how much of a cut there is, splayed fingers grabbing Jake's chin to shove it up, elongating his neck. The divot of the cut is evident, especially when Cougar rubs away a droplet of blood. "How are the cojones?" he asks, unable to help his smirk.

[igotacrossbow]

When Cougar smacks the back of his head, Jake lets out a wounded, petulant noise. "What was that for?" he protests, pouting.

When Cougar returns with his glasses, though, Jake lets out a soft sigh and lets him slide them back on his face, one hand lifting to gently touch Cougar's elbow as he forces him to tip his head back so he could see the damage he's done. "It's fine, Cougs," he assures him. "I've had worse shaving."

Cougar's follow-up question has him glaring, though, huffing a mad noise out of his noise. "Well, I guess it's a good thing I'm not going to be fathering any children anytime soon," he gripes. "God, how many knees do you have?"

[thecatinahat]

It's for charging into the room without his glasses when he could have run smack into a wall, which would have been stupid and careless of him. And that makes Cougar smack him because it's a stupid thing to do, especially just for him. "Si quieres, puedo besar mejor," he deadpans, but the glint in his eyes isn't joking so much as teasing.

He leans over to start stoking the lamp, ready to get himself awake for a long haul. If he wants to avoid those nightmares, he needs to stay awake.

[igotacrossbow]

"You're not kissing anything," he says, petulant. "You're mean to me."

When Cougar leans over to fiddle with the lamp, Jake frowns at him. "What are you dong? No, stop. C'mon. No lights. We're going back to sleep." He uses his longer reach to his advantage to turn the lamp down even further, muscling Cougar out of the way so he can lean over and puff air down the fluted glass, snuffing out the light before putting his glasses on the bedside table by the lamp. "Stop being such an idiot. You need to sleep."

[thecatinahat]

Cougar shrugs, passing off the comment like it's water off a duck, not minding rejection from Jensen. It's been fairly clear where Jake's affections lie and they're usually in the women that Cougar keeps from him (for his own good, he'd say).

He stiffens up when the dark floods the room again, not sure he can cope with the same nightmare twice in one night. "I'm not tired," he lies evenly, even if his muscles and head screams protest.

[igotacrossbow]

"You're a terrible fucking liar," he grumbles, using his greater bulk to muscle Cougar away from the lamp and back down onto the bed. "Just go to sleep, I'll be here." To stave off his nightmares, he doesn't say. Cougar is famously touchy about his problems, but Jake has found that if you just don't give him a choice, sometimes you can make him stop obsessing over them and relax.

The pillows are thin and the blankets are too, but the nights are still warm here in their little house, so Jake doesn't mind too much. Settling himself down between Cougar and the door, Jake pins him down with an arm across his stomach and his knee dug into his leg. "Stop thinking so loud, Carlos, c'mon. Sleep now. Thinking later."

[teen_angst_bullshit]

Veronica bolts upright in bed, mouth open around the scream strangled in her own throat. Disorientation rushes swiftly in, this bed and room and house and life still far too unfamiliar, and then bleeds slowly out as her fingers uncurl from her grip on the blanket.

It's only after she catches her breath, after the heartbeat begins to fade from her ears, that she realizes that she'd not woken herself this time. A noise snags her attention from the next room and then comes again, louder and unmistakable.

Still shaken, she slips from her bed and pads barefoot after the sound, slowly pushing open Cougar's door to find him locked in his own dark battles.

She swallows roughly, considers briefly waking Jake, and then steps in, over to Cougar's bedside.

"Cougar," she says, barely above a whisper. Leaning in, she touches tentative fingertips to his shoulder. "Cougar," she says, just a little louder.

[thecatinahat]

Cougar's gun would normally be here, tucked securely in easy reach so he could grab it and defend himself. Then again, he also knows that a knife can do just as well, which is what he searches for to try and fight off those fiery faces of hellions, Roque's laughter looming. And he can hear Roque calling his name.

The touch to his shoulder kicks automatic reaction into gear and he swats the hand away, grabbing the wrist and flipping the body onto the bed, rolling to get the knife and pin the intruder down with his elbow to their chest.

Except, when he blinks through the night terrors, the screams dying away, he sees dark hair and no malevolence in the eyes. Only innocence and the face of the girl he's been trying to protect. "Orar por mis pecados," he mumbles to himself as he goes pale, the knife clattering to the floorboards as he rears back, nausea pulsing over him as he realizes what he's almost done.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

She's crying before she can quite stop herself, fat, hot tears rolling furiously down her flushed cheeks as she scrambles back, hand pressed to her chest where Cougar's elbow had pinned her in place.

It isn't his fault; she knows it isn't his fault. But for a bright, hot moment there, he hadn't been Cougar at all, and she'd been back down in that boiler room.

"I'm sorry," she says, voice shuddering, head shaking at her own stupidity. "Lo siento. Yo no sabía, lo siento."

[thecatinahat]

He's never hurt another child like this, not willingly. Except that he's sent twenty-five of them to their deaths, telling them to hang on tight for the ride, to stay calm. And then, they had been shot out of the sky and Cougar's soul has been forever corrupted with those sins. She's crying, but she's alive, and Cougar wants to do anything he can to make it better.

"Lo siento," he repeats over and over again, collecting her up in his arms to hug her not only for the comfort, but so he doesn't have to look her in the eye, because he's not entirely sure that he can.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

As she falls in against him, a sob bubbles up from her throat, muffled against the front of his shirt. She hasn't ever really cried, not properly, not in the way that makes you feel wrung out but relieved at the end, tipping out all of your stress and sorrow so that you can finally begin to move on, if just a little.

"It isn't you," she tries to wetly clarify, but the words get stifled by the soft hitch of her crying and the solid weight of Cougar's chest.

[thecatinahat]

It is, though. It's the man he has to become when he shuts off his brain and does the things that he needs to, in order to protect the people he cares about. He hadn't hesitated when he'd pulled the trigger on Wade, when he'd set things in motion and killed Roque in the process. Guilt twists and stabs in his gut and he holds onto her, wishing that he could agree that it wasn't him, but that's not the case.

"I'm sorry, Veronica," he gets out in English. "It is."

"I'm not a good man," he tells her, brow furrowed with the pain of having to say such a thing and know that it's true, to a degree, in your heart.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"No," she insists, shaking her head gently against his shoulder. "You have an excuse, and you— You stopped yourself, you saw me. I'm not saying it's not terrible—" She leans back, eyes red-rimmed and damp where they look back at him. "It's terrible. For you and for me. But I'm not crying because of you. It just... I thought I'd started to forget, and I—" Her breath hitches wetly as her gaze darts away, ashamed. "I guess I was stupid to think so."

She swallows and presses her eyes firmly closed, trying to banish the image of J.D.'s face that wants to swim up from the blackness. "He tried to kill me, I don't know if I told you that. You probably never really get over something like that."

[thecatinahat]

He's starting to stiffen up from the emotion. He's not sure what to do in this situation, knowing Jake would know better. As it is, he lets her stay there, but his comfort begins to ebb away as if he doesn't really understand what he could possibly do to make her feel better after admitting that he's a murderer. "I put twenty-five children on a helicopter and sent them to die," he says, because if she's going to understand, she needs to know. "I killed my teammate with no more than a quick press of the trigger."

He tenses his jaw and gives her a long look. "You told me he was a bad boyfriend," he says, of her murdering ex. "But even if I did not mean to and something happened to you, isn't it just as bad?"

[teen_angst_bullshit]

She's glad he asks the question, even if it isn't the easiest to untangle. Right this moment, she isn't certain she can bear to ask for clarification about 25 kids dead at Cougar's hand.

"But you didn't," she says after a tick of hesitation. A headache has begun to form, a subtle pulse behind her eyes that makes it seem all the more insane that he can't see the difference between himself and J.D. "And no, it's not as bad. Intentions have to count for something. That would be like, I don't know. Blaming me for sneezing when I have a cold."

It's a paltry comparison, but she thinks the point still stands.

[thecatinahat]

His look shows how he really feels about having his acts compared to a sneeze, because he thinks that there's a world of difference between the two. He doesn't ask her what she thinks about the times when he'd intended to kill -- like his targets, like Wade, like Roque if he's true in his heart. He doesn't think that's going to go over well, not at all.

"You should stay out of my room if I'm screaming," he says hoarsely. "Then no one will get hurt." As if Jake won't come hurtling and get a black eye anyway, but he can at least try to limit the damage.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

Veronica's worried expression goes a bit more pinched, her chest suddenly tight under what feels like a chastisement. She'd only been trying to help, but apparently that's unwanted. She wants to ask if he'd just let her scream in her sleep, but knows he'll say it isn't the same. Maybe he's right, maybe her brush with death is nothing compared to his demons.

She slowly nods and slides from the bed, trying to mask her disappointment and doing a poor job of it.

"You should talk to someone," she says as she takes a step toward the door and pauses. "It's supposed to help."

[thecatinahat]

Cougar leans forward as he works to catch his breath and shake the rest of the nightmare. "Wait," he says, dredging up the single word from under the pile of his will to not do this. He knows there isn't anyone else around that can listen to him and Jake gets irritated when Cougar takes on this guilt.

And a stranger is out of the question.

"If you mean that, I will talk to you," he says firmly.